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Some books only have 1-2 ideas, and then 150 pages of words explaining why they’re right.

For these ones, it’s best to just get the idea and ditch the unnecessary words.

You can learn more reading the same book 10 times, rather than 10 different books.

Which book could you read 10 times? Let me know!

I’m a fan of Naval Ravikant, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor.

He’s been dubbed ‘The Angel Philosopher’ due to being an angel investor in companies like Twitter, Uber, and Yammer, and his penchant for sharing words of wisdom through his Twitter feed and through interviews on topics such as startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness.

Given Naval hasn’t written a book summarising his world view, it can be hard to find and synthesise his work.

Enter ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’, a free to download curation of Naval’s top tweets, podcasts, essays, and interviews over the past decade.

I’m grateful to Eric Jorgenson for taking the time to collate this free resource, as it’s a massive shortcut to help people access and understand Naval’s unique perspective.

If you end up reading it, let me know what you think.

I always forget how painful it is to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture.

Luckily… I’m reminded of it every couple of years or so via a new bookcase or sofa.

People often marvel at how IKEA can offer low prices because of their 1) flat-pack designs, and 2) efficient shipping.

However, I think IKEA’s real secret sauce is convincing their customers to do the hardest part of the job, and simultaneously making them feel good about it.

My bet is an IKEA sofa is just as expensive as a traditional sofa once you take into account the customer’s labour.

The magic question, for IKEA and for business models, is: who’s doing the work?

Maru and I have recently started reading a book called ‘How Not to Die’ by Dr. Michael Greger.

Slightly morbid title, I know, but it came highly recommended to us by a physician friend, so we thought we’d give it a try.

The basic premise is this: Almost all healthcare and medicine in the modern world is focused on solving problems rather than preventing or reversing them. The simplest and easiest way to reducing the risk of premature death is changing our diet and lifestyle.

This message isn’t new, but although we know a healthy diet and lifestyle are important, we’re often lacking the practical manual defining “what’s good”.

Once we finish the book, and make some changes of our own, I’ll report back with what we’re doing differently.

Later this week, I’m going to share a song: one of my own.

Back in April, during the middle of the UK’s lockdown, I set myself a goal of learning how to write and record a song at home.

I was nervous. I had piano lessons when I was young, and was in a number of cheeky pop-punk bands during high-school, but it had almost been 10 years since I seriously tried to write a song. Why the urge to do it now? Would I be able to do it? And of course, would it be total garbage?

So I made a commitment to myself: just have fun with the process, and find joy in experimenting with different sounds, beats, tones, and grooves.

I started with YouTube tutorials, and then added weekly lessons from producer, Jaye Locke, via his Patreon.

6 months on, and I’m finally feeling ready to share something.

Although the song still has many imperfections, it’s a reflection of where I’m at in my journey. And sharing my journey, blemishes and all, is what I do with this blog, so I’m going to do the same with my music.

Stay tuned!

If you stare at something forever, there’s no way to see it differently.

Distance from our work, from our problems, and from our own thoughts, can be the necessary to find a breakthrough.

Bamboo spends 5 years developing a strong set of roots, and then shoot 25 metres into the air in 6 weeks.

“Overnight success” is almost always preceded by years of deliberate, painstaking, and patient work.

Chocolate helped me understand debt.

When I was a kid, Cadbury Chocolates had a programme to help children fundraise for sport, music, and art extracurriculars.

You’d get a box of 20 chocolate bars, and you’d sell them to friends for $2 each.

No money had to be paid upfront. With the $40 earned, you’d have to give $20 back to school to cover the cost of the chocolates.

On those long, hot summer afternoons, the box of chocolate bars sitting beside my school bag were too much of a temptation.

I’d think to myself, “One bar, it can’t hurt, it’s only $2.”

But by the end of the week, I’d be 5 bars down, and $10 in debt to my own fundraising goal.

Mum wasn’t pleased when she found out, and the $10-sized hold in my pocket money allowance was my lesson in taking responsibility for my actions.

It’s a simple example, and not reflective of debt-in-the-real-world, but the lesson has stuck with me. Debt may be easy to take on, but there’s always a price down the line.

So unless the debt helps acquire something that will appreciate in value—such as a house or education—it’s usually something to avoid.

Today I’m re-sharing a well known metaphor—the origin of which is often attributed to author, Nora Roberts.

Everything you’re juggling right now—job, kids, health, finances, friends, mental health—is either a glass ball or a rubber ball.

Inevitably, when life get hectic, some of these balls will drop. The rubber ones, they’ll bounce back up. But the glass balls, they’ll break, scuff, or scratch.

Knowing the difference between the rubber and glass balls helps us focus on what’s most important.

“Gimme a second, let me write that idea down before I forget it.”

Is this necessary?

If it’s a great idea, it’ll come back.

If it doesn’t, it probably wasn’t a great idea.

What are the small, unimportant things you do that compound into incredible results after many years of dedication?

Brushing your teeth. Eating your veggies. Stretching. Reading. Telling your loved ones how much they mean to you every day.

Each of us have our own recipe of actions where their immediate impact is imperceptible, but their cumulative impact is undeniable over time.

All improvements in human history have been a result of someone saying, “This is stupid. We can do better.”

The critic with a willingness to act is a powerful force.

A friend of mine had a problem: her flatmates would come home every day and place their winter coats on the back of the dining room chairs.

Their dinner, study, and work table was a coat rack.

So one afternoon, she placed 3 hooks along the wall next to the front door.

The coats now had a new home, and the dining table was decluttered.

3 hooks were able to change a habit.

Small changes—or well placed nudges—can have a significant impact on the way we work and the way we live.

In startup circles, investors often talk about investing in founders, not just ideas.

Why?

Well, in a world where ideas are cheap, execution is everything.

Excellent founders can take a “paper idea”, and make it a reality.

Founders face a challenge in the fundraising process: building trust with potential investors.

With initial pitch meetings sometimes only lasting for 20-30 minutes, it can be hard to give investors the confidence required to invest. And with most of the time spent discussing the idea, the market, the opportunities, and the risks, there is little time left to talk about the founder’s philosophy, approach, and values.

So following on from yesterday’s post about my aspiration to start a company in the future, I realised something: this blog is a good representation of how I’d approach running a company.

Through my posts, I document how I solve problems, I use it to explore my own values, and I also use it to confront my own shortcomings and insecurities.

A potential investor won’t read every post, but my hope is 10-15 minutes spent with these posts will give them an insight they may not get via a more formal meeting.

When I eventually send this blog post to a potential investor, who knows how many years I’ll have been daily writing. And who knows what I will have learnt between now and then.

What I do know, however, is those learnings will have been shared here, and I’ll have turned up each day with a dedication to keep getting better.