BC FINANCE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

šŸ¤” Thread: More of the wrong thing is less
(or, how I stepped off the hamster wheel)

Iā€™m going to share a personal story with hope that it inspires at least one person to re-examine their definition of success šŸ‘‡

 Through hard work and an unfair share of luck, Iā€™ve done some cool ā€œbucket listā€ things in my career:

āœ…Raised VC from the worldsā€™ top firms
āœ…Helped build 100ā€™s of millions in revenue from nothing
āœ…Rang the bell at the NYSE
āœ…Met & did deals with billionaires & business icons
These are things I dreamed about when I was young and I treasure some of the memories. But when they finally happened I felt surprisingly unfulfilled. I was scoring lots of points but didnā€™t feel like I was winning.
Then a few years ago during a board meeting I had a moment of clarity. I looked around the table at 10 people, all absurdly successful by financial measures. There wasnā€™t a single person I wanted to emulate. Most were unhealthy and several had told me that they were unhappy.
Within months I walked away from from a 7-figure salary, moved my family to Boulder, & havenā€™t looked back. Donā€™t get me wrong, Iā€™m a capitalist & like money as much as anyone. But for me it's not the thing, and *more of the wrong thing is less*.
Too many of us build our career without being deliberate about what weā€™re building *toward*. Thereā€™s a famous Yogi Berra quote, ā€œWhen you come to a fork in the road, take it.ā€ I used to recite this quote a lot - when opportunity knocks, I answer! But...
...over the years I've realized that opportunity can become a trap. Hereā€™s why: Smart, driven people (Iā€™m talking to you Enneagram 3ā€™s and 8ā€™s) will find a way to succeed in just about any situation. This can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is obvious, but...
...the curse comes when you point your talent & energy in the wrong direction and it quickly compounds into a monster that you never intended to create. This ā€œachievement trapā€ doesnā€™t get talked about but itā€™s real.
In my case after 20 years of pursuing a misguided definition of success, I hit a wall. I couldnā€™t spend another day chasing more of the wrong thing. I thrive on ideas, creation, & human connection - money and status arenā€™t my ā€œwhyā€.
The good news is we can hit always hit CTRL-ALT-DEL. If you build the life you once wanted, then realize you were wrong, you can reboot, scary as it may seem. This means you will have less, but less of the *wrong thing*, which makes space for the right things.
Paradoxically having less tends to result in a feeling of abundance, whereas having more - especially of the wrong things - results in a feeling of scarcity (a.k.a. ā€œThe Rat Raceā€).
We know many of these things to be true at an intellectual level, but rarely do we take action. With less, we make room for lifeā€™s most important things, which arenā€™t really things at all. And in yet another paradox, this tends to result in more success in all its forms.
Ultimate wealth is control over your time. If you donā€™t believe that, then ask yourself this: Would you trade places with Warren Buffet if it meant being his age (90)?

For me wealth means allocating my time like this:
ā²ļøTime commuting to work: Zero
ā²ļøTime in meetings/offices: As little as possible
ā²ļøTime creating (alone & w/others): LOTS
ā²ļøTime helping others: LOTS
ā²ļøTime with family: Always present & available
ā²ļøTime rock climbing: LOTS
When I started my career this would have been considered impossible, even laughable. After all, itā€™s a violation of the American Workaholic Ethos, where long hours in the office is a badge of honor regardless of results.
Fast forward 20 years and one pandemic and the world is beginning to embrace a new way of working. But - and this is the entire point of this thread - it only happens if youā€™re deliberate. You have to stop chasing more of the wrong thing, even if it looks like success.
I recognize that even having these choices is a huge privilege that most donā€™t have. That said, most people have more control over their lives than theyā€™re willing to admit. We like to point to external constraints when the truth is that most of our limitations come from within.
If youā€™ve read this far then youā€™re by definition the type of person can define and achieve your own version of wealth. May 2021 be the year that journey begins...

(Thanks to @sweatystartup for keeping it real and inspiring me to post this.)

More from Finance

Grant Williams
Grant Williams
@ttmygh
1/ I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my new website, a one-stop shop for all the content I'm creating.

There you'll find links to all my podcasts, the TTMYGH newsletter, and other exciting future projects.

2/ In 2020, I reignited my passion for interviewing brilliant people by launching The Grant Williams Podcast in various forms, including The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, and The Narrative Game.


3/ Starting February 1, I'm taking the bold step of moving these podcasts completely behind a paywall.

For the very affordable price of only $10 a month, listeners can gain access to the Copper Tier of https://t.co/fxUfH8maI4, which includes all current & future podcasts.


4/ Why am I doing this? First and foremost, I aspire to create VALUABLE content. By definition, if something is priced at $0, it isnā€™t valuable. The time, effort and creativity that goes into these episodes is substantial. To keep doing them properly, they can no longer be free.

5/ I also strongly believe content creators should be able to make a living creating content. If everything is free, thatā€™s not possible. I never seriously considered accepting outside sponsors ā€“ complete integrity is too critical to me.
FINANCE
Kostas \U0001f468\u200d\U0001f4bc \U0001f4c8 \U0001f4b8
Kostas šŸ‘Øā€šŸ’¼ šŸ“ˆ šŸ’ø...
@itsKostasWithK
If you want to become financially independent and don't know where to start, here is a thread that will help you get started

/THREAD/

1. Review your expenses and make a budget

It will help you see where you overspend, make a plan to save, pay down debt and start


2. Set your investing and retirement goals

How much do you need to support yourself in retirement and when do you want to


3. The earlier you start investing, the better.

Here's why and how time and compounding can become your


4. Invest in an index fund

It's easy, safe, cheap, and the best choice for a beginner in investing, with not much time for
FINANCE
Advertisement
Private Chad
Private Chad
@Privatechad_
My Chads, institutions and retail are entering the DeFi space at unprecedented volume. One of the key primitives in DeFi will be the securitization and tranching of DeFi and is still massively undervalued. Enter https://t.co/Gx4H3hIzNg ( $SFI ).

Don't worry, let me ELI5.

1/ Alright so securitization and tranching, that's a mouthful. šŸ‘…šŸ’¦

Let's take a step back. If you look at any financial activity within DeFi, whether it is yield farming, lending or liquidity providing, there are risks involved.

2/ As an honest farmer / liquidity provider, the rewards are yield, and the risk is losing your funds due to e.g. smart contract risk and (potentially) IL.

As an honest lender, the rewards are interest, and risk is default of the borrower.

3/ 99% of the current retail participants don't use portfolio risk management in their DeFi activities. We farm a bit, IL a bit, loan and borrow a bit and hope we make gains at the end of the day. For institutions, portfolio management is much different.

4/ The problem for institutions to enter such DeFi activities as yield farming, liquidity providing and lending/borrowing, is that it's inherently risky and not quantifiable with variable rewards. We early adopters don't mind this risk, but this prevents adoption by institutions.
FINANCE
Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Omar
@IlhanMN
As a young immigrant, I took out thousands of dollars in debt to go to for-profit collegeā€”thinking it was part of the American Dream.

Like millions of Americans, I was left deeply in debt with a worthless degree and shoddy education. #CancelStudentDebt

I was fortunate enough to eventually go to a public university and begin to pay it off, but millions do not have that luxury.

Here are some misconceptions about who has debt and why we need full cancellation.

Is this really a crisis?

Yes! Student debt has more than doubled in just 10 years. 45 million Americans now are saddled with over $1.7 trillion in debtā€”and the delinquency rates have nearly doubled.

Isnā€™t it already cancelled during the pandemic?

Student loan interest is on hold during the pandemicā€”but the debt is not forgiven. That means millions will owe thousands of dollars in backpay if that debt isnā€™t relieved.

Does President Biden have the authority to end the crisis?

Yes! The federal government owns 92% of the $1.7 trillion in student debt. Biden can forgive it with the stroke of a pen.
FINANCE
Simon Barnett
Simon Barnett
@sbarnettARK
Anyone have any opinions on how self-insured employers consider innovative healthcare offerings to pass on to their employees?

As I understand it, by shouldering the financial risk, self-insured employers can curate a list of more relevant benefits ... (1/10)

... thereby avoiding paying out lofty insurance premiums for services that its employees don't use or want. There seems to be a long list of intangible benefits having to do with talent acquisition and retention, but I'd like to understand the cost equations more fully. (2/10)

In the context of multi-cancer screening, I'm skeptical that it could be cost-saving for small or medium-sized employers (<500 employees). Assuming a representative sample of the population, there are simply too few cancers and too many false positives w/ expensive ... (3/10)

... diagnostic follow-ups to bend the unit-economics in the right direction. Indeed, for larger self-insured employers, maybe on the order of thousands of employees, the dynamics may change. Each true positive is a chance to save on treatment cost and (possibly) to ... (4/10)

... extend life. However, employers won't likely be able to distinguish between true life-extension and lead-time bias without prospective, randomized studies, which are due out in the 2024-25 timeframe. Still, these likely will include interim endpoints only. (5/10)
FINANCE

You May Also Like

Pulp Librarian
Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
Due to the pandemic you may not have visited your local library in a while. So come with me on a virtual library tour, courtesy of stock photography, to see what we do for a living...


Libraries are of course information resource centres, but in many ways they are so much more. To get the best out of them you need to really know your way around the stacks.


The enquiries desk is normally your first stop in a library, and this is where you will meet The Angry Librarian! Why is she angry? Because you keep asking her stupid questions!


"Are you open?"
"Do you have a toilet?"
"That chair's wobbly!"
"Why isn't it available in audiobook?"
"Someone else is on the computer and that's not fair!"

On and on it goes...


And that's why in the library we insist on silence. It's the only way to stop us swearing at all the idiotic things you ask us. And we've looked up a lot of old swear words: beardsplitter, bescumber, rantallion, smellfungus etc. We're such muckspouts...
ALL
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
JWALAMUKHI TRIPURASUNDARI, UTHANAHALLI, MYSURU (KAR)
#bharatmandir

Jwalamukhi Tripursundari is believed to be the sister of Devi Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru
It is also that she represents the flaming mouth of Jalandhara, the demon whom Shiva crushed to death.


When Devi Chamundeswari was fighting Mahishasura, she observed that from every drop of blood that spilled out of Mahishasura, another demon was born. So she created Tripurasundari to ensure that no blood dripped from Mahishasura.


Tripura Sundari means beauty of the three worlds.
The murti was installed during Wodeyar rule. An utsava murti made of pancha loha is kept in the sanctum sanctorum.
Another shrine here is dedicated to Siddeshwara / Shiva surrounded by a beautiful wooden Mantapa.
@GunduHuDuGa
ALL
Advertisement
James Felton
James Felton
@JimMFelton
Butt plugs were originally sold as a miracle cure for headaches, acne, and insanity

Thread, article here and h/t: @qikipedia :
https://t.co/Ts84xnmWKJ


For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?"

Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.


Despite having no medical benefit whatsoever, the practice was popular, and enema kits lined the Thames like lifebelts, ready to be used as one final humiliation for somebody who was crap at swimming.

This practice ended sometime after 1800 when it became apparent that it didn't really work, given how the anus famously isn't really connected to the lungs, but doctors weren't quite finished with having a poke around in the old anus to see what happens just yet.
TECH
Andrey \uf8ff Azimov
Andrey ļ£æ Azimov
@AndreyAzimov
The best way to know if people like your product is NOT:

- Have a lot of emails in the waiting list
- Become #1 on PH
- Become #1 of HN or Reddit
- Have people that saing "I'll pay"
- Have a lot of free users

The best way to know if they're actually pay for it.

The only thing that matters is your product providing a value, and you can't know this until people will pay money for it.

We can have a first signal of a product/market fit after the launch by check how many sales we've got in the first 24h. Some scale:

200+ This has a high potential.
100+: This has a potential.
50+: Some people need it.
10+: People almost don't need it.
0+: People don't need it.

This is for a single time payment product. For a subscription probably it should be less because people hate subscription.

And obviously, you should have a lot of traffic like 3-5k+.

Here is a stat for my products (macOS apps) for the first 24h after the launch:
STARTUPS
\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8I Support Our Military & Law Enforcement\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡øI Support Our Milita...
@TheWiseOwl_AZ
1. There are more people added on the list of arrests and executions of famous people but no further intel is available at this time.

ARRESTS and EXECUTIONS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE 2020 UPDATED
Explanation of the latest military tribunal arrests and executions of famous people in 2020.

2. The tribunals are arresting these people in plain clothes. We saw the Obamaā€™s arrest, although we didnā€™t know it was an arrest at the time. The arrest was done nonchalantly so as to not get noticed by the public.
All arrests of these famous people were done this way.

3. If the person is convicted of child sex trafficking, crimes against humanity or treason, they will be executed.
If the person arrested has evidence on someone else to help their prosecution, or is willing to help Trump, & they want to cooperate, they may be allowed to do so.

4. A sentence of execution down to life in prison may be accepted if their evidence is worth anything.
When a plea deal is done, the defendant must present evidence they have to make their sentence lighter. This information is given to the prosecution, defense, and to the judge.

5. If evidence is accepted, they are presented the plea deal. They will have to make a guilty plea to the crime with a video confession & written statement. That is how all plea deals work.

All famous people arrested were either treasonous or involved in satanic worship rituals.
CRIME