Hello there,
Anyone who knows me well enough knows my favourite book is Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. I have recommended this book to everyone in my inner circle countless number of times.
This book is modeled around the triad of fragility, robustness, and antifragility. The fragile breaks, the robust stays the same and the antifragile gets better when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors.
Crucial in understanding the applicability of a triad is grasping a Black Swan event. This is a large-scale, extremely rare, unpredictable, and irregular events of massive consequence. They can be both positive and negative. Examples include the rise of the internet, 9/11, World War I, the global financial crisis of 2008…
If we live our lives not preparing for a Black Swan event, we are like a turkey who expects with every farmer visit comes more food. Until thanksgiving.
Although this pandemic is not an actual Black Swan event, rather a potent of a more fragile global system there are a lot of commonalities.
Earlier this week, in a bid to mock test my preparedness, I took an antifragile assessment test and scored 55.1%. out of 100. (100 = most antifragile).
This came as a wake-up call to quit putting vectors of antifragility (optionality) on the back burner. These often fall into the important but not urgent categorizations in our lives and tend to be marginalized when chasing the current.
To avoid being the turkey, here are 10 sets of question I’ll always ask myself:
- Income: How diversified is my income? Do I have passive income?
- Investments: Are my investments spread out into High Risk, Medium Risk, Low Risk baskets?
- Skills: Do I have Lindy Skills? What is my creative to menial skills ratio?
- Sales: How many people can I sell a $100 product? (Lindy Skill)
- Career: Who am I beyond my contract with my employer?
- Bets: Can I identify BS? Am I confident enough to bet against it when I see it?
- Deadlift: Do I deadlift? Deadlifting reveals all your errors in movement.
- Savings: The world has never been richer, yet so heavily in debt. How in control am I?
- Reputational Risk: How much is my success pegged on my outward “appearance”?
- Network: How connected am I?
Next week, I’ll do a deep dive into the “how” to create an antifragile career with a focus on the Barbell Strategy.
What I’m Reading
“I am a token black friend. The black one in the group of white people. I am in many ways its poster child…And given the many conversations occurring right now around systemic racism, it would feel wrong not to use my position as a respected friend within a multitude of different white communities to contribute to the current dialogue. I believe my story speaks directly to the covert nature of the new breed of racism — its structural side, along with implicit bias — and may prove helpful to many I know who seek a better understanding….”
“Things are going on that are much bigger than me and for the first time in my life, I am completely torn apart by what is happening here in America and in trying to figure out my role in all of this. I’ve been sad before. I’ve been angry before. I’ve protested before. I’ve engaged in conversation before. But this time is different.”
My brothers and brothers Rajathurai Nagarajah and Ramesh Nagarajah remind us that racism is alive and well around us. That if we can get people to question small interactions and beliefs, we can begin moving towards progress. There is no place for racism. Covert racism. Overt racism. None. Always speak up. ?
What I’m Watching
The Premier League, anybody? It’s finally back. Combining that with a couple of African documentaries from Yebo – ‘Africa’s first factual storytelling VOD platform’ that has some educative documentaries about popular African leaders from revolutionaries like Thomas Sankara to anti-apartheid heroes like Winnie Mandela.