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Dru's Notes

Dru Rileydruriley.com
One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.
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Episodes

What a Mastermind Group Actually Does | Daily Essay

Three years of zero income ended in two hours because someone in a room saw what I couldn't. The five things a mastermind does that solo work can't replicate. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 21, 20262 min

Don't Believe Everything You Think. Test It. | Daily Essay

For 15 years I believed meditation had to be the first thing after waking. One experiment with sun exposure dissolved that 15-year belief in 48 hours. The more experiments you run, the more fit you become to your environment, and the more accurate your model of the world. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day....

May 19, 20261 min

5 Things Chess Teaches Us About Life | Daily Essay

I sat down to play one game of chess. Twelve hours later the day was gone. Five lessons from the board that run my work and my life. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 19, 20263 min

We Are All Investors | Daily Essay

Say the word investor and most people picture money. Money is one resource among several you trade every day to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 17, 20261 min

The Optimization Trap That Broke My Meditation Habit | Daily Essay

I broke my meditation practice many times over fifteen years. The pattern was always the same. A working practice, the impulse to make it more efficient, and a feedback loop too delayed to catch in time. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 15, 20261 min

How to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone, Faster | Daily Essay

Three types of experiments — mental, physical, social — cost different amounts of energy. The type you avoid most is usually the one to lean into next. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 14, 20262 min

Lee Kuan Yew: Engineered Sovereignty | Biography

Lee Kuan Yew built one of the most efficient states in modern history and engineered the legal toolkit that kept his party in office for fifty-six years. Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 14, 202612 min

Why I Rewrite My Principles by Hand | Daily Essay

Each day I'd open my notebook and copy yesterday's principles to a new page by hand. Some lines I wrote without thinking. Others slowed me down. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 13, 202650 sec

The Minimalist Philosophy of a Jellyfish | Daily Essay

Each day I remove three things. A physical item, an app off my phone, a subscription on autopay. A jellyfish has no brain and has lasted 500 million years. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 12, 20262 min

Why Some Habits Stick: 12 Tardigrade Traits | Daily Essay

I came up with a term to describe something I value. If tardigradity is the probability a thing keeps going, it has to come from somewhere. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 11, 20263 min

Buy the Red Ocean | Daily Essay

Most founders see 15 competitors and feel deflated. They should feel relieved. The buyer's move in a red ocean is to switch seats and let the market do the work. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 10, 20262 min

When to Give Up on a Business: Force or Flow? | Daily Essay

What's forced falls apart. The line between effort and force is flow, and the test is whether the market is returning what you put in. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 09, 20262 min

Ray Dalio's 42-Year Daily Habit | Daily Essay

Most people treat their morning routine like a battery that runs all day. It doesn't. Meetings, decisions and small frictions bleed it dry by noon. Reading through biographies of Dalio, Dorsey and Harari, I kept hitting the same detail: all of them meditate twice a day. So I added a midday session to test what a second reset actually does. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day....

May 08, 20261 min

How Meditation Eats Stress | Daily Essay

Stress is raw material. Meditation metabolizes it. Life supplies the stressors whether you want them or not, and the practice has two modes: clearing the table or going deeper. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 07, 202628 sec

Satoshi Nakamoto: Absent Authority | Biography

Satoshi Nakamoto built money that could run without personal trust, then protected it by becoming impossible to find. This biography traces the technical record, the political timing and the deliberate disappearance of the most consequential anonymous person in financial history. Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 07, 202621 min

Mental Toughness via Meditation

I sit still for two and a half hours each day. Meditation trains a specific muscle: each minute is a rep against the urge to stop or check the time, and that muscle transfers to hard runs, heavy lifts, tense negotiations and cold showers. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 06, 20262 min

From Self Taught Programmer to Senior in Under 2 Years

I learned to code alone in Vim, with no one to unblock me. A single bug could cost a month. The high-friction years built the foundation that made everything after compound fast. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 05, 20262 min

Willpower Is Finite (How to Do Hard Things Anyway)

Stanford says believe hard enough and your willpower becomes unlimited. Henry Ford said the same thing a century earlier. Turns out the battery drains whether you believe it or not. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 04, 202657 sec

The Morning Habits That Stick (Why Order Matters)

I keep my habits in an app that tracks how often I do each one. The ones at the top of the list have longer streaks. Position is the lever. Willpower is exhaustible. Interruptions stack. The first slot has the most fuel and the least drag. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 03, 202656 sec

Eat Your Own Cooking

Most bug reports travel through three people before anyone fixes them. By then the pain is a paragraph in a ticket and the person who felt it has moved on. There's a shorter path. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 02, 20262 min

Flywheel Explained: One Action, Many Wins

I write a post each morning. By lunch, that post is a video on YouTube. One action that touches more than one node in your system at once. I call this a tap. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

May 01, 20261 min

Manifesting Is Learned Helplessness in Reverse

One line from my prediction markets video kept looping in my head. The market price was supposed to reflect what the crowd believed. It was reflecting those beliefs. It was also changing them. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 30, 20261 min

Launch First, Name Later

I spent two days on a name and shipped zero code. Domain searches across a dozen tabs. Then I stopped, deployed on a subdomain and started shipping. The name came later. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 29, 20261 min

I Deleted Social Media. Here's What I Kept.

You already know the cost before you open the app. You open it anyway. The algorithm that taught you a skill in a month is the same one eating your evenings. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 28, 20261 min

Do Less, Get More: The F1 Math

Most people behind on their work add more. F1 engineers know better. The math says removing weight wins. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 27, 20262 min

Warren Buffett vs Y Combinator: Two Strategies, One Rule

Most investors argue about concentration versus diversification. The best ones think evolutionarily. Strategy follows the environment, not preference. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 26, 20262 min

The Tardigrade Test: How to Build Habits That Last

Most habits die during your worst weeks. The ones that survive share a single trait that has nothing to do with discipline. This episode introduces tardigradity. It's the probability that a practice keeps going. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 25, 20262 min

How I Get Business Ideas

I have a backlog of 200+ rough blog post ideas. When I sit down to write today's post, the idea is already there. The same habit works for business ideas. Watch on YouTube Read the full post Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Apr 24, 202646 sec
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