Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

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

• Seek advice on how to fail – YouTube interview with Alix Pasquet III. I love his idea about leveraging inversion by asking people who’ve had success at what you want to do, “What would I need to do to fail?” This helps you build a list of things to avoid and develop pattern recognition so you can spot those things if you start doing them. He also talked about another idea: that price memory triggers cognitive biases like the endowment effect, which can lead to avoidable losses because you don’t recognize threats (see here). And I love his thoughts on approaching successful people to bring them value, not extract value from them.
• Human intelligence = hierarchical memory + predictions – YouTube interview with Omer Cedar. He explains how humans use hierarchical memory and predictions to think. That’s hard to simulate, so machines and AI can’t yet think like humans. He also talks about his view that the propagation curve is driven by new information being recognized over time by investors (see here). This supports his view that change in the state of information is more important than the state of information (see here). It also supports his view that the amount of a surprise correlates to the amount of alpha available because of new information.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors 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: 122
• Total blog posts published: 819

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 7/5/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read Market Wizards: The Next Generation by Jack Schwager and George Coyle, a biographical anthology profiling nine people who generated outsized returns in public markets. This book is interesting because the nine people accomplished this at very young ages. The book does a good job of detailing their backgrounds, their origin stories, and how they approach decision-making in highly uncertain situations when the stakes are extremely high.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

This week, I consumed less content than usual because it’s a holiday week. None of it is worth sharing. Next week I’ll get back to my normal content consumption level. I hope to find a few nuggets worth sharing.

I like to relax and enjoy holidays, but over the last year or two, I’ve established a habit of setting a challenge for myself for each holiday. I missed doing so for Memorial Day, and I want to get back on track for the 4th. The challenges are fun ways to push myself or make progress on a current project. I try to complete the challenge, and usually I do, but sometimes I overestimate what I can do during a holiday. Regardless, it’s fun, I learn something from the process, and I feel like I made progress on something I’m interested in.

Over the last few months, I’ve collected several research reports and articles written by notable people that I want to read. I never get around to reading them, though. They pile up in my office.

My goal for this holiday is to read two of these reports by Tuesday.

That’s it; that’s the challenge. Very simple. Wish me luck.

Today is the last day of June. That means Q2 is officially over and we’re halfway through the year. The first half of 2026 went by fast, but for whatever reason, I don’t feel like I made the most of it. I want to make the most of the year as a whole, so I’ll be experimenting with some changes and new habits. Here’s hoping they work!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors 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: 121
• Total blog posts published: 812

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/28/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout, a framework for thinking about marketing that describes 22 foundational marketing laws

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-six 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. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

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

• Focusing downside lets you play offense in down markets – YouTube interview with Seth Klarman, CEO of Baupost Group. Klarman joined Baupost at the age of 25 when it was being formed. He owned no equity, but seven years later, he was CEO and owned 40% of the firm. Klarman believes that focusing on risk and a bottom-up approach puts you in a position to be aggressive and play offense when others are panicking. In about three months, he raised roughly $4 billion as the great financial crisis hit, and his firm was a big buyer, deploying $100 million per day across various asset classes!
• The next generation of market wizards – YouTube interview with Jack D. Schwager, author of the Market Wizards series of books. I love learning about the strategies of people who’ve achieved outsized success, so I’ve enjoyed Schwager’s books because that’s what they’re about. He just released a new book, which I bought, that explains how some people, mostly working from their homes, generated astronomical sums over roughly a decade. For example, one person went from around $50,000 to over $500 million in about a dozen years working from home. Schwager won’t write about someone until he verifies their results through account statements and tax returns, which adds lots of credibility to his books. One of the interesting things I picked up on in this latest book was the power of compounding. Key to the success of these people is sticking with their winners long enough to enjoy compounding while cutting losers so the losses don’t impact their overall compounding. This is a common theme I’ve seen before that leads to power-law results for venture capital and other famous public market investors.
• She has to spend +$200k/month – YouTube interview with Anne Mahlum, an entrepreneur who sold her business to private equity. This interview was interesting because she’s transparent about her $100+ million net worth and how it’s invested. She has to remind herself to spend enough money some months, and in some months spends $400,000 without impacting her overall wealth at all. Her experiences with family members made sense. Gifting her husband a substantial amount of money before they got married to avoid fights about money was unconventional but has worked well for her.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Last week, I heard about how one extremely successful person grades himself daily in a write-up. He calls it his one-page daily report card. At the beginning of the day, he records what he plans to do and how he decided on his plans. At the end of the day, he records what he actually did, any mistakes or errors, and what he learned. He also breaks down his day into two-hour blocks and grades each block.

This really stuck with me and got me thinking. For one thing, it aligns with my having positive outcomes from daily habits (e.g., this blog).

So, this past week, I decided to copy that idea. I created a Google Doc that’s basically a journal of daily report cards. I create my plan for the day in the morning, and at 5-ish, I reflect and grade my day.

It’s only been a week, but so far I like this habit. I have a clear idea of what I want the day to look like, and I’m forced to look for and document mistakes and micro lessons. I also like grading each two-hour block. I noticed what appear to be some early patterns that I might not have noticed otherwise.

I’m looking at this as a week-by-week commitment for now. I’ll reflect at the end of each week to decide whether I want to keep going. After this first week, I’m looking forward to doing it again next week.

I had a great conversation with my mom this week, and we talked about my childhood. Mom was an educator her entire career and has been an avid reader her whole life. She knows the value of reading in learning and child development and made sure that reading was part of my childhood routine. I'm thankful she prioritized this for me.

During our chat, she mentioned that despite her efforts, I hated reading as a child and adolescent. I did the assigned reading, but I made my dislike of it known. I told her it wasn’t the act of reading I didn’t like. The problem was that I was forced to read things that weren’t tailored to me or my interests, which felt like torture for two reasons.

First, I didn’t have control. Even as a child, I didn’t want people telling me what to do, especially things I hated doing. This is still true today. I want to drive the direction and outcomes of my life rather than let life happen to me.

Second, it’s difficult for me to do things that I have no interest in doing. I wasn’t interested in learning about Huckleberry Finn or whatever book my school wanted me to read, so it was hard for me to do it.

Combine those two issues and you have a child who hates reading and is vocal about it. Given that I love to read now, I’ll bet that if my teachers had taken time to understand my interests and let me pick books about those topics, I would have loved reading and read more than was assigned to me.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors 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: 120
• Total blog posts published: 805

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/21/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner, a framework book about avoiding errors when making decisions in complex situations. Dorner argues that narrow, linear thinking styles are used in dynamic and interconnected situations, which results in errors. He uses simulated situations to describe a process that helps improve decision-making in complex situations.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!