Ghostwriting, Falseness Of Your Beliefs & High-Leverage Work

Happy Sunday to 1,796 curious individuals reading Claudia’s Digest.

I’ve officially completed the first week of school - and by the way, I also wrote a short essay on why I think going to school isn’t as pointless as all the business guru claim.

You can read it here.

Now onto this week’s digest:

(Read time: 4 minutes.)

I got a ghostwriting job offer.

I have done a little bit of ghostwriting in the past, but mostly on topics that weren’t as close to my heart (and that’s the reason I kept avoiding it for some time).

This time, it’s gonna be different - plus I know I’m going to connect with many great people in process.

Excited for what comes next!

1) The Advantages Of Youth

If you’ve been around for a while, you might know I’m very bullish on the idea of being a “time-billionaire.”

As Thomas Waschenfelder writes in his article on the subject, “You can always make more money. But you can never get back your time. Would Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett trade away their billions to be a fit, clear-minded 20-year-old again? I haven’t asked them, but I’m betting they would.”

Teenagers are time-billionaires.

Time is our most valuable asset.

If I could put something on a billboard, it would be this.

And whenever I come across an idea that’s related to the concept, it’s bound to go straight into my notes.

This week, one of them was a snippet from a brilliant blog post How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham:

“The old [also] have the advantage of knowing which advantages they have. The young often have them without realizing it. The biggest is probably time. The young have no idea how rich they are in time. The best way to turn this time to advantage is to use it in slightly frivolous ways: to learn about something you don't need to know about, just out of curiosity, or to try building something just because it would be cool, or to become freakishly good at something.”

Related:

“The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.”

Bottom line:

It’s okay not to know your purpose, obsession or a mission as a teenager.

The point is to invest those years into figuring stuff out to make yourself a magnet for opportunities in the upcoming years.

2) Choose The Beliefs That Work For You

If you look at things from a close-up perspective, you realize no belief is fundamentally true.

People adopt beliefs because for 2 reasons.

Because they either

1. Get repeated by too many people (they seem to be accepted by the society)

2. Help them support the current emotions they want to feel

With this in mind…

You can always choose the beliefs that will work for you best.

Question for you:

“What is a belief in your life that might not be necessarily true & you feel like is holding you back?”

Or in reverse:

“What is one (not necessarily true) belief you can adopt that’ll make your life better?”

3) Finding Your Life’s Purpose

Almost every day of his life, Steve Jobs would wake up, stare in the mirror, and ask himself:

“If today were my last day alive, would I be ok with the stuff I’m doing?”.

If he’d answered no multiple days in a row, he knew something had to change.

People often think that the question “What’s my life’s purpose?” has a one-time answer.

I used to think that for a long time as well.

Until I heard Mark Manson speaking on the topic:

“The point isn’t to answer the question. The point is to consistently ask yourself the right question.”

The one I showed you above might be one of them.

Things I Liked This Week

• A masterclass on having damn-good conversations (I wouldn’t skip this one if I were you) → Click here

• How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham (this took me 50 minutes to read - and I realized that only after I finished the post & checked time. Super great read). → Click here

• Derek Sivers on the Tim Ferris Show (this podcast immediately turned Derek into one of my fav thinkers) → Click here

Alright, that’s it for today.

Have a great week ahead,

– Claudia