Wins & Updates

• 25% Sale for You: Barnes and Noble has a 25% discount on pre-orders from today until Friday. Get your copy with the code PREORDER25.

• TEDxStanford: Last week, I was selected as one of ten speakers at TEDxStanford. The big day is Sunday April 13, 2025.

• Ask: I’m working with a PR agency, but if you know editors at major media or companies looking for speakers, your help would be appreciated!

From Zero to Hero

I’ve observed that many people go on life without having spectacular wins - not because they aren’t gifted or smart or hardworking, but because they’ve structurally positioned themselves in a way they cannot benefit from the upside. That is, they’ve positioned themselves in a way where outsized outcomes are essentially zero-probability outcome.

Often times, that doesn’t mean involve radical changes like risking your life savings. Most of the time, it can be minor adjustments in your life today. Beyond my own example of writing 15-minutes a day to land a book deal, there are far more prominent case studies. Lenny Rachitsky has one of the largest tech newsletters in the world, generating 7-figures with over 500K subscribers. His start was simply taking his reflections and insights on Medium after leaving his job at Airbnb. Imagine if he had just put it down on his notebook instead!

These aren’t cherry-picked, one-off stories. Andrew Chen, partner at A16z and author of The Cold Start Problem, has a similar story in sharing his insights during his time at Uber and certainly more joining A16z. James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits is another great example. Creating outsized returns can be as simple as these adjustments to your existing work. I’ll share a few examples:

• Interviews: Maybe you’re a job seeker right now. You’ll be studying industries, companies, and people. Instead of using LLMs and browsers, you could take a few minutes to organize and write it down. Better yet, the same content living on your personal drive, would have an infinitely greater probability of outsized returns if you share it publicly.

• Analysis: Anyone working in professional services will be doing some industry analysis. Taking a moment to share your learnings (removing sensitive information) can be an easy way to start.

• Journaling: Some people wind down by taking a couple of minutes to journal their thoughts. Again, instead of pen and paper, organizing a few key insights into a weekly post on platforms with scalable distribution can go a long way.

Minor changes to your workflows is just one way to start applying Asymmetric Principles in your life. Asymmetric Principles isn’t about blindly waiting for a lottery, but a system to maximize the luck of creating outsized outcomes.

Barnes & Noble is having a 25% sale on pre-orders until this Friday!

Code: PREORDER25