George Mack

After 7 months of writing, I finished my essay! I think agency might be the most important idea of the 21st century highagency.com

One of my most contrarian opinions is that if you want to be more creative, optimize for a weak bladder or irritable bowel syndrome. You only have shower thoughts once to twice per day. But you can have toilet thoughts 10 to 20 times per day.

Naval Math: Use when asked to do a task below your hourly aspirational rate. "The queue is 1 hour long. How much is the queue jump? Oh, it's below my hourly aspirational route. Great. I'll pay to skip the queue and make a profit because Naval Math"

13 most creative ads from last week and beyond: 1. McDonald's

If someone asks you “what do you do?” within seconds of meeting you — don’t be annoyed. Smile. You’ve just identified a transactional player. Instead, give them the lowest status answer. Then drop your highest IQ insights for the rest of the conversation. This breaks brains.

I think some content creators would benefit from "Politics time". One slot per month where they talk about politics, and that's it. Politics is like worry, it can eat people's entire lives. It becomes the only thing they talk about. Some creators drift into politics, and lose…

If you gaze for long enough into Instagram, Instagram also gazes back into you.

There's zero correlation between the best mathematicians I know and the most successful people I know. There's a huge correlation between the best napkin mathematicians I know and the most successful people I know. (I can show you the math behind this on a napkin)

How to increase agency in others: When people come to you with a problem, first ask if they can guess how you'd answer it. Having to make a proactive guess 10x's learning -- either from success or failure. Gradually, they'll ask this question to themselves and stop using you.

I once paid a hypnotist to put me in a hypnotic trance so I could access my deathbed self. Two selves appeared. One deathbed laid my worst self, another deathbed laid my worst self. As I entered the trance, I spoke to my worst version for 15 minutes. He was just a rambling,…

One regret from my early 20s was networking. If someone were more successful than me, I'd try desperately to get them to like me, even if I didn't like them. As I got older, I realised 2 things: 1. It rarely worked. 2. In the rare circumstances where it did work, my prize was…

I’ve noticed 3 kinds of strangers: 1. Completely blank you. 2. Non-verbal nod or smile. 3. Say “Hello!” And smile. Whenever I'd meet a 3, I immediately liked them more. I also mirrored 3's when they did that. The aha moment was realising most people are 1's because of fear. If…

Razor for creating timeless work: Don't try to predict what will make sense 100 years from now. Instead, create something that people from 100 years ago would understand. If it doesn't make sense in 1925, it likely won't age well in 2125.

What's the best storytelling you've ever seen?

The best visualisation I've seen for the strange paradox of wanting to be liked.

A good rule of thumb is to assume you're forgetting 1000x more than you consciously notice. You don't realise how much you've forgotten because if you did, you wouldn't have forgotten it. You didn't notice that you stopped checking voicemail on your phone because it faded away.

"Luck Razor - If given 2 options, pick the one that has the most luck potential. E.g. Cocktail party vs watching Netflix. Which one has the highest potential for future luck?" ~@george__mack

You defeated 200 million sperm cells in a swimming competition to be born. Why are you letting your mind convince you that you aren’t special?!

Language hack: Replace "work hard" with "focus hard". There's millions of people working hard each day. Few are focusing hard each day. Subtle change of language. It Jedi mind tricks my brain to get rid of the bathwater (work) but keep the baby (focus).