#098 – Filtration & Clear Thinkers

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

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read time 3 minutes 

#098 at a Glance:

• Quote: The treasure of words.

• Podcast: Chris Williamson x Alex Hormozi III.

• Interesting Phenomenon: The most important skill in 2025.

• Visual: The influence of architecture on our mindset.

• Tweet: Where clear thinkers turn for feedback.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Podcast I listened to:

Modern Wisdom #830 - Alex Hormozi

First listened to this on the train from Nice to Bordeaux.

Incredible.

My favourite takeaways:

• People delay doing things for longer than it takes to do them.

• Overreliance on routine creates a fragile and unrobust way of working.

• Differentiate between preparation and routine.

• Focus on outcomes rather than focusing on inputs.

• Create space between how you feel and what you do.

• The best days are those when you leave nothing in the tank.

• We don’t rise to the standards we have when others are watching – we fall to the standards we have when no one is watching.

• Wherever you point the blame finger, power follows.

• Everyone wants the view but no one wants the climb.

• There is no mysticism. Everything comes down to human behaviour.

• When you have a lofty goal, you move towards it with feedback loops and positive external reinforcement. But if you are the goal (i.e. being the best version of yourself), the positive reinforcement to keep going is coming from you, not external outcomes. If you are the goal, the actions you take everyday are reinforcing who you believe yourself to be, and that’s where confidence comes from.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Duration: 3 hours 3 minutes]

Interesting Phenomenon I’ve been thinking about:

The Most Important Skill in 2025 

I was speaking with an experienced Quantitative Investment Analyst at work the other day and asked him the following question:

“How do you stand out in the world of investing in 2025?”

And his reply was simple yet brilliant:

“Knowing what to ignore.”

You see, one of the biggest dilemmas that we face in day-to-day life is the overconsumption of information.

No other generation in history has ever consumed as much information as we do on a daily basis.

Let’s try to wrap our heads around that for a moment.

Here are some scary stats that illustrate this point:

• Teens spend an average of 8 hours 39 minutes on screens per day.

• The average Instagram user watches over 350+ reels per day.

• The average person will receive 121 emails per day.

• There are more than 500 million tweets sent each day around the world.

It’s so easy to think of this as just ‘normal’ these days.

The truth is though, that if people from just a century ago were to be teleported to the Western world in 2025, they would be in an absolute head-spin at the speed at which we consume such copious amounts of information.

So, where does that leave us as we float in this vortex of blue light screens and endless notifications?

Being proficient (in almost anything) is no longer a case of access to more information. It is now a case of being able to filter out and select the most important information.

Pre-internet days, those who consumed more information than everyone else were in an incredibly advantageous position.

But that’s all changed.

It used to be about acquiring more. Now it’s about ignoring more.

The challenge?

The acquisition of information is a completely different skillset to the effective filtration of information.

I think the key phrase in that sentence is “effective filtration”.

It’s no use just digging our heads into the sand and ignoring everything around us.

We can’t avoid the consumption of information.

The issue is deciding on the right information to focus on.

It’s about possessing the skill and discernment to critically evaluate the information we receive whilst having conviction in our classification of that information, without being overly attached to the consequences of ignoring some of it along the way.

Practical tips on how to actually do this are more than welcome.

Hit reply if you’ve got some.

P.S. The tweet at the end of this newsletter from Naval Ravikant is a strong start…

Visual I came across:

The Influence of Architecture on our Mindset

Really enjoyed this segment from one of Max Marchione’s newsletters the other week:

“Architecture influences psychology which influences action.

As we go about searching for our next office at Superpower, I think a lot about the emotion a space conveys, and how that impacts the way we feel and as a result the actions we take.

Imagine the feelings, creativity, sense of joy and empowerment, and ability to dream big you would have in the space below.”

Tweet I liked:

Where Clear Thinkers Turn For Feedback

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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