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Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal · November 18, 2024 · 52m

Sahil Bloom: Mental Models for Decision-Making

Sahil Bloom

Sahil Bloom shares the mental models he uses for decision-making and life design: the Razors (Occam's, Hanlon's, Hitchens's), the Regret Minimization Framework, and the idea that energy management matters more than time management.

Canon

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Stoic dichotomy of control applied to career strategy — Bloom argues that focusing only on controllable inputs (skills, effort, relationships) and ignoring uncontrollable outputs (followers, revenue, recognition) produces better long-term results
Bloom shares his framework: he stopped tracking uncontrollable metrics (follower counts, revenue, impressions) and started tracking controllable inputs (pieces published, relationships initiated, skills developed). The shift reduced anxiety and paradoxically improved the uncontrollable outputs.
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Highlights

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Energy management is more important than time management — an hour of high-energy work produces 10x the output of an hour of depleted work, but productivity culture ignores this
Bloom argues that the productivity industry's obsession with time management misses the bigger lever: energy management. Working during your peak energy hours on your highest-leverage tasks produces dramatically more output than optimizing your schedule around the clock.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini