Tobi Lutke of Shopify is a visionary, someone who looks far into the horizon and goes as far down the rabbit hole as possible , and then some more. Here are key lessons I learned by following Tobi Lutke:
Ask questions about the world , and explore the answers. Tobi created Shopify with the sole purpose to answer the question : Is it possible to live in a world where everyone is an entrepreneur ? Follow these questions deep down the rabbit hole, go on this amazing journey , and learn the skills needed to find the right answers. The most important thing to work on can be found by asking : What really sucks ? What are the worst pain points ? Work on the crappiest problems now, because that will make the world way cooler than it is right now. If you compete with others you will eventually plateau at a local maxima , but if you have a huge purpose and you try to get one step closer to it everyday , you don’t self limit yourself.
Think in systems. Build the machine that builds the machine. Automate. The world does not run on cause and effect , the world is loopy. Cause and effect thinking : Go to school -> you get smarter. Loopy system : Go to school -> activates your quality of thinking -> you learn how to learn -> reinforces your knowledge -> solve more problems -> you get smarter. Things do not connect linearly ,they reinforce each other in many loops. Build a system where everything reinforces each other and the right thing matters.
Cultivate a Growth Mindset. The 2010 version of myself couldn’t solve the issues that I currently have to solve , and my current version can’t solve the issues that the future version of myself at 2030 will have to solve. You have to grow exponentially , not just linearly. Every year , you have to requalify for your job , you have to requalify in your role as a parent ,a partner , a child , a friend. You have to be worthy of deserving. Develop a learners mentality. Measure how much you learn , not how much you succeed or fail. Optimize for learning above all else. Once you learn a new skill and level up, you not only make a better choice the next time you face the issue , you will make a better choice every time you face the issue!
If your company or industry or the pace of development in the world as such is growing at 50% a year ,you have to grow 50% just to stand still ! If you want to grow, you have to outpace the growth of the company !
Be relentless. Be instantly useful ! My goal is to meet a new version of myself every year. When you are very comfortable , that’s when you should worry and push yourself. Get twice as good every year so that you qualify for your right to be in your company, your family, your community. Look at what is possible on absolute terms instead of relative terms. Compete against the best version of yourself. If the best version of yourself is 10/10 and you are now 3/10 , how do you get to 4/10 and 5/10 ? The goal is to be embarrassed by who you were last year and do this every year ! When you are growing super fast , you are a new person every month , every year. You are a better version of yourself at every turn.
Create and play positive sum games. Try to reach your highest potential 10-20 years before you would otherwise. Then go beyond. Switch from fixed to growth mindset , and then learn fast !
Be an infinite learner. We all have fixed mindset on something and growth mindset on others. Intelligence and skill is not static , it can be improved. Develop growth mindset on different traits- you will achieve 10 years of results in one year on the wall clock. Be more irreverent and just do your thing !Be your authentic self , not as a sanitized , or cardboard piece , a clone , a guarded version. Don’t optimize to be like others , be yourself ! Think different. Be a part of the pioneering crowd , build something different from everything else. Figure out what matters to you and build it. What do you believe that most people don’t agree on ? That’s the key to your success. If you start with the exact same ideas as everyone else is , you are fighting in a crowded place and doing nothing to make things better. Most people are not like me , what I like doing are chores for others and vice-versa. Double down on doing the useful things that are fun for you but chores for others. My job is to do the best job I can , my job is not to make someone else think I am doing the best job I can.
Hell is meeting the best version of yourself in the afterlife. My goal is to minimize the difference between the person I meet versus the person I am right now. For this we need to awaken to a growth mindset , get smarter everyday. Taking risks is suddenly no longer scary anymore. Remove friction. Between what you want and where you are is friction , friction shapes everything. Lower the friction. Don’t fight gravity , remove friction , we are all affected by our environment. If you are in an inspiring space , full of great design , your base level of what you will do will be significantly higher. Water always follows the easiest path down the mountain , not the hardest path. Remove friction , remove the need to use willpower. Find processes that don’t work – that don’t meet your minimum quality bar and
remove them for something better.
Be anti-fragile. Be resilient , anti-fragile. Be okay with bad things happening . Its not how you can avoid bad things from happening , it’s how fast you can fix bad things once they happen. Make things go wrong and change things, so that we can thrive on change and adapt , we are not in a static world , be dynamic ! Decentralize , go open-source. Adaptability is more important than efficiency. Build your trust battery. Trust is not on or off , it is gradient on a spectrum. How to increase the charge in my trust battery ? You have to be reliable and worthy of trust , every day.
Making high quality decisions – If the decision is undoable , make the decision fast !Get all the context before making the decision. Your skill in making decisions is directly proportional to your quality of information acquisition , how many sources do you have ? resources ? Did you call the right people ? Read the right books ? Cultivate this as a skill. When making a major decision – go to a log file -write one paragraph about the decision you made , what info you considered to be the most important one to make that decision , revisit that every three months , were you right in hindsight ? Keeping a decision journal is life-changing ! The result seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight. The unknown info was there – but you probably did not get it by asking the right person, or you had the information but discounted it. Make decisions based on the information available , not on the need to be right. Strive to never make a wasted mistake. There is no such thing as failure , there is only the successful discovery of things that do not work. Experiment and learn.
Get out of the box ! I am in a box – I try to make sense of it , then it becomes comfortable .. I am in a small box , then I find a crack in the narrow box I am in , and go to the outer box where the tiny box. I came from is a tiny box in the corner , and this new box is much larger – I am uncomfortable again , I have to unlearn and learn everything again , pick new skills , even things I figured out before are no longer true. The goal is to figure everything out , and then it is dangerous because I become comfortable again. What you have to do is to go find the crack and go to the box in which this current box exists , in which this box is just one of many boxes. You meet people who occupy a much larger box and they bend down and speak to you , and they help you move to a larger box. People who stop exploring the box and get comfortable are busy judging others. When you know what box you are in and you don’t know the exit , Houston we have a problem. Import things from other people’s boxes who are in bigger boxes.
I am going for the minimal distance the person I am meeting at the end of my life. I today am the bottleneck to that goal as I continue chasing becoming the best version of myself. In your life get the best people on the bus , because then you will have a great time no matter where the bus is going ! Go on an amazing journey doing hard things surrounded by great friends !
Do something difficult first thing in the morning , for a few minutes , not something that can be done on auto-pilot.
Video games provide transfer learning – you can take skills you learn in video games and use them to solve real world problems in interesting ways !
My life and work needs to make an impact like a crater. Not just good work , not just great work , it is massive cosmic impact. It has to be visible from outer space.
Feedback is a gift.
Own your inner state
Best way to get better is to go broader in your skills. Instead of learning 100% of a field , learn 80% of the field as fast as possible , it doesn’t take long to learn 80% of a field. Most successful people know 80% of many different fields. Books are probably the closest to finding cheat codes for life !