Dickie Bush Quotes

All mindset roads lead back to seeing the world as rigged in your favor, seeing every outcome as your responsibility, seeing every circumstance as an opportunity for progress, and seeing every problem you face as a skill issue.

A good mental model for getting smarter: am I asking more questions than answers I'm giving?

The smartest thing you can do: realize you aren't that smart.

The best operators know what they know, but more importantly what they don't know.

Double down on what you know. Surround yourself with people who know everything else.

I found the greatest hack to get rid of passive voice.

After every verb, insert "by zombies."

If the sentence still makes sense, you're using ​passive voice.

"The story was written (by zombies)" → passive voice.

"She wrote (by zombies) the story." → active voice.

Something I try to keep in mind while writing:

What’s obvious to you can be magic to others.

I attribute a massive amount of my progress to treating Sunday as a work day for the last decade. It’s by far the best day to write & get deep work done, as no one is on to distract you. Plus, you can plan the entire week ahead of you, so you can hit the ground running on Monday. Highly recommend for anyone looking to progress faster.

The goal is to build generational wealth through learning, writing, teaching, creating, building, selling, and, most importantly, helping.

Reminder to self: be aggressively patient.

Execute relentlessly in the short-term. But zoom out to let those efforts compound.

Impatience with actions. Patience with results.

No one has 52 shitty newsletters.

Many people have 10 shitty newsletters.

Consistency creates competence.

My 2-step goal-setting framework:

1. Pick an outcome I want to achieve

2. Change the goal from "I want to achieve X" to "I want to enjoy every second on the journey to achieving X."

95% of achieving goals is learning to cherish the journey & loving the monotonous consistency.

You’re stuck because you thought the entire journey would be fun.

Newsflash:

Progress is not always fun.

There is a disgusting & treacherous amount of exceptionally boring work between you and your ultimate goals.

Tackle it one day at a time.

Don't cut words to make your writing shorter.

Cut words to reduce friction for the reader.

As a writer, you're competing with TikTok and Netflix.

So the easier it is to read, the more likely the reader is to stick around.

Reasons to tweet:

1. Refine ideas -> every essay I write starts as a tweet. 280-characters is the ultimate creative restraint.

2. Create a learning flywheel -> learn, share, discuss, repeat.

3. Attract like-minded people -> show people I see the world the same way they do.

Work like a lion, not like a cow.

Cows graze on grass for 10 hours/day.

Lions patiently observe, spot their target, then relentlessly sprint to catch it. Then, they rest again.

Work in extremes. Be fully on or fully off.

The fear of hitting publish isn't fear, it's an ego problem.

You're assuming everyone is going to read what you write.

So keep in mind:

There are 0 people on earth refreshing their browsers waiting to read your writing.

Start listening to the market instead of hiding from it.