Calvin's Blog

It's commonly accepted that some physical traits last longer than others.

Ask someone who could do a split in high school to do one at 30 and they will likely fall into it without an issue. Ask someone who ran a marathon two years ago, and hasn't exercised since, to run a 10k this afternoon. Their performance will likely be similar to the guy who runs a mile twice a week.

Knowing that some physical traits last longer than others is essential for anyone interested in being a hybrid athlete. It's easier to put on muscle, then get in running shape. If you try to reverse the process you'll be working against yourself.

In fields like programming, it's commonly accepted that you should learn the fundamental tech first. This way you will have a base to build from before you start working with new technologies that may end up fading out of popularity. New technologies are often very profitable, but you don't want to rely solely on untested tech to get your first job.

I'm interested in how this idea of perishable vs non perishable traits and skills could be applied to other fields.

As someone curious about many different fields, I would like to know if there are certain skills that require more maintenance to keep up that I should reserve for later. Are there some things that you can't forget that I should learn first? Or something that would help me learn the other skills? Or get me opportunities to learn the others?

Will learning to write make it easier to learn other languages? The opposite?

Right now I'm trying to read broadly, learn to write, and get better at building new habits and routines.

Have you noticed any interesting perishable vs non-perishable traits or skills that seem important? Let me know if you have.

Communication is our most undervalued activity.

Nearly everything we do is reliant on effective communication. While we put a lot of attention towards improving it, we don't put nearly enough. Especially in our personal relationships.

Attempting to be a better communicator is a minor obsession of mine. After being involved in enough toxically poor communication as a child, I made a commitment to myself, to work hard to be a good communicator.

One of my favorite undervalued tactics is defining words in conversation. Not just defining it for yourself, but explicitly asking the other person what their definition is.

There are many examples online of Alex Hormozi stopping a conversation to define a word. He even keeps a running note of personal definitions on his phone.

Here are a few of my favorite Hormozi definitions:

Anxiety: Too many perceived options.

Depression: Lack of perceived options.

Learning: Same stimulus. New Behavior.

Intelligence: Rate of Learning.

One of my favorite examples is a 1-10 rating. People use these constantly without defining the parameters.

How hard was your run? Six out of ten.

How bad does it hurt? At least an 8.

How's the burger? 7.2

These answers might get us in the ballpark, but aren't really that helpful if we don't understand what the scale is. Not just our definition, but more importantly the other person's.

If your 10/10 pain is a sprained ankle or a bad headache you don't have the same scale as the guy who got ejected from a car, slid 200 feet on the asphalt, and broke his femur.

Coming to terms in conversation is essential if our goal is to understand each other. If we don't agree on definitions of the important topics and words, we might be talking about two different things. We will never truly understand each other.

This doesn't mean we should start being grammar Nazi's in an effort to sound smart or be right. That's just being a dick. But if we want to understand each other better and solve more problems, we need to start by making sure we are on the same page. And being precise with our language is a good place to start.

(If you want to hear another perspective on this topic get the book How To Read A Book and read the chapter Coming to Terms With an Author.)

These tactics are nice but don’t forget the point. Don’t just speak and listen. Work to understand.

P.S. I have a friend who sometimes responds to my texts with. “What’s your motive?”.

Be Like Her

There are three main roles for a musician. Player. Singer. Songwriter. Most musicians are competent in at least one of these categories. Our favorite musicians, the stars, standout because they are exceptional in one. Some are exceptional in two.

One day while thinking about this I realized Paul McCartney is truly great at all three. Not just really good, but world class at all three.
Some people might disagree, but they probably haven't heard that much of his music. (If you have listened to a lot of his music and still disagree, call me. I need your number so I can block you.)

I tried to find someone else who fits this category. Someone who is world class in all three disciplines.

My first thought was John Mayer. He is one of the greatest guitarists in history, a world class pop vocalists and one of the best songwriters currently in the game.

After that it started getting iffy.

Elton John and Ray Charles seem like they should be on the list but I don't know enough about playing keys to be certain. That being said if one decent keyboard player agrees with me then they are officially on my list.

I think Michael Jackson should make the list, the songwriting's there, and his vocal skills are so exceptional, they should probably count for instrumentation too. People say he would beat box entire demos. The man would beat box every instrument he wanted on the song onto a tape and bring it to the studio.

Going down the list of my favorite musicians I keep finding people who are exceptional at one, maybe two.

But who is without question, world class at all three? I can't think of many.

Why write when ChatGPT or Grok can write for me?

More than half of workers in the US are knowledge workers. They use their brain to make their money.

Being better at thinking can help your career. Writing makes you better at thinking. The stuff we do for fun also requires thinking. Ever hear of Wordle? Clear thinking is satisfying. Writing exercises your brain, improves your ability to solve problems, and makes you more creative.

So What Should I Write About?
Write about anything that interests you. Don't limit yourself to things you know about. Find a question you want answered. Then write, research, write, repeat, until you have an answer.

Do I Have to Show People My Writing?
You should be writing for yourself. An essay is a tool that helps you explore an idea. That being said, if you want to get the most out of the process, you should get feedback on your essays. People with differing perspectives might ask questions that you didn't. They may have experience that you don't. If you're not comfortable releasing your work to the public, at least show it to a few friends. If your friends suck and won't read your stuff, write and edit as if you were going to release your work. Pretend to read it from another persons point of view. Not to critique the quality of the writing, but to critique the quality of the ideas.

Long Story Short
Writing makes you a better thinker and forces you to explore topics deeply. Do it.

His article “How to Create Your Own Real World MBA” helped me to quit my job, switch industries and ultimately kick off the type of career that I was meant for.

Going into college I didn't know what I wanted to do but I had the opportunity to go so I figured I should take advantage of it. I decided to major in Business Administration so I'd at least learn a bit about people, money, and how businesses work, while I decided what I really wanted to do. Five years later I was a year into working at my family's wholesale lumberyard and I was miserable. I had great long term prospects but I was bored, lonely, and was looking at spending the remainder of my 20s in these conditions. I really wanted to be somewhere where I could work around young people and solve difficult problems.

Around this time I told Patrick, a developer friend of mine about an app idea I had. The next day he emailed me a demo. He had built my idea in twenty minutes during his lunch break. I knew I wanted a job where I could spend more time solving problems, but it was not until this moment that I could see a clear path ahead of me. If Patrick could build my idea in twenty minutes it shouldn't take me more than six months to be able to learn the basics. Another friend sent me a Udemy course on Javascript and told me to try out the first few lessons. Four hours into the course and another eighty hours of existential crisis level boredom at work, I knew that I at least needed to try to pursue programming. The problem was I didn't want to get another undergraduate degree, I had just gotten one. And I didn't know if I'd be able to get into grad school for computer science with a business degree or if I'd be able to pay for it without taking out a loan.
I decided I had two courses of action.
1 Get a job similar to the one I had, but somewhere that would allow me to have a better schedule and younger coworkers but risk being in a pretty similar situation with significantly less financial upside.
2 Pursue a career in programming with the risk of not getting into or not being able to pay for grad school, never getting a job, spending a ton of money supporting myself during the process, then having to go with option one anyway.

This is where Tim comes in. I had heard him tell the story of his "Real World MBA" and I decided to revisit it and see if I could do something similar. Here are the highlights

Tim:
"I decided to make (in my mind) a two-year “Tim Ferriss Fund” that would replace Stanford business school... For the “Tim Ferriss Fund,” I would aim to intelligently spend $120,000 over two years on angel investing in $10-20,000 chunks, so 6-12 companies in total. The goal of this “business school” would be to learn as much as possible about start-up finance, deal structuring, rapid product design, initiating acquisition conversations, etc. as possible.
"

By the way at the end of the two years his portfolio was up 400%.

After rereading this article my decision was made. I would apply to grad school and if I didn't get in with some kind of assistantship or student job to pay my tuition, I would create my own masters of computer science program.

I spent most of the next year in coffee shops, coding along with Udemy courses and working on projects. At one point I got so fed up living off of my savings account that I got a restaurant job. Having a paycheck again was nice but I hated the job and was constantly wishing I could be studying instead of sitting around waiting for tables to fill up. This was the first time in my life I was excited to study. I would plan projects and test myself on syntax in my server book. I was constantly thinking about programming and it showed. I was a terrible server, but I was tearing through Jonas Schmedtmann's React course. I would leave work, go to my favorite coffee shop, study until close, go home, go straight to bed, then wake up and either go to work, or go straight back to Jet for a morning study session. I worked out a lot, played a lot of guitar, and never missed an event with my friends, but I spent the majority of my time writing code. The job was slow and a couple months in I got fed up sitting around half the time and decided to quit. I had just applied to my first internship, and grad school and I decided that if I didn't get into one of them I was going to start treating studying like a full time job. 9-5 at the coffee shop, studying, building, and applying to jobs until I got something. At this point I knew my first Javascript Framework and I was done playing around. It was time to bite down on the bit and really put some time in. I planned to quit my job at the end of my next shift. That night I got sent home because "it was slow and there were too many servers". I didn't get scheduled that weekend. I went in and spoke to my manager about it and he said it wasn't working out. I effectively got fired three hours before I planned on quitting. I guess I shouldn't have spent so much time sorting arrays at work but I wasn't upset, I now had control of my time back and fresh motivation to grind. I got the internship two weeks later. Eighteen months after quitting my job and setting out to create my own CS Degree I have an internship under my belt and I'm five months into a web dev job at a startup five minutes from my house. On top of that I'm preparing to launch my first iOS app in the next few weeks.
Tim's article gave me a plan of action, and the permission to take a big risk in hopes of improving my life. I now have a new skillset that has greatly broadened my ability to solve problems, have more control of my time, and have a great job. Since following Tim's lead my quality of life has skyrocketed and I'm hoping my current side project will help me to say the same about my finances by the end of the year. Follow along with the journey on X or check back with me next January for an update.