Essays

It's a small world, but I'd hate to have to paint it.”  —Steven Wright How confident are you about your ability to judge your own expertise? Do you think you generally know what you are good at and what you are bad at? Most people suffer from overconfidence bias. They tend to think that they know more than they really do. But surely you, in your infinite wisdom, are not one of these … [Read more...]

Crisis management is the process used by organizations to respond to disruptive and unexpected situations - black swan events if you will. In crisis management theory, they are typically three elements that make something a crisis: A meaningful threat to the organizationFrom an unexpected eventThat must be responded to quickly The coronavirus presents a pretty good example of something … [Read more...]

Last Updated March 7, 2020 Disclaimers/Caveats: I am not a public health expert, epidemiologists, etc. and make no claim to such. As mentioned numerous times throughout, all data is preliminary and my interpretation is amateur and should be interpreted as such. My goal here is merely to provide a helpful synthesis of existing information and a way to think about further developments. There is a … [Read more...]

Horace Mann, often credited as the father of the modern education system, began opening The Common School in the 1830s. The purpose of the Common School was to teach students how to follow directions effectively so they would be prepared for factory work. A few years after the first Common School opened, Mann couldn’t find enough “normal” teachers to help make the students “common.” So, Mann … [Read more...]

What is the optimal business strategy for your company? What is the next project you should work on? The answer, of course, is “it depends.” Your business strategy is dependent upon the stage of the business, it’s industry, and macroeconomic factors outside your control. But, I think that there are frameworks that can help you figure out the next step. The framework I've found most helpful … [Read more...]

Over the course of our lifetimes, the size of multinational businesses will approach that of small, local businesses. On its face, this may sound like a somewhat mundane statement, but the implications for our lives are no less significant than the shift from a manufacturing-based industrial economy to a services-based knowledge economy in the 20th century. Over the last fifty years, people … [Read more...]

Over the last decade, the internet has increased the flexibility in where and when we work. Remote work has become increasingly common across many different industries. Companies appreciate the cost savings of not having to have an office and the ability to hire globally instead of just locally, and individuals appreciate the increased flexibility and potential number of employers, with entry … [Read more...]

“Whenever you feel that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life…Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it’s always your fault and you just fix it as best you can — the so-called “iron prescription” — I think that really works.” — Charlie … [Read more...]

Developing a basic understanding (and a sense of intuition) around how complex systems and complexity science work may be the most important things I’ve learned and it's deeply impact my thinking. What is Complexity (Science)? Before we talk about complexity science, it's important to understand how the term complex is used. A complex environment is one where cause and effect are impossible … [Read more...]

I don't want the backstory, just show me the list of bug out bag essentials In 2011, I lived with Mimi in her home in Córdoba, Argentina. About two months after I moved in with Mimi, I was sitting across the table from her, listening to her explain the Argentine peso devaluation that had happened in 2001. In the 1990s, the Argentine peso was pegged to the U.S. dollar. That meant the Argentine … [Read more...]

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is one of the most remarkable books ever written. It explained, for the first time and in plain English, the theory of evolution. In doing so, it shined a light on biology and the natural sciences, which laid the groundwork for many of the great discoveries of the twentieth century. More than that, it provided a metaphor for many other systems in the … [Read more...]

When I learned to read, I was focused on trying to consciously remember what each chapter was about after I finished it. Like most most people, most of the reading I did growing up was for school. The reason you read something for school is because there is a test. You test well by being able to hold a factual account of what happened in the book in your conscious memory. Over the … [Read more...]

TL;DR The OODA loop was a tool developed by military strategist John Boyd to explain how individuals and organizations can win in uncertain and chaotic environments. It is an Acronym that explains the four steps of decisions making: Observe, Orient, Decide Act. This article will give you the understanding you need to turn ambiguity into advantage and risk into results in your career, … [Read more...]

I love Derek Siver’s question: “What are you optimizing your life for?” For the last few years, my answer has been “interesting.” I always felt sort of dumb for saying that, but then I read a paper called Driven By Compression Progress. The paper looks at humans as information processing machines that are compressing information to make themselves more efficient. Compression is the ability to … [Read more...]

TL;DR Making a core values list takes 15 minutes and will help you make better decisions. Note: If you’d like to skip straight to the full list of personal values, click here. Have you ever been faced with a difficult decision and not known which direction to take? Have you ever spent days or weeks or months going back and forth on a decision? You start with “Yes I will do it,” then “no I … [Read more...]

Two months before their annual event in Hickory, North Carolina, I had the honor and pleasure of being invited to present some of the core concepts from The End of Jobs as a TEDx talk. It took me the full two months to rework the book into a concise 15-minute  presentation. In the talk, I cover: What entrepreneurship really means Why the reaction of “I have no idea what I’m doing" is a … [Read more...]

Margin, in a strict business sense, is the difference between how much you can sell a product for and how much it costs to produce. In a more general interpretation, margin refers to the edge of something, the amount which something falls short of or surpasses another item. You can build margin into your day by leaving a gap between your scheduled meeting and tasks so that you have room to … [Read more...]

Tl;dr: The way to have creative business ideas is to live on the edge of the Overton Window. "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things" - Rene Descartes When Muhammad Ali died, he was lauded as a great American, a great athlete, a great man. Bill Clinton, Billy Crystal and Bryant Gumbel offered … [Read more...]

Early in his life, Benjamin Franklin, one of the primary framers of the American Constitution, outlined his best morning routine: “...I rise early almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.” In Franklin’s Autobiography, he elaborated he would “rise, wash, and address Powerful … [Read more...]

  What do the world’s foremost tank commanders, chess grandmasters, and SaaS entrepreneurs have in common? What are the shared attributes of people who have achieved mastery across different domains? How to become an expert in your field? Likely you’ve heard the cliched advice: work hard, work smart, be passionate, etc. Here’s one you probably haven’t heard that’s actually more … [Read more...]

    In the fall of her twenty-second year, Inge sat down to rest. She felt the warmth of the rock beneath her, and lay back to let the sun shine down on her. She fell into a peaceful sleep. Twenty minutes later, a friend with whom she had been hiking, came back and woke her up. “Inge,” she said, “you must keep going. If you stay here, you will die." She, along with a … [Read more...]

If you’re trying to reach your potential, when should you double down on your strengths and when should you mitigate weaknesses? One view as it relates to reaching your potential is that “if you work on your weaknesses you'll end up with a lot of mediocre weaknesses.” This is terrible policy. You can do fine in life if you are really good at math and just passable at English. Or exceptional at … [Read more...]

There are at least two overarching mental models for looking at the world: One could be called the bell curve and the other, the 80/20 curve. When I was marketing my book, The End of Jobs, I spent a week sending personal emails (in Gmail, one by one, not in bulk) to two hundred people who I thought could potentially be in the top 1% of my readers, the people most excited about the book. In … [Read more...]

  If you’d like a copy of the documents I use to run my mastermind, you can download them by entering your email below An online mastermind group is a small number of trusted advisers who meet regularly with the goal of improving each other’s lives or careers. The collective brainpower of the group—otherwise known as a “mastermind”—is turned towards a single problem. A mastermind … [Read more...]

  At the end of the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting, Warren Buffett was asked by a CNBC correspondent what he saw as the biggest threat to the company’s future. He replied “CNBC is the greatest threat to Berkshire — that is, a Chemical, Nuclear, Biological, or Cyber attack.” Beyond being a clever jab at the CNBC News correspondents who had been trying to get a sound bite out of him … [Read more...]

On a snowy day in late 1927, a young corporate executive looked down past his toes, past the trusses of the bridge he was standing atop, and stared into the choppy waters of Lake Michigan. Earlier that year, his first daughter had died and he had lost his job as president of a building company. For years, he had been plagued by a fear of failure and now it had all come true. He had no job, no … [Read more...]

tl;dr: Learn how to plan your day and get organized. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.” – Annie Dillard How do we do our best work? There are two elements to understanding how the best work is done. First, there is identifying and understanding our personal strengths – finding the work only we can … [Read more...]

Whenever you feel like you’re not getting enough done, you probably always turn to the same solution: working harder. Yet, you’ve probably heard the saying that you should “work smarter, not harder” which sounds great, but how do you actually work smarter? Why Working Harder isn’t the Answer The reason most people work harder is that it’s the most visible form of productivity. It’s extremely … [Read more...]

  “New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and, therefore, new realities.” -Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By How many times have you heard some platitude that translates to “improve your mindset?” I get why people give this advice. I can point to certain mindset shifts that have had a profound impact on my quality of life and would like … [Read more...]

At 28, Will MacAskill is likely the youngest tenured professor of philosophy in the world. His success is made more impressive by his position at Lincoln College, Oxford. As someone that considered getting a PhD in the humanities, I was talked out of it by the number of people I met who were holding out hope to get an adjunct position at Spokane Community College - much less a tenured one at … [Read more...]

  Man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do … [Read more...]

  Pursuing the perfect world for everyone is a waste of time and an excuse for not doing the hard work of making the world better for many." -Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics   Robert Rizzo served as mayor of the city of Bell, California from 1993 to 2010. When he left his office in … [Read more...]

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman I’ve gone deer hunting three times. I am a bad deer hunter. I usually listen to audiobooks and fall asleep in the deer stand. The only time I saw a deer was because the deer’s hoof stepped on a fallen branch that cracked very loudly and woke me up. I was so surprised that … [Read more...]

  2015 was my best reading year yet. Partially because I discovered a handful of authors and influential books I expect I'll be tracking for years to become. However, my biggest reading win was that I broadened my perspective from the business-book-only approach I took in 2013 and 2014 to a lot of adjacent domains: writing, investing, science, finance, sociology, and military strategy … [Read more...]

  Planning timelines have been getting shorter and shorter across every industry over the last couple decades. Companies that used to make ten-year plans now make five-year plans. Companies that used to make five-year plans now make three-year plans.  Slowly, individuals and organizations are giving up the Luddite Hope - “that it is possible to enjoy the benefits of non-zero-sum … [Read more...]

    I read 60 books last year and am on pace to do about the same this year.  Most people wish they could know how to read more often, probably because we’re reading less each year. In a 1978 survey, 42% of adults had read 11 books or more in the past year, and 13% said they had read more than 50.  In a 2014 study, Pew found that just 28% hit the 11 book mark and only 1% had … [Read more...]

  There was a kilo of white powder resting in a plate on the kitchen table. An empty cigar tube rested next to it. Judging by the grooves, the tube had been used to rake the powder to resemble a mini zen garden. I walked through the living room and opened the sliding door onto the balcony. Looking down from the skyline, an infinity pool stretched to the edge of the floor below. I had … [Read more...]

  There is a difference between correct/incorrect and right/wrong decisions, and over the long run it’s much more important to be correct than right.   I discovered this framework in What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan. The correct/incorrect distinction is based on the Expected Value (EV) of the decision. Right/wrong is based on … [Read more...]

Gazing at the greasy moulding wrapping the restaurant ceiling, I yelped out a “Yes!” The waitress jumped, spilling coffee over herself and, as is karmically appropriate, me. A pair of white earbuds were dangling from my ears as I listened to the How to Start a Startup podcast when Y Combinator’s Sam Altman remarked: “Great founders get on planes in marginal situations.” I stammered out an … [Read more...]

“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.” - James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games   A little while ago, I was at a chapel service at my old elementary school. I was there for a speech my nephew was making. As I watched them proceeding in, what struck me was how industrial it felt—not unlike a prison. If you swapped the … [Read more...]

    What's been the value of The End Of Jobs so far? Money? Authority? Connections? Recognition? The experience of writing? That was the conclusion to an email a friend sent me last week. In truth, I'm still not sure what the full implications are, but my ego thinks it’s all been pretty cool. My hope was to sell five thousand copies by the end of the year. Thanks in large … [Read more...]

“Jeez, man, that motorbike almost ran you over!” I gave a perfunctory wave to the British backpacker, acting as if crossing a busy street in downtown Saigon without looking was normal behavior and strolled on. The Vietnamese office worker turned his head back at me and glowered before rolling his right wrist back and accelerating away on his red and black Yamaha Nuovo. The white cord of my … [Read more...]

It was around 10:30pm. By the time I got to the end of the third page, I knew I wasn't going to sleep until I finished the book. It started with a bang. Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. It didn't let up. At eighteen [Hitler] took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He … [Read more...]

  Click Here to Buy The End of Jobs. The book was sh*t. My career was toast. My business was hosed. The best case scenario was that everything was completely screwed. We all have our coping mechanisms. Pizza, ice cream, and almond butter are mine. I had attempted taken a risk. It wasn’t going to work out. That was how I felt one rainy Wednesday in early April. It was a feeling … [Read more...]

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” – Charlie Jones I have no formal business credentials nor have I taken a single class on business in my life. My business education has been a combination of my own experiences and the books I’ve read. I am continually amazed by, and grateful for, all the authors who have written … [Read more...]

  “Thank God for the French Army” Churchill announced confidently in early 1939 to the British people. The Maginot Line, established along the French/German border, mirrored the same strategy that kept the Germans out of Paris for the length of the First World War. Equipped with state-of-the-art fortifications, it was impenetrable from tank attacks and air raids. A few months later, … [Read more...]

  “Well. I guess I’m giving it away for free.” I’d just gotten off the phone with a friend to talk about the marketing plan for The End of Jobs. I glanced at my writing tracking spreadsheet and looked at how much time I had invested in the project. Three hundred and thirty nine hours, not including the marketing or editing time.     I’d been planning on … [Read more...]

  I read an article by Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy, when I was 18 where he emphasized that “whatever you measure gets managed.” At the time, I'd never thought about it. In the time since, it's rung true for me and almost everyone I’ve ever worked with. If you measure something and stick it in front of your face every day, it will always improve. I keep a Key Performance dashboard … [Read more...]

  By far the most difficult skill I learned as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring, and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check. I thought I was tough going into it, but I wasn’t tough. I was soft. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs, all with … [Read more...]

  Every monopoly story has its inspiringly inauspicious beginnings. The JP Morgan Bank started with JP Morgan’s father, Junius, working as a clerk for a now unknown merchant banker, George Peabody in mid-19th century London. Standard Oil started with John D. Rockefeller ensconced in the corner of the Hewitt and Tuttle, pouring over the books, “delighting in all the methods and systems of … [Read more...]

  Paul Erdos, perhaps the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century, was an eccentric. Crisscrossing the globe and living out of a pair of suitcases stuffed with tattered suits, he never learned to boil water to make his own tea, insisting that whoever's company he'd foisted himself into rise at 4am to brew him tea so he could go to work. Even during meals, he worked furiously, … [Read more...]

“It’s Never Been Worse to Be Information Smart Than It Is Today” - Gary Vaynerchuk at SXSW, 2014   Megan Parker is a the receptionist at a law firm with a bachelor’s degree and over $100,000 in student debt. Stories like Megan's at this point are becoming cliche and cookie cutter: middle-class kid goes to good University attempting to realize economic earning potential, only to find … [Read more...]

“There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.” - Christopher Morley "Upon graduation, my primary driver was freedom. I remember thinking that at the time. I would like to be anywhere, anytime I wanted and have a lot of money." That’s an excerpt from an interview I did after finishing The End Of Jobs. After I heard it, I nodded and thought, “Yep, sounds good to … [Read more...]

  That aunt and uncle that you haven’t talked to in five years are smiling. A pair of dark spaces fragment their not-so-toothy grins. Your parents are smiling. You’re wearing a medieval-styled dress with colored sashes covered in Latin. You can feel the pride and excitement in the air. The promise of the future. You ascend the raised platform and walk across the stage, deftly hiding … [Read more...]

“When in doubt, create assets.”- Anon. quoted in Tim Grahl, Your First 1000 Copies “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” - Jean Baptiste Say     “He just hasn’t turned the corner yet. It hasn’t clicked and until it does, he’s not going to do the quality of work he's capable of. What was … [Read more...]

  “What is going on?” My head tilted to the side, mouth wide as if to emphasize my inability to explain. “I don’t know. No one’s articulated it, you just gotta show up.” I was eating an omelet and drinking coffee at 8am Wednesday October 22nd at the A2 cafe in Bangkok. “Yeah, you do.” “When people understand this, it’s going to change everything.” “Yep.” We nodded and … [Read more...]

My eyebrows raised towards the ceiling, my head leaned back, and my stomach dropped down to sit squarely on my pelvic bone. I leaned back into the broken arm of the green couch I'd picked up on Craigslist at the beginning of the semester. A chuckle and a smile were all I could muster. There's a shit-hitting-the-fan inflection point where all I can do is laugh. Everything is so terrifically … [Read more...]

    How often have you said: “No I haven’t read it. I’ve been meaning to though!” I started making a list of books to read my junior year in college in Evernote. “What a useful tool. I’ll start a list of books to read here and just delete the note after I’ve read them!” As of last night, that list is now sitting at a cozy 527. I was doing my New Year planning this week and … [Read more...]

Note: This essay has been updated. Please see the update here. As Dilbert gracefully notes, annual corporate reviews ain't so grand. There's something about the arbitrariness of it that makes it feel cheap and disingenuous. Yet, there’s always a round-up of blog posts at the end of the year where entrepreneurs I admire sit down and go back and review their businesses and progress over the last … [Read more...]

The muscles in her face contracted and distorted into a howling grimace. Unable to bear the sight, she wrenched her head to the side and began to sob. The mirror bounced once on her hospital bed then crashed to the floor. Her mother, instincts engaged, rushed to comfort her. Her father and sister, standing bewildered beside her hospital bed, looked at each other, the creases of worry on their … [Read more...]

A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past. - Charles T. … [Read more...]

    In April 1916, Robert Updegraff published his first ever article in the Saturday Evening Post. Titled “Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman,” the article was converted into a book and heralded by the New York Times as “the handbook for the young man who is going to seek his fortune in the advertising business.” Jack Trout, author of the New York Times … [Read more...]

  “That’s bullshit, you’re hiding something. You're holding back.” Cheap pendants rattled and glittered around the belly dancer's waist.  A valiant, if perhaps misplaced, attempt at adapting an ancient art form to yet another 90’s song on display at the back of the open air hookah lounge. A thick puff of thick, lemon-infused cloud of smoke drifted through the warm, moist evening … [Read more...]

Ever get the feeling nagging at the back of your head that there’s something you’re supposed to do, but you can't remember what it is? Or you know you're supposed to ask something specific to the person you're talking to? Or you've got so many open loops in that you aren't sure what the logical next step is? I used to. I don't very much anymore. I've always been a bit of the absent minded … [Read more...]

  'Location Independent' as Sustainable Competitive Advantage Duh, Duh, Duh. Duh, Duh, Duh. I throw a pillow over my head even though I know it’s useless. It’s 7am on Saturday in Vietnam and that means jackhammering time. I hear the beep-beep of the motorbike horns outside now. Saigon couldn't care less I spent 2 hours tossing in bed last night. I run through my morning ritual and … [Read more...]

I read a fair amount and it's usually only a book a year that noticeably shapes my thinking years into the future. In 2012, that book was The Fourth Economy. When I met with the author, Ron Davison, I told him it influenced my thinking more than anything I’d read since the Communist Manifesto at 18 which lead to 3 years of my life chasing rabbits down socialist, ideological tunnels. Gracious … [Read more...]

I was sitting outside a wine bar with some friends a few weeks ago and we were going around the circle answering the question - "what are you most excited about right now?" "Online publishing!" I blurted out. Peter Thiel poses the question in his new book Zero to One- "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" While I think the secret about online and self-publishing is out, I … [Read more...]

The question is whether we will structure our consciousness or if someone else will. Those who are least powerful and least rich are those whose consciousness is structured for them. “Stay tuned” they are told, and they do. They rely on popular media for information and entertainment. At work, they are given defined tasks and processes. They depend on others to direct their attention. The … [Read more...]

Optionality is an idea advanced by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile. At the most basic level, optionality just means having lots of options. If you develop a skill with many possible job opportunities, you have more optionality than someone who develops a skill that only has one or two job opportunities. The advantage of optionality is that as the world grows increasingly difficult to … [Read more...]

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle By forming good habits, we can free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action. - William James, quoted in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work I have an admittedly cultish obsession with personal productivity systems, daily habits to the point of staying up late reading about the daily … [Read more...]

"You can have virtually anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want." - Ray Dalio "Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly at scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as … [Read more...]

  I've spent a big chunk of my time and energy over the last 18 months working with Derek and Ian on growing the Portable Bar Company which is now about 2.5 years old. When I started working on the business at the end of 2012, we were having pretty consistent months, from our point of view, at a pretty low revenue number. Over the past 3 months, we're averaging over 6x that and the … [Read more...]

  In the last two years of working with small businesses, I'd say that I learn more in a typical day than I learned in a month of college. College is great for fun, but bad for learning. I would say all schooling is bad for learning. At least for learning things that matter. It’s great for learning stuff you can look up on Google like what years Kennedy was president of who was … [Read more...]

  Something that I get asked a lot is how I read so many books. People often want to know how to read more often. Last year I read 60 books and am on pace for about the same this year. I'm not going to win any contests but it’s a pretty good pace for me. I’m a subscriber to the voracious input, focused output theory of productivity. A book a week gives me more than enough to chew on … [Read more...]

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I've re-watched Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio a few times. I've realized what draws me to the movie is that it illustrates an important concept: the power of whispering. DiCaprio's character leads a team of "invaders" who are able to enter into the subconsciously shared worlds with other people and implant ideas there that alter their real-world behavior. … [Read more...]

    Six months ago, I found myself walking away from a coffee meeting at a cafe at the National University of Singapore feeling like a bit of a douche. The day before, I had been sitting in my apartment in Saigon, Vietnam scrolling down my Facebook feed when I saw that Nassim Taleb, author of Antifragile and The Black Swan, was going to be in Singapore. He had invited anyone … [Read more...]

    I drafted this post on Friday night at 7pm. I'm sitting in a cafe in San Francisco right now at around 6:30am on a Saturday editing it. I was going to go to the Giants' game Friday, but after walking around for a few hours with some friends, I sort of got that itch to work. Whenever I take time off, I always get that itch. The farther I get into entrepreneurship, the … [Read more...]

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. -Archimedes How To Change The Way You Think I met up with Ron Davison last weekend and to talk about his book The Fourth Economy. One of the central concepts in the book is systems thinking. I'd never explicitly studied or read much about systems outside of a chapter in his book, but I sat down and … [Read more...]

    The most effective heuristic I've found for deciding what to work on is Steven Pressfield's concept of The Resistance. If I had to describe the Resistance in my own words, I would say it's a state of mild existential terror and discomfort. And I think that's how you should feel everyday. I fundamentally accept the premise that humans are at their best when reaching … [Read more...]

  Consider the framework that everything you have and everything you want in life is in simply a currency. It's something that you can exchange for another good or service. If we start from this framework that everything is a currency then we can map these currencies across a continuum of legibility. It might look something like this:   More legible currencies are … [Read more...]

How To Write A Standard Operating Procedure I read a post from Dylan Hassinger on a private entrepreneurship forum I'm a member of that compared business to software at some point last year. That analogy has stuck with me ever sense. I don't have a software background, though so I like to envision businesses as manufacturing machines. You put something in one end and then it goes through all … [Read more...]

  The best ROI activities are always at the limits, the riskiest parts, of any given system. This is why tech companies are so profitable and older established industries like gas stations aren't. It's not that risky to start a gas station. You pretty much know all the variables - how many cars are in a given area and their demand for gas. There's a lot more unknown variables for tech … [Read more...]

  Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the. In the course of his career, he developed an interest in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (sometimes known as Neurolinguistic programming). He noticed that a small fraction of his patients came back after undergoing major surgery and were still unhappy with their appearance. They had undergone a dramatic physical change as the result of … [Read more...]

  I saw a talk by Peter Keller, the founder of Fringe Sport, a functional fitness equipment provider, at a conference two weeks ago. Peter's talk covered some of the major mistakes he'd made and what he had learned from running Fringe Sport for the last 3 years. One of them revolved around the concept of what he called table selection. Table selection is a better and more … [Read more...]

I'm always very hesitant to believe in causative theories for why things happen in complex systems. It's become so clear to me how good I am at rationalizing and creating patterns where none exist. I was listening to an episode of Planet Money and they gave the example of financial news. If the market is up, all the analysts go find very convincing reasons why. If the market is down they're able … [Read more...]

  One of the concepts that's been on my mind since I finished reading Nicholas Nassim Taleb's book Antifragile a few months ago is the Lindy Effect:   Taleb gives the example of cookware found in homes in Pompeii. At around 2000 years old - it looks remarkably similar to the cookware you'd see in any house around the world today. The fact that it's been around so long means … [Read more...]

I was laying in bed and watching a movie a couple of weeks ago. It was Saturday night around maybe 9pm. A friend texted me to see what I was planning on doing. I told her that I was probably going to bed. I sort of felt guilty. Maybe I should go out? I don't go out that much anymore. At most a couple of nights a week. If I do go out, at most I'll usually have 2-3 drinks and I'm pretty much … [Read more...]

Are your friends or colleagues bothering you that you must read Antifragile? Did you just finish and aren't quite sure if you wrapped your head around it? As part of my work at Mutiny Funds, a deep area of interest for me is how to make systems more antifragile, starting with investors portfolios and going from there. To that end, these are the notes that I put together for myself after … [Read more...]

I flew into Bangkok on a Wednesday. It was not somewhere that I thought I would ever go a month prior. At the time, I was working at an online marketing agency in Memphis. I stopped writing to focus on some more monetizable side projects, but the majority of my energy and focus were going into my work. I was relatively happy with my situation. I didn't particularly want to be in Memphis, but … [Read more...]

    We, as individuals, define our own realities. We often self-impose limits on ourselves. We say things like "I'm not that smart" and use cop outs. 99.9% of people are vastly underachieving when you look at what their potential is. People get comfortable in their routine and instead of pushing themselves they just accept mediocrity. I've been thinking about this … [Read more...]