Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Nothing material this week

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

So, I figured out what my challenge will be for this long Easter weekend. I’m going to keep it simple. I’m going to review my notes and highlights from a book I’ve read. Of course, that’s in addition to reading a new book this week. That’s it. Very simple. Wish me luck!

This weekend is a long one. For long weekends, especially holiday weekends, I like to challenge myself with a goal or project. I don’t always accomplish what I set out to do, but I always end up in a better place. Plus, it’s fun to challenge myself and, at the end of the weekend or holiday, have something to be proud of.

This holiday weekend snuck up on me a bit. I haven’t thought through exactly what I want to work on this weekend. I’ll spend the next day or so thinking about this and then share my challenge.

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: 108
• Total blog posts published: 721

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 3/29/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Trillions, a book that gives a historical recount of the exchange-traded fund (ETF), including its origins and products that preceded it, and details how the biggest ETF providers (e.g., iShares) and the biggest ETF ($SPY) came to be, got so large, and changed how financial markets operate

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

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

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Latticework of mental models – YouTube video with Mohnish Pabrai, where he talks about how using multiple mental models can help with clear thinking and improved decision-making in life, especially in investing. He describes some of the most impactful mental models he’s encountered. Interestingly, Pabrai is, or was, an avid blackjack player and describes the strategy that got him banned from Las Vegas casinos.
• Network effects drive your life – YouTube video with James Currier, Founding Partner at VC firm NFX. Currier talks about his journey from college to VC investor. He also describes how the networks we choose have an outsized impact on our lives. He argues that choices in life should heavily weight the networks that you’ll be a part of as a result of the decision. He dives deep into how network effects in business models impact a company’s success and how networks influence the trajectory of a person’s life.
• Warren Buffett’s hurdle rate – YouTube video with Danish investor Peter Gustafson. This interview is focused on value investing and what Gustafson has learned from his years as a value investor, including his mistakes. He goes into detail to describe how Warren Buffett’s hurdle rate for investments was 10% real pre-tax return. He also describes how Buffett goes as low as 7.5% for companies with attractive growth profiles.  

That’s what I consumed and learned from and struggled with last 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

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 107
• Total blog posts published: 714

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 3/22/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements, a framework that includes behind-the-scenes insights on what he focuses on when reading financial statements to find companies that have a durable moat

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

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

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Stablecoins = Eurodollar 2.0 – YouTube video from Bankless where these podcasters interview Brent Johnson. I’m curious about stablecoins and want to learn more about them, and Johnson’s name popped up repeatedly. What stuck with me about this interview was the impact of the passage of the Genius Act, how stablecoins are a digital version of Eurodollars, and the global implications of this.
• Move from implicit intuition to explicit decision-making – YouTube video of an Odds on Open Podcast interview with Annie Duke. When you’re deciding in uncertainty, do an expected-value calculation. Write down your thinking about it. It’s easier to spot your own mistakes and for others to spot flaws in your thinking if you write it down. Writing down your decision logic reduces errors in your thinking and makes it easier to spot errors that creep in so you can fix them. Asking people who know you well to write down their thoughts about a decision you’re considering is a way of making decisions explicitly. Creating a pre-mortem is another example.
• Writing code is over – YouTube video from No Priors: AI, Machine Learning, Tech, & Startups interview with Andrej Karpathy. It’s a wide-ranging, helpful interview. My big takeaway is that even the people who’ve been immersed in AI for over a decade are drinking from a firehose the last few months. Also, managing multiple agents simultaneously is a difficult but valuable skill.

That’s what I consumed and learned from and struggled with last 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

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 106
• Total blog posts published: 707

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 3/15/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The Laws of Trading, a framework book about making decisions in highly competitive and uncertain environments. The title is misleading because the book is about improving decision-making and understanding how markets work.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

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

Continuing what I started last week, I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from.

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I learned:

• The science behind naming billion-dollar products – YouTube video from My First Million where they interview the guy big brands pay to name their products. The process of how he picks names is intriguing. There’s much more science to it than I realized.
• Should your portfolio be positioned for defense or offense? – YouTube video where Howard Marks shares his thinking about risk versus reward in today’s investing environment.
• Declining liquidity is negatively impacting stocks – YouTube video from Monetary Matters with an interview of global liquidity expert Michael Howell. Interesting to understand how a booming economy reduces liquidity in financial markets, which can lead to flat or lower markets. Very counterintuitive.
• Emerging trend: internal AI platform team – YouTube interview from The Biography Podcast with the CEO of Speak, Connor Zwick. He has an internal team dedicated to helping the entire company use AI. They go around the company and set up AI infrastructure for internal teams so they can make the most of AI, which helps them move faster. Interesting concept that makes a lot of sense.
• How Blockworks bootstrapped to $150 million – YouTube interview from The Biography Podcast with the CEO of Blockworks, Jason Yanowitz. Interesting strategy of going from events to media to a data company. Focusing on an overlooked niche helped them separate from the competition. Landing a busy CEO for an interview by creating a book about his company was a nice angle. Flattery works. I think I found a digital version of the book here.
• Building a $100 million AI company – YouTube interview from The Biography Podcast with Dylan Fox, founder of Assembly AI. One point stood out to me: Having clarity on how the customer hears about new products and how they buy new products is important for building successful marketing efforts. You should design processes like onboarding and demand generation by working backward from that understanding. Taking what worked at another company or space and replicating it isn’t a strategy that’s guaranteed to succeed at your company.
• $1.6 million business anyone can start – YouTube interview from Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast with Sariah Howell, founder of Memory Magnets. Howell went from broke to making $600,000 in profit in a year with a simple business idea. I loved how she turned sharing her secrets about building her business into an additional revenue stream by selling products to help others start businesses just like hers. Here, the use of social media is savvy and stood out to me.
• Zara founder getting $3.7 billion dividend – See my thoughts in my post earlier this week. Building to hold forever can lead to great wealth (he’s worth $126 billion). Building to sell will get you cash quicker but won’t create this level of generational wealth.

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

For over a year, in every Sunday’s post, I shared what I’d learned from a personal project I was working on. This past week, I changed the format of that post, making it broader and sharing where I learned things. More about my thinking on this change here.

It’s early, but one effect of this change was noticeable to me immediately. Creating the new type of post forced me to review all the pieces of content I consumed that week, evaluate which ones added value, and synthesize my big takeaways from each (I need to work on this). This stood out to me because although I often save pieces to review again later in my GTD system, I don’t consistently go back and synthesize them. Creating the post was a forcing function for the review and synthesis of the most-value-added content I learned from.

Not something I thought about before making the change, but definitely a benefit.