The Genius Filter

[sei] [the genius filter] How to Build Leverage in an Unfair World Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth.- Archimedes Most people try to win by working harder. They wake up earlier. Stay later. Grind through weekends. And the math never changes. Double your hours, double your output. Maybe. The relationship is linear, and linear effort has a ceiling. You can only work so many hours. You can only be in one place at a time. The world is not fair. But it is...

[sei] [the genius filter] How to Update Your Outdated Beliefs Most people desperately cling to what they know. When the facts shift, they double down. When evidence contradicts them, they rationalize their delusion. Call it stubbornness, but it's our human nature. But belief updating (changing your mind when presented with a new reality) is the defining trait of people who see the future more clearly than the rest of us. It's what separates those who learn from those who stagnate. And it's a...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Force Your Brain To Do Hard Things You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Marcus Aurelius The brain resists difficulty. It's wired that way. Comfort is the default. When a task feels heavy, something in us pulls toward the easier path. This isn't a weakness. It's just our biology. The mind conserves energy by steering us away from strain. But the people who build lives worth living have figured out...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Rewire Your Brain to Learn Faster For over 100 years, neuroscientists believed that old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks. They were wrong. You’ve probably heard something similar: That after a certain age, the brain slows down, hardens, and resists change. But that belief is outdated. That learning new, complex skills was a race against a clock that slowed dramatically after age 25. That view treated our minds like a finished map, drawn in ink during youth and...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Make 2026 The Best Year of Your Life Do something so hard it changes how you see yourself. - Jesse Itzler Most people plan their year around comfort. They set goals that fit their limits and wonder why nothing changes. Jesse Itzler redefines that approach with one question: What if you planned your year around a single challenge that scares you? He calls it a Misogi—a test so demanding it forces growth. The idea comes from an ancient Japanese ritual of...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Recover From Brain Rot Your brain isn't broken. It's being manipulated. Every scroll, swipe, and tap is part of a system built to keep you watching. The For You Page isn’t random. It is a precision tool designed to feed your brain exactly what keeps you there the longest. What feels like choice is often manipulation. The more time you spend, the more data you give, and the better the machine gets at holding your attention. Tristan Harris saw this from the...

[sei] [the genius filter] How to Unlock the Genius Hiding in Your Brain Most creation happens in the dark. We write code, design a product, or build a plan based on an image in our head. Only after the work is done can we see the result. That delay between action and outcome kills those fragile ideas that flash in an instant of inspiration before vanishing from our conscience mind. Sharif Shameem, founder of Lexica, offers a direct, immediate method to capture those genius ideas as they come....

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Think In Systems (3 tools) We often mistake more information for better thinking. We chase new books, new podcasts, new frameworks, hoping the next one will finally make things click. But the real problem isn't what we don’t know. It's how we connect what we already know. Most of us think in fragments. Systems thinkers, like Vicky Zhao, see patterns, and from those patterns, they pull powerful tools for putting our thoughts to work. The Systems school of...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Rewire Your Brain To Stop Procrastinating We live in an age of infinite choice, crippled by our freedom. Every app promises productivity. Every guru sells a system. Every notification demands attention. But beneath all the noise lies a deeper issue: we've forgotten how to think about time itself. We’re taught to treat procrastination like a character flaw: something to hack, fix, or overcome with better apps and stronger willpower. The truth is,...

[sei] [the genius filter] From Dropouts to USC Guest Lecturers Last week, Jimmy and I had the honor of speaking at the USC Marshall School of Business for their Social Media Strategy course. Before we walked in, we thought back to why we started in the first place. After years of working in social media, we realized we were helping feed the exact system that was draining our generation's creativity, focus, and sense of meaning. We didn't just see what was happening to people our age; we felt...