Advice

03.05.2024 In this time and this economy, having a long time horizon is a huge competitive advantage. This is Tim Ferriss' view. The point is that most people cannot or will not endure a long time horizon. Most people want results now.

03.05.2024 Focus on the Craft. "Be so good they can't ignore you". It all comes back down to craft. This is Cal Newport's famous stand. And it works.

03.03.2024 "One of the biggest risk factors for getting addicted to any drug is easy access to that drug" - Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation.

Whatever "drug" it is, Netflix, Youtube, social media, ice cream, porn, ... your best bet is first to keep them away. Cancel that Netflix subscription. Block Youtube while you work. Uninstall Instagram from your phone. Don't buy big ice cream boxes to keep in your fridge.

02.16.2024 The best way to become is to be. The only way to be is to experience. And the best time to start gaining that experience is today.

Until one understands that, he will keep trying to become better without already being and doing better, without giving it the time and experience that it requires.

02.15.2024 Understand the game you are playing and who you are playing against. Make a conscious decision about playing or not playing it. Now if you decide to play, be responsive to the stake. If the stake is very high, either get good, or get help, better both. I have a friend trying to sell a large quantity of RSU stocks on the day after bad quarterly earnings report. He "lost" tends of thousands of dollars that day alone, as he sold the shares at 11am and the stock somehow made a rebound for the rest of the day. He was clearly devastated, but then the game was hard: It is the game of day trading. He was clearly not a day trader, and he was thinking in days and months, not hours, while the large share quantity involved required the skills and time dedication of a day trader. Even if he was a day trader, the odds were abysmal as he'd be competing with algorithm from giants the likes of Citadel and Two Sigma. Even if he sat around the clock to monitor the stock, or hired a reasonably good day trader to give him advice, would he really have done better than chance? I highly doubt it.

02.02.2024 (On motivation to start) When you consider starting something (a new business, new channel/ content etc.), a lot of times what motivates you to start going is seeing someone else so popular/ successful even though you judge their product/ content to be so-so, that you can definitely do better. A lot of times you are wrong: You just don't understand yet why they are successful/ popular. But that does not mean you shouldn't start. Starting is magic. You can always learn and adjust along the way. You can even quit. But whatever belief that can get you started, even if wrong, is usually useful. What's important next is not to quit so fast once you realized it's not as simple as you originally thought.

01.31.2024 (On the dangerous influence of friends) One way in which your friends influence your life is when their big financial mishaps make you feel tolerant of your own, and that's a slippery slope. That a friend of yours loses hundreds of thousands in cryptocurrency, for example, should not make you feel you can start gambling thousands of dollars. It's not the amount but the principle that makes or breaks. And there is little point in benchmarking your outcome against your worst performing friend's.

01.29.2024 (On the usefulness of constraints) Constraints can simplify your life more than it complicates, especially when they are constraints you impose deliberately. In this form, they are usually the same as "criteria" or "filters". In a new city and needing to choose which coffee shop to go to do some work, while there are 10 coffee shops within 15 minutes? How about using these filters: (i) Only local shops you haven't been to before (ii) "work" search on Google reviews yields positive mentions (iii) Vibe: Even after deciding, use your gut feeling within 30 seconds of walking inside.

Food for thought: What about the constraints that are imposed on you?