Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

I think a lot about my ability to make decisions.

Especially big life decisions that can have lasting effects.

Good judgment, or judgment in general, is underrated.

Judgment is a core part of what it means to act with wisdom.

Naval Ravikant defines wisdom as "knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. They're highly linked; knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and then making the right decisions to capitalize on that."

So this week I write about how to think clearly, make decisions, etc.

Let's get into it.

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🧠 Wisdom Tip(s) of The Week: Judgement is Underrated

Judgment is underrated, while pure hard work is overrated. Really overrated.

In my mid 20's I had a minor obsession with the hustle lifestyle. I thought wealth, success, and happiness stemmed from non-stop hard work and effort. I pursued any and every "opportunity" that presented itself. I wasted a lot of time and money because of this flawed perspective.

Hard work still matters a lot, but nowhere near as much as the judgment required to choose the right direction. The direction you're moving in matters far more than the speed you're traveling.

Since then I have made many more mistakes along my own journey, but I learned from my hustle mentality and now spend a lot more time and effort determining my direction before I start working hard to get there.

How to improve your judgment

• Learn to think clearly
• Drop your desires for an outcome to see reality
• Learn decision-making skills
• Collect mental models
• Learn to love reading/learning

Learn to think clearly - learn to think more clearly by creating a solid foundation of knowledge. The more foundational your knowledge is on a topic or subject, the more clearly you will be able to think on that topic.

This is why thinking in base principles is so powerful.

Don't self-identify to better see reality - This is a big one. The more you self-identify with concepts, the less you are able to separate yourself from the bias' of that concept.

Let me give you an example that is extremely prevalent in the United States today. If you self-identify as a Democrat or as a Republican, you are effectively self-identifying with a static set of beliefs, not all of which you might agree with.

Any belief you took in a package (ex. Democrat, Catholic, American) is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles. - Naval Ravikant

Try to avoid having too many thoughts "pre-decided," as it makes you rigid and inflexible in your thinking.

Learn decision-making skills - The most important part of improving your ability to make decisions is to improve your ability to be radically honest with yourself. When you lie to yourself you disconnect from reality, ruining the quality of the information you have to work with.

One of the core aspects of making good decisions is the quality of the information at your disposal. If you can't even be brutally honest with yourself, how are you ever going to make high-quality decisions?

The game of poker, like life, is a game of making decisions based on incomplete information. I see all the time situations where players make bad decisions based on illogical assumptions they made in their heads. This is why someone should never gamble when they're emotionally compromised.

Collect mental models - A mental model is a mindset for thinking through types of problems. Principled thinking is another way of phrasing this.

Examples of a few principles:

• Love is a verb - it's something you do, not something you feel. You can choose to practice love every day
• If it's not a f*ck yes, it is a no - This basically means if you are struggling to make a decision, then the answer is likely no. This is because there are tons of options in modern society, and settling on an option that doesn't truly fit you is a big long-term mistake.
• Run Uphill - This means, when faced with two similar choices, choose the one that is more difficult in the short term. This is because your mind will subconsciously try to avoid any conflict to avoid short-term pain. Don't let your conflict avoidance cloud your judgment

There are many, many more mental models out there. A quick google search will send you down a rabbit hole. I would suggest starting with Benjamin Franklin's mental models.

The most efficient way to build new mental models is to read a lot. Read a multitude of subjects. Period.

Learn to love reading/learning - This might be difficult for some of you, but my guess is most of you already enjoy learning via reading. I mean, you are currently reading a weekly article on wisdom, health, and wealth. But if on the off chance that you aren't a big fan of reading, let this be my plea to you to start.

"Read what you love until you love to read." - Naval Ravikant

I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on reading books. For one, I don't believe in reading everything out there. I believe in finding great books and reading them multiple times over the years.

My definition of wisdom is that it is a connection between the knowledge you've acquired and your experiences in life. You also glean more truth from knowledge when you have certain experiences. Reading the same book years apart can feel like reading a completely different book because you're a different person each time you read it.

Takeaways ☕

If I had to summarize this newsletter into a few bullet points it would be the following

• Read the greats in core subjects like math, science, philosophy, economics, etc.
• Ignore the news and other forms of "processed" information
• Avoid tribal identification. Us vs Them is a dangerous thought experiment.
• Prioritize truth and clarity over social approval

Ethereum Stats:

Total ETH burned - 920,000 ETH (or $3.9+ billion!!)

ETH burned in the last week - 91,000 ETH !!!! 😱

Avg ETH burn per minute (all-time) - 6.15 ETH/min

My favorite website for watching the ETH 🔥 is ultrasound.money.

Quote/Meme of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 4.5% interest on BTC, 5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.25% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.