# 50 Ideas That Changed My Life - David Perell
Synced: [[2023_11_30]] 6:03 AM
Last Highlighted: [[2023_08_19]]
Tags: [[advice]] [[Advice]]
## Highlights
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h578vs3kbnrq2q14gctwwn7x)
> 1. **Inversion:** Avoiding stupidity is easier than trying to be brilliant. Instead of asking, “How can I help my company?” you should ask, “What’s hurting my company the most and how can I avoid it?” Identify obvious failure points, and steer clear of them.
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h578wsr6wxc2b38mq03zgrge)
> 3. **Theory of Constraints:** A system is only as strong as its weakest point. Focus on the bottleneck. Counterintuitively, if you break down the entire system and optimize each component individually, you’ll lower the effectiveness of the system. Optimize the entire system instead.
Systems Thinking
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h578zq54zaxs3wshkwx28gbk)
> 9. **Competition is for Losers:** Avoid competition. Stop copying what everybody else is doing. If you work at a for-profit company, work on problems that would not otherwise be solved. If you’re at a non-profit, fix unpopular problems. Life is easier when you don’t compete. (Hint: don’t start another bottled water company).
[[Zero to one]]
[[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h5794v96pvxfhjss7vh7sm04)
> 20. **Bike-Shed Effect:** A group of people working on a project will fight over the most trivial ideas. They’ll ignore what’s complicated. They’ll focus too much on easy-to-understand ideas at the expense of important, but hard to talk about ideas. For example, instead of approving plans for a complicated spaceship, the team would argue over the color of the astronaut’s uniforms.
What you see is all there is.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Bike shedding is question substitution
[[2023_08_19]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h86s13n01tz98dz06j9qcre5)
> **The Map Is Not the Territory:** Reality will never match the elegance of theory. All models have inconsistencies, but some are still useful. Some maps are useful because they’re inaccurate. If you want to find an edge, look for what the map leaves out.
[[Model fallacy]]