Build & Defend Newsletter 8

One email a week - something from which I hope you'll get real value. We talk about things we can build, and how to defend them. That can apply to cybersecurity, physical buildings, digital products, and .... just about anything. It gives me a lot of latitude in what I can write about, but the two concepts are important for progress - as individuals, and as society.

Happy April Fools Day. No, this newsletter isn't a prank. Though I did briefly consider announcing my appointment as Dubai's Chief Vibes Officer.... 😉

I'm still at $325 passive income per month.... still working at it! My most recent book (linked below) is doing much better than the others.

Today's topic is: building your SELF. Previously we looked into your WIFE, and now we're going to look at your SELF. This one's much less likely to get me punched.

We talked in Newsletter 2 about your health, and what you could do to take small easy steps to improve that. I wanted to look at that in the broader context of self-improvement. Health is important, probably the most important thing, but it's not the only thing. That's where I came up with the idea of SELF - what else should we look at?

While some of this seems straightforward, there's a lot to be said (and I will say it) for looking at these things individually.

It doesn't do us any good to think of things in a vacuum. Health is one of those topics that is broadly generalisable (get more of it more quickly) but aside from what, what do you do? To self improve - to literally build yourself (see where that ties back nicely?) you have to have a strategy. What will it look like that you build yourself? How do you improve over time? We'll look at it in the context of the other three things in a bit, but a good strategy might be one like James Clear outlined in "Atomic Habits". For those of you that haven't read it (and I suggest you do) the spoiler alert (well known of course) is that by improving things by 1% per day, you make advancements that are significant over time. (Einstein was right about compounding!) That doesn't have to be your strategy, but you should figure out what to do. It could be as simple as time-blocking to become more effective at working, or organising projects, or ensuring that you remember to exercise daily while also getting more done by cutting down on other screen time. You will need to figure out your strategy and execute.

Education is important, though not in the same way it used to be. Everyone knows that the internet great democratises information, but education has moved up a whole level (or several) in terms of what's available now. Any subject in which you are interested can be learned at the drop of a hat, and oftentimes with credentials to be earned as well. Udemy, Khan Academy, Plural Sight - there are quite a few sites online where you can upskill yourself quickly and with minimal effort. Want to learn computing? There are sites for that. Cybersecurity? Most vendors have certifications. AI? Go to the GPT-slingers and they'll want you to get certified. Wood-working? There are dozens of tutorials and videos on any of the various social media platforms. Languages? Duo Lingo, Jumpspeak, Pimsleur, etc. The same can be said for just about any subject. Educating yourself today isn't about degrees or spending four years in college anymore, it's about making sure you understand the world around you as it changes faster and faster and doing your best to keep up.

Leverage is tricky but you can build it, and it comes from having a strategy and educating yourself. You need to learn to spot opportunities, which becomes easier when you have a plan and you learn about what it is that you need for that plan. I come back to computer examples a lot because I'm a technologist, but because I have a strategy and I routinely educate myself, I was able to jump on the AI wave very early and am leveraging that into multiple opportunities. It doesn't have to be a physical opportunity necessarily either; there are plenty of opportunities in the social sphere - networking is a very valuable skill and can open up lots of doors. You also want to be reciprocal where you can - help others with leverage as well - if you can spot something you know someone else would be able to use as a form of leverage to help them, then by all means share! Sometimes the best leverage / opportunity comes when you do this first. Ultimately, leverage is the multiplier. It's not about working harder, but about making your effort count more than once. There are really only four types of leverage available to most people:

Notice that the last two have zero marginal cost. I can write this newsletter once and it goes to 13 people (hi, everyone!). Or 13,000. The effort is the same. That's leverage.

I currently have an AI agent that builds things overnight while I sleep. That's code leveraging code. I have a newsletter that goes out weekly. That's media. I'm working on software products that charge monthly subscriptions. That's code again. Physical things being printed is media.

The question isn't "how do I work more hours?" but how do I make those hours more effective?

Ultimately, freedom comes down to being able to do the things you want when you want to do them. It's saying "no" without consequences. It's being able to take a Tuesday afternoon off to build LEGO with your kid without asking anyone's permission. All other things like "Financial Freedom" and "Time Freedom" and "working for myself" are all just variants of that same thing. Financial freedom is part of it but it's not the whole picture. Time freedom matters more. Decision freedom matters most. The path isn't complicated. It's just long. To truly build, you need to be free - you need to be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them. By concentrating on the SEL you will be enhancing the likelihood (and eventual quality of) the F, and more importantly, by examining the F and what you want to do there you can also reinforce the rest of it, and it becomes a virtuous cycle.

Defend Your Strategy: The biggest thing you'll need to do is to stick to your strategy, especially when other things will try to derail you. You'll have to be good at time management, and resilient enough with yourself to get that one-more-thing-done-even-though-I'm-tired. The world is designed to distract you from your plan. Social media, news cycles, other people's urgency disguised as your emergency. Defending your strategy means saying no more than you say yes. Review your strategy weekly. If you haven't looked at it in a month, you don't have a strategy.

Defend Your Education: You'll need to take your education and apply it, and if that education isn't leading you to where you'll want to go, then understand enough to cut it off and move to something else. Be careful what you learn from and who you learn from. Not all information is equal, and the internet has made it trivially easy to learn the wrong things confidently. Verify sources. Prefer primary sources over summaries. Be especially sceptical of anyone selling you a course on how to get rich.

Defend Your Leverage: Protect your assets. If your leverage is code, make sure your version it, and back it up. If it's media, own as much of it as you can and as much of the platform as you can, if you can. If it's capital, diversify if you're not financially savvy, or become financially savvy, and use things like Stop-Losses. Leverage does indeed compound, but so can mistakes in using it. You can spend a long time working with your AI agent to build a trading bot that makes you $12.

Defend your Freedom: Freedom is fragile. As I know all too well from tasting it only to have it taken away, you have to be very careful with how fragile it can be, and guard it like you'd guard anything that is supremely valuable.

Time is the one thing we can never get back. Therefore, you have to do your best to stack it whenever possible. That almost always means trading something for it. This idea isn't new, but you have to look at where you can spend something somewhere to get more time for yourself. The most common example is paying others to do things that you would otherwise do that don't immediately contribute to your SELF but which are still necessary. Don't want to meal prep but still want to eat healthy? Pay for a boxed food delivery service. As long as the cost of the service is less than what you could make with an extra five hours per week, then it's worth it. (Of course you have to work on your SELF in those five hours - binging Netflix doesn't cut it!) Of course, AI agents help immensely here - I've got two of them doing things for me while I write this and a 3D printer going behind me to actually make physical objects. That's four entities now doing things for me where three years ago it would have just been me!

(Amazon ones are affiliate links.)

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Udemy

Khan Academy

Plural Sight

Pimsleur

Jumpspeak

Duolingo

Claude Courses

Mastering the Command Line for AI by Thomas Quinlan

💬 ONE THING

There's a lot of resources out there - take advantage of them to build your SELF.

Thanks for reading this newsletter! Feel free to respond any time.

Thomas

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