Advice for young people, leadership tips, and how NOT to learn something

Happy 2024! 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: Advice For Young People

Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano is an entrepreneur and technology investor.

He works with a lot of young people, and constantly reiterates these pieces of advice:

1. Use your young age as an advantage -- most people want to help a young person, so tell people you are young.

2. Turn pro if you are serious about winning -- treat your body like a professional athlete and avoid distractions that don't help you accomplish the mission.

3. You can't be great if you can't sell -- everything you do in business is selling, so get good at communicating because you need it for recruiting to fundraising to closing deals.

Source: Advice For Young People

2: Leadership & Teamwork Advice

Justin Mikolay served aboard a nuclear submarine, worked at a multi-billion-dollar private tech company, and helped people lead the world’s largest organizations.

He shared 20 non-obvious ideas to master your professional life. It is a masterclass on leadership and teamwork.

Here are 3 of my favorite ideas:

1) Bring Solutions, Not Problems

Never state a problem without also recommending a solution

-State the situation
-State what you’re already doing
-State what you plan to do next
-State what you recommend, including options if necessary

2) One Person, One Problem

Unless you can point your finger at the person who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

3) The Three Question Checklist

1/ What do I know?
2/ Who needs to know?
3/ Have I told them?

Source: 20 Non-Obvious Ideas For Your Professional Life

3: How NOT to Learn Something

Bad system for learning:

"I want to learn about Y. So I'm going to go collect a long list of books to read to learn about it."

Good system for learning:

"I want to learn about X. So I'm creating a project that forces me to learn the necessary parts of X to complete it."

Beware of Productive Procrastination:

Source: How NOT to Learn Something

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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