ContrariLand

Views on markets, real estate and life. Honestly I'm mostly doing it so I won't have so many notebooks

Book Reports

Zero to One, Peter Thiel

  • Small is beautiful.  Small groups of people have changed the world for the better.  Large institutions shy away from risk and there are principle/agency problems
  • “What does everybody agree on?”  A good AM pages prompt
  • What valuable company is nobody building?
  • The fatal temptation is to define your market so narrowly that you dominate it
  • Characteristics of a monopoly: 1. proprietary technology 2. Network effects  3. Economies of scale  4. Branding
  • Start small and monopolize.  Always err on the side of starting small
  • A board of 3 is ideal and should never exceed 5
  • Can’t benefit from macro-insight unless you have micro-scale

 

The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler

  • Risk is required to get into flow.  While the book talks about lots of crazy risks (BASE jumping, freediving, etc.) this risk can be mental risk, social risks or creative risks
  • Flow required novelty, complexity and unpredictability
  • Create new routines, try new things.
  • 3 more crucial factors: 1. Clear goals  2. Immediate feedback  3. Challenge/skill ratio
  • Break daily life into bite-sized chunks and set goals accordingly
  • Phase 1: “Struggle”, which is a loading phase.  It might be fact finding or concentrated study or demanding exercise.  Tension and frustration arise.  The “next” is release
  • Beyond basic needs, people want autonomy, mastery and purpose
  • amazing how many entrepreneurs went to Montessori school
  • “Creativity is just connecting things” – Steve Jobs

Unlimited Power and Icarus 

  • Act.  Massive, focused activities lead to overwhelming results.  But you don’t need MORE activity, you need DEEPER activity.

Three habits for artists: 1. sit alone, quietly  2. learn something with no apparent benefit  3. ship something you created.  Must ship!  Work done – but not shipped – is pointless

OLD: obey the rules, take the test.  NEW: Start something, figure it out

  • Look inward.  Compare to own goals, not to others.  “Little things = little minds” (Disraeli).  Rise above that.  When you do your work to get applause, you have sold yourself short.  The goal: be missed when you’re gone
  • Connect.   Industrial economy v. connection economy.  Connection economy rewards the initiator, the do-er, the leader.  The person who chooses to do the work that matters.  The world is a series of projects to be built and connections to be made.  It’s a web, not a ladder, and going sideways (and even down) is just fine, as long as you learn.  People will only pay for the unexpected and the scarce.  There was a time that TV Guide was worth more than the TV networks.  The information about the the thing was worth more than the thing!
  • Give.  Worldview questions: 1. instead of “how do I get more”, ask “how do I give more” 2. Instead of guaranteeing success, ask how you can risk failure.  Seek tension, growth happens at the edge of comfort.

Inside of this, communication is power, more than ever.  Build rapport, find common ground.  The time spent with customers is huge value.  Don’t be the low-cost leader, be the high-trust leader

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris

  • Information without emotion isn’t retained
  • “The gut is not like Vegas” video to watch
  • Cold showers!
  • “Lost Lives in Lowell” doc
  • “Neurons to Nirvana” doc
  • “An advantaged metabolic state” Attia
  • Find a business you can push downhill
  • The more you know what you want and your direction, the less what everybody else is doing matters.  But when you’re ambiguous you get taken in by the noise
  • Write to get ideas, not to express them!
  • Brainstorm exercise: make a list of things that everybody thinks are true and then ask “what if it’s not true?
  • “There is no happiness without action”  Disraeli
  • Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
  • “Future is already here, its just unevenly distributed”  William Gibson
  • “Moral bucket list” David Brooks
  • Day job shouldn’t make you rich, its your homework
  • Read goals 1st thing in the morning, and first thing before bed
  • What can you build that will cost incumbents 5-10x to replicate?
  • Ask: “what are you working on?  why is that interesting?  what’s surprising?  why is nobody else thinking about this?”
  • read Attia on Ferris blog
  • spray zinc?
  • “The catastrophe of success”
  • Amplify strengths
  • to teach kids: 1. how to lead  2. how to solve interesting problems
  • find the smartest 20 somethings in your company.  ask them how they would take down your company
  • TM: just repeat a 2 syllable word
  • spend as much time in a lunge as you can
  • kettlebell windmills?
  • 3 workouts with big payoff: 1. 1 arm swing  2. turkish get up  3. goblet squat
  • saying “no” requires trading popularity for respect
  • lack of time is really a lack of priorities
  • keto frappucino: 2 scoops whey, ice, powdered coffee, macadamia nut oil
  • whats on the other side of fear?
  • the simplicity on the other side of complexity
  • 2 good questions to ask incumbent question: 1. how is their bread buttered  2. what is it that they can’t afford to say or think?
  • write to please yourself
  • habit: tighten the glutes
  • Tony Robbins: RPG, Result (outcome), Purpose (why), Massive action (tactics)
  • evening pages idea: 1. amazing things that happened today  2. 3 ways I could have made today better  3. 3 things that made me happy
  • “its always the hard part that creates the value”
  • “you get paid for enduring frustration”
  • creative people don’t really need more ideas, just need to take more responsibility for the ideas they have
  • don’t let your agenda become a list of other people’s agendas
  • read “makers schedule, managers schedule”
  • Life favors the specific ask, and punishes the vague wish
  • check out Mark Rothko paintings
  • do high leverage things
  • not busyness, but output
  • “never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious” – Edison
  • what you do is more important than how you do it.  doing something well doesn’t make it important
  • “Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work (artists).  Fragility is when you care about the few who hate it (politicians).”  Taleb
  • How Proust can change your life
  • “If we do x today, what does that result in tomorrow, 1 year from now, 10 years from now?”
  • Rhythms of stress and recovery through the day.  research has shown that 49 minutes of work/study/exercise and then 11 minutes of rest.  repeat
  • If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day
  • what if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you can do with them?
  • Find up and comers and introduce them to one another
  • solve the simplest, easiest and most valuable problem
  • there is a) idea and b) execution.  If you separate one, you don’t put pressure on the other one
  • learn from the greatest of all time, not just your competition
  • Some trance music: “Everyday” ASAP Rocky, “One Dance”, Drake  “Tonight Tonight”  “Keep your eyes open”, “Time” Hans Zimmer, “Harlem Shake”, “Lift Off”, “Everyday” Comando, “Aviators” Long, “Divenire”, “Mad World” Jules, “Festival” Ros
  • before bed, 3 wins for the day
  • put yourself into situations where you can get max exposure to new ideas, problems and people.  exposure to things that capture your “shower time”
  • Brodo NYC- best bone broth
  • Sebastian Junger: its not that I’m blocked, its just that I don’t have enough research to write with power.  don’t try to solve that with fancy prose

Tribe of Mentors, by Tim Ferris

  • Macro patience, micro speed.  Don’t worry so much about where you end up.  But work like crazy today
  • Do more walk and talk meetings
  • Doing work out of obligation is depleting, but working from passion brings energy
  • Festool technology for woodworking?
  • “The less you need positive feedback, the more original you can be and the more useful you can be”
  • Work on your own ideas!
  • “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.  They went out and happened to things”.  da Vinci
  • “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all”.  Helen Keller
  • Prioritize and execute
  • After age 4 people want stability.  That’s a luxury 21st century won’t have
  • Be excellent in the next 5 minutes
  • Growth requires discomfort
  • “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.  Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”  Sun Tzu
  • Choose opportunities based upon the quality of the people you will work with
  • “everything you want is on the other side of feara

Mastery, by Robert Greene

  • Get obsessed!
  • Find two circles of interest and overlap them.  What is in there?
  • Patience, persistence, confidence > Talent
  • If you start feeling bored, you get passive.  It is a natural response, when feeling bored, to get passive.  You must recognize and react against this
  • Searching for money will lead to a dead-end career
  • Resist temptation to be more like others.  Instead direct yourself toward small things you are good at.  Not grand dreams, but small and immediate skills
  • Learn one skill at a time.  The future belongs to those with skills who can combine them in unique ways
  • Find a way to work with your hands
  • Mingle with as many different types of people as possible
  • Children have a sense of inferiority which gives them the urge to learn.  Develop that.  Curiosity and work ethic
  • Cut off internal monologue and pay deep attention  to others
  • Appeal to the self interest of others
  • Expand knowledge to related fields, making new associations all the time
  • Mozart was surrounded by music
  • Emotional commitment will translate to the work
  • Choose tasks slightly above you.  STRETCH
  • Seek out the unfamiliar. Your brain seeks out new connections.  Feed it!!
  • Don’t focus on making something just slightly better
  • Focus on the blank space, what is absent
  • The work and the process must be the motivation and the reward
  • The Wright Brothers competed against well educated “experts”
  • Take up hobbies that cause you to stretch the brain.  Woodworking, music, painting, etc.
  • Da vinci would take long walks, taking in details of everything and then draw them
  • Absorb your mind in the fine points and details.  See everything you create as something with a life of its own.
  • Create, don’t retreat

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time (HBR article, by Tony Schwartz)

  • Energy comes from Body, Emotions, Mind and Spirit
  • BODY.  Easiest: eat, sleep, move, etc.
  • EMOTIONS.
    • Change a “story” by viewing through one of three lenses:
    • “Reverse lens” – what would the other person think/do?
    • “Long” lens – How will I see this in six months?
    • “Wide lens” – Regardless of outcome, what can I learn from this?
  • MIND
    • Don’t multitask
    • Fully focus for 90-120 minutes and then break.  Called “ultradian sprints”(?)
    • check email 2x a day
    • Focus systmetically on activities that have the most long-term leverage
  • SPIRIT
    • what are your values?  Answer: the opposite of what you find most off-putting in others!  (stinginess, self-absorption, etc)

The Untethered Soul

Randomly following that previous article, this book examines the idea of “infinite energy”.  It is true that you can control energy with your mind.  So why not do things that bring energy?

If you let moments pass through you, you will have more energy because those items will not suck from you

If you learn to live like you’re facing death, you will be bolder and more open.  What if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?

Blue Ocean Strategy

  • Quite simply, Blue Oceans are those unknown market spaces, untainted by competition. An example was Cirque du Soleil, which combined the theater and the circus (both of which were struggling). Overlapping existing circles is a good exercise
  • With “red oceans” companies attempt to grab share of existing demand. No good.
  • Make “competition” irrelevant. Differentiation AND low cost.
  • For our current business, is it applicable? I think so. There are ~500 funds out there in the market. THe vast majority are focused on institutional investors. How else to differentiate. Figure the circles!

The Exceptional Presenter

  • Must: 1) Understand the audience and 2) Practice
  • What you say last will be remembered most. Really the first and last 30 seconds are everything
  • “Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm”. – Emerson
  • TIPS: 1. Stand tall. 2. Keep head and eyes up. 3. Smile (people who are unprepared or nervous don’t smile”. 4. MOve with purpose
  • Speak from diaphragm, not throat
  • Practice by reading out loud and using other voices
  • Tell stories, anecdotes
  • Keep a journal of stories, quotes you find humorous
  • Using quotes off the cuff shows a quick mind

The Innovators

  • Defense contractors were really the start of Silicon Valley and this book tells that story
  • Silicon and Germanium are semi-conductors because they are sort of good at conducting electricity. Never knew that
  • The beaver told the rabbit, as they stood at Hoover Dam, “No I didn’t build it, but it’s based on an idea of mine”
  • In Drucker’s “Practice of Management” he says ideal leadership has one inside person, one outside person and one “doer”

The Ostacle is the Way

  • Rockefeller got his first job at 16 and he celebrated this as “job day” his whole life. Love that!
  • You choose to feel when challenged:
    • Be objective
    • Keep an even keel
    • Choose to see the good
    • Focus on what can be controlled
    • Get perspective
  • Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Step outside and be objective. As Jocko would say, “disassociate”!
  • “Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires”. “… the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of”
  • Kierkegaard wouldn’t tell the reader “do this” or “do that” but would SHOW new ways of seeing. Better method of persuasion?
  • You don’t convince people by challenging long-held opinions. Find common ground and work from there
  • TR had asthma, Abe was depressed.

Eat That Frog

  • The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and finish it completely, is the key to success, achievement and happiness
  • The one thing necessary to succeed: definitiveness of purpose. Clarity of the goal
  • Every minute planning saves 10 minutes in execution
  • “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing”
  • “Only engage and the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed”. Goethe
  • Interesting question: “What skill, if developed fully, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”
  • “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain”. Emerson
  • “The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without getting weary”. Edison
  • You become what you think about. So think about what you want, not what you don’t want
  • Self discipline: “the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you like it or not”

Bold

  • According to Babson, and Richard Foster, 3/4 of the S&P 500 in 10 years will be companies we’ve never heard of
  • QUIRKY – accelerates process for product development. What is that?
  • IBM put Watson on the cloud, making accessible to anyone. Like Kessler’s “edge”
  • Big goals always outperform small goals
  • Most of your people will climb the hill they’re on. Good. Use skunk works to find new hills
  • Interesting flip: “What’s NOT going to change in 10 years?”
  • Check out: Maven Research, MTurk, TopCoder
  • Bezos/Branson/Musk/Page share: 1. RIsk taking and mitigation. 2. Rapid iteration and experimentation. 3. Passion and purpose. 4. LT thinking. 5. Customer centric 6. Probabilistic. 7. Rationally optimistic. 8. First principles (fundamental truths)

Flow Triggers:

Environmental

  1. High consequences. Must matter!
  2. Rich environment. Novelty, randomness. New environments add creativity
  3. Deep embodiment. DO! Use your hands

Psychological

  1. Clear goals. Baby steps
  2. Challenge/skills ratio

Google’s 8 Innovation Principles

  1. Focus on the user
  2. Share everything. Use the crowd
  3. Look for ideas everywhere
  4. Thing big, but start small
  5. Fail. But fast and forward
  6. Spark with imagination, but fuel with data. Moonshots!
  7. Be a platform
  8. Have a mission that matters

Free Agent Nation

  • More than 1/2 of all US companies have <5 employees
  • Diversification – across a number of projects, clients, skills – is the best hedge
  • Career not as a “ladder” but as a web or lattice

Some steps:

  1. Make a list of 5 things you’re great at
  2. Make a list of 5 things you love to do
  3. Find where they overlap
  4. Make a list of everybody you know

School of Greatness

  • Study the stoic
  • Set big goals (swim around Manhattan?)
  • MUST write down goals
  • Seek out adversity
  • Connect: 3 new people each week in industry, 3 new “connectors” each week, 1 group event each month
  • You will never outperform your inner circle!
  • Habit ideas: gratitude, smile at everyone, bed early, breathing, volunteer, specific goals

Steal Like An Artist

  • Google everything. Go deeper than everyone else. Know it at an extra layer
  • “Find the most talented person in the room. Hang out with them.” Harold Ramos
  • Find a routine to get the work done
  • Ask yourself, “what’s the best thing that happened today?”

Talent is Overrated

  • Deliberate practice!
  • Hungarian man conducted an experiment to turn all 3 daughters into chess champions and it worked
  • Mental models help sift relevant from irrelevant
  • A number of drafts of Gettysburg address have been found

Little Gold Book of Yes

  • Make every day as effective as the day before vacation
  • “Persist to small achievement”
  • “Invest” your time, don’t “spend” it

More Than You Know

  • Read “Some Thoughts about distribution in economics” by Philip Anderson
  • Seek small advantages. Pick up small pots, compound it

Speak LIke a CEO

  • Preparation!!
  • “Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident” Carnegie
  • “Be sincere, be brief, be seated” FDR
  • “The cure for boredom is curiosity” Dorothy Parker
  • When prepping a talk: 1. The big idea, 2. 3 three main points, 3. Questions listeners may have. 4. A story 5. Talking points
  • “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you.” Carnegie. Interested, not interesting!

The Way of the Seal

  • “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”. Einstein
  • Find a 20x challenge! 3k burpees in a month, etc
  • Box breathing
  • “If you’re looking for a big opportunity, seek out a big problem.” H Jackson Browne
  • SLOW is SMOOTH, SMOOTH is FAST
  • Make decisiveness a habit
  • “To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is most difficult.” Goethe
  • Think offense all the time
  • “The best way to predict your future is to create it”

Talk Like TED and How to Deliver at TED Talk

  • First 20 seconds is peak engagement level
  • Broad emotional range
  • Adopt the tone of 1:1 conversationalist
  • PAUSE. Give authority and eliminate fillers
  • Significantobjects.com found that having a story increased sales by 2,700%!

Taming the Time Monster

  • Stress and fatigue are caused by things undone
  • Always ask what is the most important use of time RIGHT NOW?

Getting to Yes

  • Separate the people from the problem. Attack the problem, not each other
  • Invent options for mutual gain
  • Focus on understanding interests, not positions
  • Look for differences of low cost to you that might be large gain to them
  • Use questions instead of statements

Getting Things Done

  • “Imagination is more important than knowledge” Einstein
  • “Those who make the worst use of time are the first to complain of its shortness” Jean de La Bruyere

A Whole New Mind

“Six Senses”

1. Design

– high concept, difficult to automate. Cooper-Hewitt Museum, MoMa

2. Story

– context enriched by emotion

“Sharing the fire, New England storytelling conference”. “Understanding Comics”, “Beyond POwerPoint”

3. Symphony

– Ability to put pieces together. Synthesize and see big picture

– Multidisciplinary, mental models

4. Empathy

– take acting class? Volunteer

– Emotional Intelligence

5. Play

– research shows that effective execs use humor much more than middle managers do

6. Meaning

– optimism, gratitude

 

80/20 Principle

  • Focus on RESULTS, not effort
  • Focus on the small things that can have huge results

Ambition is NOT long hours, busyness and sacrifice of self.  It IS confidence, relaxation and civilized

Specialize in a niche and be the best

 

Man’s Search for Meaning

  • The sort of person men became in his prison were dictated solely by his thoughts.  Attitude is everything
  • In his concentration camp, the death rate spiked between Christmas and New Year’s.  Why?  Because people had naively set the goal (hope) of getting home by Christmas
  • “He who has a WHY to live can bear with almost any HOW” – Nietsche
  • What man needs is not a tensionless state (homeostasis) bud rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal

 

Learned Optimism

  • The self-talk of “always” or “never” Isi very pessimistic
  • Optimists don’t get sick as often.  they don’t get depressed easily when they fail.  they also are more likely to take matters into their own hands: ACTION
  • Optimists keep a stronger network.
  • Focus on the changeable and the specific

 

Missing Microbes

  • Giving antibiotics at a young age to farm animals and fish fattens them up.  couldn’t this be the same with kids??
  • As a society high/middle/lower classes used to watch the same TV, eat similar foods, go on similar trips.  No longer!
  • A new segregation based upon education and tastes.  More isolation of college grads within census tracts

 

Coming Apart

  • In 1963 the median income in Cambridge was similar to Des Moines
  • Time-use surveys show that over the last 20 years men with no HS education increased their leisure time by 8 hours per week.  Men who completed college have decreased theirs by 6 hours.

A Curious Mind

  • Even when you’re in charge, you’re asking questions more than giving orders
  • Ideas are currency
  • Curiosity makes the day interesting!  It makes people more interesting
  • do the hardest thing first, first thing in the morning.

 

To Sell is Human

  • Good recipe: humility, perspective-taking, likability
  • “Where are you from” is a great introduction to each meeting because HOW the person answers is very telling
  • Questions are more persuasive than statements
  • The discovery of problems  is THE skill
  • The ability to brainstorm with customers and help them find solutions to their problems.  with so much information out there, the ability to hypothesize is key
  • Ask “Why” 5 times you generally get to the key.
  • The plot of every Pixar film can be distilled to:
    1. Once upon a time____
    2. Every day, _____
    3. One day, ______
    4. Because of that, ______
    5. Because of that, ______
    6. Until finally, _____
  • What do you want them to Know?  Feel?  Do?

 

Public Speaking for Success. 

  • The mind is an associating machine
  • Lincoln read aloud whatever he wished to recall
  • After you have risen to speak, don’t be in a rush to begin
  • Whatever is said last will be remembered
  • It is more productive to stir emotions than to arouse thoughts

 

Happiness Project

  • “All truly” great thoughts are conceived while walking”- Nietschze
  • “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing”.  – Yeats
  • Research shows that when there are more elements that make up your identity, the less threatening when any one gets shattered
  • “It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light” – GK Chesterton
  • “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so” – JS Mill

 

Competition Demystified

  • If there is no competitive advantage, the only recourse is operational efficiency.
  • Test for existence of competitive advantages:
    • Market share stability
    • Dominant firm
    • Low entries/exit
    • Sustained high profitability

Spartan Up

  • Epictetus – the Great Stoic – defined wealth not as having numerous possessions, but as having few wants
  • 30 burpees per day
  • “We are what we repeatedly do” – Aristotle
  • Health care for an obese person is $4,900 per year.  Non-obese is $3,400 per year
  • Add value in every situation
  • Don’t complain
  • Inform, don’t dictate

The Geography of Jobs

  • Clusters are path dependent and very difficult to create
  • Facebook employés 2,500 workers while GM employs 220,000.  But what of the “derivative businesses”?
  • Innovation represents ~10% of the economy
  • 2/3 of US jobs are non-tradable (can’t be outsourced).  Such as hairstylists, yoga instructors, etc.  They receive wealth, but don’t create it
  • Internet has created 1.2 million jobs and destroyed 500,000.  But losers are disperse and winners are concentrated.
  • Market thickness matters

A Mind for Numbers

  • Bed, bath or bus (places to get great ideas)
  • Diffuse v. focused modes
  • Edison and Dali would both sit down holding a ball.  they fall asleep and drop the ball.  that period of near-sleep brought their best ideas
  • Great scientists have very broad interests
  • talk about what you’re learning about.  Summarize your current book, etc
  • Writing to-do list before bed allows subconscious to start working on them
  • develop spatial skills with kids: 3-d puzzles, draw from multiple angles, etc.
  • create analogues and metaphors

The Pentagon’s Brain

  • They paid Von Neumann the equivalent of a senior engineer’s salary just to give his daily thoughts while shaving
  • The AR-15 was created early in Vietnam because the locals were too small to handle the larger semi-automatic weapons
  • The beginning of the internet was so random.  The idea of network redundancy came about due to a 20 minute meeting
  • The distance to the moon was determined because Armstrong put a mirror on it up there!
  • WW1 determined by chemists, WW2 by physicists, WW3 by ?  (biologists, programmers)
  • They have developed a pain vaccine.  Pain is from inflammation response.  The vaccine can remove that for 30 days
  • DARPA is the ultimate seed fund