Coolest Things I Learned This Week

Hey there,

Great to see you again.

My Monday Musings newsletter is known for a section called "Coolest Things I Learned This Week."

I've included my five examples below:

Boosting Productivity: Small increases in productivity have a huge long-term impact. From Nick Bostrom: "Imagine a tool was invented to help a researcher to improve by just 1%. The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the tool, the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists. Each year the invention would amount to an indirect contribution equal to 100,000 times what the average scientist contributes."
Why People Become Entrepreneurs: According to a paper by NYU Stern professor Deepak Hedge, the number one predictor of entrepreneurship is asymmetric information about skill levels. That is, the market under-values the entrepreneur's ability. Thus, people whose actual ability exceeds the signal value of their ability are more likely to become entrepreneurs. Asymmetric information may explain why immigrants are likely to become entrepreneurs. They have less credible ability signals for regular jobs, so they think they can earn more money on their own. Traits of entrepreneurs: (1) Capable, (2) hubristic, (3) over-confident, (4) high self-esteem, and (5) more likely to have done illicit activities.
Dominance in Tennis: These statistics are insane. First, just three players — Federer, Nadal and Djokovic — have dominated men's tennis over the last 15 or so years. Between the three of them they have won 53 of the last 64 grand slam tournaments. Second, each one of them has won roughly 10x as many grand slam tournaments as players in the next best group. And third, there's a similar story on the women's side. Serena Williams has won 23 grand slam titles and at one point was the number #1 ranked player for 186 consecutive weeks.
Love These Quotes: The first is from Henrik Ibsen: "The majority is always wrong. The minority is rarely right." And the second is from Ben Franklin: "If everybody is thinking alike, then no one is thinking."
Why Writing is The World's Best Networking Activity: This is an excellent point from Andrew Chen: "Writing is the most scalable professional networking activity - stay home, don't go to events/conferences, and just put ideas down. Building your network, your audience, and your ideas will be something you'll want to do over your entire career. Think of your writing like a multi-decade project."

That's all for today. I'll share more in the upcoming edition of Monday Musings.

Oh, and one more thing... here's my list of The Coolest Things I Learned in 2018.

Chat soon,

David Perell

P.S. Now is a good chance to introduce yourself! Tell me where you're from and what you're interested in. I read every email. And if you're up for it, I have a challenge for you. I collect articles and share the very best ones in my Friday Links email.

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