Hey friends,

Happy Sunday.

Let’s get right to this week’s top 5 ideas.

A message from… The Modern Productivity Letters

Everyone wants to be more productive to achieve their goals.

But when they do, they lose sight of what truly matters…

Their health.

Every week, Matt shares one proven productivity system to smash your goals (without sacrificing your health).

Join me and 1,500+ entrepreneurial creators reading Matt’s newsletter:

1. Solomon Paradox

I went viral for the first time this past week…

Aside from my dopamine levels being all messed up, I learned that The Solomon Paradox is much more relatable than I first anticipated.

^{^ Click to read ^}

Summary:

People give better advice than they follow themselves.

1. Open up a blank Google Doc

2. Write out your problems

3. Pretend you’re your 85-year-old self

4. Give advice to your current self

What would future you tell current you?

2. How to Make a Big Decision (Part 1)

One of the best decisions you can make is to learn how to make better decisions. I mean, think about it. Our life is really just the collective sum of our past decisions. Make better decisions → live a better life.

Here are 13 questions Shaan Puri likes to ask before he makes a big decision:

1. What's the decision?

(Explain why I'm doing this in 280 characters max)

2. What alternatives did I consider?

3. What am I feeling?

(i.e. Extreme fear, pessimism, neutral, boredom, fatigue, greed, extreme greed, FOMO)

4. How long have I been thinking about this decision?

5. Who / What tipped me over the edge?

6. What are the secondary benefits of this decision?

7. If I took away all the secondary benefits, would I still make this decision?

8. What makes me think I'm right about this decision?

9. What makes me think I'm wrong about this decision?

10. What's the upside if I'm right?

11. What's the downside if I'm wrong?

12. What follow-up decision should I make to make this decision more successful?

13. How do I predict this will play out?

Going through these questions seems like a lot of mental effort. But decisions add up faster than your dirty laundry basket. Make sure they’re stacking in your favor.

Source: My First Million Podcast

3. Shaan Puri's Decision Register (Part 2)

Many people glide through life without really internalizing the lessons they’ve learned from their past decisions.

That leads to them making the same mistake over and over again.

Instead, keep track of every big decision you make and the lessons you’ve learned from them.

Shaan Puri calls this a Decision Register. After you make a big decision, go back and revisit that decision ~6 months later (and answer these 5 questions):

1. What was the decision?

2. Did it seem big at the moment?

3. What reason made you choose that decision?

4. What was the outcome of that decision?

5. What were your lessons learned?

When you consistently do this exercise, you’ll begin to spot your common pitfalls and tendencies. Then you can correct them.

Source: My First Million Podcast

4. The Never-Ending Now

David Perell has this concept that we’re trapped in a Never-Ending Now. When we scroll through social media and watch the news, we only consume content created within the last 24 hours.

Even though we’re one click away from the brightest minds in the world, from Plato to Darwin, “we default to novelty instead of timelessness.”

I fall into this trap all the time. Why read a challenging book when you can scroll entertaining TikToks all day?

But instead, David pushes us to use time as a filter for the type of content we consume. The older the content, usually the higher quality it is because it stood the test of time. That’s called The Lindy Effect.

Avoid the daily news and social media, and read Lindy books and publications instead.

Why?

Because if you only consume the content that everyone else is consuming, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Consume different to think different.

Source: The Never-Ending Now

5. Software or Hardware Problems

George Mack has the idea that “Most of your problems are hardware problems, not software problems.”

What he means is most of our mental problems can be solved by activating the body. I like this rule of thumb from Zach Pogrob:

To change your psychology, change your physiology.

Jay “5 Ideas, Every Sunday” Yang

New ‘round here? Wanna build a profitable creator business? Then gently caress that big button below to join us: