Welcome to the forth edition of Everything Random. A series of links, articles, notes, idea, and everything random living rent free in my head (and my open browser tabs). Hopefully you find them interesting or helpful. Some of these topics I'll explore further in future posts. I am also trying out some new graphics in the fourth edition. Please let me know what you think in the comments.
We’re going to call this the Financial Edition of Quick Links. You don’t need to be a accountant to understand anything going on in these articles. They are more interesting observations, advice, or ramblings loosely related to money in my own head.
I think there’s an “ideal” net worth for everyone, when money not only stops bringing pleasure but becomes a social liability. And that number is probably lower than most people think.
This is an article written by Morgan Housel for The Collaborative Fund. The article is an interesting observation on social debt that can come with wealth and what that means.
The bigger point of sharing this article for me, is to introduce readers to Morgan Housel. He is the author of The Psychology of Money and posts regularly to The Collaborative Fund website. His advice is very practical and understandable. He can take high level financial concepts and make them very easy to understand and incorporate into our own lives.
10 Truths About the Stock Market
Written on another Substack publication, Tker by Sam Ro.
The stock market can be an intimidating place: it’s real money on the line, there’s an overwhelming amount of information to follow, and people have lost fortunes in it very quickly.
But it’s also a place where thoughtful investors have long accumulated a lot of wealth.
The primary difference between those two outlooks is related to misconceptions about the stock market that can lead people to make poor investment decisions.
Some of these truths you may already know and some may seem so obvious you can’t believe you didn’t already know them. I would recommend this article to anyone interested in the stock market. If you’re just starting out, it’s easy to comprehend. If you’re a seasoned investor, it’s good to get a reminder of the basic principles.
Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.
This article is from back in 2009 from the personal blog of Paul Graham. If you have some time, I recommend browsing through several of the articles on his personal website. Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas around society, the internet, and building a business.
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.
We’re going even further back to 2008 for this article from Kevin Kelly on his personal website. If you produce anything on the internet and want to make money from it, I recommend reading this article.
I started this Quick Links thinking the theme would be finance. After writing the section, I think the theme is writers you should be reading. All the articles above are from authors I regularly read, and some I have read for years. They are thought leaders in their field and often cover a range of topics. I highly recommend reading more by any of these authors on their websites.
What writers (or people that write) do you read regularly? Or maybe just enjoy a lot of what they have written. Share your thoughts in the comments.
Plaintext Productivity
I’m going to write a bit about productivity and organization. I’m interested more on the personal side of this, not a corporate or business focus, but the principles go for both.
There are no shortage of tools to help you accomplish this. There are actually an overwhelming amount of tools that promise to make you more productive and organized. Calendars, tasks lists, note taking, and all of them sprinkled with some kind of AI to make you “superhuman.”
I’ve used my fair share of these tools, but for the past several years I’ve used one tool, GitHub. A combination of GitHub Issues, Repositories, and Projects was my entire GTD stack. It was simple and effective. I plan to continue using it for work.
For my personal organization, I’m attempting to go a little bit simpler. A plain txt file.
There is a part of my day/week that I call Life Administration. It’s all the stuff I need to do to keep my life going. Grocery shopping, laundry, bills, taxes, making appointments, and keeping in contact with friends. This is all handled by my simple .txt file.
This systems works on any computer, any platform, can be backed up to the cloud, and is about as future proof as you can get in technology. I’ve been using this system for the past week and have been very happy with it. May even move my work stuff to plaintext at some points.
For some more research on plaintext productivity check out:
If you have any questions about using .txt files for your productivity, leave a comment on this post. If there is any interest, I will write a more in depth overview of how I am using the system.
This week’s living rent free song is a collaboration from FKJ & Masego. Both are immensely talented musicians. Part of the appeal of the music is the video that goes along with it. You get to see the two artists creating the song right before you, with each instrument and looping. It’s amazing to watch how well the two work together.
This wraps up Edition #4 of Everything Random. I highly recommend checking out each artist’s individual work as well. Let me know if you find any songs you like by leaving a comment.
*Disclaimer: This post is a stream of consciousness type of writing. If you find spelling, grammar, or other issues, please let me know for them to be corrected.