DanRiley.org

Aging:

• The first thing to go when aging is imagination.
• Most people say “this is who I am now” around 30, and stop growing.
• Most meet most of their friends before 25.

Conversation:

• Life is a dinner conversation.
• For many, people are space-fillers once a phone’s dopamine hit subsides.
• The best conversationalists never lost childhood's wonder and beginners mind.
• Amazing what one honest conversation can do.
• Want better conversations?  Prepare for them (e.g. with articles, ideas, recommendations).
• Good listeners are conversational scientists.

Decision-making:

• Knowing what to do next takes time.
• Commit only to what you can sustain.
• Rationalizations cover for emotional reasoning.

Friendship:

• Friends see your blind spots, and show you.
• Buying someone a meal never disappoints.
• Avoid humorless people.
• For every gathering of 4+ people, over three hours in length, take a picture.
• Seek friends you admire, but do not envy.

Health:

• Most misery is self-made.
• For the affluent, the most common addictions are stress, a salary, and a pro-doing compulsion.
• Depression arrives when growth is hindered.
• A tip that someone is depressed: they continue to complain, but do nothing to change.
• The key symptoms of a technologically hijacked mind: greater anxiety, stridency and distraction; less self-awareness, fewer friends and worse company.
• Pagers used to be seem as annoyances, an intrusion into private life - people are now pinged dozens of time a day and wonder why their anxiety is up.
• People return to their baseline happiness.
• Productivity - perpetual work - becomes its own addiction.
• What people want is to feel good; a positive mood changes everything.
• Want mood improvements?  Anonymously buy coffee for the person behind you, or pick up the dinner tab when out with friends.
• For a clear mind, fast.
• The most abused substance is alcohol.
• Sleep is nature’s doctor.
• Shocking the body - with temporary, extreme heat or cold - is nature’s anti-depressant and mental enhancer.
• Focus, a long attention span, un-distractibility, and a non-ideological worldview are the new mental superpowers.
• Treat food like medicine.
• The worst emotional pain is from breakups: like a death, whose meaning is not appreciated until gone.  And avoiding necessary breakups is a primary source of human misery: its symptoms revealed by resentment, chronic annoyance, and, to those who have known the individual, a dimming of their inner brightness.
• Most men have no real confidants because they fear facing the truth of their own emotional pain.
• Indignant? Ask: is your object of scorn, or the reality of life, to blame?
• Who’s nervous, anxious or uncomfortable? Look for the shaking foot.
• Poor mental health is the ultimate foe.
• Love makes fear disappear.

Human nature:

• The sign of an insecure know-it-all: in small groups, they lecture, rather than converse.  A slight tension is in the air.
• Social climbers are dismissive and harsh towards those beneath them; subservient and fake to those above them.
• To predict someone’s future behavior, observe their past actions.
• The human mind is a rationalizer - more lawyer than scientist.
• With trust, put-downs indicate love and affection between men; without trust, the opposite.
• If there's a difference between what someone says and what they do, believe what they do.
• No reaction is as seductive as indignation.
• We are two minds: the experiencing self and the remembering self.
• Use negative visualization as a hack against insatiability.
• Many male groups only talk while doing other things.
• People vote with their feet.
• Humans like stress, when controlled.
• Familiarity breeds un-appreciation.
• Genes play an under-appreciated role.
• Human's unique trait: our ability to tell each other stories.
• There are more differences within groups than between groups.
• Having everything you want, all the time - sex, food, affection, control - leads to coddling and laziness.  Enjoy it, but limit it.  Relish some struggle.
• Watch body language for truth.
• If a deep hope matches a firm conclusion, odds of delusion are 10x.
• Those who are too nice, too appeasing, violate a rule of healthy relations: equality, and mutual skin in the game.
• The passive aggressive are sensitive souls, dying to stand up for themselves.
• Reasonable people can disagree.
• Everyone is selfish - to some, selfish acts are pro-social and natural.  These are the “good people."
• You hate in others what you hate - and notice - in yourself.
• Confirmation bias: an intellectual's highway to overconfidence and self-deception.
• Most advice and opinions are projections.

Lifestyle:

• Luxury has diminishing returns; a "world-class" resort, car, or home, is 10x the price and is 10% better.
• Getting up early casts a vote for the day’s momentum and growth.
• You want to be a bit of an addict, to the right habits.
• Mute your phone, and turn off notifications.
• People who think tattoos are unwise often recommend marriage.
• Marriage - and having children - should be the exception, not the rule.
• You'll likely do your best creative work - and have your most profound insights - alone.
• The result of wisdom and wealth is the ability to pursue intrinsic enjoyments, indefinitely.
• At a point, very intelligent people working exceptionally hard is a cover for inner turmoil.
• Enjoying solitude gives you ultimate optionality.
• No man reads the same book twice.
• Resist cynicism - there is so much to appreciate.
• Ideas, thoughts, and creativity blossom in silence and solitude.
• It may not be that you need someone fully out of your life, just in smaller doses.
• Never lose your ability to seek and identify what you like: your preferences, your desires - people lose their lives when they mute that inner voice and conform to please others.
• When scheduling plans, ask: would I want to do this tomorrow?
• If at first you think it’ll take 30 minutes, add 15 and say it’ll be 45.
• Stuck?  Go for a walk, a run, or go to sleep.
• Once you can, create a home or a place just for you.
• An empty calendar is a peaceful mind.
• Notice, over time, what puts you in a good mood, what endures - and set up your life to maximize that environment.
• For items you use every day (e.g. computer, phone, coffee maker), buy the best.
• Once you can, don’t see or talk to anyone before noon; these are the golden hours for thinking and creativity.
• Set up recurring chats with your favorite, far-off people.
• New stuff brings temporarily euphoric comparison - then you acclimate (it’s a trap!).
• Think deeply about your chosen habits - they compound and quickly become who you are.
• Rights, autonomy, and power are much more about the ability to say "no" than "yes".
• Caffeine is the world’s best drug.
• Have the courage to go your own way.
• Work like a sprinter.
• Goals and desires are plentiful - discern and focus on those that endure.
• You can leave something you love for something else you love.
• Encourage the wondering inner child.
• No matter the house size, people spend the vast majority of their time in three rooms.
• Less is more: what you want is quality.
• Try, fail, tinker, and iterate - the pathway to success.
• The best days: focused solitude, followed by expansive socializing.
• Great questions are the pickaxes to great knowledge.

Men and women:

• When dating, find someone that falls into your “must-have” attraction zone; then, pick for character, personality, and, mostly, compatibility
• People want to be desired; this, mostly, is what makes a great lover.
• Men are best appreciated by older women, slightly past their prime.
• People acclimate to relationships, just like things.
• A common cause of divorce and breakups: a significant shift in dating market value.
• A dating filter: is this person's company better than solitude?  Or could it be better than solitude?

Organizations:

• Benevolence or malice, leadership or its abdication, trickles down from the top.

Questions:

• Is your “love” just obsession by another name?
• Do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?
• Compared to what (when assessing the quality of any system)?
• Is something deep in you being violated?
• What are the lies society tells to keep the order?
• Does civilization work for us, or do we work for civilization?
• Is this serving you?
• Is your power being used to undermine the things you care about?

Philosophy:

• "Know yourself" - the First Amendment of every autonomous person.
• The ultimate power is the ability to say "no."
• You want to be known for signal, not noise.  This is what a truly good reputation means.
• All prescriptions create their own traps - what you want is freedom from desire.
• Many brilliant people identify with an “ism” in their early years - and never escape ideology.
• What you should not do is often clearer than what you should do.
• 90% of people root for the same sports teams as their parents; about the same register with their political party.
• Admirable people preach what they practice.
• To win, don’t look for the best conceivable outcome, just the best possible one.
• Accept difficult truths early in life.
• Steel man your opponent’s arguments; get to know your idea adversaries.
• When you win one game, play a different one.
• Enjoy being wrong; you may not have understood before, because you weren't prepared, wise, or informed.
• The best thinkers are clear thinkers.
• Understanding over judgment.
• Kindness: the only God.

Relationships:

• For couples, emphasize growth, not fusion.
• The best friends, lovers, family members bring out and encourage the best in you.
• Your most important relationship is the one you have with yourself; surround yourself with those who respect that, and don’t ask you to sacrifice authenticity or autonomy.
• When considering entering into a relationship, ask: does the desire stem more from celebration and excitement or from surrender and longing?
• In human relations, maximize freedom - let people walk away and remove neediness (and demand the same in return).
• Silence: the most underrated tool in strategy and seduction.
• If it's good today, it'll be good tomorrow.
• We give the most to those who need us the least.
• Couples who "fight well" are really just skilled relationship "problem solvers."
• You know what matters by what emotionally moves you.
• Fantasy utopias - in government, relationships, business - don't withstand reality's collision.  
• Seek the best tested outcome, not the best conceivable one.
• Resist the procrustean urge.

Society:

• To flourish, merge the best of modernity with the best of our ancestral foragers.
• The modern rebel resists cheap dopamine, relishes silent solitude, and cultivates a long attention span; technology is their slave, not the inverse.
• Politicians lambast identity politics, then castigate "the Democrats" or "the Republicans."
• Workaholism: the most undiagnosed psychopathology; a socially-sanctioned addiction to fill an absence of acceptance, meaning, and love.
• "Breakscreen": the moment at which a black mirror is first consulted - decreasing creativity and increasing anxiety by 90%.
• The danger of the past was too little information; the present, too much.
• Treat texts as you used to treat emails - respond, but with a respect for your time and energy.
• News confuses the anecdote for the enduring.
• By definition, in anything, half of people will be below average.
• Benevolent people approach every interaction with the possibility for a positive-sum relationship.
• Self-discipline is resisting the dark side of human nature, a hallmark of civilized people.
• Religion is mostly belief in belief.
• In a healthy hierarchy, power is earned and assented by those beneath.
• When people couple up, everything changes for those outside the pair.
• For race relations, MLK said it best: to judge not by the color of one's skin, but by the content of one's character.  Equal, not better.
• Identity politics turns the mind to cabbage, a single-outlook perspective free of nuance.
• Fear the mob.
• Much of today’s acute political tribalism is fueled by echo chamber technology - arguable views held by both sides, each talking past each other.
• Learn history to know who sacrificed for you, and what they sacrificed for; we're living in the best of nation-state times.
• People fear mobs - and are easily enticed to join them.
• Equality of opportunity is the goal.
• Liberate yourself.
• You can tell the quality of a conversation - and connection - by how often an iPhone is consulted.
• Liberals falter when confusing the ideal for the real.
• Too much ambition can kill your relationships.
• Some people have inevitably stressful, intense jobs (e.g. E.R. doctors, teachers at difficult schools) - they need understanding, and god help their children.
• The social cost of asshole-dom has drastically decreased with technology.
• Antiracism pseudoscience works on well-meaning people who don't consistently witness genuine interracial love.
• Amazing that universities - by crippling its student's ability to afford its services - are encouraging America socialism.

Truth:

• The trouble isn’t knowing the truth, it’s learning how to deliver it with decency and courage.
• More informed does not mean better educated.
• Beware of teachers who complicate; genius is in simplicity.
• People tend not to skew towards the truth, but to what’s incentivized.
• Today, nearly all censorship is self-censorship.
• Trust your own experience.
• Pain is often the best, and the only, teacher.
• Beware of the smartest person in an echoed, small group.
• Notice how one's views on climate change map perfectly onto those about gun ownership?  Partisanship at work.
• People's views are usually those of the smartest, most articulate person they know or watch.
• Once you learn it, you see that the self serving bias is everywhere.
• Learning obtained, but not used or documented, is wasted.
• Learn the major cognitive biases.
• Don’t equate eloquence with truth or wisdom.
• Focus on the basics - let them sink in.

Wealth:

• Time is the most valuable thing you can buy.
• Have a “Mr. Market” view of stocks.
• What you want is leverage - time and nature working on your side.
• In investing, the only price that matters is the price on the day that you buy and on the day that you sell.
• The best investors set it and forget it.
• 99% will be in the 99%.
• Competition is overrated.
• The ultimate wealth is time wealth.
• The purpose of money is autonomy.
• To grow wealth, continue to use skills learned when young (frugality, appreciation of simple food and pleasures, free activities) when advancing financially.
• Most wealthy people have given something great to the world.
• Choose more time over more money.
• To create wealth and space for asymmetric risks, extend the early 20’s lifestyle for 15 years.
• Tinker until the world gives you a signal.