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“To finish first, you must first finish”
Rick Mears
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The Interesting Times is a short note to help you better invest your time and money in an uncertain world as well as a digest of the most interesting things I find on the internet, centered around antifragility, complex systems, investing, technology, and decision making. Past editions are available here.
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Hi, No big updates from me this week. I'm heads down on a number of projects over at Mutiny Fund which I hope to be able to talk about in the near future. One involves a new system we're setting up
with some NoCode tools (Airtable, Formstack, Paperform, etc.). I'm pretty excited about the possibilities of the NoCode movement broadly and it's been fun to get my hands a bit dirty building some things out. I'm also doubling down on my Roam usage. It's a hard
tool to explain since there aren't any great comps to it, but if you're interested in knowledge management and note-taking then it's worth a look. I've used Evernote for a long time, but I feel Roam has the potential to be 10x better.
This edition of the Interesting Times is sponsored by my
new, favorite calendar app: Woven. Annie Dillard, in her beautiful book The Writing
Life, says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” Woven is a calendar application, but, more than that, it's a tool for how you spend your hours which is ultimately how you spend your life. Woven’s analytics lets you easily evaluate how you're spending your time to know if it lines up with your goals. As an added bonus, their scheduling functionality helps me set up meetings a lot easier than using Zoom’s impossible-to-use scheduling feature. It’s completely free so check it out.
9 Questions to Ask Before You Start Something New
One of the subjects which I have written and thought the most about is what I like to call priority management. Ultimately the goal of priority management is to spend your time and energy in a way that aligns with your priorities (which themselves are derived from your values). I think there’s a lot to be said on the nuances of the subject (and I’ll link to further reading below), but, ultimately, it boils down to saying yes to some things that become your priorities and saying no to other things
that don't become your priorities. Sometimes, it’s very clear that something is a priority and sometimes it is clear that something is not, but there are a lot of cases at the margin where it can be hard to decide. A simple and effective rule of thumb is Derek Siver’s Hell Yea or No, elaborated on more colorfully by Mark Manson as F**k Yes or No. The title more or less says it all: if you have an opportunity that isn’t a hell yes do it, if not, don’t. Since
basically every project takes twice as long, costs twice as much, and works half as well as you would hope (a result of reality having a surprising amount of detail), you want to make sure you are pretty psyched about it upfront.
If you are “meh” when you get started then you are likely to quit halfway through and a halfway completed project is about as useful as a half-cooked turkey. While Hell Yea or No is a pretty good general rule, there's still a lot of cases
at the margin that are hard for me to decide on. As a result, , I've tried to keep a more detailed list of criteria for deciding on whether to take on a project. If all the criteria are met, it’s a clear “Hell yea” for me. - If I didn’t make any money, would you still have had a great time?
- Is the project a purple cow? Imagine having a conversation at the last cocktail party (or even better, actually have one) do people’s eyebrows raise and say “cool"?
- Does the project leverage your unique ability? Why are you uniquely qualified to do it?
- Imagine that you are selling a million dollars worth of this product. Are you happy with how you spend your time?
- Do you respect your customers? Would you be happy to see one if you were walking down the beach on vacation?
- Does this solve a pain point people already know they have? I.e. Can you sell this without needing to re-educate the market? If not, can you position it that way?
- Is the problem a 'tooth-ache level' pain point? Will they do anything to get rid of it? Does it itch or does it burn? (You want something that burns).
- Is it something I Personally Need - Are you scratching your own itch?
- Does it follow the Star
Principle - Is the market growing at least 10% YoY so that the overall size of the pie is growing?
If you're interested, here are some other Priority Management resources I've put together over the years:
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Early Work
Paul Graham
The always thoughtful Paul Graham comments that "one of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame." I have found this to be overwhelmingly true, encapsulated in Reid Hoffman's quip that "if you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late."
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s and 1880s. He is famous for criticisms of traditional European morality and religion. He's also the philosopher from whom I've read the most work and the one who I find most persistently insightful and interesting. Writing something that ages well for a decade is Herculean. Writing something that ages well for over a century is damn near impossible. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a wonderful resources not just on Nietzsche but all philosophers and if you're interested in learning more about philosophy, it would be one of my top places to start.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the also spectacular Philosophize This which manages to be both insightful, educational and funny.
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Why You Shouldn’t Max Out Your 401(k)
Of Dollars and Data
For Americans, maxing out your retirement accounts as opposed to saving in a taxable account is nearly un-contested advice. There are lots of good reasons to do so, but in general I think people overstate the benefits and understate the cost.
Regardless of whether you have a Roth 401(k) or a traditional 401(k), the benefits of contributing beyond the employer match are much smaller than you might have initially imagined.
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The Great Age of Rebalancing Begins
Breaking the Market
Shannon’s Demon was a toy model developed by Claude Shannon (of Information Theory fame) for investing in the stock market. At the time he developed it, it was effectively impossible to implement. With the advent of zero-fee brokerages, it is increasingly doable. I think this is probably one of the most underrated ideas in the investing world right now.
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What Cyber-War Will Look Like
The Scholar's Stage
When prompted to think about the way hackers will shape the future of great power war, often grand catastrophes: planes falling out of the skies, missiles firing without being told to do so and crazy space lasers or something.
What the experts think Cyber-War will actually look like is far more nuanced and true to OODA Loop thinking, more focused on the social and cultural elements than the purely military.
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As always, if you're enjoying The Interesting Times, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend (or three). You can send them here to sign up. I try to make it one of the best emails you get every week and I'm always open to feedback on how to better do that.
If you'd like to see everything I'm reading, you can follow me on
Twitter or LinkedIn for articles and podcasts. I'm on Goodreads for books. Finally, if you read anything interesting this week, please hit reply and send it
over!
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Here are a few more things you might find interesting:
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Interesting Essays: Read my best, free essays on topics like bitcoin, investing, decision making and marketing.
Consulting & Advising: Are you looking for help with making decisions around scaling your company from $500k to $5 million? I’ve been working with authors, entrepreneurs, and startups for half a decade to help them get more out of their businesses.
Internet Business Toolkit: An exhaustive list of all the online tools I use to be more productive.
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