5/52: Quantified habits
#CapitalAtRisk
The 2010s was the decade of the Entrepreneur.
The 2020s will be the decade of the Investor.
“Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility… Nobody asks him how hard he works. Nobody asks him when he wakes up or when he goes to sleep. They’re like, ‘Warren, just do your thing’”
Naval Ravikant
The weekly plan
A game-changer for getting things done has been this, a weekly tear-off planner from Yop & Tom.
In December 2021 Joppe (the ‘Yop’ I presume…) wrote to me after he saw 9others — he’s yet to come along but I hope he does soon. As a nice notebook fan I immediately bought a bright yellow ‘Power-of-three’ goal planner.
That note book has been extremely useful but at the end of last year I saw the tear-off planner and, dare I say, it’s much better.
On a Sunday night I tear off that week’s sheet and write down the following week’s tasks, goals and habits.
A new habit
Last night I added a new daily habit, “Read for 1 hour”.
Pretty simple, right? However I’d had “Read” on there for the first two months of 2025 and there had been many days (most, if I’m honest) when I hadn’t read at all. When it was simply “Read” there was always something more important to do.
Thanks Borislav and Naval
Borislav Koev was a fellow attendee at VALUEx. It was his first time (my second) and it was immediately obvious that he was ‘one of us’ VALUEx’ers when he told me about his favourite, life-changing book and, without hesitation, said, “Tell me your address now, I’ll send you a copy”. He went straight onto Amazon mid-dinner, ordered a copy and put the delivery address as mine. What a gent!
The book he sent to me was, “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”, which was put together by Eric Jorgenson.
On page 113 Naval says, “Read a lot — just read”, followed by a Tweet:
“Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.”
Those first 113 pages took me over a week to read. Then, on Saturday, I read that ‘read one hour a day’ bit and committed to doing just that. I carried on until I’d hit one hour and finished the rest of the book on Sunday, yesterday.
Quantified
That book finished, it was just so obvious I had to update and quantify the “Read” habit on my Yop & Tom tracker so I added “for 1 hour”.
Now I have added that “for 1 hour” bit I know I’ll do it.
I know that because since I wrote “Run 4x per week” rather than just “Run” early last year I’ve done exactly that1 — I wanted to run more days of the week than I didn’t.
So what did I read today?
Suggested by
I printed then read ‘The Power Of The Context’ by Alan Kay, here. (I can’t find your post now Dominic — I’m sure it was on your Substack — did you remove it?)‘The Power Of The Context’ is a terrific piece about what made ARPA and PARC so successful. The relevant bits for me and you as investors are:
“ARPA/PACT had ‘visions rather than goals’ and ‘funded people, not projects’”.
“The situation was ‘out of control’, yet extremely productive and not at all anarchic”
“…in most processes today — and sadly in most important areas of technology research — the administrators seem to prefer to be completely in control of mediocre processes to being ‘out of control’ with super-productive processes. They are trying to ‘void failure’ rather than trying to ‘capture the heavens’”.
Another tip from Naval
On page 120 Naval says:
“Another way to do this [have solid foundational knowledge of a subject] is to read originals and read classics. If you’re interested in evolution, read Charles Darwin. Don’t begin with Richard Dawkins (even though I think he’s great). Read him later; read Darwin first.”
I’m an investor. I want to be one of the greats. But I haven’t read all of what the greatest investor in the world has written. I’ve read a biography of him, watched some videos, documentaries, and I’ve read what other people think about him.
It’s now just so obvious what I have to read next.
They’re not in any book, but they’re online in PDF form so yesterday I printed off all of the Berkshire Hathaway Partnership letters from 1957-1965.
After that I have this.
England has eight new oak trees
Late last year I mentioned an important side project, here.
The backstory is that towards the end of 2024 I applied to Drop Dead Generous. They (Tom and John) started it as a social experiment and have set out to give away $500 to 1,000 people around the world who have good ideas.
My idea was that, if selected, I’d buy $500 worth of English oak trees throughout 2025 and plant them in the fields I run through (4x a week!) and walk Ralph the dog through.
I was selected as one of the 1,000 and am buying English oak trees in batches of four from The Woodland Trust. So far I’ve planted eight trees and the next batch are on their way.
Please apply to Drop Dead Generous with your idea and even if it’s not $500 worth please buy a few trees and plant them.
In other news
🏢 I love it when a portfolio company makes an acquisition — most founders think only of being acquired but the best think of acquiring others. In early 2022 Black Bullion did this by buying The Scholarship Hub. Last week what3words announced that it had acquired Swiftcomplete.
🥷 Founders Focus is a new membership program from 9others; a space for you to carve out time (Mondays, 10am UK time) to work on the hard things that really matter. Find out more and join Founders Focus here.
🇨🇭 A month ago I was just arriving into Klosters for VALUEx (lovely bunch, more here) and this week I’ll be meeting up with some of the London based Value Investors ahead of the Phoenix annual investor meeting.
🍽️ I’m also attending an investor lunch on Thursday 13th March near Waterloo, London. Hit reply if you’re a keen investor and keen to join.
More from me?
If you like my writing you can get more by buying my book, ‘Find your 9others’. It’s on Amazon here.
And if you’ve already read ‘Find your 9others’ please leave an Amazon review here.
Q&A
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Important: None of these posts are investment advice. If you are thinking about investing you should seek the advice of a suitably qualified independent advisor.
#CapitalAtRisk
Apart from one week when I was ill and two others when I was travelling.