My Takeaways from 2020
75 Lessons learned from this unique year
Queue generic “2020 was a weird & catastrophic year that no one expected” comment. Enough with that, we all know how devasting this year has been and we’ve all been reminded of it plenty of times.
Instead of viewing the glass half-empty, this is my attempt to reflect on the year and view it as half-full.
Whilst most issues of this journal are designed to be of value both to me and yourself, this is a more selfish piece where I write lazy, one liners that resonate fantastically with me. It is my attempt to create a document that I can go back to and remind myself of what I have learnt throughout this historic and transformative year. In no particular order, this is what I have learnt in 2020; the year of masks, lockdowns & uncertainty.
Live slow. Evict the noise. It’s incredible what you’ll discover.
Creativity & inspiration may be a life-form. They certainly behave that way.
People can be the wrong fit for you, without being bad.
Keep identity small. Identity prevents the nerds from working out and the men from dancing.
KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid. Unbelievably true.
Big thanks to Borka for this one - I don’t need an empire to be fulfilled. Why measure success by one’s ability to accumulate capital?
I really really struggle to do nothing. With so many potential distractions, I have become addicted to always doing something. A big problem.
You have infinitesimal political influence. Every thought you have about politics will come to nothing. It’s an extremely inefficient allocation of scarce time.
I need to conquer my inner bitch more often. My monthly challenges are returning in 2021.
Being virtuous is paramount to living prosperously. Be a stoic.
Happiness is both a choice and a skill that can be trained.
BTS and Travis Scott released new music on Fortnite. The metaverse is maturing.
Being humbled is perhaps my favourite sensation (aside from cruising downhill on a snowboard).
Know thyself. There’s no situation where it doesn’t help enormously.
The market price is correct, but the market is full of idiots.
Show up and it’ll happen. All you have to do is show up...repeatedly.
We live in a world with infinite leverage. Do more motherfucker.
Competition isn’t competition. It’s distraction.
Branching out & consuming everything isn’t efficient. Pace yourself Felix.
To my surprise, after spending 3 months in the Canary Islands, I don’t have many stories to tell. What I do have is heaps of experiences & lessons for me to remember.
The narrating self vs the actual self. Be cautious of the narrating self & its ability to obfuscate reality.
Spend less time criticising. It’s very easy to point fingers. Find solutions.
Be radically open-minded (thanks Ray Dalio).
Status games exist and they are poisonous. Exit them.
Everything (and I mean everything) works better in moderation.
The barriers to opening a restaurant/kitchen are too high. The market needs a Shopify solution for restaurants. Thinking about this lots going into the new year.
Discipline > motivation. Got to master it.
Religion has low confidence in man. ‘Spirituality’ has high confidence in human potential.
I really ought to do my morning mantra every single day.
Proper meditation and examination should ruin the life you’re currently living.
Epstein didn’t kill himself.
The COVID disaster has highlighted that we are more like sheep than I believed. I too am very guilty of this.
Every 3rd thought should be of my grave. Acknowledging mortality has been such a humbling and beneficial choice.
The people with the most power in the world are those who write the code for Facebook & Twitter.
One of the scarier realisations of 2020 is that I am not a single unified self. I have no free will. I am instead a biochemical mechanism controlled by algorithms beyond my control. Pretty daunting to discover that I am nothing whole.
When the best hour of my day is spent by myself, the world has very little to offer me. When you are so content and healthy by yourself, the probability that an external injection into your life results in a net-negative is high.
Be wary of new ideas and facts. You don’t know shit.
Language and writing are perfect anarchy. No one telling you ‘how’ to. You are free to speak and write however you want. This newsletter is an example of that.
Christmas might source from an old ritual where people were given the amanita muscaria mushroom (which grows under xmas trees) on the winter solstice. Santa is the shaman who delivered them.
Global policy runs markets, not underlying fundamentals. Hope this one doesn’t come back to bite me.
People spend a lot of time living in the past and present. I enjoy and thrive off living in the future.
I have a nasty addiction to instant gratification.
I have lost the ability, or perhaps never even acquired it, to really pay attention to every choice I make.
Discovering the importance of having ‘Skin in the Game.’
When trying to create a new habit, replace “I have to do…” to “I get to do…”
Brexit means Brexit. Writing this minutes after the brexit deal was agreed upon, and for the first time in years, Brexit does indeed mean Brexit.
Creating decentralised governance structures is something I want to work on, but they are impossibly hard to forge. Just highlights how truly great Bitcoin is.
I spend too much time thinking about others.
I am incredibly fortunate. Read that again Felix.
Things rarely transpire to be what you imagined them as.
Let it go. Don’t chase. If the world wants, it will return.
If I want to create/lose a habit, divide it into three steps (1) Make it obvious or invisible (2) Make it attractive or unattractive (3) Make it easy or hard
Software is eating the world and we’re headed towards a future where every asset is represented by a token stored in your wallet. All wealth is becoming digital.
COVID19 catalysed and will accelerate an overdue medical revolution. Surprise surprise the focus will be digitising it.
The region of Andalucia has much more to offer than I thought.
Writing is the art of unravelling thoughts and noticing flaws within them.
Things you use for a significant part of your life (eg bed & office-chair) are worth investing in.
Trust in institutions is rotting and is the lowest I’ve seen in my lifetime (governments, supermarkets, banks, doctors, etc).
How you spend every day is how you spend your life. You are what you eat. You are who you hang out with. You are what you do.
Governments, similar to US states in the past, are starting to compete when it comes to attracting and luring talent. The competition to attract the best and most skilled humans to said country has begun.
Exit > Voice. Voting with your feet is better than some shitty meaningless ballot.
Football is changing. The love of the game is fading and the love for money is growing.
No one knows anything. We’re all children trying to do the best we can as we navigate through life.
It is far better to devote yourself to a few authors than to get lost among the many (shoutout to my man Seneca).
Success is the byproduct of learning.
Masks & Lockdowns are not a sustainable & optimal solution. The solution does more harm than the issue.
For the first time in 14,000 years we humans have regained the ability to not have to commit to a sole location, and instead, can travel around the world whilst still supporting oneself. Appreciate this.
The best investors & traders refrain from FOMO. Let opportunities go. One will inevitably arise.
Trump taught me that I don’t have to play by the rules to win.
Forrest Gump has taught me more than any other movie.
It was a damn good decision to leave social media platforms.
Humans conquered the world thanks to their ability to believe in collective myths/imagined realities (religions, empires, organisations, capitalism etc).
Is the digital revolution the beginning of the end for us homo-sapiens? What will happen to humanistic beliefs like liberalism & democracy when the duo of consciousness and intelligence decouple? We are now discovering unconscious intelligence; which decreases humans’ economic + military value. Will we, the conscious ones, still be valued in a world where consciousness is not required to be intelligent?
Don’t look for jobs. There are none. Look to solve problems. There are many.
People are shockingly bad at preserving wealth. I’m somewhat good at it. Leverage this.
I like points 3,13, 31, 74 and 75. enjoyed reading this