Internet systems
The Anthology of Balaji
Eric Jorgenson
Building and communicating increasingly belong to the same job; reach changes what a small technical team can attempt.
26 Readwise highlights · In book order
Highlights
As a guiding philosophy, “win and help win” will always outcompete “live and let live.”
Rather than GDP, GDP-per-capita, or the stock market, perhaps we should have dashboards of life expectancy (health) and net worth (wealth). A good leader is one who improves these metrics for individuals and society as a whole.
Good: Helping others without concern for yourself Smart: Helping others while helping yourself Evil: Harming others while helping yourself Stupid: Harming others while harming yourself
At a very fundamental level, you created order from disorder.
The less money you need, the less dependent you are.
Once you get that first win under your belt, you build the confidence you’re able to do it again and again.
Reducing your cost of living to ⅕x is way easier than increasing your net worth by 5x.
[your current savings] ÷ [your yearly expenses] = [personal runway]
Here is my ranking of types of leaders: socialist < nationalist < capitalist < technologist.
Most people do not do this. They just compartmentalize. They’ll learn something, but they won’t try to propagate it through other things they know to see if it conflicts with other ideas.
Economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes said, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Meaning, if you don’t know what intellectual software you’re running, you’re running something subconsciously.
You have 168 hours per week, ~112 awake. Substitute capital for time, technology for both. Avoid travel. Cancel meetings. Focus on doing.
That’s my single biggest productivity hack: stack all meetings on (for example) Monday and Thurs-day.
In the same way that a short-term optimization in engineering means taking on technical debt, you are taking on physical debt if you are not working out and eating right each day.
Taking some time off Twitter can be helpful, which I do every once in a while. I took almost four months off Twitter to complete all the final details in my book and get it shipped. Win off Twitter to win on Twitter. Pretty much anything you want, you cannot actually win on Twitter itself. You have to win off Twitter and announce on Twitter.
Hard work is a competitive advantage. Even the belief that hard work is a competitive advantage is itself now a competitive advantage.
What do you know to be true that others cannot or will not bring themselves to admit?
Learning with intent to use filters down information, and you can snap things into use immediately. That’s why I think a purpose-driven life is good. You have a purpose, and you think often about what that purpose is.
The ideal is you are a full-stack engineer and full-stack creator.
Today, a founding engineer and a founding influencer are building a company. Tomorrow, a founding influencer and a founding engineer may be building a country.
Due to the constant search for new monopolies, venture capital may be more effective than antitrust at disrupting old monopolies.
Tech’s best feature? The past is past. There is always another train leaving the station, another rocket ship blasting off. Found it, fund it, or join it. We’ll have to work to create the future we want.
Kindle: probably a better recreational app than Twitter
Test-Driven Development with Python: Obey the Testing Goat: Using Django, Selenium, and JavaScript by Harry Percival
Indistractable by Nir Eyal
The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen