A collection of mental models and ways to think about the world that I find useful in my daily life.
Physics teaches you how reality works, rational investing teaches you how the society works.
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it buys freedom. And freedom can buy happiness. Owning your time can be the most valuable asset you can have.
Time is the most scarce resource you have. Use it wisely!
Life is hard, and it is not fair. The sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be, but it is worth every second of it.
Plan for the worst and hope for the best, so even if the worst happens you can still sleep at night.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
You are one book away from becoming an expert and improving your skills.
Dedicating money on your knowledge and improving your skills has a compounding effect. Do not hesitate to spend money on making yourself more attractive to the market (and society overall). It may bail you out in times of crisis.
Write a diary and meditate. It will help you understand yourself better and make better decisions. Like saving and investing your money, these are habits that compound.
Some habits are compounding, and you need to persist to see the results. If you think they are good for you, stick to them.
Purchasing your own domain name is like getting your own personal piece of the Internet. It is like buying a piece of land in the digital world. It gives you ownership over your email address, your website, and all the services that you build, removing the vendor lock-in that we see in current web2.0 platform and services.
On investing, inflation and generational inequalities: The world has been playing monopoly for hours and you just joined the game. No wonder why everything seems more challenging and expensive, everyone has hotels in the board, and you keep having to pay for them. The sooner you enter the game, the better off you’ll be! This is why baby boomers (our parents) had easier access to housing and jobs, and why millennials are struggling to get a foot in the door. The game has been going on for a while, and the rules are not fair for everyone. It is not fair, so the best you can do is to learn the rules and play the game as best as you can with the card that you’ve been given.
Find your purpose in life. Purpose will drive your happiness and help you make the right decisions. Let this be have kids and make a family, solve a problem that you are passionate about, or reach financial independence. Find your purpose and let it guide you.
“Invert, always invert”. Sometimes the hard problems in life need to be solved from the other side.
The man who needs a new machine tool and hasn’t bought it is already paying for it. If you don’t have the right thinking tools, you and the people you seek to help are already suffering from your easily removable ignorance.
When thinking about your habits, goals, and time management always subtract before adding.
When spending money in something, do not think on their absolute price, but the percentage of your monthly (or yearly) salary of what you are buying, its utility in time, and the time required to amortise it. This will help you make better buying decisions, to not to hesitate to spend money on important things, and not to waste time on trying to find discounts or bargains when it only represents a small percentage of your total income.
It’s not bringing in the new ideas what is hard. It’s getting rid of the old ones.
You and your research. You should be working in the niche from your field where you can have the higher impact.
Always be the “devil advocate” and the one that tries to destroy your own ideas to make them more robust.
The skills that you stop using are lost. Try to create habits that help you keep and improve the skills that you want to maintain.
Try to always increase the number of people that you are giving value to every year, and identify the blue oceans (all industries still have blue oceans and problems to solve, but we focus on the blood).
Identify the problem and work to solve it, but don’t fall in love with the solution.
Most ideas are bad and a huge amount of “work” is useless. You can excel just by pointing it out. People will gladly commit to weeks of extra work instead of calling bullshit and risk being seen as an asshole. Develop the skill of speaking up with kindness.
A happy life is determined by is purposed. Assign some purpose to everything that you do, and love is the ultimate purpose for everything: love for your work, love for your family, or the love of doing things right.
Spend more time with fewer people.