"I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two." Jeff Bezos (2012)

In the last few weeks, two of my friends have been laid off. I've also had several conversations with recent college grads who are uncertain what to do.

I realized what I shared with them may be useful for you or someone you know as well, so here are 7 things that will serve you, regardless of what happens in the future.

1. Fix your foundation. A 10-story building and a 100-story building need very different foundations. Our lives are no different. How high you can go is directly related to how strong your foundations is. The CEO of a $1B company needs a much stronger foundation than if she was leading a $1M company. The winds, stresses, and earthquakes of life are inevitable. Our foundations determine how well we handle them. Bankrupt professional athletes and lottery winners don’t have money problems, they have foundation problems. Our foundations have three pillars: mindset, habits, and skills. Everything is a byproduct of those three things, and yes, courage is the rebar that connects all three pillars.

2. Take care of the machine. Your mind and your body are the only two assets that show up to every job, every pitch, and every relationship you'll ever have. Sleep, movement, and someone to talk to when it gets heavy. It's boring advice, and it's still undefeated. The better you look, the better you feel, the better you perform. You’ll also attract more opportunities.

3. Double down on the three R's. Reading, writing, and arithmetic sound like elementary school, which is exactly why they're an edge now. Americans read fewer books today than at any point since Gallup started counting in 1990, so the bar has never been lower. There's an old line, often pinned on Mark Twain, that a person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't. Writing keeps your thinking sharp and lets you teach what you know. And basic math, meaning simple interest and rough probabilities, is most of the game in decision-making. If you want to get better at the decisions themselves, start with Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets.

4. Put yourself where luck can find you. Last week, I saw Angela Duckworth speak about her new book, Situated, and her argument after a decade of studying grit is that grit alone isn't enough. The people and places around you matter as much as the willpower inside you. Steven Pressfield makes the same point with fewer syllables in Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. If the city, the room, or the crowd is wrong for what you're trying to build, move. And once you get there, build community on purpose rather than waiting for it to happen. Radha Agrawal's Belong is the best how-to I've found.

5. Own something. This is not optional. In a capitalist society you either own or you get owned. The key is to just get started and keep compounding. Keep creating and acquiring assets. Ageism doesn’t apply to asset owners. It only affects employees. 99% of Warren Buffet’s wealth came after 50. He retired at 94.

6. Make asymmetric bets. Thirty hours spent learning a skill most people won't touch can open doors for the next thirty years. Right now that skill is almost certainly AI, and I'd spend time on it every single day. Not because it's trendy, but because it's rewriting what companies and roles look like, and the people who learn it early get paid for the gap between them and everyone who waited.

7. Learn to friend-zone your fear. Fear is your brain estimating risk, and it usually overestimates it. When the estimate runs too high, we freeze and don’t take action. And Pablo Picasso said it best: “action is the foundational key to all success.” This is why fear is a tax on our potential. Fear itself isn't the problem. Mis-priced fear is. So the practice is to notice where fear is charging you more than the actual risk is worth, and make sure you’re not overpaying.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear its the willingness to act in the face of fear. Our assignment is to focus on the foundation we pour, the books we read, the rooms we walk into, the things we own, the bets we place, and the Fear Tax we refuse to overpay.

If we do those well, the odds have a way of taking care of themselves.

Here's your reflection for the week:

What decision, not condition, shaped the best year of my life so far?

Audit your foundation. Rate your mindset, habits, and skills from 1 to 10. Pick the lowest and write one action to take this week.


With courage,

Jonathan