Weekly Reads: Create for Yourself, Valuable Conversations, and Hidden Taxes
Using yourself as signal, on better dialogues, and surviving the "Boiling frog" effect.
My week’s top reads: clear, useful, and (hopefully) worth your time.
My advice on writing, for what it's worth
In "How to Do Great Work", Paul Graham says:
If you’re making something for people, make sure it’s something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want.
And in "What I’ve Learned from Users":
I often tell founders to make something they themselves want, and YC is certainly that.
The reason this advice is good (though exceptions exist) is that, by following it, you will have at least one real user (yourself) that you can use for feedback to build an MVP, otherwise, you can easily fool yourself into believing what you are building is useful.
Well, I think this concept can generalize to all forms of creation:
When you write; write something you would read.
When you do research; look into questions you'd be interested to answer.
When you release open-source code; package it in a way you'd use it.
Conversation & Ideas
How a group of people approach a conversation either makes it or breaks it.
Examples of good conversation principles:
A shared desire to objectively understand something or reach the truth.
A return to first principals to either solve a problem or understand a topic.
A common incentive to solve a problem using measurable metrics.
Examples of bad conversation principles:
Seeking approval on ideas. Avoiding disagreement or not tolerating it.
Debating for the sake of debate. Taking the defence by default.
Gossiping.
We can selectively opt in or out of conversations based on our knowledge of the participants and their motivations.
Things you're allowed to do
There are many things we could do, but don’t—simply because most people don’t. Examples:
Use your money for things other than consumption/investment:
Hire a researcher or expert consultant.
Run surveys.
Buy advertisements.
Buy research or data.
Hire a tutor.
Buy goods/services from your friends.
Give to charity.
Hire a coach.
Ask questions online.
Travel to friends just to visit them.
Live in multiple places with multiple people.
Generate your own ebooks.
Ignore what’s on the jobs page & pitch someone at a company on hiring you.
Negotiate for better terms in your job offer.
Ask for a raise or drop out/quit your job.
Live off your savings (or get a grant) while trying something new.
I think the space of what we can creatively do is huge!
The Virtue of Silence
In his (excellent) book, "Antifragile", Nassem Taleb points out that in many situations, refraining from intervention (doing nothing) is the optimal choice. However, we don't get paid to do nothing (in money nor recognition/visibility), this is why doctors are inclined to leave you with a prescription despite knowing you will naturally recover. In such situation, the actor should indeed do nothing and bear the cost (missed opportunities, reputational damage, decreased pay, etc).
Inflation is Multiple Taxation
This article opened my eyes to the other forms of inflation that exist in our lives. Aside from currency depreciation...
Capital gains tax: when asset appreciation is tracking inflation (e.g., 10% inflation resulting in 10% asset appreciation) and we don't pay taxes, we are breakeven. However, when we pay taxes on our gains (which is our reality), we lose purchasing power. This means that to be breakeven, ours returns need to be higher than the inflation rate.
Higher bracket taxation: we receiving a 5% annual raise with 5% inflation are no better off in real terms, yet may end up in a higher tax bracket, losing more of our income to taxes.
Reduced tax credits & benefits: as we attempt to keep up with inflation, we get decreased benefits as we are considered higher income, but in reality, we are just trying to keep up with inflation.
It's important to be aware of such realities to avoid being slowly boiled alive.