Business & Money

I’ve happened upon a similarity between COVID and markets.

In a vacuum, you’d never say you hope to contract a disease or virus. But at some point, it sort of became a good thing to have already had COVID. If you already had it in the past, perhaps you don’t need to be as cautious about things going forward given you already have the antibodies (whether or not that’s actually the case, I have no idea, but that’s not the point). So now you can go out, see friends, and even travel without as much stress.

Similarly, in markets, you might say COVID was a good thing. With an incredible amount of government stimulus, increased savings rates, and accelerated trends toward digitization, markets are loftier now than they might have otherwise been.

You might say that central bank intervention is the new herd immunity.

Human Progress

What brings about progress or change? From a Marxist perspective, the answer has to do with materialism. Not the colloquial meaning of materialism as an interest in material things, but materialism in the sense that change comes about due to changes in material conditions. Further, Marxist thought chooses materialism over idealism, in which change comes about due to changing ideals or beliefs.

Here’s an oversimplified, though hopefully helpful, example.

I have a hypothetical friend who lives here in New York City. This friend recently moved in with his girlfriend. If I ask why he decided to take that step, he might offer a materialist or idealist answer.

The idealist answer might be because he is in love, and when people are in love, they often move in together as the step before getting engaged. So moving in together is simply a manifestation of how they feel about one another and a logical evolution toward marriage.

The materialist explanation is less fluffy. Splitting rent is more cost-effective than living alone, especially given that one of their apartments is usually empty. Further, given how much time they spend together, they also save on cabs and subway rides traveling to and from each other’s homes. In short, living together is an economic and pragmatic decision.

Of course, this example is rather trivial. The point here, though, is that idealist explanations are often accepted as true when there are more materialistic forces at play. And idealist explanations are often fraught with contradictions.

Take the founding of the United States as an example. From an idealist perspective, you somehow have to grapple with vehemently opposed ideas in the same breath. The country was founded on principles of freedom, liberty, and justice for all, meanwhile, native populations were being extinguished and forcibly removed from their land. All men were created equal, but of course, African slaves were an exception. It doesn’t make sense that these ideas exist simultaneously in the same people.

It’s more likely that slavery and the appropriation of native lands were selfish and economically driven behaviors. Settlers were more concerned with getting rich than upholding lofty ideals.

Are there areas in your life in which you’ve accepted idealist explanations as true that might warrant further consideration?

Philosophy

There is a Zen koan that goes as follows.

A glass of water is on the table. The master asks the question,

“What is that?”

The students say repeatedly what they think it is in different ways.

“A glass.”

“Water.”

‘”A glass of water.” Eventually, the students say,

“Tell us master, what is that?” In response, the master picks up the glass and drinks it.

My Latest Discovery

Hypnosis gets a weird wrap in movies and popular culture. But my recent conversation with Daniel Ryan, a renowned hypnotherapist and past life regression therapist, has been one of my favorites on the podcast so far. I highly recommend checking it out!

Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport, has long been on my short-list of books to read, but for some reason, it kept getting bumped downward. Earlier this year, I finally picked it up as an attempt to be more thoughtful about how I use digital technologies. But what started as a narrow analysis based on one book, ended with picking up a number of other books and expanding my scope of analysis. These 10 reflections are the result of that process.

There is more work to be done here, but this shall suffice as a starting point…

Table of Contents:

1. Ecology of human experience

2. Sovereignty of mind

3. Mindfulness

4. What NOT to pay attention to

5. Stoicism

6. What TO pay attention to

7. Time

8. Money

9. Space

10. How

Reflection #1: A human life is an ecological system

I once heard a story about how a plot of land was restored in South Africa. The area had previously been filled with cattle farms, but the farms went bust due to over-grazing and tough terrain. As such, the land was in shambles. That is, until the owners came into contact with a prominent ecologist. The ecologist told the landowners that they must partner with the land if they are to restore it. He showed them how to pack scrub into low points on the land to absorb runoff and abate erosion. As they did that, grasses began to grow, encouraging wildebeest and waterbuck to return. With those came flocks of birds, furthering the spread of plant life. Eventually, baboons, lions, leopards, rhinos, and elephants all began to thrive. Today, the land is home to the Londo Lozi Wildlife Reserve, one of the most beautiful reserves on earth.

The water, plants, animals, topography, climate, all of it is connected. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that human life is much the same. The organization or disorganization of your home, your mental and physical health, your emotional and spiritual wellbeing, who you surround yourself with. It’s all one interconnected system. You might think of it as the ecology of human experience.

It occurs to me that, if I am to arrive at a philosophy of technology use, what I’m really after is a philosophy of life.

Reflection #2: Sovereignty of mind

If everything is connected, where is the right place to start?

There’s a book I love called Figuring by Maria Popova. Early in the first chapter, she offers up a question.

How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism?

From the moment we are born, we become creatures of convention. Our entire being is sculpted from the clay of social conditioning. Behaviors are developed based on seeking affection and approval. What to do to fit in and to be liked? What defines your community and culture?

I won’t pretend to know the answer to her question, but I will offer an inversion. One sure-fire way to fail at that pursuit is to exist in a purely reactive state. Simply allow external factors and ephemeral stimuli to dictate your internal state.

There’s no shortage of these in modern society. Email, social media, constant connectivity in general, all of these encourage reactivity. Attention is coopted by recency and sensationalism.

It seems to me that proactivity and intentionality are necessary prerequisites to sovereignty of mind.

Reflection #3: Claiming control of attention

By proactivity and intentionality, I mean deciding from first principles what deserves one’s attention.

That sentence was easy to write, but it is perhaps one of, if not THE, most difficult things a person can do.

For me, the most impactful tool in the toolbelt has been mindfulness. A painstaking and relentless focus on the present moment does wonders for claiming control of attention.

When first learning to meditate, a common exercise involves focusing on the breath. As a crutch, you can even count the breaths one-by-one as they go by. You can try it right now if you’d like. Find a quiet spot and sit down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, then allow your breathing to resume as normal. Count each breath as it goes by. Inhale, exhale; that’s one. Inhale, exhale; two.

What number did you reach before becoming distracted?

For me, it took me about a month to reach 30, and a full 6 months to reach 100.

The profound thing for me was that, before trying that exercise, I was a firm believer that I controlled my thoughts. I decide what to think and then I think the thoughts. But the exercise made it patently obvious that thoughts simply appear into consciousness, seemingly out of thin air. One moment I was counting breaths and the next I was lost in thought about some random topic unaware of what number I left off on.

Another exercise involves paying close attention to the tiny sensations happening all over the body. When you do so, you become aware of a slight tingling or aliveness that always seems abuzz.

This practice of coming down out of the head and into the body is an amazing tool for becoming more present and aware. As human beings, we cannot help all of the tiny physiological reactions we have to external stimuli. But when we tune into the physicality of the reaction, we develop an ability to take countermeasures before things go awry.

Reflection #4: What NOT to pay attention to

As we cultivate better attention, we, of course, have a decision to make about where to direct our reclaimed attention.

Given that I am in no position to determine where your attention should reside, allow me to instead make a counterpoint.

Distractions are just that, distractions. I make it a habit of cataloging mine via a simple process. I take a sheet of paper and write a line down the middle. On the left, I make a list of the things that truly matter to me. On the right, I make a list containing everything that gets in the way of the things I just listed on the left. On a recent iteration of the list, I included digital distractions, a few psychological tendencies, and also a few people that seem to be impeding my growth.

Reflection #5: The Stoics

Stoic philosophers have a lot to say about where not to direct our attention.

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t, what we have influence over and what we do not.

Allowing things one has no control over to dictate one’s internal state is a fool’s errand.

Reflection #6: What TO pay attention to

Coming back to the affirmative, I find myself spending increasing amounts of time thinking about questions that get at the core of my being.

Why am I here?

What does it mean to live a good life?

What does wealth and abundance look like for me?

My desire here is not to share my answers to these questions, but rather to ask if you’ve considered such questions for yourself?

A great book I’ve read on the subject of grappling with these sorts of questions is called Start With Why. In the book, Simon Sinek describes how the most impactful leaders, whether at the helm of corporations or cultural upheavals, have always started with why. They start with why because it cuts deeper than facts and figures. It isn’t about logic and rationality. It’s raw. It’s emotional. When an individual taps into a compelling why, and they can find others for whom that why deeply resonates, a movement is born.

An important thing to point out here is that I don’t believe it matters how big or small the why ultimately is. Elon Musk is dead set on making humanity a multi-planetary species while I’m content bringing mindfulness and simplicity to more people in more ways.

Reflection #7: Time

Another aspect of dealing with important questions is having adequate time to do so. One could do worse than reference Thoreau in Walden when it comes to time.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.

I interpret “life” in this context to mean the amount of time and energy required to obtain something. He seems to suggest that time is one of our most valuable resources. I would agree.

If we circle back to sovereignty of mind, I hope I was clear in the implication that it’s difficult to obtain. And that being the case, difficult things take time.

In a modern context, many spend egregious amounts of spare time staring at screens. Myriad digital novelties keep us watching, tapping, and scrolling. All the while, our important faculties atrophy, faculties like the ability to explore and clarify hard problems, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to build moral courage.

Reflection #8: Time is money

Assuming that you agree with the premise that time is important, a question comes to mind. Is it possible to obtain more time?

While time itself is finite, it turns out that money can buy time. For example, I pay my cleaning lady because I place a higher value on 3 hours than I do on the money she charges.

Of course, this idea has limitations. I rather spend time with a good friend on my birthday than receive a visa gift card in the mail. But it’s important to acknowledge the oh so important role of money as a way to free up time.

Reflection #9: Space

Albert Einstein can be credited with forever joining the concepts of time and space. But leaving general and special relativity aside, I’ll take a more pragmatic angle.

If one is to have sufficient time to grapple with big questions, he or she should also have sufficient space. Said differently, I am arguing in favor of solitude as an essential tool for self-discovery. Not necessarily solitude to the degree of Thoreau in Walden or Boyd Varty in his retreat to nature, but simply solitude meaning outside of the influence of other human minds. No people, books, articles, music, podcasts, videos, games, or anything. Just a person with their thoughts. It worries me greatly that solitude seems to have become one of the most frightening propositions for modern people.

Reflection #10: After why, comes how

It’s not lost on me that our prolific tool-making ability is something that defines us as a species. But this sword has two edges. Nuclear warheads can both dispose of authoritarian dictators and keep them in power. Gene editing and sequencing could cure cancer, but could also herald designer babies and further income inequality.

Once you have determined your why, the next question is how. Which tools will you bring to bear and how will you optimize their use to best accomplish your goals?

I am a techno-optimist through and through. I wouldn’t be building a software company if that wasn’t the case. But I fear that too few of us spend time with the fundamental questions. We don’t take time to consider the role that technology plays in our lives. And more alarmingly, it seems that many of us don’t take the time to consider what sort of life we truly want to lead.

This post originally appeared here on the Idenati blog, and you can listen to it in podcast form here. 

I wanted to share an exciting update with you all! I’ve just launched a podcast called “Mindful & Intentional”, and I’d love to know what you think! You can listen and subscribe on your preferred podcast player (Spotify | Apple | Google).

I started this blog back in November 2015. One of the reasons for doing that was a desire to live with intention.

I write about potential investments before deploying any dollars to ensure my thinking is sound.

As technology and society rapidly change, I write about potential implications so that I’m not caught off guard.

I write philosophical reflections about everyday life because “alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.”

And now I am launching a podcast because building a company is sure to be the most difficult task undertaken thus far. And like everything else, it’s better done mindfully and with intention.

The cover art for the podcast is a picture of a journal that I started back in 2010.

In the first entry on the first page, I write,

I’ve started this journal to facilitate my spiritual growth. I want to engage in a significant amount of self-inquiry.” I want the decisions I make to reflect conscious awareness and the right intentions.

It seems this show has been a long time coming. I hope you’ll join me for the ride and let me know what you think!

Business & Money

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about diversification. He or she was arguing that my portfolio is overly concentrated, and thus risky.

Clearly, as my portfolio indicates, I disagree.

I find that diversification is often oversimplified and overemphasized. People take it to mean that owning more stocks reduces risk. But there’s tons of nuance.

For example, some people own a lot of different companies, but all in the same sector. Is that diversification?

Further, individual companies can be diversified in and of themselves. Take Salesforce, my largest holding. Most people know it for customer relationship management (CRM) software, but that segment makes up less than 30% of revenue. So yes, it’s one company, but with a diversified revenue mix, driven largely by acquisition. Does that count?

Taken to the extreme, consider Constellation Software, another favorite holding of mine. The company follows a holding company structure, similar to Berkshire Hathaway, but purely dedicated to vertical software businesses. Since being founded in 1995, they’ve acquired over 500 companies. If that’s not diversified, I don’t know what is!

In investing and in life, concepts are rarely black or white. The interesting (and profitable) bits often lie somewhere in the grey.

Human Progress

Zeno of Citium is thought of as the founder of Stoicism. He was a merchant before later becoming a philosopher, and thus often took voyages across the Mediterranean to conduct business. On one voyage, he survived a shipwreck and made his way to Athens. There, in a bookstore, he encounters the philosophy of Socrates, greatly altering the course of his life.

To the Stoics, grave hardship and pain is often the most fertile ground for learning and growth. The entire discipline is founded on the very idea.

There’s also a Stoic phrase that goes ‘premeditatio malorum’. It’s about considering the worst possible outcomes just as deeply as those outcomes you want to occur.

I point these ideas out now because our country has arrived at a precarious moment. And regardless of outcome, we must be prepared to roll up our collective sleeves and do the work necessary to create the world we want to live in.

Philosophy

From Track Your Life, Day 13:

Once when I was driving along with Renius, we came to a watering hole. It was the middle of a warm winter’s morning and a small heard of impala were just arriving at the water’s edge. Seeing them, most common of antelope, I thought nothing of it. The road curled so that it skirted to one edge of the watering hole. I barreled on past. The bucks scattered like they tend to do when cars go by. I thought nothing of it. Renius glanced at me sideways. I knew I had blundered in some way. “Those animals are thirsty,” he said. “They come to drink once a day. When you drive by like that with no feeling, you leave them thirsty for the whole day.

When I was young, I took out the trash every week. The trash cans were stashed on the side of the house in a narrow walkway between the house and the fence. So on each Monday night, I would grab a stick and proceed to walk through the walkway waving the stick in front of me as if I was drawing large circles in the air. It was an effective method of destroying spider webs.

Thinking back, you might say I was repeatedly barreling past the watering hole. I’m not sure how long those webs took to build, but it’s quite possible those spiders went hungry for the night.

Perhaps I could have taken the cans out before nightfall, or in the morning even. But the reality is I never once paused to think about it.

How many watering holes have you blundered past?

My Latest Discovery

A friend of mine recently sent me this beautiful piece by Terrick Gutierrez.

Business & Money

I’ve recently decided to formalize an investment checklist. A company doesn’t have to check every single box, but it should come pretty darn close.

I’ve done most of this most of the time, but I’ve never written it down. But froth and fragility now demand the quill and parchment (I rather enjoyed that phrase 🤣).

I’m sharing this now because I’ve recently made my first investment since the late-march bottom. Back then, I was betting on e-commerce (AMZN, SHOP, MELI). That turned out pretty well.

Conditions are very different now with those names trading near all-time highs. My recent investment is Chevron (CVX).

Before we get to the checklist, it’s important to note that I consider this to be more of a cash alternative than an investment. With anemic bond yields and the best interest rate for savings accounts just north of 1%, I’ve had a bunch of cash just sitting on the sidelines. So anything better than a 1% return on this will be a mark in the win column.

Ok, on to the checklist…

Have you spoken to at least one highly respected person?

Yes. And “spoken” has two meanings here. First, I like to pressure test my ideas against the sharpest finance minds in my friend circle. Second, there’s a shortlist of public market investors and commentators that I follow closely, two of which are Jesse Felder and Warren Buffet. While I have no direct contact, I consider them mentors from afar. Both seem to like what they see in energy markets.

Have you committed the idea to paper?

You’re reading it.

Is the business easy to understand? (have you tried to explain it to someone outside the relevant industry)

Yes. Chevron is an American multinational energy company, one of the successors of Standard Oil. They’re involved in all parts of the energy market, including upstream (exploration & extraction), midstream (transportation), and downstream (converting oil into finished products like gasoline).

This high-level understanding, when combined with the track record below, is good enough for me.

Is there a long (5-10) track record of demonstrated success?

Extremely long. I particularly love 33 years of increasing dividend payments.

What is the source of power?

Massive economies of scale, a strong balance sheet, and cash flow for days.

Is the price reasonable relative to historical levels?

Oil demand, oil prices, and oil stocks are all in the dumps, and it makes sense why (COVID-19). But sentiment seems to be outpacing the situation on the ground. One investment research firm posits that energy stocks, at current levels, represent the most hated sector of all time.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re in a secular trend toward more sustainable energy. But that transition will take time and require boatloads of capital, both attributes that point to the continued involvement of today’s oil majors.

Can you imagine holding it forever?

Not forever, but the medium-term outlook feels right, probabilistically.

Is this, in absolute terms, the best use of capital at the present moment?

As far as I can tell (as a cash alternative).

Human Progress

I’ve recently returned to The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. I love this section from chapter 128.

Contemporary notions of beauty are ridiculous. Our standards for what’s attractive are incredibly unstoic in that we prize and extol things people have almost no control over. High cheekbones, complexion, height, piercing eyes. Is it really beautiful to win the genetic lottery, or should beauty be contingent on the choices, actions, and attributes we develop?

I found these sentences particularly noteworthy in the context of dating during COVID. I am happily married, but have plenty of single friends. Many of those are highly active on dating apps of late. With the limited opportunity to meet new people in real life, it’s no surprise.

The most distinct part of a dating profile, I imagine, is the picture. Further, with the swipe-based design of many apps, that’s often all you see.

I wonder if there’s space in the dating market for someone to innovate on a different vector. What if everyone had to write a short essay or article and you had to swipe right on that before seeing the picture. Or perhaps you do the same, but in audio format to bring another element, voice, into the equation. Of course, physical attraction is an important part of a romantic relationship, but I’m not sure it should be the primary filtering mechanism.

Philosophy

I proposed a thought experiment to a close group of friends recently, so I thought I’d share it here as well.

Murder is wrong. That’s pretty easy to say.

Let’s say you have a friend called John. John lives in New Jersey. There was a murder in New Jersey last week. Do you sever ties with John? Likely not. New Jersey is a pretty big place with lots of people, the vast majority of which John has no relation to. You continue interacting with John the same as always.

Ok, let’s say the murder was in John’s town. Does that change how you feel about John? Likely not, he’s still in the clear.

What if the murder was on John’s street?

Ok, John’s wife was murdered. And you know they had been getting in increasingly heated confrontations. Now things get dicey. The husband is always suspect number 1. But John seems very distraught. He’s devastated. You comfort and console him as any friend would, but do you invite him into your home the following week? Do you leave him alone with your children?

It’s a question that looms large. When, if ever, does proximity suggest complicity?

In reality, it’s two questions. One of proximity, and one of severity. How close is someone to the wrong, and how wrong is the wrong?

In a world of increasing upheaval and growing divisiveness (political, racial/cultural, etc.), it’s a question of growing importance. The grey areas are vast, but to avoid exploration feels irresponsible.

My Latest Discovery

I’m really enjoying Simon Sinek’s Podcast called “A Bit of Optimism”.

Volume 1

There’s something quite ironic about Idenati (here’s a quick video and the website if you need some context). The idea is to bring simplicity and order to the experience inside the browser. With that comes improved efficiency and productivity. In other words, the more successful we become, the less time people spend online. Aka, the less time they spend interacting with our software. I think that’s a good thing.

Following this thread, I’ve noticed something interesting in my own behavior. In the past couple years, an increasing proportion of my computing time happens on my computer, as opposed to my phone. That’s while the opposite is happening for many (most?) people.

This change has been an intentional one. I decided I wasn’t ok with the constant attack on my attention.

I bring this up because I often get the question,

Why do you guys focus on the computer experience so much in an increasingly mobile world?

Well, herein lies the reason. I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done on mobile to save people’s attention. In fact, it’s not a technology problem. It’s a behavior problem. People are addicted. The limbic system is under assault.

To me, being mindful on mobile usually means putting the mobile down. Sure there’s the “screen time” app and smartwatches remind you to breathe and stand up every so often, but the tide hasn’t been stemmed.

In the end, I guess you might say we design for ourselves first, and the world we want to see. When we’re out in the world, we try to be present. When it’s time to get things done, we usually take it to the computer. And since the computer has been neglected with the explosion of mobile, it feels like there’s work to be done to simplify the experience.

Volume 2

I live in Long Island City (LIC), New York. Before the pandemic, my primary modes of transportation were the subway and Uber. Post pandemic, it has been the ferry.

From LIC to midtown east by subway is about 20 minutes (much of that time spent walking to and waiting for subways).

Depending on where you’re going, it’s perhaps 5 or 10 minutes by Uber, and occasionally much longer (bridge/tunnel traffic can be a drag).

The ferry ride from LIC to midtown east takes 2 minutes. 2 minutes!

The distance traveled over water is a straight line. It’s jagged by land due to man-made routes. But it took a global pandemic for me to consider a behavior change.

I point this out because our journey on the internet often takes jagged and out of the way paths, despite the lack of real-world constraints like roads to make it so.

When I visit Facebook, it’s for a specific reason. I’m either visiting Ads Manager or one of a few Facebook groups. But the default landing place is the Facebook News Feed. As such, it’s easy to get sucked in to a few minutes of scrolling. That’s by design.

For work, we often use HubSpot to create landing pages. The normal flow starts at hubspot.com to log in, then navigate to marketing, then to landing pages.

But why all the hops? The landing pages section in HubSpot and the Groups section in Facebook have specific web addresses.

In both cases, I’ve updated the “Link To Website” field in my relevant tiles to point to the places I actually want to go.

Straight lines every time!

I like eliminating extra hops. If it saves 10 minutes a day, for 5 days a week, over 4 weeks in the month, that’s over 3 hours back in your hands. Could that time reduce your stress or anxiety? Could it give you more time with your spouse or your kids?

Stretch it to a year, it’s almost 2 days. If you work for 40 years, that’s 80 days. I wonder who, at life’s conclusion, wouldn’t kill for another 80 days.

Volume 3

A few weeks ago, my wife was struggling to handle her workload. She was working late into the night almost every night, skipping meals during the day, and generally have a tough go of it.

It wasn’t so much the work that made her sad, but rather, she was most distressed about not having time to do the things she loves. She loves propagating plants. She loves arts and crafts with our niece. She loves all things wellness and nutrition.

One day I asked to see her calendar. It was wall-to-wall with multicolored blocks. After discussing those things she loves, I asked where those things were on the calendar. She said she didn’t have time.

So I proposed an inversion.

“What if, rather than relegating your most important things to “if I have time” status, you prioritize those things first?“

She decided to switch things up. Every morning, she now takes her coffee to the balcony for a meditation session, followed by a bit of time for reading a nutrition book. She now schedules arts and crafts time for the week ahead on Sunday evening, informing co-workers that these hours are off limits. She prioritizes the most important things first, with the other bits of life filling in the gaps. That sounds, to me, like the way life should be lived.

On the internet, many people start their day with email triage. In fact, many people exist in a reactive state most of the time, allowing the incoming deluge of requests to dictate their schedule. For me (and not the case for everyone), morning is my most productive time. So the first 2-3 hours is usually blocked off for what Cal Newport calls Deep Work. That’s time that I (and no one else) decide how to spend. It’s time that I’m in a proactive and intentional state. The start of that is making sure I have an empty screen to look at each morning. That way, there’s nothing to clutter my mind. When I open the browser, Idenati is my default homepage. Having planned ahead how I will start the day, I launch only the relevant tile or 2 required to dedicate my attention fully to the task at hand.

It’s a nice way to start the day.

Volume 4

Yesterday I mentioned starting each day with a blank screen. But there are different gradations of “blank”.

For the longest time, my desktop was cluttered with app icons, recent downloads, random screenshots, and more. Most of these are single-use items never to be clicked again.

An easy way to reduce digital clutter is to delete everything. At first, I considered reviewing each item one-by-one. But I caught myself. I couldn’t remember the last time I opened any of it.

Select all, delete!

Ahh!

Then I updated my desktop background to a small glass of water on a white table. I find it stunningly beautiful!

A tasteless, odorless, colorless chemical that contains no nutrients or calories. Yet it’s the primary constituent of fluids in all known living things and vital to all life forms.

Remarkable!

Volume 5

In this final volume of the Manifesto on Attention, I would be remiss to not talk about meditation.

When I was 22 I read a book called Awakening The Buddha Within. It was my introduction to meditation and mindfulness.

When I sat down to attempt my first meditation, I was immediately confronted with a profound realization.

I had no control over my mind.

When I tried to focus on my breathing, I became distracted in under 60 seconds. Time and time again, my thoughts wandered off.

Up until that point, it felt obvious that thoughts were self-directed. It turns out not to be the case.

And to be clear, meditation doesn’t fix this problem 100%. None of us can be completely mindful all of the time. But developing a meditation practice has been the single best strategy for making improvements in this regard.

So in honor of that cherished first experience, I want to share a snippet from a guided meditation that I often return to:

(you’ll have to imagine that dreamy guided meditation voice)

To help you maintain that focus on the breath,

silently start to count the breaths as they pass.

One with the rising sensation.

Two with the falling sensation.

Then three, then four.

Just up to a count of 10.

When you get to 10, you can stop,

then start again at 1.

Just try that a couple of times through.

Remember to allow thoughts to come and go,

but the moment you get distracted,

just gently bring the attention back again,

to that physical sensation of the breath.

… [long pause] …

It’s perfectly normal for the mind to wander off.

Remember as soon as you get distracted,

as soon as you realize that the mind has wandered off,

just gently bringing the attention back again

and just picking it up on the number you left off on.

This is such a powerful concept. There are so many moments in life that get away from us. An argument with a significant other, when your 100-pound german shepherd breaks things with his long fluffy tail, irrelevant email solicitations from thoughtless salespeople, people hitting “reply all”… The list is never-ending.

Whenever these happen, meditation has made it easier to pause, notice the anger or frustration welling up, refocus, and begin again.

There’s a saying that says “you should fight fire with fire”. Sounds pretty crazy to me. I’d rather fight fire with water, or better yet sand or foam.

Following this thread…

Business & Money

In business, it’s best not to battle incumbents head-on. It’s a losing proposition. Shopify is a great example. Rather than try to compete with Amazon by building another marketplace, better to build a platform on top of which merchants can build their own digital storefronts. It’s orthogonal to Amazon’s business model and aligns incentives perfectly with merchants.

Human Progress

There seems to be a tendency among humans to relegate important conversations to the shadows. Politics, religion, sex, money, race, all are uncomfortable topics for many (most?).

If we’re to get the human progress train back on the tracks, exercising our “difficult conversations” muscle feels like it should become a priority of the highest order.

Philosophy

One of the few times it does make sense to fight fire with fire is when it comes to questions.

The other day, my 7-year-old niece asked me a question. “Immobu, how hot is lava?” Rather than simply answer, I said “why do you ask?” What could have been a simple question-answer exchange turned into an interesting conversation about how volcanoes form, where they form, earthquakes, and many other things.

Often the real learning lies a few layers beneath the first question.

My Lastest Discovery

You’ve likely noticed the brief format of this month’s VIC. I was inspired by Screenshot Essays. I find that thoughtful yet succinct communication is both a skill and an art form.

The idea of opportunity cost is one I spend a lot of time thinking about in almost every area of my life…

Business & Money

Every investment decision is one that should involve a consideration of opportunity cost. Is this the absolute best use of capital available to me right now?

Not is this better than that, but is this the best in an absolute sense?

I had a friend email me last week asking whether I thought company A was more attractive than company B. My response was, “is this the entire universe of investment opportunities available to you right now?”

And the “right now” portion is equally, or perhaps more important, than the “investment opportunities” portion.

Lucky for us, there are no shot clocks in the public markets.

Human Progress

Money is one thing, but time occupies more of my attention these days, given it’s nonrenewable. So every allocation of time has to be weighed against other uses of time.

I find this topic vexing because the universe of options for how to spend time is vast, almost infinite in fact.

I think about my work for instance. Why build a software company when there are fundamental challenges like racial inequality and social justice to be solved?

To capture one aspect of how I think about this, I’ll share a story included in a letter written by Ernst Stuhlinger (the Associate Director for Science at the Marshall Space Flight Center at the time he penned it). He wrote the letter in response to one he received from Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration.

About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated, because poverty was abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague which ravaged the country frequently. One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects. The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be observed with the strong magnification, and which he had never seen before. He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to become a member of the count’s household, and to devote henceforth all his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of the count.

The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without purpose. “We are suffering from this plague,” they said, “while he is paying that man for a useless hobby!” But the count remained firm. “I give you as much as I can afford,” he said, “but I will also support this man and his work, because I know that someday something will come out of it!”

Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.

The count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than he could have contributed by giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden community.

So, while I am not inventing the microscope, I think about my work in similar terms. It’s my belief that the internet is the greatest tool on earth for unlocking human potential. We’re trying to make it easier to use for people who are trying to pursue their passions. If we are successful, it will mean that hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions of other people can more efficiently access the tools they need to make far more progress toward solving fundamental challenges than I could ever do on my own.

Philosophy

Similar to time, but somewhat different is attention.

Recently, someone I know behaved in a way that could be interpreted as rude or inconsiderate. A friend of mine called me to say, “Aren’t you pissed about such and such? That was so rude!”

I responded that I wasn’t.

Perhaps it was rude, or perhaps the behavior could be attributed to some factor that I’m unaware of. Who knows?

But I have a choice of how to direct my attention and my emotional energy. I felt better served simply moving past it and directing my attention and energy elsewhere.

My Latest Discovery

Not really a recent discovery, by damn this city is gorgeous!

In life, we all have the opportunity to build tons of relationships. Those relationships start with the family, then expand outward over time. After the immediate household come relationships with extended family, neighbors, friends, religious communities, schools, and companies. Zooming out further still, you might say you build relationships with your home city, state, or country, or at least a relationship with the values and beliefs upon which those are built.

There’s a ton of advice out there about how to build strong relationships. But the thing about relationships is that they’re all a bit different. Some people love and respect family members dearly, while others treat them as sworn enemies. Some people beat their dogs while others treat them like royalty. Relationships are subjective.

As a result, I don’t feel it’s a great use of time to give advice about how others should go about building relationships.
What I can do, is invert the question. Rather than give advice about how you SHOULD build relationships, here’s a sure fire way to build terrible relationships that I think most will agree with.

If you want to enjoy guaranteed misery in your relationships, you should avoid difficult and uncomfortable conversations at all costs. When you are angry, upset, or confused (or think the other person to be), never talk about it. Just make assumptions about what others think and feel and accept that as the truth. Make assumptions about their drives and motivations. Make assumptions that you know what it’s like to feel what they are feeling, that you understand their experience.

Guaranteed misery, every time.

The relationship between America and the black community is, and has for a long time, been one defined by extensive misery. It’s a relationship defined by exhaustion and exasperation. It’s one defined by glimmers of hope, and repeated let down. It’s defined by fear, anger, and thoughts of “WILL THIS SHIT EVER END??”

You know, this has always been a difficult topic for me. And I never have any idea what to do in the moments of the deepest despair. And I think that question about what to do is deeply personal and subjective for everyone, regardless of what you look like or where you live.

As one person, a black man, here’s a range of things that have crossed my mind over the last decade:

Do I just pretend that everything is fine?

Have I done enough to stand up for the black community? Have I done anything?

Do I drop everything and become some sort of activist?

But there’s no money in activism. And money is an important conduit toward financial and intellectual escape velocity.

The best thing I can do is to become successful in business and in life to prove that black people can do it too.

Or does that do more to say that I am some sort of exception to what many think is a rule?

Is it even worth fighting a war you’re sure to lose?

Of course it is! Do you want the work of greats like MLK and Malcom X to go to waste?

They paid the ultimate price. Am I willing to die for this cause?

Death aside, what AM I willing to sacrifice?

Not at all meant to be comprehensive, but you can see that I’m all over the map.

At this very moment, it feels like the best thing I can do is utilize the platform that I’ve built through VIC as a vehicle to bring more folks into the conversation. As I said earlier, ignoring difficult conversations is guaranteed to yield misery. So the best thing I can do right now is use the tiny loudspeaker I have to speak my truth. Or not so much truth, but to speak my confusion.

On one side, things have gotten better. We’re not getting abducted, then beaten, then eyes gouged, shot, tied to a fan, and dumped into a river, like Emmett Till did. We’re not watching our kids sold to neighboring plantations and wives raped by our owners. It’s important to speak truth to that progress.

On the other hand, we’re having knees plunged into the back of our necks on camera until we stop breathing. We’re being chased through neighborhoods and gunned down my ex-policemen. You can’t make this shit up!

How do you reconcile those two things in your mind? I, for one, cannot.

You’ll notice that I offer no answers and solutions, only a sea of questions. And one of those questions is,

What are you thinking? What are you feeling?

Coming back to relationships, we are all friends, family members, parents, neighbors, company leaders, and citizens. Are you having what is sure to be a difficult conversation with the people that matter to you? Because if you are not, I worry for the health of those relationships.

The “C” in VIC is curiosity. It’s vital that we remain curious about the truly vexing problems. One such problem, or question, weighs heavily on my mind as we close.

How, or why, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that we are all the same, do large groups of people continue to fervently believe in intractable differences?

Business & Money

I’ve gotten quite a few notes from people in recent months asking what I am buying and selling during this crazy time. So here it is.

My portfolio is up 12% on the year. That feels strange to say given we’re in the midst of both a health epidemic and a large shock to the real economy. I used the word “real” in that sentence to distinguish between the actual economy and the stock market. While the Nasdaq is positive for the year and the S&P is only off 12%, the real economy has seen jobless claims spike to 30 million and tons of companies have seen their revenues cut 80-100% overnight. And all the while 250,000 people have died globally, with 80,000 of those in the US.

This disparity between the real economy and the stock market doesn’t make sense to me; it doesn’t feel right. There is a narrative that low interest rates and money printing yields higher asset prices, and I imagine there is some truth to that. Nonetheless, I still feel uneasy.

At the end of the day, I find investing to be more about psychology and emotion, than it is about intelligence or financial analysis. As such, I needed to do something to ensure that I could keep my emotions in check and fight off the cognitive dissonance.

I decided to sell 20% of every position. I chose to do it across the board to embrace my own ignorance. I have no idea what will happen in the future, so I didn’t want to pretend I knew what stocks to hold and which to sell. So I sold a bit of everything. My hunch is that there will be better opportunities to put that capital to work in the not too distant future. Perhaps that plays out, and perhaps it does not, but there are worse things in the world than having more cash on the sidelines, especially if it helps me sleep better at night and keep the emotions at bay.

So that covers the selling side of things.

Of course, massive selloffs are also a great time to buy. It’s not every day that your favorite companies go on sale for 25-40% off. So in mid-late March when the panic felt palpable, I was busy putting capital to work in one of the largest themes in my portfolio: e-commerce. E-commerce has been a steadily growing trend over the last 20 years and the current moment serves to accelerate the trend. As such, Amazon at $1,729 a share felt too good to pass up. Same for Shopify at $326 and MercadoLibre at $509.

Finally, I’ll end by calling attention to a stupid mistake. I decided to buy shares in Carnival Cruise Lines when they hit $27. I promptly sold them a few weeks later at $17 for a quick 40% loss. Ouch!

But it was a good lesson, and an important one. Sometimes things sell off because of fear and panic. And other times things sell off due to a fundamental impairment to the business. I put a bunch of money into Shopify when it fell from $535 to $326 because nothing changed about the underlying business. If anything, the proposition of e-commerce only got stronger. By contrast, Carnival stock fell 85% due to a fundamental impairment. Revenue likely fell by that same amount, and there’s no way to tell how long that impairment will last.

Lucky for me, my good decisions during this period have more than compensated for the bad, at least for now.

Human Progress

Following that same thread, progress and improvement are all about learning from one’s mistakes. And even better than learning from your own is learning from the mistakes of others to avoid making those same mistakes in the first place.

Sticking with the theme of markets, I figured I’d touch on the things I’ve seen during my short stint of investing and what I’ve learned from each. 4 periods stand out to me.

The first that I was old enough to understand was the financial crisis of 2007. From that I learned to be allergic to debt. Nothing kills a business like too much debt.

The next was the run-up in the crypto markets during 2017. I had done some reading about euphoric periods in the past, but reading is altogether different than experiencing the real thing.

I made my first Bitcoin purchase toward the end of 2015 at $330. At the beginning of 2017, the price sat around $900. By June when things had tripled to $2,700, I started to feel uneasy. It didn’t feel right that something would appreciate that much that fast. So at that point I made a rule for myself: I would sell half the position any time it doubled. My logic was simple. If things doubled again, I would sell half, which would lock-in significant gains from where I started. At that point, I would be playing with house money. I wanted to participate in the upside, while removing the downside. So I sold half when things hit $5K, and half of that at $10K, and another half at $20K.

I’m not sure the “selling half” strategy is the right thing for everyone, but I think the underlying principle is sound. If things feel like they are starting to get frothy, it’s not a terrible idea to decide on a strategy in advance, so that you can remove the emotion from the process as things progress.

The next one came at the tail end of 2018 when markets quickly gave up 20% in 3 months. I learned 2 things.

First, it was during this time that I first heard the phrase “markets take the stairs up, but the elevator down.” It’s so true!

Second, when you decide to put capital to work during these periods, you can make a bunch of small bets, or a few high conviction bets. The latter feels more appropriate for me.

Finally, we come to today. I think things are a bit early to draw any conclusions, but there is one thing I’ll say. I have no idea what comes next. And from what I can tell, no one else does either.

Philosophy

It’s super hard to admit that you have no idea what’s going to happen. We humans are narrative machines; everything has to make sense. Everything must be reduced to cause and effect.

I once had a mentor who gave me a great piece of advice.

Every day, write down a prediction. After a while, review your notes to see how often you were right or wrong.

It’s likely to be a humbling experience.

My Latest Discovery

Overnight oats are delicious, nutritious, and super easy to make!

(ok, Hana makes them, but I swear she said they’re easy to make 😂)