(Jorgenson and Ravikant 2021)

“I do believe that 99% of effort in life is ‘wasted’. If you look back at all the term papers you wrote, all the classes you took, all the people you dated, and all the things you stressed about. 99% of them didn’t matter; they were inconsequential; and there were a few 1% decisions that did matter.”

“I think most people are working too hard. I think most people are just basically spinning wheels. The older you get, the better you get at just declining work that you know is useless. I have this theory that 99% of work that you do is useless. You still have to do it because it’s iterating your way to the 1% that is useful. But, in an ideal world, if you are omniscient, you would just cut to the 1%.”

“You should be very thoughtful and realize in most things (relationships, work, even in learning) what you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on to earn compound interest. When you’re dating, the instant you know this relationship is not going to be the one that leads to marriage, you should probably move on. When you’re studying something, like a geography or history class, and you realize you are never going to use the information, drop the class. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of your brain energy. I’m not saying don’t do the 99 percent, because it’s very hard to identify what the 1 percent is. What I’m saying is: when you find the 1 percent of your discipline which will not be wasted; which you’ll be able to invest in for the rest of your life and has meaning to you, go all-in and forget about the rest.”

It’s important to know that you cannot skip the 99%. The wasted effort is the cost of exploration. You cannot know in advance what the 1% will be. The term papers, the bad dates, the failed projects — they are the iterative search process that surfaces the few opportunities worth going all-in on.

This is the same logic that underpins venture capital: most investments fail, but the few that succeed return enough to justify all the losses.

Eat the biggest frog first thing in the morning

The Pareto Principle