Just read an article written by Sam Altman back in 2019: How to Be Successful. I won’t break it down for you—go read the original yourself. I just find it interesting, from Lee Kuan Yew (I’m currently reading his *From Third World to First*) to Buffett, from Buffett to Duan Yongping, and from Duan Yongping to Altman. There’s some commonality among them, which can be summarized using a technique even a middle schooler would understand: extracting the common factors: 1️⃣ Rationality + 2️⃣ Pragmatism + 3️⃣ Focus + 4️⃣ Long-term thinking and compounding. Each of them uses their own experiences and language to convey these ideas. When distilled, these concepts might seem like useless motivational fluff, but it’s only when you dive into the details behind each one that they become fascinating and thought-provoking. For example, Lee Kuan Yew describes Singapore’s struggles right after independence in *From Third World to First*, along with his thoughts and strategies for dealing with them. I just made a bet: if Singapore were compared to a person, there wouldn’t be many people reading this tweet who were worse off than Singapore at that time. Yet this weak, impoverished kid with a terrible hand of cards has grown into a small but beautiful country with a per capita GDP ranking in the global top 5. When I was in Japan, I even noticed that many Japanese people were eager to be assigned to work in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew’s secret? Nothing more than extreme rationality, pragmatism, focus, and long-term thinking. Yes, when you put it that way, it’s “just motivational fluff,” isn’t it? Altman’s original article: https://blog.(samaltman.com)/how-to-be-successful