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On anti-goals, life advice, and asymmetric bets
The Z Fellows Newsletter - Oct 16th, 2023
Jay Yang
October 16, 2023
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.
“What if your dream was to be a musician. And guess what - you did it! But while you’re touring the world, you gain weight, get addicted to drugs, your marriage is in shambles, and your kids don’t recognize you....you won the battle but lost the war.” - Shaan Puri
Anti-goals allow you to win the battle AND the war!
How to set Anti-Goals:
Pick your project - What are you going to work on?
Define winning - What does success look like?
Invert the problem - What’s the worst possible outcome?
Set Anti-Goals - What do I not want to happen?
Here’s how Andrew Wilkinson sketched out his Anti-Goals:
Source: The Power of Anti-Goals by Andrew Wilkinson
Quantity + Consistency = Quality
“If you want to get good at painting, do 100 paintings. If you want to get good at making YouTube videos, make 100 videos. To get good at something, just show up consistently, and don’t worry too much about the outcome.”
Move Towards What Energizes You
“Whether it’s work, hobbies, or relationships, we should gravitate towards the things that energize, instead of us drain us. This is a useful mental model for almost every situation. It’s just one question, but pretty powerful: ‘Will this energize me, or drain me?’”
Don’t wipe your face with a bath towel
“Very solid life advice: always wipe your face with a different towel to the one you use in the shower. The one you use in the shower goes into weird places, and you don’t want that on your face. It’ll cause you to break out in spots and stuff.”
The Sting of Rejection is Better than the Pain of Regret
“Shoot your shot. It can be a bit meh dealing with rejection, but it’s a lot better than always wondering ‘what if’. Because if you’re not getting rejected fairly consistently, you’re not really pushing yourself to succeed.”
Source: My 28 Best Pieces of Life Advice
Image via Arjun Mahadevan
I recently came across an essay by Erik Torenberg, the founder of On Deck.
In his essay, he shared the career advice he wished he had known when he was younger.
Here are 3 insights I extracted from his essay:
• “Asymmetric opportunities usually have meaningful upside in a success case, and meaningful learning or development in a downside case.”
• “Young, smart people are afraid to look dumb so they follow safe paths that cap their downside, not realizing that they also cap their upside.”
• “Especially when you’re young, accumulate optionality through the skills you gain, the knowledge you acquire, and the unique experiences you undergo.”
Source: Take Asymmetric Bets
See you next Monday,
- Jay + The Z Fellows Team
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