Thirteen Beliefs of Mine

Even one narrow field is too complex to comprehend, let alone the whole world around us. We generalize, we make little rules, and playbooks to make our everyday more fluid.

We can call them principles, assumptions, big theories, guiding stars, or beliefs.

I have my own set of beliefs.

They changed, some of them proved false over the years, and I am sure some of my current ones will be obsolete soon. But that means I will learn something.

I wanted to write down some of my principles to be able to prove myself wrong in the future and to share a small part of my thinking with you.

It is easy to hide behind book reviews and soulless SEO case studies, but it adds value to these pieces to know how I think, and how the books and articles I read influenced my views.

Here are some of my beliefs about work and life:

1. Popular advice leads to average results. You need to be contrarian, lucky, or change your time horizon to be an outlier.
2. Life is built upon journeys, not goals. Your everyday runs change you not the fact, that you won a race.
3. Our local reality has a bigger impact on us than any global event. A compliment from the bartender worth more than 100 likes from strangers on the internet.
4. Knowledge does not equal intellect. Being well-read or having a degree does not mean that someone is clever.
5. Non-fiction books are not better than documentaries, novellas are not better than Netflix. But books require more imagination and are less distractive.
6. Biographies are a way to connect the dots nobody saw beforehand. Nobody knows what they are doing.
7. Consistency matters more than doing things the right way. Writing every day for a year improves your craft more than any workshop.
8. We have a happiness baseline that we return to after good and bad events. Life is not worth optimizing for the peaks, but appreciating the average.
9. Being nice is free and it can make everyone's day better.
10. Our body was designed to move. To sprint, to lift, to walk, to sweat. Sitting in a chair for years is not natural for the body, nor for the mind.
11. Hard work does not always pays off, but it is still better than the alternative: doing nothing.
12. Having false beliefs about the world is a must to be happy. In "X" country everything is better. If I would do "Y" diet I would like "Z" Hollywood actor. The fewer myths you tried, tested, and destroyed, the more hopeful you can stay.
13. There are builders and keepers. None of them is better than the other and they rely on each other. The entrepreneur needs the politician to create an environment where his work is appreciated (and it is not stolen or exploited by others), while the politician needs the entrepreneur to create a world worth protecting.