This week, I caught up with a friend who’s an entrepreneur. During our chat, I inquired about how he works. How does he determine what he’s working on each day? How does he know what needs to be done for each objective or project he’s working on? You get the idea. He said that he learned how to work—meaning he learned the process of working efficiently and consistently—while employed by a large corporation known for its world-class training. But that was a few decades into his career.

What I took away from this conversation is that most people are never taught how to work. They’re taught skills, and they gain expertise. But they’re never taught how to effectively execute their skills from day to day to accomplish goals or objectives. Instead, they try to remember and manage everything in their head and end up stressed or burnt out as their responsibilities at work and home increase.

To take this a step further, entrepreneurs experience many times more pain than the average person because of not knowing how to work. They often start out by doing literally everything in the business—much of which they have zero skills or experience in. Over time, many of them experience high levels of stress and anxiety because of this, which causes other problems.

My big takeaway is that the costs of never being taught how to work are high, especially for entrepreneurs.

Yesterday, I shared an interview featuring Howard Marks and his four steps to dealing with change (see here). Toward the end of the interview, Marks talked about his partnership with one of his Oaktree Capital cofounders, Bruce Karsh. He described partnership as an important part of a healthy work environment, which he has with Karsh and other Oaktree Capital founders.

So what’s the key to healthy partnership? Marks has a simple framework. Here’s the key to a healthy partnership (in all aspects of life):

• Shared values – You have to believe the same things about how you want to operate in the world. Marks gave the example that he and Karsh shared the view that they should invest by seeking moderate gains and avoiding losses. Said differently, they would aim for consistent returns rather than grand slams. Neither believed in shooting for the stars. Their values regarding their investment strategy were the same.
• Complementary skills – The key to success is having a well-rounded team that covers all the important areas—the team is strong in all key areas although each individual is not. If you have a team of really smart people who all specialize in the same thing, the team has a skill set hole that will likely cause execution and other issues. A better approach is to work with people who are strong where you’re weak, so you complement each other. This enhances the team’s ability to execute, and people won’t be stepping on each other’s toes.

I agree with Marks. I think partnerships that have both these things can do well. My gut tells me that many people understand the second point and seek complementary skills—opposites attract. But I don’t think as many people understand how important shared values are in a partnership. If you have complementary skill sets but polar-opposite views on how to go about things, you’re bound to have a day of reckoning and maybe even a huge blowup between partners.

If you’re interested in Mark’s full thoughts on partnership, take a listen here.

Last week, I listened to an interview in which Howard Marks, cofounder of Oaktree Capital, shared his views on dealing with change. He referred to his 2006 “It Is What It Is” memo (see here). In that memo, he said that “mujo means cycles will rise and fall, things will come and go, and our environment will change in ways beyond our control. Thus we must recognize, accept, cope and respond. Isn’t that the essence of investing?”

What jumped out to me was his four steps for dealing with change:

• Recognize
• Accept
• Cope
• Respond

Change is inevitable and beyond our control. We can’t change our reality. As Marks said in the interview, “what we can’t do as investors—we can’t say ‘Please sir, I'd like a different environment.’ The environment is what it is, and it’s this one we have to cope with . . . .”

Change is the only constant in life. That being true, having a rational process for dealing with change is key (fighting it usually doesn’t end well). That’s why I like Marks’s four-step process. It’s simple, easy, and something anyone can follow. If something is happening that creates uneasiness, it’s not difficult to go through each of these steps to deal with the change and hopefully become at ease with it.

Marks elaborated more on this topic in the interview. To listen to his comments, go to that section of the interview here.

The entire interview contains other great nuggets of wisdom. If you want to watch it from the beginning, take a look here.

This weekend, I was catching up with a friend who mentioned they’ve been swamped at work. It’s starting to have a negative impact on their life more broadly, which they don’t like. They work in a high-visibility, very demanding role at a well-known company. I shared that I’m refreshing my own productivity system and had just reread Getting Things Done and Building a Second Brain.

I told them about the books and offered to share what I’d relearned if they wanted the help. They accepted. I was thinking about this today, and I believe it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement. It reminded me of starting this blog because of an accountability challenge with my buddy Ethan. There’s something about doing something new with other people that requires new habits. Knowing that you have to regularly report to someone else who’s going through the same thing forces you to step up your game.

I don’t think I’ve been involved in an accountability challenge, or anything similar, since I started this blog in March 2020. The more I think about it, the more I’m looking forward to it, and think it’ll be fun and competitive (in a nerdy kind of way).

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 97
• Total blog posts published: 644

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 1/11/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread Building a Second Brain, a framework for organizing your projects and digital life

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Little Book of Market Wizards
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred two was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book this week. I need to adjust my approach somehow.

What I learned:

• Distilling a book or book chapter down to the essence of its main idea should be the goal when I’m writing posts about books. If I can get it down to a maxim, even better. Maxims are easier to remember (including for me).
• Just as my reading must be done first thing in the morning, I’m realizing that the daily habit of working on a synthesis of a book must be done early, too. Once the day gets going, who knows what’ll get thrown at me? The likelihood that I’ll get to the difficult task of synthesizing drops drastically.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

After reading Getting Things Done by David Allen again, I realized I don’t have a great “inbox” to capture all incoming information and thoughts. The inbox is a core piece of the GTD method. It’s the holding area where you place things until you have time to process and sort them properly. Sure, I have the inbox for my email, but I didn’t have a go-to inbox in a tool I used to manage my productivity.

I’ve been working on cleaning up my GTD system by creating a clean, short-term (to be completed within a year) project list and defining next actions for each project. That’s going pretty well and should be done shortly. But because I don’t have a solid inbox, my GTD system hasn’t been as effective as it could be.

So, this week, I created an inbox in Apple Notes, moved all unprocessed notes into it, and added all new notes to it. I must say, having a single place to drop all new thoughts and incoming information has been helpful. It’s taken some discipline to make sure I put everything there, but now that I have the hang of it, I feel more confident that everything important is being captured so I don’t have to try to remember everything.

Another thing I like about GTD is that processing and sorting are separate from capturing my thoughts and incoming information. I can quickly capture thoughts about an article, book, project, or podcast in a messy note and save the note in my inbox. When I process my inbox, I add more context to the note and save it in the appropriate folder or project so it’s where I need it when I need it.

I’m still early in the process of cleaning up my GTD system and creating new GTD habits, but I think this, along with Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain process, will boost my productivity in 2026.

This week, I had a conversation with a good friend about the power of community. He’s an entrepreneur in a traditional industry and is looking for ways to increase awareness of his brand and the products he sells. He’s got good marketing ideas that follow what others in his industry have done successfully.

I introduced the idea of building a community around his product: First, create an audience of people who love the product for a deeply personal reason (i.e., it helps them solve a problem they care deeply about). Then, hopefully, convert some percentage of that audience into a community of people who will engage with each other (with some guidelines and light moderation).

I like this idea because it leans into a key market concept: word of mouth is the best form of marketing. People in a community love talking to one another and will invite other like-minded people into the community. They share what they’re doing in the community and how the community has helped them. This all helps knowledge of the brand and product spread via word of mouth.

I also like the idea of community because it creates a moat, or competitive advantage. When you have a community of people who’ve bought into a brand or product, they don’t want to leave the tribe they’re a part of, so it’s less likely they’ll leave or switch brands or products. Community makes customers stickier and creates a moat that’s hard for competitors to replicate.

Lastly, I really like community because it’s a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of what your target customer thinks of your existing products, learn about ideas for new products, and spot early trends you can capitalize on. It’s a great feedback mechanism and a way to stay connected to customers in an organic way, which leads to product improvements and new products that keep your customers loyal.

All in all, I’m a fan of companies leaning into creating communities, especially when they’re in slow-moving or antiquated industries.

For the last few years, I’ve been using X (formerly Twitter) as a research tool and a news source. I’ve learned a ton from the platform and connected with some great people, but I rarely post anything. What I did years ago was set up an integration to X. Every time I create a new blog post, it creates a post on X with a link to the post on my blog. It’s basically the lazy way of posting on X.

The integration is easy, but not very effective. X doesn’t love it when you link out to external sites. So, this year, I want to change how I share my thoughts on X. I’m going to convert my blog posts into native X posts. Not sure what this looks like or how I’ll do it, but I want to turn it into a habit by the end of the year.

I’ve been reading one book a week consistently for 96 weeks. It’s been a solo activity . . . so far. I read alone, think about what I read alone, and share my thoughts in a blog post. It’s a pretty self-contained process.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a book club. I’ve heard of book clubs but never considered joining one. After thinking about it, I decided to give it a shot—mainly because I’m curious to see how a book club operates and how it’s valuable to its members.

I didn’t have a book club on my bingo card for 2026, but this seems like something fun to try, with limited downside and large potential upside. I’m looking forward to my first meeting next month.