Naval Ravikant on how to truly learn something, Ben Horowitz on establishing company culture, and Shohei Ohtani's goal-setting framework

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Naval Ravikant on how to truly learn something

“Life is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing.

If you’re not doing, then all the learning you’re picking up is too general and too abstract. It turns into Hallmark aphorisms. You don’t know what applies where or when. These principles are not mathematics. They’re not precise definitions. You can’t form a playbook that runs like a computer program.

Then, while you’re doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done. Only after that can you look back at something I tweeted, something you read in Deutsch, or Schopenhauer, or somewhere online and realize, “Oh, that’s what he meant.” You recognize it as a general principle and learn when to apply it—not mechanically, not all the time, but as a helpful heuristic in specific situations.

You start with reasoning. You build judgment. Then when your judgment gets refined enough, it becomes taste, intuition, or gut feel. And that’s what you operate on.

If you start from the general and stay there—just reading books of principles and aphorisms—you risk becoming overeducated but lost. 

Acquiring knowledge is easy. The hard part is knowing what to apply and when. That’s why all true learning is on the job. Life is lived in the arena.”

Source: In The Arena by Naval

2: Ben Horowitz on establishing company culture

“Here are the rules for writing a rule so powerful it sets the culture for many years:

• It must be memorable. If people forget the rule, they forget the culture. It must raise the question “Why?”

• Your rule should be so bizarre and shocking that everybody who hears it is compelled to ask, “Are you serious?”

• Its cultural impact must be straightforward. The answer to the “Why?” must clearly explain the cultural concept.

• People must encounter the rule almost daily. If your incredibly memorable rule applies only to situations people face once a year, it’s irrelevant.

When Tom Coughlin coached the New York Giants, from 2004 to 2015, the media went crazy over a shocking rule he set: If you are on time, you are late. He started every meeting five minutes early and fined players one thousand dollars if they were late.

Eleven years and two Super Bowl wins later, backup quarterback Ryan Nassib explained the cultural intention to the Wall Street Journal: Coughlin Time is more of a mindset, kind of a way for players to discipline themselves, making sure they’re on time, making sure they’re attentive and making sure they’re ready to work when it’s time to start meetings. It’s actually kind of nice because once you get out in the real world, you’re five minutes early to everything.“

Source: What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

3: Shohei Ohtani’s goal-setting framework

Shohei Ohtani is the reigning World Series champion and is widely regarded as the greatest baseball player alive.

He used the following goal-setting framework to reverse-engineer his childhood dream into a step-by-step system he could execute on every single day:

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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