Eytan Messika, Founder at Overload

Learning Inspiration 🌈 #44

Eytan MESSIKA is the Founder of Overload, the newsletter for those curious about tech. Ethan curates over 70 newsletters on VC, tech, online business, marketing, and personal development. Every Sunday evening,  in a 5-minute email, he shares the best resources, including articles, fundamental trends, Ideas, interesting statistics, and a list of startups.

Who is your biggest inspiration? 

How do you learn on a daily basis? What are your learning routines? 🧠

It’s a tough question. 

I don’t have specific learning routines. 

I have learning phases where I actively go into content discovery, like when I’m writing on a specific topic. 

On those days, the most useful learning tools I’ve found myself going back to are: 

1. Speaking to experts
2. Reading Twitter and Reddit comments and following interesting people.
3. Going through the “content recommendations” section on blogs of people I admire 
4. Spending countless hours on Youtube 

More generally, I think that learning comes from everything you do. The idea is to become consciously aware of that. 

I wrote this article a couple of months ago about how to learn anything. The overall idea is that the closer you are to real-life situations when you’re learning, the more it will increase your skills.

Every life moment is an opportunity to draw useful insights. 

For instance : 

• I played poker. It taught me about money management and investing.
• I played chess & video-games. It taught me about strategy and game theory.
• I frequently write. It helps me to think on paper.
• I’ve seen many movies. They teach me about storytelling. 

I know that Warren Buffet reads newspapers every day at 5 AM. I can’t do that.

What are your favorite books, and why? 📚  

I don’t read many educational books. I prefer articles and videos because the knowledge shared is more compact.

1. Living Inspired by Rabbi Akiva Tatz – My life-guiding book based on Jewish philosophy. 

2. Le Joueur d’échecs by Stefan Zweig – Writing, psychology, and a story; it’s a masterpiece.  3. Disparu à Jamais by Harlan Coben – One of the first mind-blowing stories I’ve read with a twist ending (before discovering Christopher Nolan’s work 😉.)

What are your favorite podcasts, and why? 🎧

I don’t listen to many podcasts for the same reason as I don’t read many books. I think that, on average, the real value comes from 20% of each episode. It’s the Pareto Principle, and it’s not productive. At least for me. 

Even if that 20% could make up for the whole podcast, I’m not comfortable with this approach.

Nevertheless, one podcast I like is the Lex Friedman Podcast about technology and AI. 

The episode with Elon Musk was outstanding.

If you were to stay alone on an island and only be allowed to bring one item, what would it be? 🏝

Definitely a knife

What would you say to the 18 years old version of yourself?

People don’t want to be rich; they want to be free.

Freedom is not about doing whatever you want whenever you want to do it. Freedom is about being enslaved to the truth. 

So seek the truth and be faithful to it at all cost. No matter what it means.

Once you know that, maximize how you spend your time. This is how you become free.

Otherwise, read this article, Tej Dosa Letter, that answers this question. It’s incredible.

What is the biggest challenge you had to overcome this year, and how did you do that?

This year’s biggest challenge was to find what to find the most impactful actions to take daily. Most of the time, I was pulled into activities that didn’t have any positive impact.

To overcome that: 

1. Take a break —> I rented a house alone close to the sea and did nothing for four days.
2. Prioritize —> I wrote down only three goals. 
3. Break down your goals —> I broke them down into a monthly plan and daily actions. 

Be consistent —> Don’t miss daily habits.

One last word? 

Nowadays, I think that one of the most challenging things is to find your unique path. It’s a struggle. People lose self-confidence and don’t know what to do with their life.

Here are thirty life-changing articles I recommend reading to start seeing life with new eyes.

Hope it helps.