In the world of startups and investing and ideas, things are always chaotic and fluid, and as such a key skill is to somehow cut through the noise and find focus.  That's on a micro level, like what do I do for the next five minutes, and on the macro level, like am I (or are we) heading in the right direction? This may be true in other fields, but I find it to be especially true on the investing side, where situations are undefined, and there are infinity ideas and directions to explore.  On the operating side, things are slightly more bounded, but there are always large questions about direction and focus. So I find myself spending a lot of personal time working on my own mindstate, and trying to find ways to help with this challenge.  One thing I have tried this year is to use a Volt Planner, which helps you structure goals on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I have found this to be incredibly useful, and I can write more that later.  One immediate observation from using the Volt Planner is that I emerge from each session (on Monday each week) feeling a rush of energy, paired with an increased sense of focus.  It's really nice. And that energy is really the important thing.  It's the foundation for all of the moments and decisions that happen, all day every day.  The more of it you have, the better.  It's foundational. So a little more broadly, I've been thinking about how important it is to optimize for energy in life.  I think that is some combination of exercise, diet, sleep, and writing.  Maybe that's obvious, and the first three are things that anyone would tell you are good for your health.  But "health", while obviously good and positive (especially compared to major injury or illness) is a little abstract, and for me at least, a little hard to motivate around on an everyday basis.  I suspect that will change as I get older. Energy is the foundation of doing anything, and it feels like there are compounding / exponential results to having more.  I am not saying I have figured out how to really rally myself behind this idea on a consistent basis (which is why I'm writing this), but I think it's worth figuring out which activities give you more energy and which suck it away.  Worth figuring out.

I had lunch yesterday with someone who has been investing in the crypto / token space recently -- having pooled together a small "fund" from friends and family.  It's a short-term vehicle (like, 6 months), and a large part of the goal is simply to become hands-on familiar / capable investing in token sales / ICOs, and dealing with issues like custody and security.  At least for the moment, there are so many odd aspects of working in this space (handling private keys, exchanging tokens on various exchanges, downloading wallet software, etc.) that actually a large part of the value that a fund manager offers is handling all of that stuff.  Over time, this will change, as infrastructure and new financial vehicles (e.g., ETFs) come to market. But for now, it's actually really complicated and hard to do this stuff, and there's no better way to learn it than by doing it. More generally, I just love the idea of learning-by-doing.  It's the best way. Right after college, when I thought I wanted to be an architect, the first thing I did was get a job with a construction company, building homes.  I spent the better part of a year shoveling gravel, jack-hammering old driveways, and sealing foundations, but I also got to do some more interesting / complicated building work over time.  My reasoning at the time was that I didn't want to be that jackass, know-it-all architect (believe me, that's often how they are perceived by builders) who didn't know how things really worked at the ground level. Same thing when I got into programming.  There are two really beautiful things about learning to code: 1) you can learn everything you need to learn at basically zero cost online, and 2) you're making as you're learning.   I think that's great as a learning mechanism, and it's also really great in terms of motivation.  Nothing like wanting to finish making something as motivation for learning how to do it! Learning-by-doing is harder to do when it comes to investing.  Because, of course, in order to invest, first and foremost you need capital.  But it doesn't need to be a lot, especially in the cryptocurrency space.  So it's possible to learn to be an early stage tech investor by actually doing it.  I think that's pretty exciting. (as always,

We recently had our daughter's birthday party, and we held it in a public park near our house, where there's an old parks department building.  The sun plan was outdoors, but of course it thunderstormed and we didn't have a back-up plan.  So we called an audible and asked if we could use the back room in the parks building and they said sure. So we ended up with a bunch of kids running around a dank, old, concrete room (1950's style - mostly unchanged since then), eating pizza and cake and being entertained by a (wonderful, thank god) balloon twister, in the pouring rain.  It was dead simple, and cheap.  And the kids had a *fabulous* time.  Our daughter was thrilled; one of her friends said it was the best party ever. It just goes to show that sometimes, simple is best (or at least, can be great).

In the world of startups and investing and ideas, things are always chaotic and fluid, and as such a key skill is to somehow cut through the noise and find focus.  That's on a micro level, like what do I do for the next five minutes, and on the macro level, like am I (or are we) heading in the right direction? This may be true in other fields, but I find it to be especially true on the investing side, where situations are undefined, and there are infinity ideas and directions to explore.  On the operating side, things are slightly more bounded, but there are always large questions about direction and focus. So I find myself spending a lot of personal time working on my own mindstate, and trying to find ways to help with this challenge.  One thing I have tried this year is to use a Volt Planner, which helps you structure goals on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I have found this to be incredibly useful, and I can write more that later.  One immediate observation from using the Volt Planner is that I emerge from each session (on Monday each week) feeling a rush of energy, paired with an increased sense of focus.  It's really nice. And that energy is really the important thing.  It's the foundation for all of the moments and decisions that happen, all day every day.  The more of it you have, the better.  It's foundational. So a little more broadly, I've been thinking about how important it is to optimize for energy in life.  I think that is some combination of exercise, diet, sleep, and writing.  Maybe that's obvious, and the first three are things that anyone would tell you are good for your health.  But "health", while obviously good and positive (especially compared to major injury or illness) is a little abstract, and for me at least, a little hard to motivate around on an everyday basis.  I suspect that will change as I get older. Energy is the foundation of doing anything, and it feels like there are compounding / exponential results to having more.  I am not saying I have figured out how to really rally myself behind this idea on a consistent basis (which is why I'm writing this), but I think it's worth figuring out which activities give you more energy and which suck it away.  Worth figuring out.

I had lunch yesterday with someone who has been investing in the crypto / token space recently -- having pooled together a small "fund" from friends and family.  It's a short-term vehicle (like, 6 months), and a large part of the goal is simply to become hands-on familiar / capable investing in token sales / ICOs, and dealing with issues like custody and security.  At least for the moment, there are so many odd aspects of working in this space (handling private keys, exchanging tokens on various exchanges, downloading wallet software, etc.) that actually a large part of the value that a fund manager offers is handling all of that stuff.  Over time, this will change, as infrastructure and new financial vehicles (e.g., ETFs) come to market. But for now, it's actually really complicated and hard to do this stuff, and there's no better way to learn it than by doing it. More generally, I just love the idea of learning-by-doing.  It's the best way. Right after college, when I thought I wanted to be an architect, the first thing I did was get a job with a construction company, building homes.  I spent the better part of a year shoveling gravel, jack-hammering old driveways, and sealing foundations, but I also got to do some more interesting / complicated building work over time.  My reasoning at the time was that I didn't want to be that jackass, know-it-all architect (believe me, that's often how they are perceived by builders) who didn't know how things really worked at the ground level. Same thing when I got into programming.  There are two really beautiful things about learning to code: 1) you can learn everything you need to learn at basically zero cost online, and 2) you're making as you're learning.   I think that's great as a learning mechanism, and it's also really great in terms of motivation.  Nothing like wanting to finish making something as motivation for learning how to do it! Learning-by-doing is harder to do when it comes to investing.  Because, of course, in order to invest, first and foremost you need capital.  But it doesn't need to be a lot, especially in the cryptocurrency space.  So it's possible to learn to be an early stage tech investor by actually doing it.  I think that's pretty exciting. (as always,

We recently had our daughter's birthday party, and we held it in a public park near our house, where there's an old parks department building.  The sun plan was outdoors, but of course it thunderstormed and we didn't have a back-up plan.  So we called an audible and asked if we could use the back room in the parks building and they said sure. So we ended up with a bunch of kids running around a dank, old, concrete room (1950's style - mostly unchanged since then), eating pizza and cake and being entertained by a (wonderful, thank god) balloon twister, in the pouring rain.  It was dead simple, and cheap.  And the kids had a *fabulous* time.  Our daughter was thrilled; one of her friends said it was the best party ever. It just goes to show that sometimes, simple is best (or at least, can be great).