Blog Posts

Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

11/6/2018

Blockchain and Bitcoin have sat in the background of my mind for awhile. I recently decided I want to dive in and learn a lot more on the subject. I grabbed Blockchain Revolution after seeing solid reviews on Amazon. It's a broad overview, covering design principles, possible future applications, and challenges. Its outlook is sunny, but it was a good dive into the affected industries, businesses, and people. I look forward to continuing my research.

Key Takeaways

Bitcoin and blockchain have a wide range of potential applications.
In internet terms, we're in 1990 with Blockchain and bitcoin. Nobody knows how things will change and develop in the next 10 years.
Blockchain could disrupt any black box, aggregation of power, or collection of data.
Democratization and disintermediation seem to be the two most important processes of blockchain.
We can think of blockchain as a new system of transacting online. The designers and builders of this system imbue it with trust. I don't need to trust you to do business with you anymore, I just need to trust that the system works.

Memorable Quotes

We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable.
Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow.
Bitcoin or other digital currency isn’t saved in a file somewhere; it’s represented by transactions recorded in a blockchain—kind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large peer-to-peer bitcoin network to verify and approve each bitcoin transaction.
Online, we still can’t reliably establish one another’s identities or trust one another to transact and exchange money without validation from a third party like a bank or a government. These same intermediaries collect our data and invade our privacy for commercial gain and national security.
Who is going to invest in a company that shows you what’s going on quarterly, compared to one that shows you what’s going on all the time?
We have growing wealth creation and growing social inequality.
Privacy is the foundation of free societies.

Rating: 7.5/10
This book is broad and high level. It was a good place to start for me, but I still have a lot of questions, technical and otherwise. I look forward to diving into more details and understanding further.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

11/6/2018

I've read James Clear's blog for the last couple years. This book is the culmination and synthesis of a lot of his writing. Anyone with an interest in creating good habits and eliminating bad ones needs this. It's broken down into a few simple principles to make any habit stick. It's an easy read, and there are some great stories in here about how small changes lead to outsized results.

Key Takeaways

To make a habit easy, make it obvious.
To make a habit hard, make it invisible.
Make good habits attractive.
Make bad habits unattractive.
Make good habits easy.
Make bad habits difficult.
Make good habits satisfying.
Make bad habits unsatisfying.

Memorable Quotes

We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.
You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.
The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can't get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.

Rating: 9/10
This book is super practical. Anyone can use these principles to improve themselves or their teams. I'll return to this anytime I want to change my habits.

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

10/27/2018

Another great business book. I would argue that everyone should read this book. This applies to leadership in sports, business, relationships, and families. The well organized and written narrative covers military principles in action. They follow with an explanation of the principle, as well as its application in business. It's clear, easy to follow, and easy to understand. It doesn't matter if you're a busboy or a CEO, you'll find something worthwhile in this book.

Key Takeaways

No matter where you are in the chain of command, you need to take ownership over what you can.
No matter where you are in the chain of command, it is your responsibility to lead both up and down.
Good communication underlies all aspects of leadership. As a leader, it's your responsibility to make sure your subordinates understand. As a leader, it's your responsibility to ask clarifying questions of your superiors.
If you wish your team to be effective, you have to implement decentralized command.
If something is going wrong, look at yourself first. Understand how you can own the situation and make it better.
Prioritize your problems and execute one at a time in order.
Simplicity in plans is paramount.

Memorable Quotes

Discipline equals freedom.
It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.
the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.
When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.
Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance. Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.
Belief in the mission ties in with the fourth Law of Combat: Decentralized Command (chapter 8). The leader must explain not just what to do, but why. It is the responsibility of the subordinate leader to reach out and ask if they do not understand. Only when leaders at all levels understand and believe in the mission can they pass that understanding and belief to their teams so that they can persevere through challenges, execute and win.
Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, the highest priority first. Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful.” I explained how a leader who tries to take on too many problems simultaneously will likely fail at them all.
Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. It can even stifle someone’s sense of self-preservation. Often, the most difficult ego to deal with is your own.
Regardless of how you think an operation is going to unfold,” I answered, “the enemy gets their say as well—and they are going to do something to disrupt it. When something goes wrong—and it eventually does—complex plans add to confusion, which can compound into disaster. Almost no mission ever goes according to plan. There are simply too many variables to deal with.

Rating: 10/10
Hands down required reading. I'll recommend this to anyone who will listen

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

10/27/2018

This is the first business book I've read that I want to re-read immediately. Tim Ferriss has recommended this book over and over, so I've known about it for awhile. I should have read it four years ago! It covers a variety of strategies for building and running successful small businesses. Having started and failed to grow a business of my own, I recognized many of the mistakes I made in the dialogue. This is an easy read, and if you run (or are thinking about starting) a business, I would call this required reading. You can finish it in an afternoon.

Key Takeaways

If you want to grow your business, you need to work on your business, not in your business.
Every entrepreneur has 3 competing identities within them. There's the strategist, the technician, and the manager. They need to be in equal parts, otherwise the business will suffer.
Most entrepreneurs don't realize they're doing the wrong work a lot of the time.
Standardize everything in your business so that you can hand off roles to other people. Bonus points if you design these systems to improve themselves.
Be very explicit about your primary aim and strategic objectives.
Even when you're the only worker in your business, you need to describe each role in detail.

Memorable Quotes

Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is living fully and just existing.
If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!
With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it? What is your Primary Aim? Where is the script to make your dreams come true? what is the first step to take and how do you measure your progress? How far have you gone and how close are you to getting to your goals?
Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.
You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, not by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it. – Carlos Castaneda
Most salespeople think that selling is “closing.” It isn’t. Selling is opening.
the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.
I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

Rating: 9/10
A top business book by all accounts. I recommend this to anyone interested in any kind of business. This is even applicable to startups, despite using a small business as its example. Even though first published in 1995, it holds up over 20 years later, as these principles are timeless.

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

10/19/2018

After finishing Broken Angels, I rolled right into part 3, Woken Furies. We follow Takeshi Kovacs again, in a more fulfilling finale than part 2. The book was still not as novel or exciting as Altered Carbon, but a fitting ending to the saga. I listened on Audible – a decent narration, but not the best I've heard.

Key Takeaways

Power is never stagnant, it flows. It either concentrates in the few, or it diffuses to the many.
The Fermi Paradox is tough to swallow.
The potential for human enhancement through technology seems unlimited.

Memorable Quotes

Every previous revolutionary movement in human history has made the same basic mistake. They’ve all seen power as a static apparatus, as a structure. And it’s not. It’s a dynamic, a flow system with two possible tendencies. Power either accumulates, or it diffuses through the system. In most societies, it’s in accumulative mode, and most revolutionary movements are only really interested in reconstituting the accumulation in a new location. A genuine revolution has to reverse the flow. And no one ever does that, because they’re all too fucking scared of losing their conning tower moment in the historical process. If you tear down one agglutinative power dynamic and put another one in its place, you’ve changed nothing. You’re not going to solve any of that society’s problems, they’ll just reemerge at a new angle. You’ve got to set up the nanotech that will deal with the problems on its own. You’ve got to build the structures that allow for diffusion of power, not re-grouping. Accountability, demodynamic access, systems of constituted rights, education in the use of political infrastructure.
it’s amazing how constant repetition can make even the most obvious truths irritating enough to disagree with.
Or maybe that was just the swiftly gathering sense of motion that had me now, the drug-like grip of a decision taken and what it meant.
Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash...

Rating: 7.5/10
A solid read, but again, not as good as Altered Carbon. Some more action and intrigue than Part 2 of the trilogy, but not a return to the murder mystery that I loved in Part 1. At this point, I'm tired of Kovacs and ready for something else!

Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

10/9/2018

Takeshi Kovacs is back in Broken Angels. This is the second installment (of three) in Richard K Morgan's series. I reviewed Altered Carbon a few weeks back, and while it has some of the same feel, I was a bit disappointed. Altered Carbon is part sci-fi, part murder mystery, part thriller. It was something new to me that surprised me in a lot of ways. To me Broken Angels is only an action novel that takes place in the future.

Key Takeaways

What are the chances we're alone in this universe?
If we discover life from elsewhere, there will be an incredible rush and incentive to reverse engineer its technology.
Space travel and orbital dynamics are hard [again].
Virtual Reality could be a powerful tool for any number of reasons. The possibilities are exciting.

Memorable Quotes

Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don’t pray, don’t wish, don’t buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don’t give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of . . . whatever. Face the facts. Then act.
The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.
In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don’t, then the agenda makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay.
I thought that was what religion was. Simplification for the hard of thinking.
Religion is religion, however you wrap it, and like Quell says, a preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.
You can’t talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on.
War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?

Rating: 5/10
Broken Angels was disappointing to me, especially after Altered Carbon. It is still entertaining, but not near the top of my list as far as Sci-Fi goes. I'll read the third installment anyway, to see if it's any better.

Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual by Jocko Willink

10/9/2018

I've followed Jocko since he first appeared on Tim Ferriss' podcast. While Discipline Equals Freedom came out awhile back, I wish I hadn't waited to buy it. The combination of inspirational and tactical takeaways made it worth every penny. It's a great coffee table book too, and I'll be keeping it well placed in my apartment. It's an easy read, and you can breeze through it in a couple hours. If you want to tackle some of the workouts though, it may take a bit longer.

Key Takeaways

Discipline, not motivation, is the most important quality to cultivate in your life.
With discipline, you can reach your potential.
Discipline is about what you don't do.
Most things are simple, but that simplicity comes at a cost. It's hard (very hard) to achieve.
Discipline is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
You can apply this principle to anything in your life.

Memorable Quotes

Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.
Don’t let your mind control you. Control your mind.
NO MORE. No more excuses. No more: “I’ll start tomorrow.” No more: “Just this once.” No more accepting the shortfalls of my own will. No more taking the easy road. No more bowing down to whatever unhealthy or unproductive thoughts float through my mind.
With myself, I have to hold the line. There are areas within myself where I CANNOT compromise. I am going to work hard. I am going to train hard. I am going to improve myself. I am not going to rest on my laurels. I am going to own my mistakes and confront them. I am going to face my demons. I’m not going to give up, or give out, or give in. I’m going to stand. I am going to maintain my self-discipline. And on those points there will be No Compromise. NOT NOW. NOT EVER.
Because emotion and logic will both reach their limitations. And when one fails, you need to rely on the other. When it just doesn’t make any logical sense to go on, that’s when you use your emotion, your anger, your frustration, your fear, to push further, to push you to say one thing: I don’t stop.
Is this what I want to be? This? I this all I got - is this everything I can give? Is this going to be my life? Do I accept that?
Live in defiance of the weakness and in rebellion against the decay.

Rating: 9.5/10
Excellent all around. Practical and inspirational, and I'd recommend this to anyone interested in getting better.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

9/30/2018

Neuromancer is a genre-defining novel by William Gibson. The plot follows a crime-connected hacker named Case. Case goes on a series of adventures in an attempt to release an AI called Wintermute. I know this is sci-fi canon, but I had a hard time following the plot. The narrator had something to do with it, and I'd like to go back and read it in hardcopy.

Key Takeaways

AI Is going to be a very difficult problem. We can't predict all the possible outcomes, so we need to expect the unexpected.
It seems unlikely we'll contain AI by physical means.

Memorable Quotes

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.
Things aren't different. Things are things.
His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well.
Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Dar- winism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.
Cliches became cliches for a reason; that they usually hold at least a modicum of truth, and the following cliche is truer than most: You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.

Rating: 7/10
I can see why this book is appealing. Unfortunately it didn't draw me in like Snow Crash or Altered Carbon. As I said, the narrator had something to do with that. I'll try to read it on paper sometime soon so I better understand and follow what's going on in the early going.

The Truth by Neil Strauss

9/25/2018

The Truth changed my thinking on love and relationships. In some ways, it's a sequel to The Game, where Neil dives into the world of pickup artists. In The Truth, he dives into the world of alternative relationships. His goal is to find something that meets his endless (and impossible) list of requirements. I won't spoil any of the details, but Neil has quite the roller coaster, and in many ways I identified with him.

Key Takeaways

Relationships are a give and take (duh!).
A relationship is a third thing that's built between two people. If either of the people are broken, the relationship will also be broken.
We all have baggage. We owe it to ourselves and our partners to dissect that baggage and understand that baggage.
You can't always trust your gut.
You need to take a close look at your relationship with your parents. Most of what you think (subconsciously) about relationships comes from them.

Memorable Quotes

Most people seem to believe that if a relationship doesn't last until death, it's a failure. But the only relationship that's truly a failure is one that lasts longer than it should. The success of a relationship should be measured by it's depth, not by it's length.
Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.
Because, all too often, the things that we're the most resistant to are precisely what we need. And the things we're most scared to let go of are exactly the ones we most need to relinquish.
The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.
A healthy relationship is when two individuated adults decide to have a relationship and that becomes a third entity. They nurture the relationship and the relationship nurtures them. But they’re not overly dependent or independent: They are interdependent, which means that they take care of the majority of their needs and wants on their own, but when they can’t, they’re not afraid to ask their partner for help.” She pauses to let it all sink in, then concludes, “Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.
In the dance of infatuation, we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts.
In this life, we don't meet many people who truly love us, who accept us for who we are, who put us before themselves.
They say that love is blind, but it’s trauma that’s blind. Love sees what is.
I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that's when all forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.
Love is when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one things and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self.
Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.
How you do anything is how you do everything.

Rating: 10/10
I could post most of the text as memorable quotes. It's filled with wisdom on relationships, love, intimacy, trauma, and addiction. Having recently left a committed relationship, this was particularly timely for me. I have a new perspective and thought process now. This will go into my regular rotation so I revisit and pick up new tidbits regularly.

Sleep by Nick Littlehales

9/25/2018

Sleep changed my system for rest and recovery. Sleep is easy to overlook, especially because nobody teaches you how to do it. Nick Littlehales comes from the peak performance industry. He works with Premier League Football clubs and Olympians. He's developed a simple system to optimize your recovery. Anyone can find more sleep efficiency with a few key changes.

Key Takeaways

Your sleep cycles go in increments of ~90 minutes.
Wake up at the same time every day (yes, even weekends), so that your body is always primed to go in the morning.
Go to sleep a multiple of 90 minutes before your wake up time. This means if you have 7 hours until your wake up time, you're better off staying up another hour.
Use blackout shades.
Find a mattress that's right for your body.
Take advantage of naps to supplement your regular sleep. Nick calls them "Controlled Recovery Periods: CRPs," and I get a kick out of that.

Memorable Quotes

In fact, setting a constant wake time is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal when looking to improve the quality of our recovery. Our bodies love it, with our circadian rhythms, set by the rise and fall of the sun, working around a consistent point, and our minds love it, because through this constant wake time we can build the confidence to be more flexible in other aspects of our lives.
Use caffeine as a strategic performance enhancer, not out of habit—and no more than 400 milligrams per day.
Think of sleep in ninety-minute cycles, not hours. Your sleep time is flexible, but it is determined by counting back in ninety-minute slots from your wake time. Look at sleep in a broader tract of time to take the pressure off. One ‘bad night’s sleep’ won’t kill you – think of it in cycles per week. Try to avoid three nights of fewer cycles than your ideal back to back.
Start on five cycles, and see how you feel after seven days. If this is too long, move it down to four. Not enough? Move up to six. You’ll know because you should feel good once you’ve adjusted to it.

Rating: 9/10
This gets a high rating because of its pure practicality. It's very much a 'how to' of sleep. It's a quick read, and even if you only take one or two pieces from it, you'll find value.

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