Nabeel Qureshi: Principles For Living

Note: if you’re in the UK, pick up a copy of today’s Sunday Times. The magazine is running an extract from the first chapter of John & Paul. You can also read it online FOR FREE if you click today (Sunday). (The Times website has taken its entire paywall down for the weekend, not just in my honour I hasten to add.) And don’t forget to pre-order!

I’m delighted to share with you this conversation with Nabeel Qureshi, a software engineer, entrepreneur, and writer. It’s all about his principles for living, which he laid out in a recent blog post.

Nabeel grew up in England. He studied PPE at Oxford where he specialised in philosophy, particularly Wittgenstein and Parfit. In his twenties he founded a fintech company, worked for Palantir, lived in San Francisco, and France. He's been a visiting scholar in AI and economics at the Mercatus Center in Virginia. He’s currently running a startup based in New York.

Nabeel has not only done a lot, he has one of the widest intellectual ranges of anyone I know, able to talk fluently and knowledgeably on machine learning and bioscience and finance and also on literature, music, film and art. He does all this without a hint of showing off or pretension. He's just a deeply curious guy who has read and watched and processed an incredible amount of good stuff, and has interesting things to say about all of it.

He recently posted a list of 63 principles for living, from the philosophical to the practical. It's proven very popular online. When I linked to it from the Ruffian, many of you said how much you enjoyed it. So I thought I'd invite Nabeel on the podcast to talk through some of his principles. The result is a fascinating conversation that covers everything from how to make the most of your talents, to how to think more clearly, to the best way to take notes.

I strongly recommend checking this out; if nothing else it will get you thinking about some pretty important questions. In fact we had so much to talk about that this episode is in two parts. The second, coming soon, will be available to paid subscribers only.