Stan Winston, if you weren’t already aware, is a 4-time academy-award-winning special make-up effects artist, best known for his work on:

• Terminator series,

• the first three Jurassic Park films,

• Aliens,

• The Thing,

• the first two Predator films,

• Inspector Gadget,

• Iron Man and Edward Scissorhands.

To name just a few.

I met him briefly when I was 19 years old, and I’ll never forget his advice to me.

Today, I will share what he told me so that I can pass on his life-changing advice.

1. Create Something To Show

Stan told me that the #1 thing I needed to do to explode my success was to put all my energy into creating “something to show”.

See, when we create anything, we become better at it.

We may suck at it, but once we have finished, we have become slightly better.

Even a 1% improvement starts to compound over time.

Not only are you getting better…

People start to see your work!

When this happens, the next level of opportunity opens up.

Then, the cycle repeats.

2. Compound Skill

Current Skill Level X 1% Improvement³⁶⁵ = Future Skill Level

1 X 1.01³⁶⁵ = 37.78

When you improve by 1% daily, you are 37.78 times better after one year.

If you made a 37.78 return on anything, that is one of the most insane returns you could ever wish for on an investment.

This is why we need to spend all our time, all our money, and all our resources on improving ourselves and reaching our goals.

While others invest all their thoughts and money into obsessing over Cheese Coins, you invest in yourself and your creations to get unbelievable returns.

By the way, I was joking, but I just looked Cheese Coin up, and it’s a real digital currency…

3. Perfection Is NOT A Requirement For Intelligence

How do I create a machine that is smarter than me?

This is a paradox.

We have broken it and built various artificial intelligences with superhuman capabilities.

This paradox is equivalent to building ourselves into something we are not currently.

We have a future goal, but we cannot achieve it if we continue being who we are.

But how do we become something we are not currently?

Let’s look at our AI example.

Alpha Fold, an AI, has transformed medicine.

It can perceive what humans can not.

For example, Alpha Fold accurately predicted structures for over 350,000 proteins since 2020, and humans have done half of that over the span of decades.

Chat GPT can pass a Bar Exam in seconds. Everyone knows about GPT, I don’t have to get into that.

How did we create something smarter than us?

Well, how do we as humans go from bad to great?

Michael Jordan famously was not selected for his high school basketball team.

This setback caused him to become ruthless at practicing.

He spent all his time putting in the reps, screwing up, until those reps compounded over time.

And now he’s considered the greatest competitive athlete of all time.

All life evolved from dust.

Life breaks this paradox of constantly building something bigger and better than itself.

And so, humans didn’t set out to build perfect machines when they built these AIs.

AI is trained.

We create simple systems that fail millions of times at a task until it’s incredible at a task.

Just like Micheal Jordan practicing and failing repeatedly until he became transformed.

This is how we achieve results that are impossible based on who we are today.

That’s why we must set aside time every day to build “something to show” and get 1% better every day until we don’t recognize ourselves.

Imperfect action every day.

Done is better than perfect.

So let’s get to work.

Your biggest fan,

Dan