#069: What's the Most Important Question?, Brief Quips on Storytelling, Agency, and Life

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we'll be taking a look at how to prime your mind for optimal performance, brief quips on storytelling, self-discipline, agency, and where you can find hidden 'alpha' in activities.

Let's begin:

What is the 'Most Important Question'?

We often find ourselves lost in a sea of complexity when it comes to solving problems. Andrew Huberman recently shared this gem of a clip from a recent podcast with his guest, Josh Waitzkin. Josh was a chess prodigy who also became a martial arts world champion, author, and primary subject of the film Searching for Bobby Fischer.

The clip that Huberman shared was the process Waitzkin uses to achieve 'peak performance in any craft or career'. Waitzkin calls it the MIQ Process, or 'Most Important Question' Process. He goes on to say that a great chess player actually looks at less moves than a lower-level chess player. They just happen to be looking in the right direction, i.e. for the 'Most Important Question'.

He goes on to say that a lower-level chess player may brag about how many moves deep that may calculate, but it may all be irrelevant because 'move two' was inaccurate.
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Waitzkin says a great way to program this as our default setting is to end the day asking, "What is the most important question?" and rest. The following day, we should wake up, and before any inputs of the day, return to the critical question and brainstorm on it.

A Brief Quip from Simon Sarris

​Simon Sarris is one of my favorite accounts on Twitter. Keeping in theme with the above, here is a short piece of advice he recently shared which may also be helpful while performing thought exercises:

Simon Sarris @simonsarris For a lot of activities there's more alpha in trying to think about how it should be done, rather than looking at what everyone else is doing 3:48 PM • Feb 1, 2025 13 Retweets 371 Likes Read 7 replies

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A Brief Quip on Storytelling

Keeping the spirit of brevity again, here is a tweet from signüll that resonated with me regarding storytelling:

A Brief Quip on Self-Discipline

I find the following tweets pair nicely together when thinking about self-discipline.
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From @dkazand:

From @5matthewdub:

A Brief Quip on Increasing Agency

When Paul Graham says a tweet "may be the most inspiring sentence (he has) ever read", it's a good idea to perk up the ears and listen.
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The following was quote tweeted by Graham and originally posted by @nickcammarata:

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