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🤸 Living an asymmetric life, 4 types of professional time, & podcast bros

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Cristina & Jenni
October 12, 2023

Hey — it’s Cristina & Jenni.

This week we’re:

  • learning how to live an “asymmetric life” and go from playing safe to playing BIG 💪

  • enjoying soulful conversations about our dharma and learning how to organize our time more intentionally thanks to Sahil Bloom’s calendar tricks 📅

  • laughing about a podcast bro parody 😅

Enjoy!

What we’re reflecting on this week

In life and business, are you playing to win or not to lose?

If you’re not quite sure, let me introduce you to 4 powerful principles that, when embraced, can shift your trajectory and position you to succeed.

But first, we need to understand the concept of “Living an asymmetric life”.

A philosophy championed by Graham Weaver, the founder of Alpine Investors and a Stanford lecturer (his talk is linked in the learnings section).

With over 30 years of experience as a professional investor, for Graham, asymmetry is key to success in both life and investing.

It's about setting up for a bigger upside while managing the downside.

And Graham learned this the hard way.

It all started with him losing half of his largest investor's money at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis.

But a transformative encounter with an executive coach and a powerful exercise changed his course permanently.

From these experiences, Graham distilled 4 principles for building an asymmetric life. Together, they challenge us to elevate our actions and thinking.

The four principles of living an asymmetric life:

1. Do hard things

2. Do your thing

3. Do it for decades

4. Write your story

Principle 1: Do hard things.

“Everything that you want in life is on the other side of worse first.”

When pushing for a change or confronting a new challenge, it’ll often get worse before it gets better. But the more we push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, the more our threshold increases, and the more we realize that we can do hard things.

Growth is never easy but always rewarding.

Principle 2: Do your thing.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. So when faced with hard choices, pick the path that aligns with your passions and values.

The most authentic successes come from pursuing what genuinely matters to us.

“When faced with choices about what we want to do, most of us miss one important piece of the equation. We factor in all the risks and tradeoffs, but we completely discount how differently we will show up when we’re truly energized about something. When our whole being is fully invested, we tap into a superpower and can sustain that for a long time. You won’t tap into this power as long as you’re living someone else’s dream. “

Principle 3: Do it for decades.

“There is no obstacle that won’t yield to you at full power for a decade.”

Greatness isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

When you find something worth your time and energy, invest in it, and let time compound the results.

Principle 4: Write your story.

“Don’t write a story about what happened. Write your sorry, then make that happen.”

Graham shares 3 rules for writing your story:

Rule 1: It takes place five years from now.

Rule 2: What’s your genie goal? Think about what you would do if you knew you couldn’t fail.

Rule 3: Put on the blinders to where you want to go and forget the how.

→ Are any of these principles guiding your current journey? If not, perhaps it’s time to play BIG! “Look fear in the face and say not today.”

What we’re learning this week
What we’re enjoying this week

That’s it for this week — thanks for reading.

See you next Thursday! 🤸‍♀️

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