High Performance Thinking

Taking Risk

• Risk = not doing something and spending the rest of your life regretting it (Source)
• Is this actually risky? (Source)
  • Am I just overrating the risk of failure (reputation damage, embarrassment, etc.)? (Source)
• Am I taking enough risk in my career? (Source)
• If I don't do this, will I have massive regret about it in the future? (Source)

Picking What to Work On

• Am I being a doer or a talker? (Source)
  • Am I dabbling on a bunch of projects because I don't want to take the risk of going all in on one? (Source)
• What is the intersection of what you're good at, what you enjoy, and where you can create value for the world? (Source)
• Do I have deep seeded personal conviction that the thing I'm working on is going to work and be important? (Source)
• Am I willing to make a long-term commitment to this? (Source)
  • One of the few arbitrage moments left in the market is time. Where should I make a long-term commitment that leads to high ROI? (Source)
• How can you create something that a small amount of people love? (Source)
  • It's easier to scale up from this, than to scale up from a lot of users not really liking the product.
• Can you explain your product in one sentence? If not, it's too complicated. (Source)
  • The more complex the product, the more difficult it will be to succeed.
• Why shouldn't you do significant things in this one life, however you define significant? (Source)

Do you call it quits or do you keep persevering?

• Have I run out of ideas? If not, keep going. Quit when you internally feel like you can no longer keep going because you've ran out of ideas and it's not working. (Source)
• Do you derive satisfaction from what you're doing? Does it give you enjoyment? And do you deeply feel that it matters? (Source)
  • If not, you won't be able to keep moving through the inevitable bad that is coming.

When you're between jobs:

• How can I take a year off to read, learn about fields I'm interested in, travel, meet new people that think differently, reconnect with friends and family, help people without asking for anything in return, and leave myself unscheduled for spontaneous events? (Source)

Building a Great Product

• How can you make Version 1 of your product as simple as possible? (Source)
  • Start with as little surface area as possible.
• How can you find a few people that will give you feedback on the product every day? (Source)
  • Recruit these people by hand, not through paid ads.
  • Ask them these questions (Source):
    • What do they like?
    • What would they pay for?
    • What would make them recommend it?
• How can you make your feedback loop shorter? How can your product get 10% better every week? (Source)
• Are you keeping track of the right metrics? Here's what to keep track of (Source):
  • Total registrations
  • Active users
  • Activity levels
  • Cohort retention
  • Revenue
  • Net Promoter Score
• Is your product so good that people are spontaneously telling their friends about it? (Source)
  • Are you trying to build a growth machine around a product people don't love? (Source)
  • First build a product people love, then build the growth machine.
• Are we building a product based on a real trend or a fake trend? (Source)
  • Are people telling their friends about it obsessively? That's a real trend. A fake trend is something that people may buy, but there isn't intense usage per user.

Execution

• Am I making sure the entire company executes? (Source)
  • Do I know what we should do? And can I get it done? (Source)
• What am I spending my time and money on? (Source)
  • This reveal what I think is important.
  • What are the two or three most important things to focus on?
• What are our key goals? Am I repeating these goals enough? Does everybody in the company understand those are our key goals? (Source)
• Am I constantly choosing a bias toward action? (Source)
  • Everytime you talk to a great founder, they've gotten new things done. This is the greatest predictor of success.
• Are we winning all the time? Are we ensuring that we always keep momentum? (Source)
  • If you're not winning, what's a small win that can help us get our momentum back? (Source)
• The team is in disagreeance about how to move forward. What do the users want? That's your answer. (Source)
• The compound effect says that the more I do today means the more I'll benefit tomorrow. What compounding can you start today that will give you new opportunities in the next 1, 5, and 10 years? (Source)

Team Management

Choosing your co-founder:

• Are they relentlessly resourceful? (Source)
  • Do they remind you of James Bond? (Source)
• Have you known them for years? (Source)
• Are they tough and calm? (Source)
• Am I willing and happy to give them an equal share of equity? (Source)

Hiring employees:

• How can we do this with the least amount of employees possible? (Source)
• Is there a way for us not to hire someone right now? Are we absolutely desperate to hire someone or can we wait longer? (Source)
• Is this a role where I care about experience, or do I prefer aptitude? (Source)

Interview questions and observations:

• What projects have you worked on in the past? (Source)
• Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them? (Source)
• Do they have good communication skills? (Source)
• Do they have a risk taking attitude? (Source)
• Who is impressive and gets things done? (Source)

Calling references (Source):

• Is this person in the top 5% of people you've ever worked with?
• What specifically did they do?
• Would you hire them again? Why aren't you hiring them again?

Firing employees:

• Are they bad at their job? (Source)
• Are they creating office politics? (Source)
• Are they persistently negative? (Source)
• Are they getting every decision wrong? Would I have chosen the opposite action in comparison to their chosen action? (Source)

Networking

• How can you move to the pockets of the world where people are working on what you care about? (Source)
• Who can you help with no intention of benefiting from that help? (Source)
• How can you increase the amount of people you're spending time around in your professional network? (Source)

Productivity

• 3 Question Annual Reflection (Source):
  • What went well this year?
  • What didn’t go well this year?
  • What’s on my to do list for this year?
• Am I properly priotizing using the 3 key pillars? (Source)
  • Am I getting the most important tasks done?
  • Am I wasting time on stupid tasks?
  • Am I making lists to keep track of tasks?

Your Psychology

• Am I asking for what I want or am I worried that someone will say no if I ask? (Source)
  • Am I being aggressive enough about what I want? (Source)
• How can I surround myself with people who will make me more ambitious? (Source)
• Do I have clear goals for myself every day? Every year? Every decade? (Source)
• How am I ensuring that I'm keeping mental flexibility to look at things from new perspectives and new angles? (Source)
• Am I addicted to the internet? Do I have an attention span? (Source)

Get a biweekly email with a list of questions to ask yourself that make you happier, healthier, and wealther.

You'll also get immediate access to the High Performance Thinking Library that houses all editions.

Copyright © 2024 Great Writing, LLC. All rights reserved.