Do you need more, to be more?📚
If you're new to this - hey, I'm Aditya! I'm a 14-year-old obsessed with AI, film making, reading life-changing books, and philosophy. This newsletter is a "monthly-update" of sorts - enjoy! 🔥
Do you need more, to be more?
That’s the question I was grappling with this month as I went through my daily list of tasks. I felt like I wasn’t achieving anything - I needed to get more done, get through more tasks in an even shorter amount time.
Well, that was until I read this quote:
“The way to create something great is to create something simple.”
And (like all good quotes)…it proceeded to upheaval everything I knew about producing high standards work. The answer to increasing the quality of your output isn’t to mindlessly add more tasks and projects - it’s to take them down.
It’s about doing just a couple things, but doing them insanely well. But wait - how do you decide what couple things you should work on?
That’s where the 80/20 principle comes into play.
80/20-ing my life. 🤔
Most of you have likely heard of the 80/20 rule -> commonly known as Pareto’s rule (which I talked about in a previous newsletter). For those of you who don’t know, this is basically what it means:
80% of the effects stem from just 20% of the causes.
This might seem like a useless fact on first glance, but I promise that the effects go FAR deeper than what you might imagine.
Think about all the friends you have right now. Out of those, how many are you really close to? Chances are, those 20% (or even fewer) of friends are the ones you’re with 80% of the time.
Now, think about something that’s been really bothering you lately. Or, a list of goals you want to achieve. Once again - it’s likely that 20% of them bother/excite you 80% of the time.
It’s INSANE to see the sheer prevalence of this principle in the real-world. Yet, it means nothing if you don’t decide to take advantage of it. And that, was what I decided to do this month.
Here’s a quick framework I used to DE-clutter my life with the Pareto Principle. Really, you just need to ask yourself the tough questions:
What 20% of tasks are taking up 80% of my time?
What 20% of events are draining 80% of my happiness?
What 20% of media I consume (books, videos, etc.) provide 80% of the value?
What 20% of people do I spend 80% of my time with?
(Add more based on your life)
It’s crazy how little people ask these questions, despite their importance. It’s almost like 80% of people don’t ask the 20% of the questions that’ll change their life! 😎
(see what I did there?)
Anyway - I’ll be looking to more consistently use this principle in the coming month. Hopefully, you’ll benefit from it too!
Checkmate.♟
If you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough, you know that I’ve been going pretty deep into AI over the last 6+ months. My previous project (video on it coming soon) involved driving a car in a simulator, and I found myself needing a bigger challenge for my next endeavour.
And so, my gaze settled on the beautiful, awe-inspiring game of chess (yes, I’m having a bit of a chess obsession right now). With no one to play, I thought - why not just build a chess AI?
And so, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days. The approach looks something like this:
Find a chess engine that can draw the board and move pieces.
Train an AI to recognize different pieces on the board.
Create an environment where the player and AI can both move pieces.
Play against the AI, and hopefully not get creamed!
Hopefully, this works well - I’ll update you guys on how it’s going in the next one ;)
The 4-hour workweek.⌚
This book was, hands down, one of the most LIFE CHANGING one’s I’ve ever read. Tell me if this sounds familiar:
I need to go to work -> I can make more money -> I can have an elevated social status -> I can travel around the world and do whatever I want after retirement.
The problem? By the time we retire, we’ve already passed some of the best years of our lives. Instead of enjoying ages 0-60, we end up postponing “happiness” until we retire.
This book goes over a new age of wealth - the “New Rich”, who decide to distribute this period of retirement across their entire lifetime in so called “mini-retirements”.
The result? You can enjoy both in the present, and the future.
This book completely changed my perspective of wealth and happiness, and it’s a must read for anyone looking to maximize the potential out of life!
GOALS 🎯:
10x Content creation! I know I’ve been redundant on this, but some pretty 🔥content is coming your way in March.
Get the AI to successfully play (and beat) a bunch of people in chess.
Grind on more Kaggle certifications!
Read 2 more, life-changing books.
And that, dear reader, is the end of this month’s newsletter. If you want to continue being a part of my journey, subscribe to get direct updates. See you guys next month!