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In the past, when I set goals to write more frequently, I was always stopped by not having ideas ready for what to write about. Or when I got one, I didn’t have a systematic way of collecting them. I would sit down to write, but getting started on a new piece was too difficult.
My ONE thing is make it so that when I sit down to write I have a checklist to work from.
I started the month writing about long-lived systems
But mostly, I wrote about how I think about personal finance:
The first post is about savings rate, so I made a spreadsheet and python script to help understand the effect I was describing
The second lesson was about increasing income, and I wrote two posts following up on that
Finally, I wanted to say a few words about excessive saving
And, I continued releasing Podcast episodes about writing
I’m doing a lot with SpriteKit and making tutorials on App-o-Mat as I go.
In yesterday’s episode of Write While True, I spoke about how making things changes you. This is true even if what you made isn’t that great. I asked you to think about the programs you threw away.
In my morning pages today I tried to start from the first program I ever wrote and think about all the small things I made and never finished. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but I reminded myself of the Amazing Voice Master and found an ad for one in the Internet Archive’s Compute! Magazine archive.
The Voice Master ad claimed it could turn humming into sheet music, but I guess I didn’t hum in tune.
I mostly remember making card games that responded to voice, which worked a little better, but I did learn to be skeptical of voice recognition claims. Perhaps that prepared me to do my Skillshare course and Smashing article on Siri.
I write in this blog everyday, but I cannot come up with anything to say in Twitter. I think it’s because I think no one’s watching here.
I mean, no one’s watching on Twitter either. But that feels more like being ignored, where this place is just more secluded.
In episode 10 of Write While True, I talked about why I blog every day. It’s because I’m trying to build up a body of work, mostly not that great, in the hope that that helps me become a better writer. Also, I find it enjoyable in of itself, and it helps with my self-esteem to “do things”.
Twitter offers none of that. I don’t find it that enjoyable, and the instant judgement is the opposite of what I want.
Yesterday I wrote about a way to think about designing something: by comparing opposites. I also think you can use the idea of opposites to generate a new thing from something else.
This is an exercise I did recently to design a game.
I call it Nebulous, because it’s meant to be a play on a “nebula”, which I am thinking of the opposite of an asteroid. Nebulous is the opposite of Asteroids.
Here are some essential elements of Asteroids
I used this to generate what could be the essential elements of Nebulous
I am still thinking about this. At this point, I don’t need to keep thinking about the opposite of Asteroids — this starting point will be the seed that goes in its own direction from here.
In my podcast episode, Write While True Episode 7: Find Your Voice, I tried to express an idea that I find is useful in a lot of contexts. There are some choices where you are trying to make something specific or differentiating—in those cases, one way to know that you’ve done it is to see if the opposite choice is also reasonable.
In this case, I was talking about trying to find my “voice” in the podcast—what makes it mine and not generic. I recommended Joanna Wiebe’s video on voice and tone.
But, I cautioned against a voice that was “smart”. I said:
I actually don’t think smart is a good choice because the opposite of smart is very rarely appropriate. Everyone would choose to sound smart.
When you have a generically positive aspect that you want (like smart), a useful technique is to consider opposing ways to achieve it.
I recommended considering the choices of “expert” or “fellow learner” instead of smart. Both voices might be smart, but they are specific, opposite, and both are reasonable.
This is also a good technique in job seeking. It’s easier to find what you want if it’s not something that everyone would claim to have.
Sending a clear signal that “this is not for you” is the only way the people that it is for will recognize it.
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I know that a lot of my episodes are variations on the theme of quantity. In episode one, I asked you to write morning pages every day. In episode 4, I asked you to make a schedule where you write multiple days a week. I’ve talked about the importance of producing many first drafts. In episode 8, I said you should lower your bar and just last week I shared my personal “why”, which is all about playing the infinite game because it’s fun. The title of this podcast is a play on the idea of the infinite game.
My early career was in writing financial options software, so I’ve been around the concept for options for a long time. The general characteristic that’s important to understand is that it has a fixed, low cost and a (low-relative-probability) of very high upside.
My ex-boss, Philip Brittan, wrote this piece about optionality back in 2014 on an internal blog and recently posted it publicly. It goes over the technical details, but generally, when I read it I was reminded about the power of the generic concept of options when applied more broadly.
He ended: “In general, you should be on the lookout for situations that naturally make you long options and give an asymmetrical (‘unfair’) advantage”. (being “long options” means you have options — as opposed to short, where someone has options on you).
Applied broadly, there are many things that “have optionality”. For example, renting instead of buying. But, for now, let’s concentrate on optionality in compensation.
At the time I read this, I was consulting. The kind of optionality that consulting offers is options on opportunity and freedom. You can easily change what you are doing or when and where you work. You can stop and start at will, comparatively. But, in consulting, pay is mostly tied to work and does not have options-like returns.
Before that, and for most of my career, I worked for startups that had some kind of optionality in the pay structure. My first job had an unlimited profit-sharing bonus pool that was literally a percent of profit that was not capped. At other times I had equity-like instruments, options, or RSUs. I also did limited work for free for a share in future profits.
My personal finance plan was just a normal compounded returns and high savings with an exponential curve, but when I look at what actually happened, there are these moments of step-wise lumps when one of these options paid off. I was lucky, for sure, but also, I took a lot of shots.
The key was that my options mostly felt free to me. I was completely satisfied with the job and guaranteed pay, so the option was extra. It might be true that I could get more elsewhere, but I was satisfied.
My default plan would still work.
I think of optionality in compensation the way some people think about playing the market with “play money”. I’d be ok if the options expired worthless. It’s another way I think programmers can “beat the market” with labor instead of by picking stocks.
I have written a few posts lately to convince you to increase your savings rate.
Increasing your savings rate is the easiest lever to pull in increasing your net worth. To do that, I mostly suggest increasing your income:
If you increase your income and mostly save it, that effect will compound on itself and with the market. The end result is significant.
But, surely there’s a downside, right?
When you save money, you are forgoing whatever benefit you could have by spending it now. That spending could be considered investment or consumption.
If the spending is truly an investment, then I think it’s worth considering. I am not talking about Bitcoin or $TSLA, I am talking about
A lot of this stuff is deductible against business income (see my taxes post). If you could deduct it, then I’d say it qualifies as investment or a worthwhile expense. I’d also extend this to serious hobbies and fitness. Of course, you need to keep it in line with your income.
In spending that is for consumption, I would follow Ramit Sethi’s advice to spend on things you love and cut mercilessly everywhere else. Also, he says to ask the $xx,000 questions (e.g. saving on a mortgage) and not the $x dollar question (e.g. lattes).
Spending that is an investment pays off in some way over and over. This doesn’t need to be money. If you spend on fitness, your improved health gives you benefits. If you learn an instrument, you will get enjoyment from playing for the rest of your life.
Consumption is more about enjoyment in the present. You absolutely should do that, but this is where you need to be careful as we’re built to value short-term pleasure (see The Pleasure Trap [amazon affiliate link] book or watch the TEDx talk).
Having money in the bank is good, but ultimately, you do need to spend it to get any benefit. But, please don’t use that as an excuse to waste money.