Stoic Effectiveness Flashcards

It took two people and more time than we would care to admit, but we made a list of flashcards to help anyone grasp the basics of being as effective as emperors like Marcus Aurelius. Here are the problems we tackled:

• Dealing with taking risks and the ability not to be led by fear.
• How to make starting easier. How to have more fun and finish things earlier.
• How to deal with the thoughts that slow you down. And how to look at failures.
• Balancing ideation with execution. When to come up with ideas and when to act.
• Pretend work vs actual goal-getting. Getting rid of a paid-by-hour worker mentality.
• Progress stabilization. How to be the turtle that steadily gets in front of the rabbit.
• When and how to apply discipline and willpower. What to do to be able to use it less and enjoy life more.
• Creating a compass within. Understanding what is truly important and what to do to accomplish goals.
• Experiencing life more deeply. And enjoying the time passing more slowly.
• Dealing with work that demands creativity.
• Learning how to take advantage of the stoic mentality. Learning the way Marcus Aurelius did his thinking.
• Using the methodology called Effectuation.
• Balancing quality with speed.
• Structuring one's day to get the most out of it.

I recorded a fast video (and imperfect, deal with it) that shows you how these flashcards look like, how they work, and why they are useful:

https://www.loom.com/share/402ac6d7c2584f37994ad1a4e2408252?sid=7fc5a506-7ffd-4e36-beeb-64d1de095405

In total, it's 50+ flashcards. Our goal was to get over 100, but we couldn't make more without drastically reducing the quality. Even with 50, it's still noteworthy that it's highly individual what one would find most useful and we advise you to pick the best flashcards before starting to learn them - we tell you how to do it.

Over half of the flashcards didn't come out of the current research but rather from notes made throughout the years. In other words, these are slowly gathered exquisite thoughts to learn. If you are anything like us, the flashcards should help you a lot. And if you don't like it, well you will waste minutes to check it out - you can live with such a loss.

It turns out that there is no software (that we could find) that easily let's one share a deck of flashcards. A quiz? Sure. But not flashcards. And the difference is huge as with flashcards the goal is not to merely test your knowledge, but rather use the concept of spaced repetition to teach you things.

Our final choice was Remnote. It's a note-taking service, but it has the ability to make and easily share flashcards. You use them like you would learn vocabulary. Come to them daily or almost daily and repeat. In a short time you should note that whenever a situation described in the flashcard happens to you, you will have a vague thought of "hey, it looks like the situation I learned from Paul's flashcards" - don't dismiss this feeling. If you are able to consciously note something, you are able to choose how you respond to the situation. AND WIN!

Where the idea came from?

Our goal is to make freely accessible small projects that people would use. The one we did before is here: https://salprado.gumroad.com/l/deepwork

To get the product you will have to give your email. Give a fake one if you hate the idea of getting info when we finish projects. Give a good one if you like the idea (as of now, we average on 1 project per month, but we would love to finish as much as 4 per month).

Type in anything above 0 as a fair price to support what we do - it actually makes a difference. But really, it's fine if you give us $0. We will use the email to tell you what we are working on (including our main endeavor), but we don't make money on projects like this one. We lose. More time than money, but still.