I wanted to learn how to breakdance so I paid some kid $15 to teach me out of my hard-earned newspaper route money. I saw him in the street, spinning on a piece of linoleum. He had three friends with him, all of them were good at their own particular style of breakdancing. One kid was good doing the backspins, windmills, and headspins. Another kid was good at doing all the above floor stuff: like popping, etc. Another kid was good at waving. Like his body was made out of rubber. I had lost a contact lens and was afraid to tell my parents they needed to spring for a new pair. So for the entire summer, way back in the mid 80s, I practiced breakdancing every day and I could only see out of one eye. Maybe the best summer of my life. Certainly the most embarrassing when I now think back on it.
In every spare moment I either hung out with my new friends, having no issues abandoning my other friends who weren’t cool enough to understand the finer subtleties of the windmill, or I practiced in front of a mirror. Its even embarrassing writing these words down.
Of course, like in all my remembrances, I thought that by learning how to spin on my back and do other random contortions with my body I would , of course, meet girls in clubs. I had gotten rid of my glasses and braces a year earlier so now I was ready. I was the new me. That’s what the braces were for, right? Now my teeth were straight and shiny. Good for kissing. But it didn’t happen because I still had “me” to deal with. The me that couldn’t talk to anyone or was too shy to ask anyone for their number.
Much later, when I applied to colleges I never mentioned this little episode in my life. I focused on things like “chess” and my stupendous performance as a “mathlete”.
But its all related to making money. I wanted to make money for the same reason I wanted to breakdance: because of lack of self confidence I felt I needed a crutch of sorts to increase my attractiveness to women. My insecurity was so high that only by being the best at something could I muster the confidence to say, “this is me, this is what I do.” If I wanted to pursue ANYTHING (and it has to be something I’m passionate about or it won’t work), I had to apply the following principles. Who knows if I ever really got good at anything, or mastered anything worth telling people about. But at the very least, I applied the principles below and got good at a few things. Good enough to make some money, good enough to have fun, good enough to have some interesting experiences along the way.
A) Teacher: Get a teacher/mentor. I’ve done this with everything from chess, to stockpicking, hedge funds, entrepeneurship, etc. You absolutely need a teacher in anything you do to help you quickly jump over the basic mistakes.
B) Read. Read everything you can. I have over 200 books about chess. I’ve read over 2-300 books on investing. In the early stages of the Internet I read every book that Tim O’Reilly ever published. I learned every programming language, everything about networking and security, everything about design. I read everything I could on entrepeneurship. I read so many books about Warren Buffett I wrote my own book about Warren Buffett (“Trade Like Warren Buffett” (2005) ) 200 books on a topic seem to be about the right number. You need to also study the present. Every day new things are developing in your field. You need to know all of them. If you are a lawyer, you need to follow every case. If you’re a doctor, every new breakthrough technology. If you are an Internet entrepreneur, every new twist on website development, on business model innovations, on the new businesses being started every day, etc.
C) History. You need to know the history of what you are doing. When Bobby Fischer was about 14 years old, after already proving he was a talented chess prodigy, he disappeared for about a year and studied every game played in the 1800s. By the time he reappeared he had developed some critical innovations to games played a hundred years earlier and handily won the US Championship, the youngest champion ever. In investing there are tons of books written in the 60s, 70s (Adam Smith’s “Supermoney” is a great example) and even in the early part of the century (Baruch’s autobiography, anything by LeFevre). I would study all of the so-called bubbles (I do not believe there ever was a tulip bubble or South Sea Bubble, for instance). Get software to model the markets so you can see the subtleties in the data over the past 100 years. It’s the only way to understand what is happening now.
D) Fail. Study your mistakes. Repeatedly. You can’t improve by only studying your wins. In poker, you have to analyze every hand you lost and why. In chess, you have to run your losses thorugh the computer, through your teacher, you have to spend hours studying the games and looking for your weaknesses: the weaknesses in your knowledge and the weaknesses in your psychology, which are part of every loss. Ditto for investing. You’ll always have losses. But the second you blame it on “bad luck” then you’ve gone from having a loss to becoming a loser. You don’t want to be a loser. Same goes for relationships. When it doesn’t work out, its just as much your fault as the other persons. Where did you go wrong? How can you be better? There’s a corollary to this, which is that in order to succeed, you have to fail at many things (not always, but most likely). You will probably fail dozens of times. There’s countless examples in history (Edison, Einstein, Lincoln).
E) Ideas. Generate new ideas. When you work at a company, its not enough that you be a good employee of that company (i.e. you do everything well that your boss asks you to do). You must actually BECOME the company. You need to act as if you are the force that brings that company to life. And every company, just like every endeavor you embark on, needs new ideas. Once you inject your own life force into an endeavor, then you inevitably will bring to it new ideas. You’ll develop new chess openings that match your style. You’ll discover a new risk arbitrage technique that matches the type of risk profile you’re comfortable with. You’ll bring a company or academic discipline into a new direction that nobody’s ever thought of before. You’ll start a new company where everyone says, “gosh, that was so easy. Why didn’t I think of it?” But in order to do that you have to first do all of the techniques above, then do everything you can to develop the idea muscle. Every day, making a list of ten to twenty new ideas in your chosen field.
F) Do. You need to not just “read” and “study” but “do”. If you want to write a screenplay, every day you need to write. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you must start write away thinking of services or products you can provide and sell people. If you want to invest, open an account and start buying stocks. Nobody is going to do it for you.
G) How long does it take? You need to be patient. I think to properly follow the steps outlined above its at least a three to five year process. Three years before you can say, “I understand this field”, five years before you can say “I can make a living doing this”, and eight years before you can say, “I’m one of the best in the world at this.” Its ok not to be the best in the world at something. But if you want to make a difference you need to put in the time, whether its art, internet, sports, etc.
Finally, you need to maintain. Everything I’ve ever done, I still keep track of and stay in at least “maintenance” mode. I’m not saying I’ve mastered anything. And I haven’t created billions in value. But if you threw out a piece on linoleum and wanted me to spin on my back, I can probably still do that, although when I do it in front of my kids they laugh at me.
p.s. My current favorite breakdancing video:
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a longtime advocate of Internet freedom, said she’s undaunted by the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to adopt net neutrality rules. Instead, she thinks the FCC’s action will be a catalyst for renewed commitment on the issue in the 112th Congress.
“What we will do is first use this as a way to show how we’re going to keep that Pledge to America,” she said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation. “We said in the Pledge that any rule or regulation that had more than $100 million impact on our nation’s economy would be subject to review. … This is an area where we can keep that Pledge. We can go ahead and start congressional review and move forward on getting this off the books.”
Blackburn was speaking at The Bloggers Briefing as the FCC debated the net neutrality rules. When the 112th Congress convenes on Jan. 5, Blackburn said she will reintroduce her bill to block the FCC from implementing the regulations and force the issue back to Congress.
“We’ve had bipartisan agreement on this, that the FCC should not take this action, that we, as members of Congress, should be the ones that are there to take that action or any action that should be done,” she said.
Of course, in this case, that “action” might be no action at all. After all, discontent with Internet service providers has not exactly been widespread. On the contrary, Blackburn said: Most people have been pleased with the access they’ve received from providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
“Our action is to make sure that the Internet remains unencumbered and does not have the FCC with a chokehold on it,” she said. “We are moving from an industrial, manufacturing, technology-based economy to a creative economy … and the creative economy depends on an unencumbered Internet.”
FCC intrusion would mean just the opposite — an Internet of interference and obstacles.
“What the FCC would do today is to implement the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet and force people to come to them,” Blackburn said. “They would have the determination of what could be innovated. They would have the determination of what should be the priority and value assigned to all the content that is traveling. So, we’re watching it very closely. We’re going to continue to do so as they go through the rule-making process and, then, come Jan. 5, you’re going to see us vigorously opposing this.”
That vigorous opposition will include a lack of funding if necessary, Blackburn said.
“That goes without saying,” she said. “We’re going to have numerous amendments to defund plenty of things in the House to keep money from going where they would like for money to be going, whether it is health care, whether it is the FCC, whether it is the EPA implementing cap-and-trade under the Clean Air Act. You’re going to see a series of amendments that would defund those activities that we view as being harmful to free enterprise and the American people.”
surface encounters review surface encounters surface encounters rock tops surface encounters rock tops surface encounters surface encounters complaints surface encounters surface encounters surface encounters review surface encounters review surface encounters review surface encounters complaints surface encounters surface encounters surface encounters surface encounters complaints surface encounters review surface encounters surface encounters rock tops surface encounters complaints
<b>News</b> - Chris Brown Apologizes for Using Gay Slurs on Twitter <b>...</b>
"I love all my gay fans and this immature act is not targeted at you," he says.
BIl Hemmer - Fair And Balanced Alive And Well - Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Fox News host Bill Hemmer, preparing for a long night in Times Square alongside Megyn Kelly for Fox's All-American New Year's Eve has strongly defended Fox against the charge the network's anything but a shoot it down the middle real ...
Windows Phone Marketplace hits 5000 Apps and is Cracked
There's been good news and bad for Microsoft this week. The good news is that the number of apps available in the new Windows Phone marketplace has been growing steadily since October and has now passed the 5000 mark. ...
surface encounters rock tops surface encounters review surface encounters complaints surface encounters surface encounters review surface encounters review surface encounters complaints surface encounters surface encounters rock tops surface encounters complaints surface encounters surface encounters surface encounters review surface encounters surface encounters review surface encounters complaints surface encounters rock tops
No comments:
Post a Comment