In 1902, Remington advertised its breakthrough appliance — the first commercial typewriter — with the following slogan: “To save time is to lengthen life.”
It’s a powerful phrase, and for years, Richard Polt thought it was true. Polt is a typewriter collector, but he’s also a professor of philosophy. Eventually, he came to the following realization: “The more time you save, the more time you waste, because you’re doing things that are only a means to an end.”
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Three weeks into studying abroad in the U.S., I started missing German bread. I love American food, but when it comes to “Brotzeit,” those pale, floppy slices of toast just don’t cut it.
I wanted a loaf. I wanted rye. I wanted the sour, moist-yet-crunchy freshness only German bread can provide. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find.
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and so eventually, I became desperate enough to decide to bake my own. Since my baking skills are on par with a nine-year-old, this was a much larger-scale effort than it might seem.
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It’s a myth that we only use 20% of our brain, but I can see why it’s popular: It’s the perfect excuse.
How can I excel if the tools I need to do so are in a place I can’t access? If only there was a miracle drug…
In reality, even a single task can easily demand 35% of your brain’s capacity, and, over the course of a single day, most of us will access all 100% — just different areas at different times.
Still, many a movie has been made about said miracle drug, including Limitless, a film starring Bradley Cooper as a hard-up writer. After he discovers NZT-48 and finishes his book in a day, he makes millions in the stock market and enjoys his newfound life as a genius — until the side effects kick in.
It’s a nice movie to fuel our daydreams, but it also makes for a strong wake-up call because, as Lars van der Peet says in a video essay about the film, “it explores something we are all aware of: The perception that we are unfulfilled potential; that we aren’t doing everything we could and should be doing.”
Our frustration with our brains shows on many levels: You might be angry that you can’t remember what you wanted to say, feel depressed after being stuck on an important project for months, or watch movies like Limitless in lack of motivation to write your novel.
As understandable as these frustrations are, they are born out of misconception: Our brain was never something we were meant to have 100% control over — it is simply a partner we must work with.
There is no exact science on how much of our brain activity happens “below the surface,” but chances are it’s a lot more than what we process and register in a conscious manner. Whether it’s 80–20 or 60–40, the point is: Your subconscious is much larger than your consciousness, and you can’t force everything into the realm of awareness. Even if you could, you’d probably feel overwhelmed and wouldn’t be able to synthesize the information in a useful way.
Your brain is an iceberg. Most of it is under water. It is not your job to try and turn it upside down. Your job is to navigate whatever lies above sea level. Even the small terrain up top is constantly changing, and in order to navigate it well, you must trust in whichever part the iceberg decides to reveal.
“Make your unconscious your ally instead of your enemy,” Lars says.
Accept that creativity requires breaks, and that in those breaks, your subconscious is working for you, not against you. Your mind can process even when you don’t, and usually, it does its best work while you do none at all.
Organize your surroundings. Give your brain every chance to structure what it sends you by structuring your sensory input. A brain fed with views of a chaotic room will only feed you chaotic thoughts. Clarity on the outside, however, breeds clarity within.
Make new connections. Structure and routine lead to insights on the regular, but if they become too rigid, only a change of pace can provide stimulation. In the long run, your brain can only give you new ideas if you give it new input.
Finally, never let a good idea go to waste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scrambled for my phone to make a note, and I expect myself to do so many times in the future. Inspiration can strike anywhere, anytime, and it is foolish to think it’ll repeat the favor just because you’re too lazy to take note right now.
Towards the end of the movie Limitless, the main character realizes he never needed a smart-drug in the first place: His limitations were mostly self-imposed. Instead of blaming his brain, he starts using it.
Your brain is not you. It will never define who you are, and yet, you must live with it every day. Treat your brain like a partner: You don’t control them, but together, you can achieve a whole lot.
In that sense, I think the real message of the movie is this: We have everything we need. We just have to work with it rather than against it.
In seventh grade, my history teacher asked if anyone knew what the huge, fancy, painting-like carpets covering the walls of the Palace of Versailles were called. His question was met with silence and puzzled faces.
Eventually, I raised my hand and said: “Gobelin.” My teacher was thrilled. So was my neighbor. “Ooooh, go-be-liiiiin, Mr. I-know-everything.” The class erupted in laughter.
There’s something to be said here about shaming intellectuals and about a system in which being fun is cooler than being smart, but at 13 I was oblivious to both of those things — so I too erupted in laughter. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?
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Water is balance. That’s why Bruce Lee’s “Be Water” analogy is popular to this day. His metaphor captures the balance we all need in our lives.
Water doesn’t look left or right. It just makes its way however it can. It adapts, but it always perseveres. Even at rest, water still slowly eats away at its surroundings. In Striking Thoughts, Lee expanded on the short recorded clip:
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Water is a slow judge. It asks: “What shape do I need to be?” It conforms to whatever it’s in touch with, one drop at a time. However, you can only ask that question if you come to any situation with an empty mind.
Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash.
Despite having no form on its own, despite being infinitely soft, water is one of, if not the strongest element on earth. It can trickle, it can flow, or it can rage. If water drops on a stone long enough, it’ll hollow it out. If water forms a wave the size of a skyscraper, it can crush an entire ship. Water does whatever it needs to do to keep moving forward.
Water may seem to move in contradiction, even uphill, but it chooses any way open to it so that it may reach the sea. It may flow swiftly or it may flow slowly, but its purpose is inexorable, its destiny sure. Be water, my friend.
Thanks to its never-ending balancing act, water always finds its way back home. Sooner or later, it will reach the sea. You too should keep flowing. Have plans, but don’t force them on life.
Life is unpredictable. Sometimes, it throws stones in your way. Sometimes, a new door opens up. When you’re water, you’re ready for either one of the two. Whatever happens tomorrow, you’ll adapt.
When the universe says “Yes,” go. Flow downhill. Move fast. Leap. Ride the momentum, take the opportunity, and make the most of your advantage.
When the universe says “No,” listen. Take a different path. Adjust. Persist slowly instead of failing spectacularly.
When a crisis hits, summon your strength. Form a towering wave. And when the sea is calm, enjoy the cruise and take in the view.
When you’re water, you’re always exactly where you’re meant to be.
Be water, my friend.
All relationship problems are communication problems.
Tim says: “The window is open.”
Maya says: “I’m not your butler.”
Whoa! How did such a small interaction go so wrong? Tim said just four words, but, immediately, his girlfriend felt offended. Sadly, exchanges like this happen millions of times every single day. I’m sure you’ve had one.
Maybe, Tim just thought out loud as he noticed the window being open. Maybe, he wanted Maya to notice the birds singing outside or tell her that he opened it for a reason. Or, he really did want Maya to close the window.
Unfortunately, Maya responded so fast that she didn’t have time to consider all these options. Her heuristic-driven brain jumped to one conclusion when it should have thought about many.
We all do this. We speak before we think, and we damage our relationships in the process. Today, Maya snubs Tim. Tomorrow, Tim cuts Maya off. And the day after tomorrow, Tim and Maya break up. How sad and unnecessary.
If Tim and Maya had taken some time to talk about how they communicate, they might still be together. This is called meta-communication, and it makes perfect sense: If all relationship problems are communication problems, improving your communication will make most of your problems go away.
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In January 2018, my crypto portfolio showed a value of $350,000. At the time, I had invested about $20,000, making the multiple a cool 18x.
A smart man might have cashed out some of that money; a genius would’ve cashed out all of it. I was neither smart nor a genius, and so I watched that $350,000 shrink into $30,000 at its lowest point over the last 2.5 years — all while continuing to invest. My portfolio has recovered a good bit since then, but it’s still far from its all-time high.
The only way to learn how to act in a financial bubble is to live through one. You can read all the psychology and trading books in the world — how you’ll handle the real experience is written into none of them.
Me, I had to go up and down to learn. I don’t regret anything. I had a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal in an extremely compressed period of time. Some of my initial theses crumbled to bits, but I believe others are still valid.
I wanted to take enough time to reflect on this story. It’s been three years since I first began studying cryptocurrency, and today is a good day to tell it.
Here are 9 lessons I learned about money and investing.
Disclaimer: I’m not a financial advisor. This post recounts my personal experience as an individual. If anything, it’s probably a tutorial on what not to do rather than what to do.
I guess technically, I didn’t “lose” $300,000 — because you can’t lose something you don’t have. The money never hit my bank account.
To this day, I haven’t cashed out a single cent. I’ve sold assets to buy others, but whether at a profit or at a loss, I always used that money to buy more assets. That’s a fine strategy to have, I think. They always say, “Treat the money you invest as if it’s gone forever.”
On some days, however, I pretended to have that money. I felt and behaved like someone with $300,000 in the bank. That’s not good, because that’s what leads to feelings of remorse when you later do realize that, actually, you don’t have the money. Never count your chickens before they hatch.
In Germany, any gains from cryptocurrency you held for more than a year are tax-free. That’s a tempting promise, and so my plan from day one was to hold everything for at least a year.
(Un)fortunately, the profits came and went much quicker than that. Paying taxes on $100,000 in profits is a lot better than having no profits to pay taxes on.
But the flip side of the German tax rule — any gains you make from selling within a year become part of your overall taxable income (and thus drag up your tax bill for everything else) — clouded my thinking.
You have to take profits when there are profits to take, period.
Looking at old screenshots, I realized my portfolio hit $100,000 on December 23rd, 2017. On January 7th, 2018, it hit $300,000. When your portfolio triples in two weeks, it’s probably a good time to take profits.
For months, I spent 2–3 hours every day studying blockchain technology and the crypto markets. There were enough signs. I listened to smart Youtubers every day. I distinctly remember one of them pointing at a vertical chart, saying: “Anyone who doesn’t tell you to take profits on a chart like this is probably trying to scam you.” But since it didn’t align with my plan, I didn’t understand the urgency of taking profits. And so I never took them.
In hindsight, I would always take some profits when times are so good you know they won’t last. Planned or not, it’ll still give you peace of mind.
My investing philosophy is compounding every dollar I can spare indefinitely. I’m not in a rush, and I know the biggest jumps on an exponential curve happen at the very end of said curve.
That said, you should always have a contingency plan. In my case, “What do I do if my portfolio grows a lot before I hit the tax-free holding period?” I never asked myself that question, and that’s why I didn’t have an exit plan to follow.
The best time to come up with an exit plan is before you even invest. “If this grows 100% in a year, I’ll sell 50%.” Making these plans won’t guarantee you execute them, but if you don’t have them, you definitely won’t do anything.
Most people are frustrated with the markets because they want them to reflect reality — but that’s not what markets do.
The stock market is a discounted version of the expected future economy. The crypto market reflects the expected value of future blockchain networks. When people have bleak expectations, prices are bleak too. And when people are euphoric, so are the prices — regardless of our current reality.
On any given day, some crypto networks are grossly undervalued, whereas others are worth more than they should be. The same applies to companies in the stock market.
Numbers rarely reflect reality — but that doesn’t matter as long as you adapt to what the numbers are. Don’t let cognitive dissonance get it in the way of managing your money as best as you can.
In finance movies like Wall Street, there is often the question of, “What’s your number?” Allegedly, everyone in the business has an exact sum of money for which they would retire and quit competing in the markets.
Unlike trading, wealth is not a zero-sum game. The things you create can add value to everyone’s benefit and at nobody’s expense. That said, a number can still be your guiding star in a positive sense. My number is $10 million.
Naval Ravikant is a thinker, philosopher, and investor. His net worth could be anything from $4 million to $4 billion, but I’ll never forget him saying, “Every time you see one of these billionaire founders giving away to a hospital or whatever, you know they overshot. They didn’t need that much money.”
$10 million will pay for the lifestyle I want to have until I die. It’s a lofty goal, but it’s also comforting. I don’t need a $600 million yacht. I need freedom.
The good thing about determining your number is you know exactly where you’re headed. Nothing else matters. It’s much easier to take profits — or stomach losing money if you don’t — when you know your long-term goal.
One of the conclusions I drew after hundreds of hours of research is that, yes, blockchain has lots of potential, but, like the internet in 1993, the mountain of unlocking it still lies ahead of us.
It’ll take years to build the infrastructure upon which good blockchain apps can attract a large share of the population, and there are many ways the effort could fail. If it works, however, the rising tide will lift all boats.
Amazon’s stock went down 95% after the dot-com bubble burst — from $100 to $5. 20 years later, the drop looks like a blip on the radar, and one share costs $3,000.
At the end of the day, what matters in investing is taking out more money than you put in. Right now, I’m down 20%. I used to be up 1,650%. Will both look like a rounding error in two decades? I don’t know, but I believe in the industry, and that’s why I’m still in the game.
When I tell people that I invest most of my money into cryptocurrency, they often tell me I’m insane. I think investing in risky assets when you’re young is actually quite reasonable.
When you’re young, you don’t need a lot of money. You still have the energy to recover from financial setbacks. And every extra day of being invested early will add exponentially to your compounding returns decades later.
I want to buy my riskiest assets first, not last. If I lose $100,000 now, I can recover. If I’m late to the party, most of the returns will have already happened. The more my crypto portfolio grows, the more I’ll invest into stocks. Then, I can look at index funds, real estate, and so on.
The older you get, the less risk you should take on in exchange for safer returns. Start bold, grow more timid. You don’t want to bet the house when you’re 60. You want to bet it while you can still build another house.
As my friends are starting their first jobs out of college, some go from earning $0 to earning $4,000. I often tell them: How you spend your first paycheck will determine how you spend every paycheck.
It only takes one month of spending it all to get used to spending it all. Five years later, you’ll still have $0 invested, and you’ll have lost the last five years of your exponential growth curve — the years with the biggest returns.
Even if you don’t earn a lot, chances are, you can take away 10% and it won’t hurt at all. Maybe even 30%. Or 50%. However much you can put aside without feeling pinched, do it and do it now.
Whether you first save for a while or invest all of it right away, the only way to learn to manage and grow your money is to commit some of it to that end.
In 1997, 14-year-old Nathan Zohner used the science fair to alert his fellow citizens of a deadly, dangerous chemical.
In his report Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer, Nathan outlined all the alarming characteristics of the colorless, odorless, tasteless compound — DHMO for short — which kills thousands of Americans each year:
After giving his presentation, Nathan asked 50 fellow students what should be done. 43 — a staggering 86% — voted to ban DHMO from school grounds.
There was only one problem: Dihydrogen monoxide is water.
Every day, people use facts to deceive you because you let them.
Life is hard. We all get fooled six ways from Sunday. People lie to us, we miscommunicate, and it’s impossible to always correctly read other people’s feelings. But facts? If we let facts deceive us, that’s on us.
When it’s hard to be right, there is nothing wrong with being wrong. But when it only takes a few minutes or even seconds to verify, learn, and educate yourself, choosing to stay ignorant is really just that: A decision — and likely one for which you’ll get the bill sooner rather than later.
If you know a little Latin, Greek, or simply pay attention in chemistry class, the term “dihydrogen monoxide” is easy to deconstruct. “Di” means “two,” hydrogen is an element (H on the periodic table), “mono” means one and “oxide” means oxidized — an oxygen atom (O on the periodic table) has been added. Two hydrogens, once oxidized. Two Hs, one O. H2O. Water.
When Nathan ran his experiment “How Gullible Are We?” in 1997, people didn’t have smartphones. They did, however, go to chemistry class. Nathan’s classmates had parents working in the sector, and they all had chemistry books. They even could have asked their teacher: “What’s dihydrogen monoxide?” But none of them did.
In his final report, Nathan wrote he was shocked that so many of his friends were so easily fooled. “I don’t feel comfortable with the current level of understanding,” he said. James Glassman, who wrote about the incident in the Washington Post, even coined the term “Zohnerism” to describe someone using a fact to mislead people.
Today, we have smartphones. We have a library larger than Alexandria’s in our pocket and finding any page from any book takes mere seconds. Yet, we still get “zohnered” on a daily basis. We allow ourselves to be.
“Too much sugar is bad for you. Don’t eat any sugar.” Yes, too much sugar is bad, but the corollary isn’t to stop eating it altogether. Carbohydrates are the body’s main source of energy, and they’re all broken down into various forms of sugar. It’s a vital component of a functioning metabolism. Plus, each body has its own nuances, so cutting out sugar without more research could actually be bad for you. But if I’m selling a no-sugar diet, who cares, right?
You care. You should. And that’s why it’s your job to verify such claims. It’s easy to spin something correct in a way that sends you in whatever direction the manipulator wants to send you. The only solution is to work hard in order to not let yourself be manipulated:
The dihydrogen monoxide play has been used many times to point people at their own ignorance. A 1994 version created by Craig Jackson petitions people to “act now” before ending on a truthful yet tongue-in-cheek note: “What you don’t know can hurt you and others throughout the world.”
Richard Feynman received the Nobel prize in physics, but he started his journey as a curious boy, just like Nathan Zohner. Like Einstein, he believed inquisitiveness could solve any problem, and so he always spoke in simple terms — to get people interested in science.
He also said the following, which still rings true today: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Your parents aren’t coming to save you. They’ve done that often enough. Or maybe never at all. Either way, they’re not coming now. You’re all grown. Maybe not grown up, but grown. They’ve got their own stuff to take care of.
Your best friend isn’t coming to save you. He’ll always love you, but he’s knee deep in the same shit you’re in. Work. Love. Health. Staying sane. You know, the usual. You should check in with him some time. But don’t expect him to save you.
Your boss is not coming to save you. Your boss is trying to cover her ass right now. She’s afraid she might get fired. She’s fighting hard to keep everyone on the team. She’s worried about you, but she has no time to save you.
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There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who do too little to accomplish their dreams and those who do too much.
Usually, self-help talks to the former. “Your dreams are urgent! Who knows how long you’ll have? Don’t wait! Start now! Go, go, go!”
I know because I have written many of those posts. I wrote these articles because “Go, go, go!” was the message I needed to hear to finally start on my own journey.
It took me 23 years to realize no one was coming to save me. That I had to build what I wanted with my own hands. That only I could give meaning to my life.
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