Put in the Right Reps
Putting in the Right Reps is a key foundation to not only building, but even discovering, your Category of One.
As AI takes away the human value behind raw, rote human effort, the vectors that will matter are the things that it will take time and effort to build out.
Most people understand the Compound Effect -- how small daily returns stack up.
What is that daily regular activity that one needs to put the reps into, though?
Some things are becoming foundational -- meaning, it seems that conventional wisdom and some parts of research -- make the case that these foundational things are part of life.
They are valuable for "Optimizing" your life, and I use that term loosely and with some irony because of how this can be such a negative net spiral.
I know there are people with a clear category of one who don't do any of those things; they are walking unicorns.
But the goal of this is to put in the reps to Stop Being an NPC -- and I liken at least from my own experience escaping NPC to launching a rocket. Need enough escape velocity.
Meditation
The primary purpose of this is to get the chatter especiallythe thoughts around trying to be perceived and accepted by people. Narcissism is the act of imagining ones own greatness with nothing to back it.
Meditation should be to give space for valuable thoughts or insights.
Personally I have found meitation can be distracting without clarity, so sometimes I include a basic exercise.
I use a meditation's app music to help me to stay focused although if you can do pure silence that's obviously better.
What is really truly important to me?
What would I do if I didn't care about anyone's opinion?
Who am I?
These are purposefully broad questions but I think meditation is a time to ask these questions to escape the NPC mode.
I meditate with a laptop open sothat if there's a fleeting idea I can just type it, but I keep my eyes closed the whole time.
I am attracring
One idea that I have played around with and I would love to hear your results is this:
If the world is a simulation, who do I choose to be"?
Just keep it open.
To me, getting clarity on who you are and the value you can deliver in the world should be a constant meditation.
Writing
There are two kinds of writing: personal/private and public.
They don't need to be long.
Private is helping you to explore the unknowns to find your unlocks.
Unlocks are the beliefs values, skills, ideals -- whatever we can use as building blocks to your categoyr of one.
Private writing can also be a awya to challenge the problems behind Miimesis.
It can be lucrative to follow other people if you are in a group of high earners; for example, following people who work in hedge funds or venture capital is a way to be wealthy; the question is whether you can get past the gate keepers in the first place.
You might be able to; you may have those skills that are valuable to do so.
But you may not.
Public writing is helping to clarify your own writing and test the waters on what is atually valuable.
It is your "proof of work" credibility.
Gratitude
Overplayed and overdone. But why not?
Your Real Throughline
But the most important rep is the throughline of what do you like doing the most?
What are you most interested in, and can you get 1% better at it by working at something daily?
It could be a skill. It could be reaching out and connecting to people through DMs or LinkedIn or whatever community platform you are in.
Figure out your category of one throughline...even if you don't know what it is.
For example, in terms of Category of One, which is not my primary venture, is something that is important enough to me that I know I need to put in the reps.
Writing online in a Substack is a good forcing function because doing so requires me to:
- Clarify my thoughts
- Research areas I am a little bit shaky on
- Reach out to people for feedback and input
But the reps are all in writing something public.
My current method is to get it all out of my head and make sure that I publish in my own public space. The value of that is to just hit publish -- but it know it typically needs alot of editing.
I do spend time trying to make sure that it gets indexed, though. Which isn't easy if you're self-hosting it as I do.
But that daily rep -- and writing online is probably one of the highest leveraged things one can do on the Internet -- is definitely valuable.
Yes, I know, there are a ton of gurus who are advocating for this and have built huge businesses on this.
And I'm probably going to take some of those courses too, particularly around the promotion side.
But here's the thing: before you work on the tactics of writing online, you need to have the lay of the land. Writing is a way of potentially discovering your Category of One -- and that's what I'm going to show you how to do. I won't focus on distribution.
But it's only really worth spending time writing and distributing when you have clarity (doesn't need to be perfect, but there does need to be clarity) on your Category of One.
And to get there, to have a line of sight, you need to Put in the Right Reps.
What are you doing to put in the reps?
What gets in your way of identifying what reps to work on?