#1 Productivity Hack #1: DEEP WORK

- Cal Newport : Deepwork (Distraction-free, pushes cognitive capabilities to limit, hard to

replicate)
- Flow : Freetime is difficult to enjoy because it is unstructured and requires much greater
effort to be something that can be enjoyed
- Deepwork : a) Pick time blocks (No Shallow work) / b) Pick locations (Quiet, Free from
Distraction) / c) Set Laws (no texting, internet, email, chatting etc.) / d) Rechargers (coffee,
schedule breaks, snacks, cleaning the work)

RECOMMENDATION: DEEP WORK by CAL NEWPORT

#2 How to build good study habits

I. OVERVIEW

1. Perform the activity everyday

2. Habit forming takes times (18 to 254 days)
3. Willpower is limited (only take important decisions and work on them, more decisions you make
less willpower you will have) – Ego Depletion
4. Build habits to become automatic in actions and lose no or less willpower when doing them

II. PLANNING

1. Associate habit with something 'natural' that will happen (e.g. Walk after dinner, Brush after wake
up) – CUE
2. First Few days to months of building a habit are the most important (Don’t break the chain)

III. MONITORING / LOGGING

1. Use pomodoro technique (25 mins focused work 5 mins break) and log the number of sessions
you do and push it up.
2. Do small and manageable changes to your habits
3. "Accurate monitoring helps determine whether a habit is worth the time, money or energy it
consumes." - Gretchen Rubin

IV. CONVENIENCE

1. Ex. If you want to learn guitar place it somewhere so that you can see it, take it and play it without
much effort required

2. Make it easy to start.

V. SMART REWARDING

1. Create a positive feedback loop and nobody can stop you from making that habit.

2. The rewards should re-inforce the habit.

#3 Why I quit Social Media

It’s important to respect the work put into social media i.e., they are made to be addictive with ease.

Use social media – Receive Attention - Dopamine hits – Novel Information – Stimulating senses

When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and
distracted thinking and superficial learning.

You are not missing out – Disasters. Just Gossip. No Solution

We compare the highlights of someone’s life with our behind the scenes
#4 How to take good notes

How to take bad notes

– Not primed
– Distracted (Facebook & Friends)
Friends: attention is constantly shifted to more interesting conversations and a regular shift
b/w them and lecture is difficult. Have fun during breaks.

How to take good notes

– CORNELL METHOD

– Mentally teach yourself (FEYNMAN TECHNIQUE)

– Go through all the heading and write in the main ideas and now we have a rough idea. Get a
general overview from whatever sources available.
– 10 minutes to summarize and re-teach.

#5 A Simple Trick to Develop Good Habits that Stick and Break Bad Ones | Don't Break the Chain

- Our thoughts do not define who we are, they are just infinite possibility of who we could be
but they are just infinite possibilities of who we could be and the thoughts we act on reflect
our true nature.
- Don’t break the chain. Average – 66 days
Reason 1: Big X on calendar = DOPAMINE
Reason 2: Loss Aversion = Stake of losing increases

#6 Self Discipline if freedom from yourself

- Bertha the bee. Prisons of their own biology

- Humans can overcome this with self-discipline
- Supernormal stimuli (junk foods, social media, internet, video-game)
- Novelty : humans are wired to seek for more novelty and it’s been followed by our ancestors
#7 How to become more disciplined

- Story of Lucas
1. STRONG REASON WHY (Strong motivating reason)
2. DEVELOPING DISCIPLINE THROUGH SINGULAR ACTIVITIES (Turning one into habit
before moving to another)
3. PLAN FOR TEMPTATION (IF-THEN TECHNIQUE : pre-planned decision of self-control)

#8 This is How Short Your Life Is (Starred)

#9 Existentialism: Finding meaning in suffering

- Nazi Concentration Camp (Viktor Frankl)

- 1:28 survival
- Essentialism: Essence can be considered as a part of a person or thing, that defines them
The specific DNA is my essence without which I wouldn’t be me.
- Existentialism: We are born without a purpose, and is left to define our own.
EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE.
- Quote “When we are no longer able to change a situation – just think of an incurable
disease like an operable cancer – we are challenged to change ourselves.”
- TENSIONLESS STATE: It causes Existential Vaccum – a complete lack of purpose or
meaningless
- Life is not about avoiding suffering or stress at all costs but finding something worth
something for.
- Quote “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to
choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

#10 How to create an absolutely broken system

- Human Education : Nomadic Hunter Gatherers  10,000 BC Agricultural Revolution : formed

civilizations  1760 Industrial Revolution : Apprenticeship- Schools formed
- Horace Mann, Secretary Education for the state of Massachusetts studied systems in Europe
and chose the Prussian Model (funded by taxes, mandatory attendance, trained teachers)
- Prussian used their schools to instil obedience to authority in students.
- Committee of 10 (10 in each) studied courses and narrowed down 9 courses: Latin, Greek,
English, Other Modern Languages, Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, History,
Civil Government, Political Economy and Geography.
- Standardized Education ensured a minimum quality and ensured that education is available
to all.
#11 Why is the School System Failing?

- Downsides:
1. It stifles creativity. The students are limited in the subject matter they can learn and the
ways in which they can learn.
2. It values efficiency over mastery and promotes incomplete understanding of subject
material.
It works like a factory.
- Swiss Cheese Learning
- House on weak foundation
- PREDICTIONS
- Young students find education a chore. In the ideal state, where students find and use their
talents and natural inclinations to make the world around them a better place.

#12 The Most Important Thing School Never Taught You

- Rational Thinking
- A perfectly rational being which doesn’t exist makes decisions purely based on logic, data
and empirical evidence.
- The passive thinker is focussed on outputs whereas a critical thinker focus on inputs
- Critical thinkers are less likely to make irrational and emotions decisions or be manipulated
by others
- Secondly, they are more empathetic. They understand that we all have our unique view of
the world. It’s an essential skill for any great leader or teammate.
- Critical Learners are deep thinkers.
- They admit if they do not know something.
- They speak on topic they have studied actively.
- Lastly, they are creative.
- They refuse to blindly accept the ideas and values of other which results in the generation
of new ideas.

#13 7 Habits of Highly Effective Thinkers

- Critical Thinking as personality: “… Open and fair mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility, a

propensity to seek reason, a desire to be well-informed, and a respect for and willingness to
entertain diverse viewpoints.” – Emily Lai, Pearson Assessment
- HABITS
1. Read – wide variety – open-minded – multiple viewpoints
2. Don’t jump to conclusions – absence of data – sound reasoning
3. Create systems not goals. Ex. writing everyday vs writing one article per week. A system can
be measured, refined and optimized. Use feedbacks
4. Argue with oneself. Counter arguments
5. Be willing to change your opinion
6. Write – separates what we actually know from what we think we know
7. Seek Adversity. Standards promote passiveness.
#14 Feynman Technique

- Plancks’s Speech & Chauffeur

- Deep Knowledge vs Shallow Knowledge
- It’s impossible to learn deeply about everything
- Best not to act on information not reviewed
- Feynman’s first principle “The first principle is not to fool yourself and the easiest person to
fool is you”
 FEYNMAN TECHNIQUE: SIMPLE & CONCISE

1: Explain topic out loud to a peer unfamiliar with the topic at their level of understanding and
use the simplest language.
2: Identify gaps in your own understanding where you can’t explain an idea simply.
3: Go back to source material, until you can explain simply.

REPEAT THE 3 STEPS UNTILL MASTERED.

- Take help of: Analogies. Conveys a lot of information in a simple manner, something they
can relate to and thus understand better.
- Example : Story to a Pyramid

- Apply at: Life changing decisions, craft

#15 How One Man Manipulated All of America

- Edward Bernays
- Story: Post World War 1. 1929. New York
- Yin and Yang of City Life: It puts more fish in our sea but it made it so much harder to stand
out among the ocean.
- Modern Advertising
- Nephew of Sigmund Freud
- Propaganda: The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is
propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or
doctrine. Understanding group psychology.
- Symbolism, Influencer marketing: Influential figures to spread message (cascading),
altering group norms, and being everywhere.
- Inter-commodity competitions (taxis vs Uber)
- Getting women to smoke & Slim figures
  STEPS

1: Cigarette becomes a symbol of female independence

2: Appeal to unconscious desires: first, getting slim and then growing female independence
3: Normalizing Behaviour: thin frames brought to fashion and linking cigarettes to fashion
4: Get into their mental space: Be everywhere

#16 Will Virtual Reality Replace Real Life?

- Maximizing Pleasure
- Thought Experiment: Robert Nozick – Book: Anarchy, State and Utopia “THE EXPERIENCE
MACHINE”
- Supernormal stimuli
- Premise: More people, more often than not, try to make their creations more effective
- Premise: Possible to take advantage of human biology.
- Hedonism: Pain & Pleasure. Illusion
- Reasons not to plug in: 1. We want to do things and not just experience. 2. We want to
become a character and the person who enters the machine has no character ex. Gold
medal 3. Machine would prevent us from experiencing a deeper reality, more than what
man have experienced till date.
- REVERSE EXPERIENCING MACHINE: Status Quo Bias. We don’t like change.

#17 The Most Powerful Mindset for Success

- The Growth Mindset – Carol Dweck : Intelligent and Skills are not innate and thus not fixed
- Fixed Mindset : No room for improvement
- Lenses
- Prioritize learning over failure, growing over stagnation
- State of flux and transformation: do not attach their identity to the result. Instead, they
focus on the process of learning
- Study: Entrepreneur (Journey is the most important factor)

 How to develop growth mindset ?

- Accepting its existence and the possibility for brain to change (neuroscience: brain
malleable)
- Focus on process over results (Dweck: praise for the process)
- Solution: Get a journal. Put step. Measure with quantity. Have a target to aim at.
- If the results are not better, analyse the process and alter it at the required places.
- Seek advice from peers or those who have travelled the path.
- Read Books people you mind. Adopt and incorporate the right elements.
- Jump out of your comfort zone.
- Notice when people say things that attach you to fixed mindset but always remember what
carol dweck said “the path to a growth mindset is a lifelong journey, not a proclamation”.
#18 How to Memorize Way Faster and Easier

- Memorization: ENCODING & RETRIEVAL

 Encoding: Creating new memories

- Dual Coding: Allan Paivio. Creation of both a visual and verbal memory
- Memory Palace
- Mind Map (Seeing the bigger picture and finding gaps in the knowledge)
- Actively reconstruct the material into a mind map / memory palace

 Retrieval: Accessing the memories

- Spaced Repetition: Retrieval sessions are spaced apart
- Leitner System: Space increases for each repetition.
- Leitner Hierarchy: no. of days. After 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 9th day and so on. Reset back on
failure

- Combining the two processes: State (Simulate exam environment).

#19 How to Focus Intensely

- Though Experiment: Robo3000 & Robo5000

- Directed Focus: Directing attention at a single thought or action. Undivided attention while
ignoring the environmental stimuli
- Generalized Focus: Broadly distributed attention. Reacting to environmental stimuli
- Point System: Based on action priority. Low. Medium. High. Very High. Highest
- It is not so simple, intuitive and subjective in humans. The code of humans are not subject to
such easy changes, some of it is already coded prior for the basis of our existence.
- What does it mean not to focus? Difference between the wanted and actual area of
attention. Reason1. Stress.
- Stress demands higher level of attention. Some people just can’t move on beyond it. Thus it
is important to be naturally less stressed about certain things.
- Reason 2. Doing things we intrinsically dislike. Extrinsic (Leads to pleasure. Job) and Intrinsic
Pleasure (pleasure perse)
- Reason 3. Seeking short term pleasures.

 Addressing all the problems

- Dealing with stress
- Doing things that are intrinsically pleasurable
- Avoiding short term pleasures. Practice 1. Meditation. Practice 2. Deep Work. Practice 3.
Not to Do List.

 Solutions
- The Abstaining Problem: What if you die early? Make the short term pleasures controlled.
Choose time periods and devices when and where you will have access to the social media
- Quitting Time: It’s easy to direct focus on knowing the bounds of time
- Blocks of Work: Intense Focus + Breaks (Pomodoro)
- Priority List: Making a list of activities with a priority index. Make one every day.
#20 How to be Powerful?

- Power is the ability to actualize any idea, the ability to make any idea into a reality
- If we define power too narrowly, we lose the ability to have productive discussions about
how we can obtain it, use it, and distribute it for positive change.
- Power is amoral, devoid of concepts of morality.
- Evil doesn’t emerge from power rather it emerges from the worldview of the person who
wields it.
- Two fundamental ingredients: A true understanding of reality & resources to shape the
reality.
- Factor1. Understanding laws of nature.
- Factor2. Money, Natural Resources, Right to Vote, Political Voice, Societal Support, Labor
Force & Education. These resources are manged by societies.
- Society is a collection of people that work together to actualize ideas.
- In a healthy society, resources are evenly distributed uniformly.
- Power is granted to us by the society we live in.
- Pareto Distribution of Power: Powerful get more powerful and powerless gets more
powerless. Lead by rules and regulations laid out by society.
- Democratic Society: Power should be more equally distributed in society.
- Not all powers are equal.
 - Positive changes tend to last. They get improved upon or become a fundamental part of the
structure of the society. On the other hand, negative changes often needs to be corrected
for.
- Larger the change, more the resources required.
- Become a valuable person. Start by knowing yourself. Big 5 model. Agreeableness,
Openness, Conscientiousness (Best term predictor in long term school & career success),
Neuroticism, Extraversion. Find out places to live and work on. This will help you to
naturally accumulate more value.
- Conscientiousness: Organized, Industrialised etc.
- Reap benefits if you are naturally not one kind of person.
- Different societies values strengths of different kind of person. Environment is better suited
to the environmental strength
- Operate on places of intersection : What is meaningful to you and society
- Do what you value intrinsically

#21 The Most Powerful Way to Think | First Principles

- Extending from the previous video, we will discuss on factor1, understanding reality.
- First Principles: most fundamental building blocks of an idea. We know it be true and using
this build more complex thoughts
- Aristotle: First Principle Thinker
- Empiricist: All knowledge is achieved through experience
- Cycle of seeking knowledge through experience and using reason to give it structure is how
one comes to know the first principle and builds an organized and structured body of
knowledge.
- Analogy: Tree. Apple
- If we improve the individual components in an essay, then we can improve it in its totality.

 Benefits
- Innovation: rearrange to get them a new product
- Optimization: fundamental component can be changed in order to improve an idea or
product.
- Integration: Adding new knowledge from a different domain becomes easier
- Dissemination: easy to transfer the complex idea.

 How to become a first principle thinker?

- Create hierarchies
- Write down by organizing information.
- Using mindmaps