Tony Robbins on Building An Extraordinary Life, The Power of Curiosity, Intuition and Dreaming, How To Make it to the 1%, Tyler Cowen on AI Bottleneck, AI Without Datacentres, Defence Tech Briefing...
January 17, 2025
I am sharing this weekly email with you because I count you in the group of people I learn from and enjoy being around.
If you missed last week’s discussion: Being More Human, How To Fix Your Sleep, 7 Powers by Hamilton Hemler, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, AI Tools, Contrarian AI Ideas, Jensen on the Future at CES and SpaceX Outlook....
This week we go deep into a few subjects. The primary focus is on improving the quality of our lives, and we hear from Tony Robbins, Tom Morgan and Codie Sanchez to cover a number of angles. Dan Lawrence shares his thoughts on Intuition and Dreaming. Tyler Cowen discusses why AI won’t unleash huge growth and the Economist shares how to bring down the cost of AI. On the fiction section we discuss The Secret History by Donna Tart and we finish with our events series.
Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you got value out of reading, please let others know!
Quotes I Am Thinking About:
“…I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”
- Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
– Jack Kerouac, On The Road
A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:
1. How To Build An Extraordinary Life.
In 2019, I found myself at a 3 day Tony Robbins seminar in a huge dark conference hall jumping up and down with my wife and 18,000 other people.
It was probably the 3 most impactful days of my life and both of our lives changed days after the event.
Tony was on the Modern Wisdom show with a bunch of good ideas.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
How Can You Contribute: The secret to genuine confidence lies not in self-help mantras but in progressive achievement and contribution. When you consistently tackle difficult challenges and dedicate yourself to a mission bigger than yourself, self-doubt naturally fades. The key is to shift from asking "How do I feel about myself?" to "What can I contribute that matters?"
How To Have Control: Your life experience is fundamentally shaped by three critical decisions made in every moment: what you focus on, what meaning you assign it, and what you do about it. Most people unconsciously focus on what's missing or what they can't control, creating unnecessary suffering. By consciously directing your attention to opportunities and taking action on what you can influence, you create a dramatically different experience of the same reality.
The Cycles of Life: Life operates in predictable cycles, both personally and historically. From our individual seasons (like the testing period of 21-42) to broader societal patterns, understanding these rhythms helps you navigate change with less anxiety. Instead of being blindsided by transitions, you can anticipate and prepare for them, turning potential crises into opportunities for growth.
What has life prepared you for: Past difficulties aren't barriers to success - they're often the foundation for it. Tony Robbins' childhood food insecurity became the driving force behind his feeding billions of people. Rather than trying to "get over" or "move past" your challenges, ask yourself: "How has this prepared me for my mission? What understanding or capability has this given me that I couldn't have gained any other way?"
The Right Environment for Change: While personal development is possible through solitary effort, transformation accelerates dramatically in the right environment. This explains why someone might make more progress in three intensive days with the right group than in three years of reading alone. The key is finding or creating environments that combine high energy, clear outcomes, and positive peer influence to create breakthrough moments.
I hope you get the life you are looking for.
2. Leaning into Love, Curiosity and Intuition
A few months ago I realised that after over 25 years in finance I had let my life and work become too left-brain led. I became all ROI and excel led and had lost a lot of my soul and humanity.
As I explored a way out of that place I joined a community called Leading Edge put together by Tom Morgan.
I’ve featured some of his posts in the past. He had a great episode on the Curious Humans podcast. It’s a great discussion of how he navigated his mid-life crisis and discovered intuition and curiosity.
By definition a discussion about all things right-brain such as curiosity and intuition cannot be reduced to bullet points like left-brain ideas can, so I would encourage you to simply listen if you want to make room for those ideas in your life.
Some of the ideas maybe new and will initially seem as woo woo! That is probably a good thing because we should aim to be continuously exposed to new ideas.
The 3 BIG IDEAS:
The Nature of Curiosity: Curiosity as a form of love applied to information: "What is curiosity, I think it is, in that sense, it's love, it's just love applied to information and love applied to topics." And a guiding force: "benign intelligent force guiding your attention in a relational way…and that it manifests through what we're energetically interested in and curious about and drawn to."
The Importance of Embodiment: There was a great discussion around something I see often in finance and one I went through a few years ago: "in a state of total disembodied connection and dissociation" which he recognises was a "coping mechanism". You often see this where we run away from our life through the distraction of work or substances. It’s particularly an issue in finance due to the Left-Brain Trap, which focuses on rationality and control, often at the expense of embodied wisdom and intuition. This can then lead left-brain individuals to engage in spiritual or right-brain activities, they can face “intellectual recapture”, which is the tendency to turn spiritual practices into another form of achievement, especially among high-achievers.
Attractors and Syntropy: Syntropy as a relational force that guides us through our curiosity toward things that will help us grow and develop, operating through a connection to the heart and right brain and not as a result of left brain ego-centric choices. AI Cannot Guide: since it is the ultimate left hemisphere thinking, which can’t direct us in the right way as, "it can't tell you what's relevant."
3. Listening to our Sub Conscious….
I am trying to open my brain’s aperture. Our brains are both what we perceive consciously and what is in our subconscious. Most finance people know the story about George Soros and his neck pain when his subconscious was telling him that his book was not positioned correctly. Some things we know in our head, but others we only feel in our gut, maybe we see it in our dreams.
Since we spend 25-30% of our lives sleeping and dreaming, I wanted to spend time learning how our body and mind maybe understanding the world communicating with us during sleep.
Dan Lawrence is Jungian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. He started as Derivatives Trader, then studied Theology, briefly considering priesthood, then became a Jungian psychotherapist all while practicing Zen for 25 years.
He was on the What Is A Good Life podcast.
The 3 BIG IDEAS:
The State of Reverie: a kind of alert receptiveness - can be cultivated in everyday life, much like a tourist experiencing a new city. Lawrence describes how this manifests in different ways: through mat surfing where one responds moment-to-moment to waves, in Zen practice facing a wall in silence, or simply sitting in a café observing the world flow by. This isn't about achieving a special state but about recovering a natural way of experiencing that we often lose in our data-driven, high-speed world.
What are Dreams: Dreams are not just nighttime stories but a fundamental form of human understanding that exists before structured thought. Dan describes how dreams offer compensatory perspectives to our conscious attitudes, helping balance our understanding. Like when studying infants who process their experiences through a dream-like state before developing structured thinking, we can see how this proto-thinking forms the foundation of human consciousness and continues to serve us throughout life.
How To Approach Your Dreams:
Approach dreams with curiosity rather than trying to analyze them definitively. As Dan says, "within that kind of field it's not about analyzing the dream so much and gaining again knowledge about it or an understanding." Instead, let dreams remain "inexhaustible" and keep "opening out to new knowings."
Pay attention to the world's "dreaming layer" even while awake. Dan suggests noticing synchronicities and coincidences - like when a siren goes off outside just as someone mentions something relevant. Rather than dismissing these as pure coincidence, he suggests "leaning with a raised eyebrow and a kind of curious notion into the synchronicity."
Consider dreams as having wisdom beyond personal meaning. Dan emphasizes that dreams aren't just personal property but can have collective significance. From a Jungian perspective, he notes that dreams can be "compensatory" - offering alternative views to balance our conscious attitudes.
Stay open to "proto-thinking" or the state before structured thought. Dan compares this to how infants process experience, suggesting we can maintain connection to this more fluid way of knowing alongside our logical thinking.
Don't rush to interpret or "trap" dreams in fixed meanings. Instead, Dan suggests allowing dreams to remain alive and generative, continuing to inform us over time.
4. What would advice would you give to a 25 year old about how to succeed in today’s environment?
I see many millennials dis-heartened by a lack of opportunities for career growth.
The Knowledge Project had a great interview with Codie Sanchez. It’s a useful discussion especially if you are in your 20’s and 30’s on how to make it to the 1%.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
Money represents freedom, but the path isn't through saving alone: it's through skill development and earning power. Codie shared how she went from a $37,000 starting salary at Vanguard to building a nine-figure holding company by focusing on skill acquisition first. She spent her 20s in "learning mode" at financial institutions, letting them invest $100,000+ in her training. The key insight: Your 20s should prioritize learning over earning, as learning has unlimited upside potential. Rather than trying to save your way to wealth, focus on developing high-income skills in industries where success is common (like finance, which produces the most Forbes 100 members).
High performers share specific, learnable traits that differentiate them from others. They follow through religiously on commitments, maintaining detailed task lists and over-communicating when expectations might not be met. Most distinctively, they help rather than criticize - instead of leaving negative reviews (being "yelpers"), they provide constructive feedback directly (being "helpers"). Track your commitments meticulously and always doing what you say you'll do - this alone puts you ahead of 99% of people.
Modern leadership requires radical honesty combined with genuine investment in people's growth. One specific system is: 30-60-90 day plans for all new hires, clear quarterly KPIs, and regular "team" check-ins (Touch, Educate, Appreciate, Metrics). Rather than trying to be universally liked, effective leaders focus on being kind rather than nice - they give hard feedback when needed but always with the person's growth in mind.
Successful businesses share clear, measurable characteristics that can be evaluated before investment. Codie defines a "good business" as one that's profitable, cash-flowing (gets paid upfront), sustainable, historically proven, and easily explainable to a grandmother. She looks at three key metrics: referral rate (how often customers recommend you), repurchase rate (how often they buy again), and churn rate (how often they leave). Poor businesses often think they have marketing problems when they really have product problems - these metrics help distinguish between the two. Cash-flow positive businesses provide a "trampoline" for growth, while cash-drain businesses offer a "concrete floor" with no forgiveness for mistakes.
Growth requires deliberate environmental design: both personal and professional. The research shows a 30% higher lifetime earning potential for people who interact with higher earners, even if they start at the same income level. Codie does this by investing heavily in learning (buying books, taking courses, seeking mentors) and carefully structuring her business environment. She hires people with complementary skills (if she's ideas-focused, she hires implementation-focused) and creates diverse teams (including politically diverse teams that learn to respect different viewpoints). She suggests viewing every job as paid training - her time at Vanguard wasn't just about the salary, but about acquiring licenses, skills, and knowledge that would compound over time.
B. The Science and Technology Section:
1. Will AI unleash growth?
Tyler Cowen shared his views on why the #1 Bottleneck to AI Progress is Humans. It’s a great multi-faceted conversation.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
The AI Revolution will be evolutionary, not revolutionary: While artificial intelligence will transform the economy, it will do so at roughly half a percent of additional GDP growth annually. This seemingly modest rate compounds dramatically over decades but contradicts predictions of explosive change. The pace is governed by real-world constraints that can't be coded away: the need to integrate with existing regulatory systems, the limits of physical infrastructure, and the inherent gradual pace of institutional adaptation.
Today's youth show unprecedented polarization of capability: At the top, we're seeing remarkable achievements - teenagers launching successful companies, mastering complex skills, and pushing intellectual boundaries. Below this elite level lies a concerning trend: a broad middle segment showing declining performance across multiple metrics. Yet intriguingly, both the very top and bottom segments of the distribution are improving, creating a complex picture of generational change.
Innovation diffusion follows stubborn patterns: History consistently shows that transformative technologies - from the printing press to electricity to the internet - spread more slowly than optimists of their era predict. This isn't due to the technologies' limitations but rather the complex choreography required across numerous systems: regulations must be written, workers trained, infrastructure built, and cultural practices adapted. Even revolutionary technologies must dance to the rhythm of human and institutional change.
Founder leadership carries unique power: Organizations thrive under founders not just because of their vision, but because they combine two crucial elements: the courage to make bold decisions and the unquestionable authority to execute them. This powerful combination lets them push through necessary changes that would stall under conventional leadership. The success of founder-led organizations, from Apple to Amazon to the Beatles, stems from this capacity to make hard pivots when required.
Progress carries a shadow of risk: While technological advancement has brought unprecedented prosperity and reduced many forms of human suffering, it also amplifies our capacity for destruction. Each major technological leap throughout history has been eventually weaponized, from gunpowder to nuclear fission. Although global violence has declined in the modern era, the destructive potential of emerging technologies means future conflicts could be catastrophically more devastating than anything in human history. This creates an imperative to manage progress thoughtfully and develop robust safeguards alongside technological capability.
2. The Economist had a useful piece on titled: Training AI models might not need enormous data centres.
The 2 BIG IDEAS:
The Current AI Computing Race Is Reaching Its Limits: "Mr Musk says he has 100,000 GPUs in one data centre and plans to buy 200,000. Mr Zuckerberg says he'll get 350,000... Each extra chip adds not only processing power but also to the organisational burden of keeping the whole cluster synchronised... Simply increasing the number of GPUs will provide diminishing returns."
DiLoCo: A Revolutionary Training Approach "Rather than training on 100,000 GPUs, all of which speak to each other at every step, DiLoCo describes how to distribute training across different 'islands'... communication burden drops 500-fold... When they are turned to predictions that they've never been asked to make before, they seem to generalise better."
C. The Fiction Section:
Last week we discussed Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This week’s book is The Secret History by Donna Tart (she also wrote The Goldfinch, which won The Pulitzer Prize in 2014).
The book is a well crafted detective story that opens with a climactic murder and then unspools backward to reveal how a close-knit group of classics students at an elite New England college became entangled in ancient Greek rituals with deadly modern consequences.
Layered on top of the detective story is an examination of class, privilege, and the human desire to transcend the ordinary at any cost. That adds another dimension to the story.
I thought it would make a great movie and look forward to that being reality one day. Otherwise the book was too long a read for the payout.
What I’ve come to believe about books is that 90% of the time you only want to read stuff that’s more than a few decades old. By that time the Lindy Effect means that the books that won’t stand the test of time are forgotten. What remains is clarity.
In the meantime if you want to learn new things podcasts, twitter, blogs and doing stuff is the best option. Reading books written in the last few years is a waste.
D. The Curious Mind Event Series:
Defence tech is in the news daily given Palantir, Anduril, Helsing and many others.
To help us learn more about the market and contextualise the opportunity set I wanted to have my friend Ateet Ahluwalia give us a briefing.
Ateet started at Goldman Sachs as a credit trader, then traded Macro at BlueCrest, then crypto and venture investing at CoVenture and Bracket. Since 2023 he has been the Managing Partner at Island Green.
Island Green is an inflection focused venture capital firm that invests in generational companies across all sectors via primaries and secondaries at their turning points.
His prior investment experience includes SpaceX, Shield AI, Anduril, Palantir, Coinbase, Stripe and others.
He will discuss:
The US and Allied budget
The Chinese supply chain and Allied Defence
What tech is the pentagon focused on
Air land sea and now…space
New Defense start-ups vs primes
Why it’s crucial to have program of record
The briefing will be January 31st 12pm EST. Please let me know if you’d like to join.
Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you got value out of reading, please let others know!
very thoughtful newsletter, I read it every time it hits my inbox