Casey Dai

Founder of Expanded Skills

Former Head of Engineering

[Orange Book 🍊📖 @orangebook]

You don't need therapy, you need to work on yourself until you have a fit body, a calm mind, valuable skills, investments that compound, difficult goals that force you to grow, family and friends you love, and the core belief that things will get better as long as you get better.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

Giving advice is cringeworthy.

I've given plenty, and I cringe when I do.

Advice is a suggestion for what someone else should do.

Instead of "here's what you should do," saying "here's what I would do" converts advice into thinking out loud. Listen if you want.

Better.

[Ness Labs @ness_labs]

We are excited for @casey_dai to host a session on “strategies to overcome career stagnation” in the Ness Labs community on Wednesday, June 26th!

We will explore:
- Career stagnation
- Career uncertainty
- Career growth

Join us 📷
https://t.co/cz88N4783K

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

@neuranne I had a similar feeling when I was sorting through some of my old notebooks and examining what had occupied my mind over the past 10 years.

A good reminder to take notes consistently, so we can "travel back in time" later.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

We do a weekly talk like this one as part of the Expanded Skills community.

Request to join: https://t.co/OY0GlemIv2

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

On Wednesday this week, I'm hosting a discussion to unpack and internalize the ideas from Nassim Taleb's talk on his book Skin In The Game.

The book is on my re-read list every 6-12 months.

It's filled with timeless ideas and principles on how to better operate within complex systems and social dynamics.

Topics we'll cover include:
• Patterns and examples to help identify and avoid hidden risks
• A case study on how profit sharing helped align employee incentives
• Power of working backward from incentives when faced with complex social systems and power dynamics

No pre-reading is required since just enough context is provided on the essence of each idea before delving into a deeper discussion.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

Compartmentalize and alternate between periods where you're inhaling information vs. processing.

Given the current state of the Internet, it pays to have a strong bias to processing information in solitude before consuming more information.

During these sessions, deconstruct, then reconstruct the idea you're examining. Afterwards, ask if it changed your view and how you're allocating your attention differently.

[Farnam Street @farnamstreet]

If you want to think for yourself, you can’t have someone always whispering in your ear.

If you want space to think, you need quiet and calm, not a bunch of people throwing out new ideas.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

Or as a pragmatic measure to claim the 'reward' that the exam is gatekeeping, so that we can move on to more practical pursuit.

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

The reason why students cheat in exams is because we value their grades more than they value their learning.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

Building on this point - describing what things are at a surface level and regurgitating conventional wisdom is dead.

Instead, the most compelling content comes from:
- A unique approach on a seemingly boring topic (usually requires you to be contrarian AND right)
- Uncovering Easter Eggs that some super consumers aren't aware of (and unknown to all casual observers)
- Reporting on first hand experiences that your audience has trouble getting access to themselves

[Tim Ferriss @tferriss]

It’s never been easier to be a “creator,” and it’s never been harder to stand out. Good isn’t good enough.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

📌Head over to my profile to join our community, where we regularly discuss topics such as:

• Ways to develop a better relationship with uncertainty and change

• Mental models to better understand complex systems

• Techniques to accelerate your learning

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

Later this afternoon, my community is examining one of Tim Ferriss' most impactful ideas — The Top 5 Reasons To Be A Jack Of All Trades.

The generalist vs. specialist debate has a tonne of nuance and interesting sub-topics to look at more deeply, including:

• "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes is better than a master of one." — emphasis on the final part that's often omitted/forgotten.

• Which domains value a well-rounded skillset more than going deep on a single one?

• Is the need to specialize preventing you from checking off things on your bucket list?

More broadly, this touches on how we should examine the future of work, changes to your career strategy, and what skills you should prioritize.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

@orangebook It starts with taking more time to define what is meaningful progress.

Also, asking yourself how much of that definition is intrinsically vs. externally driven.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

If there's a single piece of advice to better K12 education as a parent, it's probably this one.

We're overtraining our muscle for answering canned questions (which usually doesn't make any sense).

Meanwhile, our muscle for examining premises and finding worthwhile questions to ask is missing.

[Prof. Feynman @ProfFeynman]

Don't just teach your children how to read. Teach them how to question what they read.

[Brandon Beery @NDominator]

This week's Content Distilled is a podcast between @justinkan and @zedbandit

One of the topics was baseline happiness isn't improved by selling a billion dollar company.

The question I'm asking myself now is how do I have more good days?

That means I have to define what a good day is.

To avoid a bad day: what's a bad day?

When I was $30,000 in debt as a new graduate a good day was really simple.

I was happy whenever people got home and I wasn't on/off like a stuck light switch.

When I was working for a healthcare data company... I was happy when code worked, I got to teach someone something, and 5PM came quickly.

But now?

A good day is waking up, getting to talk to someone, have an impact on what they are struggling with, and then getting to share bits of it here.

A bad day starts the day before: going to bed at 3AM or later, feeling stressed with no purpose or productivity, knowing I should be doing more.

There's more, but it's a good prompt to have in mind.

If I can control it, let's make more good days happen.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

@thedavidloewen Being able to come up with the "how" on your own vs. taking a prescription blindly from someone else starts with drilling down on "why".

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

@themgmtconsult Doing the basics solves most problems.
- Power nap
- Protein-rich food + water
- Something physical without a device
- And of course walks and sunshine

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

Ambition is fuel, but when unexamined, it can backfire, especially if you're also talented.

To quote Paul Graham, I've thought about quite a bit:
"If you're smart and ambitious, it's dangerous not to be productive"

I've been guilty of focusing too much on "optimizing my productivity" for things that should be left as-is in life.

A leading indicator is when you're thinking about how to optimize your leisure time or trying to squeeze an extra 5% out of your morning routine.

Going back to examining our ambitions, it roughly breaks down into two types.
— Results driven: obsession about an outcome, particularly dangerous if it's externally driven
— Curiosity driven: usually healthier as long as you're not compromising the basics of being a human being (physical health, relationships, etc.)

If you're interested in diving deeper into this in the broader context of "how to do great work," I'll be hosting a discussion in my community this upcoming Sunday at 3pm ET.

Head over to my profile for the link to join.

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

How I use time intervals to categorize decisions.

Automatic - within than 2 seconds
Intuitive - within than 20 seconds

Deliberate - within a day
Deep thought - more than a day

Why this categorization matters:
- Usually correlated with importance
- Taps into a different part of your brain
- Improvement requires different training
- Optimizing a different variable (e.g. which part of the speed vs. precision spectrum)

Anything else you'd add to the list?

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

@calvin_rosser Foundational before any other topics:
- Critical reasoning skills
- Learning how to learn

[Casey Dai @casey_dai]

The 1-liner on what sucks about traditional education coming from someone who always did well in school.

-- Their starting point is a mountain of theory before any practical scenarios are considered.

Plus, you are forced to sit there and rote-memorize because they can gatekeep a certification/exam grade, which is a questionable measure of actual competence on a good day.

Instead, if we started with practical scenarios and layered in concepts as needed, I'd wager textbooks would be 5% the length they typically are.

As a bonus, they leave you to figure out how to study effectively.