no toil
meetings are not work. toiling is not building.
toiling is doing a bunch of meetings. toiling is being unwise, being foolish, not being clear about what you're doing with your life. what are you doing with your life when you're meeting with people and just burning yourself out?
a meeting is potentially the beginning of a project. the project has to be fulfilled. there's no way you're fulfilling infinite projects that are starting in every meeting. if your whole day is meetings about new projects, when are you doing your existing projects?
the top three rule.
at any given time, you have three priorities. everything else is noise.
you don't say yes to things that aren't serving the top three. you don't schedule calls that aren't moving the top three forward. you don't open doors you can't walk through right now.
the downfall of being high signal is that there's no shortage of interesting people who want your time. but having a lot more to add to someone than they have to add to you right now is not a reason to take the meeting. it's a reason not to.
pass the ball.
you should be putting balls in other people's courts constantly. "I want to schedule a week with you" is not your problem to solve. your time is not a service to be booked. you are not a service worker.
the Brenda model: "I want you to be in meetings where I secure government contracts, but I don't want you to do the work. I make it happen, I pass it on to you, you score." that's the play. create the opportunity, hand it off, move to the next one.
the anti-toil test.
before any meeting, ask:
- is this serving one of my top three priorities?
- can this person make a decision to pay or help right now?
- or is this going to be a follow-up that becomes a whole thing?
if the answer to #1 is no and the answer to #3 is yes, cancel it. send a warm note. "super busy right now, but down the line I'd love to compare notes." communicative, respectful, done.
protect the creative day.
there should be a day a week, at least, where you don't do anything except strategy. no calls. no meetings. just thinking time. the download requires space to receive it. you can't follow the divine download if you never sit still long enough to hear it.
practice what you preach.
you tell others to prioritize ruthlessly. to say no. to focus on what only they can do. follow your own advice. fine-tune in real time so you don't regret your life later. nip it in the bud before it gets bad.
the advice you have for Christian, the advice you have for every founder you meet: are you even following it?
earn the calendar.
human time is the scarcest resource on earth. you can build energy plants. you can scale compute. you cannot manufacture more hours of focused human attention. and yours is especially scarce because it's especially high-signal.
the default state should be: my calendar is closed. you earn access to it.
the primary way to earn it: prove that you are applied AI literate and curious. humble, coachable, teachable. show that you've done the work. take the course. engage with the material. demonstrate that a conversation with you will be high-signal in both directions, not a one-way extraction of your energy.
there may be other paths. but the default path is proof of work. not proof of interest. not proof of connection. proof that you've engaged with the mission deeply enough that the conversation will compound.
everyone who gets Gary's time should have earned it. not because Gary is arrogant. because his time is the bottleneck for the mission, and protecting it is protecting the mission.
meetings are not work. building is work. protect the time that lets you build.