Nassim Taleb - 11 Rules For Life (How To Live a Resilient Life)
Hey friend!
Here I bring you 11 insightful rules for life from Nassim Taleb. I think that reflecting on these rules can make us more resilient in life, more successful and help us live a happier life!
Hope you find it valuable :)
🧠 Top Quotes
"Nietzsche's Master-Slave morality in modern terms: Reputation is for slaves. Honor, Courage, & Integrity is for the Self-Owned."
- Nassim Taleb
“Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action."
- Confucius
👨 Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb's work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. Author of many successful books, including The Black Swan, which The Sunday Times considers one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.
📝 Notes
Rule #1 — Do not Disappoint your 18-year-old Self
Look at yourself in the mirror and wonder if you would disappoint the person you were at 18 (right before people usually get corrupted by life). Let your 18-year-old self be the only judge. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful.
Never let your reputation, wealth, academic awards, prizes, and standing in a community to be the judge of your success! As these are modern fragile judgers of success [we will see in Rule #3 why these are fragile measures].
"Nietzsche's Master-Slave morality in modern terms: Reputation is for slaves. Honor, Courage, & Integrity is for the Self-Owned."
- Nassim Taleb
"I have found freedom in dropping being respectable. Respectability is a social strategy to keep you imprisoned."
- Osho
Rule #2 — Sacrifice for Others
In ancient times, success for the Greeks was to have had an heroic death. Nassim argues we can adapt this to our (less martial) modern times:
"Take a heroic route for the benefit of the collective. As narrowly or broadly defined as you want. So long as it's someone else."
"You are as good as what you do to other members."
In this sense, virtue is inseparable from courage. So you have to take some risks for the sake of others. That’s success. That’s honor.
“You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.”
- Seneca
“Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Rule #3 — Seek Self-Respect. Do not attach to external success
Attachment to external success (Wealth, Prizes...) will make you:
More fragile.
More insecure.
When you attach to something that you can lose, you become fragile and insecure. The higher you go up, the worse the fall.
Besides, a willingness to show-off your external success is a sign of weakness and lack of confidence.
On the other hand, Self-respect is robust. That’s the approach of the Stoics — Regardless of the external circumstances (making wealth, losing wealth...) your character remains untouched.
So you can be wealthy or poor, highly awarded or not — and be robust! Because your validation comes from yourself, and no one can take that away from you.
“Receive [wealth or prosperity] without arrogance and be ready to let it go.”
- Marcus Aurelius
"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."
- Billy Graham
Rule #4 — Do Not Read Newspapers
Do not follow the news in any way or form. To be convinced, go to the library and try to read last year’s newspapers.
Passages from Nassim Taleb’s Incerto:
"Consider the iatrogenics [negative second order consequences] of newspapers. They need to fill their pages every day with a set of news items—particularly those news items also dealt with by other newspapers. But to do things right, they ought to learn to keep silent in the absence of news of significance. Newspapers should be of two-line length on some days, two hundred pages on others—in proportion with the intensity of the signal. But of course they want to make money and need to sell us junk food. And junk food is iatrogenic."
"In the complex world, the notion of “cause” itself is suspect; it is either nearly impossible to detect or not really defined—another reason to ignore newspapers, with their constant supply of causes for things."
Rule #5 — If something is nonsense... You say it! And you say it out loud!
You will be harmed a little bit, but it will be Antifragile — In the long-term, people who need to trust you, will trust you!
Picking Nuggets Note:
Another rule from Nassim similar to this one:
"If you see fraud and don’t say fraud, you are a fraud."Rule #6 — Be respectful to hard manual labor workers
“Treat the doorman with lot of respect. More than bosses. Because the boss can go down, not the doorman.”
Rule #7 — Avoid things that bore you
“If something is boring, avoid it. Except taxes and visits to your mother-in-law.”
"That’s the whole secret: to do things that excite you."
- Ray Bradbury
Picking Nuggets Note:
When I get really bored with something, I typically avoid it. But I do not avoid the higher categories to which that boring thing belongs. For instance, if I read a book on Economics and find it super boring, I will stop reading it but I will still try to find other books on Economics! (I won't avoid the whole category of Economics just because I read a boring instance of that category). And if we go a higher level, I'm even more stubborn on keep trying -- I won't stop trying to read books just because the first books I read in my life were boring.
So I easily avoid particular instances if they are boring, but I do not usually avoid overarching categories. In the case of books, I keep looking until I find the interesting ones!Rule #8 — Do Not Do to Others What You Don’t Want Them to Do to You
This simplistic-looking rule has deep implications. It implies moral symmetry (risk ownership) among people, which is a robust ethical rule to ensure a well-functioning civilization.
The idea of moral symmetry was started in Ancient Egypt, under Hammurabi’s Code. The essence of this Code was not the “eye-for-eye” kind of rule, instead the central idea is that “You cannot walk away from risks you have created for others”. So they were looking for symmetry in risks, to mitigate and punish the actions of reckless people who do not care about generating risks for others. And this is a more difficult problem in today’s complex world, because the more complex the system the easier it is to hide risks and get away with no punishment (violating the moral symmetry).
We have seen it in banks and credit-rating agencies operations (leading to the 2008 Crisis), and recently in the illegal construction of many buildings in Turkey (sadly leading to its collapse after the strong earthquake).
Rule #9 — Start a Business
If you are an ambitious person, the best way to improve the world is to start a business [this view is also shared by Naval Ravikant and Charlie Munger]. Much better than go to work for an NGO. But of course, starting a business requires that you take some risks. But as Nassim Taleb argues, virtue is inseparable from courage. And with the internet and the existence of so many cheap software services, you do not even have to take that much risk anymore!
More about the differences btw a Business and an NGO on this blogpost.
Rule #10 — Tell People What You Do. Not What They Should Do.
You should never tell people what they should be doing. You should tell them what you do. If you are going to give advice, your words should be supported by your actions (skin in the game) — Because you should always bear the risk of your advice.
"The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action."
- Confucius.
Rule #11 — Be a Communist to your Family
Picking Nuggets Note:
This was taken indirectly thru Naval Ravikant (on the episode with Joe Rogan), when commenting on Nassim Taleb's positioning in Politic matters.
• "With my family, I'm a Communist."
• "With my close friends, I'm a Socialist."
• "At State level politics, I'm a democrat."
• "At higher levels, I'm a Republican."
• "At the Federal level, I'm a Libertarian."
The smaller the group, the more trust there is. Thus, you can be a Communist / Socialist to the members of those groups (family and friends). And that’s actually the way to live a happy meaningful life!
The larger the group, the less trust there is. Thus, the more aligned the incentives need to be so that the system works well. In this case, the more you should lean towards Capitalism.
Nassim Taleb explained on his speech at Google (discussing his book — Skin in the Game) that different political stands are perfectly compatible when you attach the scale. As the scale of the group changes, your political stand can (and should) change!
Quick Heuristics on What to Avoid…
Muscles without Strength
Friendship without Trust
Opinion without Risk
Change without Aesthetics
Age without Values
Food without Nourishment
Power without Fairness
Facts without Rigor
Degrees without Erudition
Militarism without Fortitude
Progress without Civilization
Complication without Depth
Fluency without Content
Religion without Tolerance
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of July 2024) contains nearly 2,000 timeless ideas (sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs — captured on books, interviews/podcasts and articles).
I call this Database the Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”.
So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
📚 Passages I loved
Passage 1
8 Beliefs about Money that You Need to Remove ASAP (to get in the right mindset to become Financially Independent):
1) Only lucky people get rich
2) Your innate capabilities determine your level of wealth
3) Frugality creates wealth
4) It's OK to spend more than you earn
5) You can make money without creating value
6) The rich prevent you from acquiring wealth
7) There's a shortcut to wealth
8) Relying solely on compound interest (in a savings / passive investing setup) makes you rich
This is an excerpt from Shortform's summary of the book "Unscripted", written by MJ Demarco.
Passage 2
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”
— Epictetus
Passage from the Book “The Daily Stoic”, written by Ryan Holiday.
Picking Nuggets Note:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - The Serenity Prayer
If we can know the difference btw what is not under our control and what is under our control, it will also give us a big advantage over people who doesnt know -- because we can allocate our (limited) energy into what we can actually change and improve, instead of wasting it in things we can't change. For instance, it is a waste of time to think about the past and things we wish were different, but we have power on the present moment and we can change our future as result.
(Inspired from the book The Daily Stoic)(If you enjoyed these passages, you might wanna connect with me on Twitter/Linkedin — I consistently post there the best passages from books I’m reading!)
👨💻Other content I have found super valuable lately…
- 1 Video
- 1 Podcast
https://foundersjournal.morningbrew.com/more-thinking-less-doing/
- 3 Tweets
Until next time :)
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!