How I [assess] Work
It is amazing how little information we needed as kids to make a decision on who we wanted to be when we grew up. We didn’t need to get embroiled in the “back end” when we fell in love with the “front end.” Most of our career choices were as a result of peer mimicry, family preference, something we saw on TV or a random pick from our school textbooks. Read More.
Barbell Strategy
Beknownst to many is the idea that we should hedge our main gig with a side gig to curtail the downside and potentially reap the upside.
Unbeknownst to many is that certain careers operate in a domain where only 1% of players can reap into rewards to the order of 50%.
In the latter, most of our total annual income will be just a rounding error to the richest professional. But that disparity won’t likely happen in your 9 to 5 job. Read More.
Freedom is Binary
There are two kinds of freedom:
Freedom ‘from’ (negative freedom)- anger, instant gratifications, mood, fear, procrastination…etc
Not to be confused with
Freedom ‘to’ (positive freedom)- do whatever whenever wherever. Read More.
Lindy Skills
‘Which skills will withstand the test of time & technology?’
Over time, I have come to believe that the answer lies in our immutable skills as humans. Skills that tap into the core survival instinct of humanity. Skills that have enabled us to survive over the last centuries. Lindy skills (From the Lindy Effect). These are a sub-set of skills whose mortality rate decreases with time. They have been around so long, extinction would mean the end of the human race. Read More.
Productivity
Productivity is a fine balance of “when to”, “what to” & “how to”
But in the information age, where attention is a currency and skills can be readily learned, the proportion is highly asymmetrical.
When to is probably the most valuable form of intuition we can develop. Read More.
The Power of Weak Ties
Weak social ties are responsible for the embeddedness and structure of social networks. They are the intrinsic drivers as to why we post on social media. The why behind why we join communities. These ties transcend the clique to its other friends and acquaintances and more importantly transmit more novel information than strong ties.
While the average person focuses on the inner circle as the sole epicenter of value, the super connectors, mavens, influencers, influential politicians seek to exploit the weak tie relationships.
How we engage the weak tie is a key differential because it brings us non-redundant information across structural holes. This is how we inhabit more worlds than we live in. Read more.