The School of Knowledge is the weekly newsletter for SME owners and investors who want frameworks they can actually use — frameworks, checklists, and operating manuals every weekend, built to read on Sunday and use on Monday.

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What’s the difference between being stuck in a job you despise for 40 years and a 12 x 8ft cell? Nothing. The sad fact is—most people get up and go to work for somebody else’s version of what it means to live life. You feel paralysed, trapped in a body betraying your own free will. You don’t want to be here—you swore you weren’t going to be—but here you are anyway.

There’s something lifeless about following another person’s dreams. When you’re a kid, your dreams are of being a rockstar, an athlete, an artist. I was always the footballer scoring the winning goal in the World Cup final. Nobody wanted to be a cog in a massive wheel.

You say dreams are for kids, but i disagree. They just look different as an adult.

A dream as an adult is working on something you value—not despise. A dream is having enough money to share experiences with the people you love—not dislike. You waste 40 hours of your week, or more bluntly—86.6 days of your year on a job you couldn’t care less for. A dream as an adult is waking up in the morning and looking forward to the day—not in a whimsical way, but because you’re ready for whatever the day throws at you.

A dream as an adult is doing something with purpose.

I never once imagined as a kid, or even in early adulthood, that i would enjoy writing. Even worse—enjoy writing about stuff like capital allocation, mental models or how to be a systems thinker. But you can’t choose who or what you fall in love with. 15-year-old Karl would probably be taking the piss out of 36-year-old Karl. Perhaps because i’m approaching 40, i’ve been thinking about midlife crises a lot more. I don’t think i’m the susceptible type, but i also didn’t see my future love for financial ratios either. But, why do people have midlife crises? I think people have them for many reasons, but i think many come back to one thing: purpose. Or more specifically—a lack of.

Us humans are a stubborn bunch. We’d rather be an insider suffering with the many, than an outsider. To go against the grain is to choose isolation. Writing about business couldn’t sound any more boring if i tried; it also sounds counterintuitive to what i’ve spoken about, but let me explain: The shoes on your feet, the coffee in your cup, and the eggs you ate for breakfast all come from businesses. People are businesses—plain and simple. Without people there can’t be any businesses.

So let me ask you again: What’s the difference between being stuck in a job you despise for 40 years and a 12 x 8ft cell? Nothing. But, let me ask it differently: What’s the similarity between being stuck in a job you despise for 40 years and a 12 x 8ft cell? A lack of purpose. Direction.

The School of Knowledge was born as a placeholder for my thoughts and has turned into me distilling lessons i’ve learnt from being a nobody to a Royal Marine, to travelling the world, to getting paid thousands of dollars a day to cleaning ovens for minimum wage. I’ve built many lives in my 36 years and they’ve all taught me lessons—lessons that as a business owner-operator i want to share with people who are trying to build a life or career they want. If you just want the mental models, concepts and frameworks then stay for those alone. If you just want to learn about how to run or start your company and gain financial understanding you can do that too. But for those who want access to it all—warts and all—there’s an offer below waiting for you to just accept it.

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For those that want to keep on reading about uncertainty and changing your beliefs (or lack of) start here:

Incase you missed it

Yesterday i published the third deep-dive on the 7 Powers series: Counter-Positioning. Essential reading for business owner operators:

Until next time, Karl.

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Every capital allocation decision you make means foregoing other options available to you—and getting those decisions right is the difference between good investments and great ones.

Between a 12% return or 20%.

Great investors such as Charlie Munger and Nick Sleep thought about capital allocation a lot, and i leaned on their way of thinking when i had to make a capital allocation decision for my business this week.

The construction industry is cyclical. We’re usually one of the first industries impacted by recessions and usually the last out of one. The last couple of years i’ve seen clients delay more projects, material and labour prices double and national insurance rates shoot up, all contributing to a difficult period for the industry.

But, a declining industry offers opportunities for businesses that operate well, have healthy margins and, more importantly—have cash on their balance sheet ready to deploy.

Being a Principal Contractor in the UK, you are heavily reliant on being competitive enough to win jobs through the public or private sector, which in general is just a race to the bottom with margins amongst the lowest in any industry. A big part of this is the layers upon layers of bureaucracy in the industry—all taking their fees whilst passing on the risk to the contractors. Fair enough—but i want more reward for my risk.

A couple of weeks ago i was presented with software that cut right through those layers of bureaucracy and went straight to the source of what we wanted to do as a company: buy land, build commercial buildings on it, and then sell or rent them. No estate agents to deal with, no developers, no consultants—no waiting around for people to do things for you. No tendering. A direct link to the landowner, with a service that even sent them letters with your offer.

It was great, but the problem was that the software was expensive and i declined their service. But, a few days later i sat and thought about the decision i’d made. With this software i could do everything remotely. i didn’t even need to leave my desk. By rejecting their service i was accepting that i was willing to carry on searching for land the old way; scrolling websites, communicating with estate agents, taking time out of my day to go and view the land, and relying on them to get back to me whenever they pleased. Not to mention the synthesised bidding wars they create.

i added up the time it would take for myself or my business partners to do all of this, and conservatively estimated that the minimum would be two days a week if we were limiting our search to the North West of England, and were taking it half-seriously. We are also unquestionably up against other companies who have whole departments dedicated to doing something similar, with better resources and more capital.

Once i looked at the maths—the cost of one of us doing this manually for two days a week, or 104 days a year (not accounting for holidays)—it dwarfed the annual cost of the software. That’s before any savings from going direct to the vendor and developing and building ourselves.

The opportunity cost of not purchasing the software was too high, so i made a call with my tail between my legs and changed course (not before getting two months free).

i don’t have a crystal ball and time will tell if the investment pays off, but by understanding the concept of opportunity cost—by being able to work out the present value of future cash flows—i’ve given myself a reasonable edge and sought to take back more control over my company’s future prospects.

And that’s what The School of Knowledge hopes to assist you with. Making better business and investment decisions. There are no rose-tinted glasses here—i call a spade a spade and look to share everything i’ve found useful in getting to where i am today.

If you’re an operator—someone who does things—and would like to read more about capital allocation, opportunity cost and net present value, click through to the following posts:

For paid subscribers, next Saturday i produce a deep dive into the most paralysing form of business strategy: Counter-Positioning. To read the first two articles in this series click below.

Until next time,

Karl.

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Here’s a roundup of everything I found interesting or useful last week:

📚 Books

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time and have just got through the first chapter—scale economies. Absolutely can’t wait to share my thoughts with you.

💭 Quotes

A great quote on perspective:

📜 Articles

Lots of useful advice on how to organise your notes. Konik’s idea of synthesis notes has closed a loop i’ve long wanted to close. A must read for those who take digital notes and especially if you use Obsidian.

Manuscriptions

🌲 The Konik Method for Organizing Electronic Notes

Back in 2022, my article outlining the Konik Method for Making Useful Notes won Obsidian October and was widely shared in notetaking communities — although it was written before my migration to Substack so alas, all the comments are lost. Now that it’s been three years (!) I thought it might be useful to explain how technological changes (like the rise …

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6 months ago · 36 likes · 17 comments · Eleanor Konik

NotebookLM is a power tool and Eva, from Lifelong Learning Club gives you a fantastic overview, including use cases on how to get started in under 5 minutes.

Lifelong Learning Club

A Short, Yet Useful Guide to NotebookLM

The Lifelong Learning Club is your place for applying evidence-based learning strategies so you can learn faster, remember what you read, and use AI to augment thinking, instead of outsourcing it…

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2 months ago · 75 likes · 25 comments · Eva Keiffenheim MSc

🎧 Podcasts

Peter Kaufman shares his advice on the importance of multidisciplinary thinking, along with why he thinks reciprocation is one of the most important skills you can develop—and why you must always go first.

❓Questions

A great question posed by Lifelong Learning Club on using AI to build expertise, including my response. What are you thoughts?

Lifelong Learning club: You cannot evaluate what you do not understand. You can only know what “good” AI output looks like if you already know the subject deeply.

What do you think are the implications for learning? Is procedural fluency (knowing how to produce the work) a prerequisite for evaluative fluency (knowing how to assess and improve the work), or can we shortcut straight to expert judgment via alternative learning pathways?

The School of Knowledge: I would say in general your level of analysis is surmountable to your level of expertise. I don’t think you can shortcut your way there, but I can see how AI could accelerate learning through quicker feedback and iteration in certain domains. However, you still have to do the work. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll be an expert, or in fact better at all if your learning practices are poor.

If I want to become a better essayist —AI can give me advice on formatting, voice, punctuation, and link the best 100 essays for me to read and learn from. It could do all of that in seconds/minutes. AI can spot patterns and draw conclusions from these essays—but if I can’t, what am I achieving? And if AI is identifying expert level patterns and offering them to me on a silver platter, am I developing expert judgement?

“To understand is to know what to do” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Or, perhaps:

“To understand is to know how to see”

To comment on the thread just click through below:

👀 Incase you missed it

A round up articles I published in Jan (note, I was pretty ill for a few weeks so wasn’t a great deal).

*Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/low-angle-photography-of-grey-and-black-tunnel-overlooking-white-cloudy-and-blue-sky-210158/

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📚 Book

There are three conditions where people are likely to succumb to the influence of social proof. Robert Cialdini discusses those three, below.

The principle of social proof states that one important means people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to examine what others are believing or doing there. Powerful such effects have been found among both children and adults and in such diverse activities as purchase decisions, charity donations, and phobia remission. The principle of social proof can be used to stimulate a person's compliance with a request by communicating that many other individuals (the more, the better) are or have been complying with it. Therefore, simply pointing to the popularity of an item elevates its popularity. Social proof is most influential under three conditions. The first is uncertainty. When people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more likely to attend to the actions of others and to accept those actions as correct. In ambiguous situations, for instance, the decisions of bystanders to offer emergency aid are much more influenced by the actions of other bystanders than when the situation is a clear-cut emergency. A second condition under which social proof is most influential involves "the many": people are more inclined to follow the lead of others in proportion to the others' number. When we see multiple others performing an action, we become willing to follow because the action appears to be more (1) correct/valid, (2) feasible, and (3) socially acceptable. The third optimizing condition for social-proof information is similarity. People conform to the beliefs and actions of comparable others, especially their peers-a phenomenon we can call peer-suasion. Evidence for the powerful influence of the actions of similar others can be seen in suicide statistics compiled by sociologist David Phillips. The statistics indicate that after highly publicized suicide stories, other troubled individuals, who are similar to the suicide-story victim, decide to kill themselves. An analysis of the mass-suicide incident at Jonestown, Guyana, sug gests the group's leader, Reverend Jim Jones, used both of the factors of uncertainty and similarity to induce a herdlike suicide response from the majority of the Jonestown population.

- Robert Cialdini, Influence

📜 Article

My latest article discusses what the Roman and Stoic Emperor, Marcus Aurelius thought about tranquillity and how his advice can help you achieve inner peace today.

🎧 Podcast

There aren’t many people who understand the power of consistency better than Haruki Murakami. This week I listened to David Senra discuss his memoir ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.’ A great one for people who are passionate about something.

💭 Quote

"There is a difference between a heap of bricks, on the one hand, and the single house they can constitute, on the other. There is a difference between a single house and a collection of houses. A book is like a single house. It is a mansion having many rooms, rooms on different levels, of different sizes and shapes, with different outlooks, with different uses. The rooms are independent, in part. Each has its own structure and interior decoration. But they are not absolutely independent and separate. They are connected by doors and arches, by corridors and stairways, by what architects call a "traffic pattern."

Because they are connected, the partial function that each performs contributes its share to the usefulness of the whole house. Otherwise the house would not be livable."

- Charles Van Doren, Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

❓ Question

I was asked yesterday what my favourite book was and two popped into my head immediately. King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild & Endurance by Alfred Lansing, closely followed by The Ocean Outlaw by Ian Urbina. That’s interesting because they are all ‘adventure’ or ‘exploration’ books, not something I would have said if people asked me what my favourite genre is. Anyway, this week’s question.

• What is your all time favourite book and why? I’ll although you to choose two :)

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

If you found this article helpful and think it could benefit others, please share it!

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📚 The School of Knowledge leverages book wisdom to better understand people, businesses, and ideas by bridging the gap between theory and real-world application. Join my growing community of like-minded people below💡

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J. Paul Getty died the richest man on earth but never shied away from doing dirty work. His crew admired and respected him more for doing so. There’s a lesson for managers in this:

"I spent most of my time in the field working on the drilling rigs with my men, a habit which paid many handsome and unexpected dividends. Not the least of these stemmed from the drilling crews' reactions to the presence of a working boss on the job. The men felt they were partners with the boss in a mutual effort, rather than merely employees of some corporation run by executives they never saw and who had probably never set foot on a drilling platform in their lives. Morale and production-soared as a result."

- J. Paul Getty, How to Be Rich

Buy it here: How to be Rich

🎧 Podcasts

For those who are perpetual learners, Andrew Huberman discusses the overwhelming evidence to suggest you’ve probably been learning wrong and how to fix it!

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

My favourite time of year autumn (fall for you American folk) is here. The changing of the seasons is something I look forward to as we move away from summer and head towards colours of amber, red and yellow. I’ll also be spending Halloween in America this year which has always been a dream of mine. An easy question for you this week..

1. What’s your favourite season and why?

   ---

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

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📚 I leverage book wisdom to better understand people, businesses and ideas. Join my growing community of like-minded people below💡

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Some timeless wisdom from Marcus Aurelius on how to be happy in life. Not much has changed since he wrote in his diary.

"If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment. If you can embrace this without fear or expectation-can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)-then your life will be happy.

No one can prevent that."

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

📜 Articles

Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of the scarcity principle in my recent post below.

💭 Quotes

The scarcity principle can be used in a multitude of ways, both for good and bad. So,

1. How has the scarcity principle been used against you?

2. How have you used the scarcity principle to your advantage?

That’s it for this week. Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

How you can help…

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“Which activities in your life make you enter flow? Write all of them on a piece of paper, then ask yourself these questions:

1. What do the activities that drive you to flow have in common?

2. Why do those activities drive you to flow? For example, are all the activities you most like doing ones that you practice alone or with other people? Do you flow more when doing things that require you to move your body or just to think?

In the answers to these questions, you might find the underlying ikigai that drives your life. If you don't, then keep searching by going deeper into what you like by spending more of your time in the activities that make you flow. Also, try new things that are not on the list of what makes you flow but that are similar and that you are curious about. For example, if photography is something that drives you into flow, you could also try painting; you might even like it more! Or if you love snowboarding and have never tried surfing…

Flow is mysterious. It is like a muscle: the more you train it, the more you will flow, and the closer you will be to your ikigai."

- Héctor García, Ikigai

📜 Articles

A great article from Giacomo Falcone from ‘Getting Better’ on why distancing yourself from your phone is important for a healthy brain.

Getting Better

Why putting our phone away isn’t enough: The "Brain Drain" effect

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2 years ago · 51 likes · 21 comments · Giacomo Falcone

🎧 Podcasts

A great episode where Tim Ferriss and Naval discuss happiness, anxiety and love in the modern age. From minute 30 Naval beautifully describes his ‘purpose’ and personal brand for those who might need some clarity on their own.

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

After reading Ikigai this week i’m interested to know if and how people have found their purpose in life, so…

1. Have you found your purpose in life yet?

2. If so, how did you find it?

3. Are you pursuing it?

   ---

That’s it for this wee, if you haven’t checked out my long form post from yesterday it walks you through how to find your purpose in life. You can check it out below:

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

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When stuck between different markets and niches, remember that Amazon started out as a bookstore before it became the online retail monster it is today. Pick one thing, become really good at it and then expand.

"Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos's founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books-those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock-also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software.

Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world's general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company's scaling strategy. The biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest reflected Amazon's first goal of cataloging every book in the world, and now it stands for every kind of thing in the world, period."

- Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One

You can grab a copy of the book here (I will receive a small commission).

📜 Article

If you read one thing today make sure it’s this. With all the unrest going on around the world Gurwinder is yet again a voice of calm and reason.

Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviors validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.

The Prism

The Rise of Neotoddlerism

Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent, and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which cars were flipped over and buildings set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime …

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2 years ago · 1238 likes · 255 comments · Gurwinder

🎧 Podcast

More common sense from Gurwinder on Modern Wisdom.

💭 Quote

A particularly pertinent quote this week from Peter Thiel.

❓ Question

What book or essays would you like me to provide you with the best insights from? Comment below :)

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

If you enjoyed this article and feel it might help someone then please consider sharing it.

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📚I read and share about history’s greatest minds, leaders and achievers, distilling their insights into actionable advice for everyday life.💡

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Poor Charlies Almanack

Charlie Munger understood that to solve real-life problems, you had to have a readily available collection of tested mental models in your head. Isolated facts alone might make you sound smart but they won’t help you solve problems.

"What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form. You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience― both vicarious and direct-on this latticework of models."

- Charles T. Munger

Get it here (I make a small commission and you get to support your favourite newsletter): Poor Charlie's Almanack

📜 Articles

This is a great article from Stefano Miele, who writes the Good To Know newsletter. This piece will make you think twice about seeking advice.

Good To Know

Advice Addiction Robs You of Real Returns: Embrace Your Unique Path

You spend 200 hours browsing YouTube, furiously making notes on how you can make money writing online…

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2 years ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · Stefano Miele

Have you checked out my article on ‘How To Be A Sales Guru’ yet?

Gary Halbert made tens of millions selling by email and much more for his clients. He wrote 25 letters to his son when he was in prison and in this article I discuss the single most important thing to remember if you sell products online.

🎧 Podcast

I love stories from the great Polar Expedition era. In this episode, Dan Snow discusses Scott’s fateful attempt at reaching the South Pole. Grab a seat and get comfy because this is brilliant.

💭 Quote

❓ Question

Something i’ve been thinking about a lot this past few weeks- who is my my target audience? It always feels so grey and murky and 62 articles in I feel i’m still trying to figure it out. So this weeks question is:

• How have you (if you have) identified your target audience to write to here on Substack or elsewhere?

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

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When you want somebody to do something for you or because it’s the right thing for them to do you need to appeal to their interest, not to reason:

"I watched the brilliant and worthy Harvard Law Review-trained general counsel of Salomon Brothers lose his career there. When the able CEO was told that an underling had done something wrong, the general counsel said, "Gee, we don't have any legal duty to report this, but I think it's what we should do. It's our moral duty."

The general counsel was technically and morally correct, but his approach didn't persuade. He recommended a very unpleasant thing for the busy CEO to do and the CEO, quite understandably, put the issue off, and put it off, not with any intent to do wrong. In due course, when powerful regulators resented not having been promptly informed, down went the CEO and the general counsel with him.

The correct persuasive technique in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin. He said, "If you would persuade, appeal to interest, not to reason." The self-serving bias of man is extreme, and should have been used in attaining the correct outcome. So the general counsel should have said, "Look, this is likely to erupt into something that will destroy you, take away your money, take away your status, grossly impair your reputation. My recommendation will prevent a likely disaster from which you can't recover." That approach would have worked. You should often appeal to interest, not to reason, even when your motives are lofty."

- Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack

📜 Articles

I recently published my key takeaways from Peter Thiel’s magnificent book Zero to One. A must-read for founders and business people:

🎧 Podcasts

This podcast is full of so much wisdom i bought the book after listening to it. J Paul Getty’s essays are summarised in the below podcast:

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

What book or essays would you like me to provide you with the best insights from? Comment below :)

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).

If you enjoyed this article and feel it might help someone then please consider sharing it.

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Charlie Munger understood that if you want somebody to do something you’ll have a better chance of them saying yes if you appeal to their interest rather than trying to reason with them.

"I watched the brilliant and worthy Harvard Law Review-trained general counsel of Salomon Brothers lose his career there. When the able CEO was told that an underling had done something wrong, the general counsel said, "Gee, we don't have any legal duty to report this, but I think it's what we should do. It's our moral duty."

The general counsel was technically and morally correct, but his approach didn't persuade. He recommended a very unpleasant thing for the busy CEO to do and the CEO, quite understandably, put the issue off, and put it off, not with any intent to do wrong. In due course, when powerful regulators resented not having been promptly informed, down went the CEO and the general counsel with him.

The correct persuasive technique in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin. He said, "If you would persuade, appeal to interest, not to reason." The self-serving bias of man is extreme, and should have been used in attaining the correct outcome. So the general counsel should have said, "Look, this is likely to erupt into something that will destroy you, take away your money, take away your status, grossly impair your reputation. My recommendation will prevent a likely disaster from which you can't recover." That approach would have worked. You should often appeal to interest, not to reason, even when your motives are lofty."

- Charles T. Munger

📜 Articles

A great read this week from Sherry Ning about our incessant need to monitor people’s lives on social media.

“We often compare social media to Orwell’s surveillance state of 1984, but here’s what’s different about our telescreens: our screens do not exist to monitor us, but for us to monitor others. There is no totalitarian state behind our screens enforcing social order; instead, the screens turn us into the supervisors of each others’ behaviors.”

Pluripotent

Stop Looking At Each Other

“I don’t want Big Tech to sell my data.” “I don’t want employers to stalk me.” Not wanting to be watched is a valid reason to be anti-social media. We often compare social media to Orwell’s surveillance state of 1984, but here’s what’s different about our telescreens: our screens do not exist to monitor us, but for us to monitor others. There is no totalitarian state behind our screens enforcing social order; instead, the screens turn…

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2 years ago · 205 likes · 15 comments · Sherry Ning

🎧 Podcasts

When we think of Silicon Valley we think of Apple, Meta, Google and the like but the birth of it started long ago and had something to do with a man named Robert Noyce. Good for those interested in the semiconductor business.

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

What’s your best read of 2024 so far?

Did you enjoy this article?

I read and share about history’s greatest minds, leaders and achievers, distilling their insights into actionable advice for everyday life. Please consider sharing with a close friend if this article has helped you in anyway.

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Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge.)

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I’ve been reading Influence by Robert Cialdini the last couple of weeks after reading how valuable Charlie Munger thought it was in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. There’s a lot of crossover between the two books and like Poor Charlie’s Almanack, in Influence the mistakes we humans repeatedly make are best illustrated with stories. This one on Contrast-misreaction tendency is a personal favourite.

"Dear Mother and Dad:

Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you are sitting down, okay?

Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out the window of my dormitory when it caught on fire shortly after my arrival here is pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get those sick headaches once a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory, and my jump, was witnessed by a worker at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me in the hospital and since I had nowhere to live because of the burnt out dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it's kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven't got the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show.

Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has a minor infection which prevents us from passing our pre-marital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him.

Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend. However, I am getting a "D" in American History, and an F in Chemistry, and I want you to see those marks in their proper perspective."

Robert B. Cialdini, Influence, New and Expanded

📜 Articles

If you’re serious about making money on Substack or through digital courses you need to read this. I would go as far to say that even if you have no intentions you still should read it as there is so much common sense and myth busting it’ll be worth your time.

The Art & Business of Writing

10 Lessons Selling $10M of Digital Products

Dear Writer, I recently crossed a meaningful milestone: $10,000,000 in digital products sold. Except it’s not really “I.” I could never have done this on my own—or maybe I could have, but it certainly wouldn’t have happened in just 3 years. Sort of like how no individual player is responsible for winning a championship. I give all the credit to the amazin…

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2 years ago · 119 likes · 33 comments · Nicolas Cole

🎧 Podcasts

David Senra who hosts the Founders podcast on Spotify has a rare episode on Bernard Arnault. The richest man you’ve never heard off.

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

1. The contrast principle has been used by salespeople and manipulators since the dawn of time to get you to buy or do whatever it is that they want from you. Even when we understand what’s happening it can be very hard to stop it. What’s an example of somebody using this on you? Comment below.

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From Principles by Ray Dalio:

"Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine. One of the hardest things for people to do is to objectively look down on themselves within their circumstances (i.e., their machine) so that they can act as the machine's designer and manager. Most people remain stuck in the perspective of being a worker within the machine. If you can recognize the differences between those roles and that it is much more important that you are a good designer/manager of your life than a good worker in it, you will be on the right path. To be successful, the “designer/manager you" has to be objective about what the "worker you" is really like, not believing in him more than he deserves, or putting him in jobs he shouldn't be in. Instead of having this strategic perspective, most people operate emotionally and in the moment; their lives are a series of undirected emotional experiences, going from one thing to the next. If you want to look back on your life and feel you've achieved what you wanted to, you can't operate that way."

📜 Articles

I enjoyed this article from the Stoic Gym and who doesn’t love shortcuts?

The Stoic Gym

A shortcut to a better life

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2 years ago · 45 likes · 8 comments · Dr. Chuck Chakrapani

🎧 Podcasts

Ryan Holiday discusses the origins of notebooks and what the term freedom really means.

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

1. What’s been your favourite book, article or podcast of the year so far? Comment below.

Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge.)

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"On April 29, 711, the armies of the Arab commander Tarek crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco into Spain with a small army (the name Gibraltar is derived from the Arabic Jabal Tarek, meaning "mount of Tarek"). Upon landing, Tarek had his ships put to the fire. He then made a famous speech every schoolchild memorized during my school days that I translate loosely: “Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You are vastly outnumbered. All you have is sword and courage.”

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

This story fascinated me because of how committal it is. I don’t know how it ended up for Tarek and his men but you have to admire his courage (or insanity) for doing what he did.

📜 Articles

I did a small guest post this week for The Daily Spark which every Friday helps to bring insights from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and practitioners. Head over to Taylor’s page to learn something new.

The Daily Spark

On Facing Difficulty

Happy Friday, Sparkies! Today, we have a special treat for you on a guest Spark. Our guest is Karl from The School of Knowledge. His Substack is filled with nuggets of wisdom, and I can't recommend it highly enough! The moment I stumbled upon his Substack, I knew we had to get him for a guest Spark. Lucky for us, he agreed—get ready because school is in …

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2 years ago · 1 like · Taylor Dean-Lipson

🎧 Podcasts

If you want to get fitter in life or excel in sport then Dr Andy Galpin is somebody you need to listen to. Dr Andy Galpin has been featured on the Huberman Lab podcast numerous times. He now has his podcast, Perform. The second episode on muscle is below:

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

I was at a BBQ last night and the subject of taxes (not my doing) got brought up. This led to arguments from what sounded like a communist/socialist’s perspective and a capitalist perspective between several people. I sat, watched and ate Ben & Jerry’s. With everything that’s happened the last few years there was obviously strong sentiments on both sides.

What was interesting though was that both sides blamed one another. This is what i despise about politics and such subjects. I summed up politics when i was only a kid- If one side says the sky is blue, the other will say it’s red. The aim is to try and convince as many people that your camp is right. What I failed to hear from either side was any sort of personal agency with both sides seemingly unable to change their own fate whilst the other side is still in the game. This led me to think:

1. How much agency can a person expect to have in their life?

2. If we don’t have agency, or it is limited, are we truly free?

3. How can we gain more personal agency?

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Elon Musk at his finest here. The algorithm is something Elon Musk demands from every one of his workers in all of his companies.

"The algorithm

At any given production meeting, whether at Tesla or SpaceX, there is a nontrivial chance that Musk will intone, like a mantra, what he calls "the algorithm." It was shaped by the lessons he learned during the production hell surges at the Nevada and Fremont factories. His executives sometimes move their lips and mouth the words, like they would chant the liturgy along with their priest. "I became a broken record on the algorithm," Musk says. "But I think it's helpful to say it to an annoying degree." It had five commandments:

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from "the legal department" or "the safety department." You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.

2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.

3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.

5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them:

All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can't ride a horse or a general who can't use a sword.

Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other's work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided.

It's OK to be wrong. Just don't be confident and wrong.

Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do.

Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers.

When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.

A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.

The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.

Everything else is a recommendation."

- Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk

---

📜 Articles

A great article on how note-taking, using the Cognitive Flexibility Theory can be used to understand novel concepts.

You can read it here.

💭 Quotes

Away in Crete this week relaxing these quotes seem particularly pertinent.

❓ Questions

1. Elon Musk is a master of unconventional thinking. Is there an example of where you used such thinking? How did it work out?

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One of my favourite passages from the book Poor Charlie’s Almanack perfectly summarises human psychology.

The authors of How to Read a Book share some advice on how to read philosophy which I found helpful.

🎧 Podcasts

The Second World War has always fascinated me and this episode on the preparation that went into the D-Day landings mainly from a British intelligence point of view is outrageous at times and pure genius at others. Highly recommend.

💭 Quotes

❓ Questions

1. History is always remembered from the winners perspective. The classic good vs evil story. But within the ranks of both sides are heroes and villains and doing something virtuous, noble or courageous and losing is no more insignificant than those who do the same and win. Why do we have such a bias for those who win?

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"Strong character has a tensile quality like a good piece of metal—it can give and bend but still retains its overall shape and never breaks.

The strength emanates from a feeling of personal security and self-worth.

This allows such people to take criticism and learn from their experiences. This means they do not give up so easily, since they want to learn how to get They are rigorously persistent. People of strong character are open to new ideas and ways of doing things without compromising the basic principles they adhere to. In adversity they can retain their presence of mind. They can handle chaos and the unpredictable without succumbing to anxiety. They keep their word. They have patience, can organize a lot of material, and complete what they start. Not continually insecure about their status, they can also subsume their personal interests to the good of the group, knowing that what works best for the team will in the end make their life easier and better."

- Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

📜 Articles

Paul Graham’s essay on what makes the best essay has more to it than first meets the eye. For curious minds.

You can read it here

🎧 Podcasts

Legendary podcast host David Senra discusses how Steve Jobs was one of the best salespeople of the last century.

🎬Video

Author Cal Newport describes 5 tips that help him read 5 books a month!

💭 Quotes

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I’ve been reading The Laws of Human Nature for the last few weeks. I particularly liked the below sentence as it describes a lot of our bias to outwardly seek to justify why things aren’t going our way. It is often far easier to lie to ourselves and distort the true picture to protect our self-esteem.

I finished Poor Charlie’s Almanack this week and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. If you think it’s just about business you’d be mistaken. It touches on worldly wisdom, mental frameworks, living life and developing principles and virtues. His most famous talk in the book is chapter 11 called The Psychology of Human Misjudgment which is based on 25 mental biases we need to be wary of if we want to have an easier and better life. I condensed the chapter to create a checklist for you, for free. Screenshot the picture or download the PDF here.

📜 Articles

I’ve been going through Paul Graham’s Essays recently and particularly enjoyed "Superlinear Returns”.

“Teachers and coaches implicitly told us the returns were linear. "You get out," I heard a thousand times, "what you put in." They meant well, but this is rarely true. If your product is only half as good as your competitor's, you don't get half as many customers. You get no customers, and you go out of business.”

Read the full article here

💭 Quotes

A quote from Naval here that brought about an interesting debate about what defines ‘Human success’. Whatever your definition of it is I’m sure that reading alone won’t get you into the top echelon if you don’t apply what you are reading.

❓Questions

1. What is your definition of the phrase ‘human success’?

2. How can reading enhance your life, if at all you believe it can?

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📜 Articles

Paul Graham is an essayist, author and investor concerned with computer science, entrepreneurship and self-help. He’s famed for his writing style and this post helps break it down for those interested.

The Common Reader

Paul Graham's plain rhetoric

I had a discussion with Rachael Meager in the comments of the Mary Oliver piece and I recommend it to you, especially Rachel’s comparison of Ginnie Bale, Mary Oliver, and Izumi Shikibu…

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2 years ago · 75 likes · 19 comments · Henry Oliver

🎧 Podcasts

Dr Andy Galpin features on The Diary of a CEO with his extensive knowledge of muscle building. Listen to this and you’ll almost be certain to have the body of your dreams for the summer.

*It’s actually probably too late but you’ll know better for next year.

❓Question

1. Is happiness tangible or intangible? Is it many smalls things or is one thing? Is happiness the absence of things?

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📚 Books

📜 Articles

I throughly enjoyed this article and recommend giving it a read it if you’re interested in how people can easily abuse science, and more importantly, how to spot it!

The Ethical Skeptic

What is Social Skepticism?

Social skepticism is kabuki, the activist-minded abuse of science by means of its underlying philosophical vulnerability, skepticism. An imperious agency which has politicized and enslaved science through teaching weaponized fake skepticism to useful idiots…

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2 years ago · 39 likes · 7 comments · Ethical Skeptic ☀

🎧 Podcasts

David Senra’s Founders podcast is one of the best out there for people interested in learning from the worlds greatest entrepreneurs and experts. In this episode he reviews the book “The Lessons of History”.

❓Questions

1. Does a person having a purpose in life determine whether they are happy or not? Can you be happy without one?

**Photo by Ben Jessop.