AI is moving fast. So what should you work on when your current skills might be outdated next year? This piece explores the kinds of projects AI can’t do well — and why hard, long-term creative work still gives you the biggest edge.

I get a rush when I experience greatness. Greatness moves people. Average work does not. And as Naval Ravikant says, “there’s no demand for average.” If you’re trying to figure out why your work isn’t resonating, it’s probably because the work is average. And that’s okay. Because you need to be average before you can be great.

ChatGPT is now a core part of my workflow and I keep having this reoccurring thought: I’m so glad I get paid by the execution, and not by the hour. Not only can I work faster with AI and create more value, but the inherent creativity within each project protects me from being automated away by AI agents. The more I rely on AI, the more I realize this simple truth: the best defense against automation is creative, project-based work.

If you commit to something with all of your being, you can accomplish it (over a long enough time period). The problem is that many people have trouble committing. Or don’t know what to commit to. They suffer from choice paralysis, where the sheer number of available options is so overwhelming that it becomes difficult to make a decision at all. But no matter where you are at, it’s not too late (and certainly not in your early 30s!) to pick a path and start compounding.

I watched the movie, “The Wild Robot” last night and it got me thinking about the act of creation. Within each of us lies a spark—a primal urge to create. One of the greatest things you can do is to recognize that spark, feed it, and let it blaze from a tiny flicker into an unstoppable fire. But to transform that spark into a raging fire - the kind of creative fire it takes to successfully make an animated movie like “The Wild Robot” - you need help. And AI can help.

There comes a time for every creator when you need to close your computer and go out into the world. Feel the earth under your feet. Hear the hum of life around you. And open yourself up to serendipity.

I can now code despite never learning how. It’s a breakthrough that’s been on my radar for over a year. I touched on it in a post from August 2023, about the importance of judgment and taste in a world of infinite leverage. That world is now here. New tools are coming online each day to hand the power of code to creatives. What a time to be alive!

I saw Christopher Nolan at a coffee shop in Hollywood this week. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops while chatting up an acquaintance unknown. Christopher Nolan drinks his coffee just like a normal person. From a paper cup, outside in the sun with his fellow (wo)man. Christopher Nolan is just like you and me, except for one crucial difference. He’s got a hell of a lot more leverage than either of us.

“The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is products with no marginal cost of replication. This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission.” - Naval Ravikant

I just learned about this guy - Ramon van Meer - who started a website called SoapHub.com and sold it for just under $9 million USD. Not bad! He’s made even more money since then buying and scaling Alpha Paw - a company that creates breed-specific products for dogs. Here’s what I learned from listening to him talk about building his blog on the My First Million podcast.

Internet real estate is valuable. Just like real estate in the real world has location value, internet real estate like domain names, websites, social media accounts, email lists, and online platforms has value based on visibility, traffic, and the potential to generate sales. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to build digital real estate.

If you want freedom, it’s time to start building online. Whatever skill you have, whatever business you’re in, writing & creating online is a cheat code (kinda like Super Mario Bros 3’s magic whistle - I f*cking love that game) that will open you up to so many opportunities, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner. Here’s why…

There are lots of ways to define intelligence, but only one I really like. It’s Naval Ravikant’s definition: “The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you wanted out of life.” If you got what you wanted, you’re smart. If you didn’t, you’re not. But there’s an even more important question embedded in the premise of the first: Are you wise enough to know what to want to begin with? Because if you aren’t, you’ll waste your life chasing booby prizes.  

There should always be a delay between the time you do something, and when you get paid for the work you did. That means you’ve created an asset or product or invested capital that’s making money for you. What you want to avoid is exchanging your time directly for an hourly wage. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “If someone pays you for anything other than a specific transaction, you are a slave.”

If you’ve played around with OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Dall-E programs, you know that the “robot army” has arrived to carry out your orders. But now, you don’t even have to speak their “language” to control them. Text-based interfaces allow you to give instructions in your language, and the artificial intelligence will carry it out in theirs. The days of having to learn how to code are quickly disappearing - just give good prompts, get good results. And when everyone has infinite leverage, your judgment and taste are what matter.

The world is flush with quick dopamine. You can make a TikTok video in minutes and get thousands of views in seconds. A Twitter thread that took you ten minutes to write can go viral with millions of impressions overnight. And it feels really good. It becomes brutally hard to stick with things that take much longer. But that’s where the real competitive advantage lives. When you do things that take years, not days, you compound your efforts with small, incremental gains, and immediately escape competition from anyone with a shorter time horizon. The longer it takes to do, the larger the competitive advantage in doing it.

There is no easy way to build wealth. If there were, everyone would already be rich. As Charlie Munger says: “It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.” There are no shortcuts. Every “get rich quick” scheme gets the person selling the scheme rich, not you. Stop cutting corners and start focusing on creating value instead. Start compounding small amounts of money and skill and watch it grow for decades.

If you are young, inexperienced, and have no idea where to start your wealth creation journey, then great. You have the best chance of getting rich.

Wealth is not an end in itself. What money buys is the freedom of your time to design a lifestyle you love. We are all here for such a short time - years pass in the blink of an eye. Don’t spend your life chasing more wealth than you need for the sake of making money. Get paid, then cash out.

Creativity isn’t an exact science. The best work doesn’t happen on command and when you try and push to make it happen, the work often falls flat. That’s why you should always try and sell your creativity by the execution, not by the hour. When you charge by the hour, it eliminates the magic AND you’re often giving the exponential upside of the project to someone else. Own your upside and keep the magic alive.

If you want to get wealthy, you have to create value AND expose yourself to the upside of the value you create. Most people who work a 9-5 job create value in their position. But they’re usually not paid proportionally to the value they create. If they were, the employer wouldn’t make any money off the employee and the work they do. The key to wealth is simple: create value, then capture it.

After a year of reading, writing, and applying the models of wealth creators, here are the top 20 ideas that have changed the way I think about the world.

If you are going to become wealthy, you need help. You only have so many productive hours in a single day, which puts a cap on your productivity. What you need is a way to compound your efforts. You can do this with leverage. There are four different kinds of leverage: capital, labor, code, and media. Here’s why media is the most useful to you.

“Seven Cures for a Lean Purse” from The Richest Man In Babylon overviews the basic financial principles of getting rich. Author George Samuel Clason delivers these through the wealthy and wise character of Arkad, who lives in the ancient city of Babylon 4,000 years ago. Not only are these principles still relevant, but they are also easy to understand and apply.

The most important knowledge can’t be taught. It can only be learned by pursuing the things you’re curious about. Naval Ravikant calls this kind of knowledge specific knowledge - the knowledge that can’t be trained for. And this is the kind of knowledge that can make you rich.

Most games aren’t worth playing. They are either status games, where you have to take someone else’s position in a zero-sum game. Or, if it is a wealth creation game, the upside is usually capped in some way and not worth the effort. If you are going to get rich, you need to make sure the game you’re playing has a payout worth the effort.