Zach Mobius

I talk about human performance, building with AI, and being a new dad. Ex @ubereats Global Strategy turned COO of an 8 fig startup.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Understanding how to learn is the unlock for getting what you want.

Once you understand how to learn, the only thing that stands between you and achieving your goals is time.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

High performance is a state of complete connection. Your body and mind coordinate as one to produce a desired result.

If you can’t get the results you want, look at what is disconnected before searching for advice.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Kids bring a level of spontaneity that was missing from my life before. My son rolled this morning and it was the most excited I’ve been all year.

Routine is fantastic for productivity, but if your day is all order and no chaos then you’re living an incomplete life.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Making a bad hiring decision is impossible to fully prevent.

One simple change to de-risk the process is to build your hiring system around
one or two specific traits that are non-negotiable.

This should be the trait that is most important for the role, or that a candidate lacking it will most frustrate you as a leader.

For example, our hiring process screams almost purely for an individual's ability to self-manage.

Every hire I've made that lacked this single trait caused me significantly more time and frustration on the backend and ultimately led to having to fire them.

So the process now screens for this. As the candidate goes through 4+ interviews, we get progressively more specific as to how we test it.

Since we changed our approach, every candidate we have put through has elevated the level of the team in the first two weeks.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Hiring is the highest leverage skill that I neglected for years.

The only thing more draining than doing everything yourself is trying to turn C+ players into A players. Doesn't work.

We made 3 key hires this year and my enjoyment of running the business improved 10X.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

@NoahRyanCo 5 mins of HRV resonance breathing and setting the Or nothing rule.

You can do the task or you can do nothing, nothing else until the timer is done.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

@signulll Years and years of tech debt. And trying to scrub the system that Jump (micromobility) was ever a thing.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

We had our first kid and my HRV is 40 pts below baseline.

This is even with daily sunlight, nutrient dense diet, meditation, and training.

None of those are enough offset the lack of sleep, but in times of high stress all you can do is control what you can control.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

There is such a giant gap between knowing something intellectually and actually doing it. I know that to build anything great it takes time. Yet on a daily basis, sometimes hourly, have you keep reminding myself to do the thing and not get distracted by other opportunities.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

@signulll It's just much efficient to have the AI go deep in one specific area than to try to capture everything.

I think the future on this will likely be more deep solutions combined together (niche agi) than one super AI over everything.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

@jackbutcher The reward for winning a pie eating contest is more pie.

Great if you love pie, bad if you entered the contest for the wrong reasons.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

One idea taken seriously is enough to change your life.

That project you've been putting off. That relationship you've been half in, half out on. They compound if you give them the effort to compound.

Hard lesson for me, as someone who likes to see and pursue a lot of options.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

I often wonder what I did with my time before we had kids.

Reflecting on this gave me a simple truth: If you don't have the luxury of time, you must have the discipline of focus.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

The fundamental thing here is that attention has become more of a scarce resource over time.

When you have infinite opportunities, having the additional 5-10% bandwidth of not owning things that drain it creates significant compounding. Could be the difference between a good and bad decision.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

It would be silly to take running advice from a Kenyan marathon runner if your 5'10 and 200 lb.

Same with productivity advice. Grind for 12 hours a day' is a viable strategy when you don't have kids.

Easy to see with physical traits. Much harder with cognitive work.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Being a new dad is a complete paradox.

The most meaningful thing I've ever done. Also incredibly inconvenient that your day-to-day performance hinges on how well your kid sleeps. You can do everything right and still be dragging.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

AI is both the axe and the tool that sharpens the axe. Use it to build your own capacity. The better you are, the higher the output you build with AI.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Started building a longevity training app.

Had to throw out most of what I believed
about "progress."

Different metrics.
Different methods.
Different definition of winning.

Progress over a lifetime looks nothing like progress over 12 weeks.

[Zach Mobius @ZachMobius]

Most things are hard because you make them too important. In reality 99% of life is just practice, and not the actual game. Practice lets you fail, get reps, and not worry about it. Games are for demonstrating skill, practice is for building it.