Patricia Mou

First principles are the Lego building blocks for thinking. These Lego blocks, once carefully assembled with forethought, are reusable. With the right set of first-principles, you can start mixing them in ways you couldn't before allowing you to think better and faster. 

What do you do every day, constantly strive to get better at, that improves not just your life, but the lives of others? What is that one thing that you are building above all else, trading your time - no, decades of your life - in exchange to will into existence that is good and beautiful in this world?  That is a mission, and everyone needs one.

9. Noise Cancellation. The ability to cancel out the noise - to truly focus on the task at hand - is both broadly applicable and extremely powerful.

There are numerous variations on these simple activities but the original intervention (Emmons and McCullough, 2003) consisted of taking time once per week to reflect upon five things in life that one was grateful for and writing these down, and then repeating this for ten consecutive weeks.

Tribes are living organisms. Even if nobody joins or leaves, members of the group change and the world around the group changes. Your rules, norms and goals will evolve. 

Growing your tribe creates more resources that can allow you to reach higher goals. New people bring in new knowledge, new ideas, more attention, etc. At the same time, as the tribe grows it becomes increasingly harder to maintain highly trust-based group dynamics.

Do the work.  That's all the productivity advice you need, and the only useful productivity advice you're ever going to get.