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Codex Audentia

Codex: An ancient manuscript text in book form.
Audentia: Latin for “audacity”.

This is my codex — a working notebook with my notes, experiments, and rambles in their full glory. It is raw, unpolished and unfiltered.

This is not a blog.

You can subscribe to these posts here.

I’m building a 1,000 year company, and writing about the process.

Aug 03

Being Boring

By Reflections No Comments

I live a fairly austere lifestyle.

I don’t drink alcohol.

I don’t drink tea.

I don’t drink coffee.

I eat 99% vegan – almost never consuming meat, fish, chicken, dairy, or eggs.

I don’t eat much sugar.

I like music, but only in the background. I’m not a big fan, and I’m not an early adopter.

I don’t like buying new clothes.

And of course, I don’t smoke.

Never used weed or acid or any recreational drugs.

I don’t go to nightclubs or bars.

And I don’t watch porn.

A lot of people ask me, what do I do?

The truth is, I don’t feel like I’m supposed to consume certain things to increase enjoyment in my life. It’s just how I am.

It’s like I’m creating my own version of The Monk Life.

(More on this later.)

Jul 16

Death and Time: Living a Life of Home Runs

By Reflections No Comments

In recent months, I’ve been struggling with my mortality, as well as the fact that the universe is too big, vast, and ancient – and permanent – for me to make any significant impact.

I live on a tiny speck of dust, floating in an ocean of stars. All our history (and future) is limited to a few thousand years of this little wet particle. Whatever I can build or achieve during my lifetime, is temporary – it will only push this world a tiny bit.

The sad thing is that we are too small, insignificant, and doomed to perish right where we are, without ever being able to see or appreciate the beauty and vastness of this physical universe.

And on top of that, I could die at any time. I have no way to know whether it will be today, in just a few hours, or 70 years later when I’m 100 years old. Life and death are unpredictable.

To make matters even worse, I do not know what will happen when I’ll die or what lies “after” that event. It has nothing to do with whether I choose to believe in God or not – the fact remains that I don’t know. It could be blissful heaven or burning hell, or it could be the END, i.e. eternal darkness and unconsciousness – with all my memories and experiences forgotten and lost forever — or it could even be an afterlife here on Earth (or somewhere else?).

To summarize this gloomy picture,

  1. We are born in a tiny corner of the universe, where we barely have any control over what happens around us, and can do nothing that is remotely meaningful given the vastness of space and time. Our actions and choices have no consequence in this universe, nor can we understand how it truly works.
  2. We are dealt a card, in terms of the physical body and mind we’re given by luck, the family and society, and the technological era we are born in.
  3. We are doomed to die, sooner or later. We have no idea when this experience called “life” is meant to end – in a few minutes, or in a few decades. We also don’t know HOW it will end – painfully or peacefully.
  4. We do not know what death even is. It’s the ultimate unknown. It could be the “end” as our minds cease to exist, or it could be the beginning of another journey (which could be painful, pleasurable, or something else).
  5. We do not know if we even have any free will, or is everything pre-written and destined to happen, with us simply being puppets of time – thinking that we have any choice at all.

Our “life” could practically be an illusion altogether, with us being AI characters in a simulation.

The Way Forward

1. Life may be short, therefore – chase the fleeting experiences and simple pleasures. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Be playful, don’t take life too seriously, and welcome whatever lands in your plate. Share love and positive energy.

2. However, life may also be long, and afford us enough time to achieve great ends and be all we can be – MAXIMIZE and OUTDO ourselves, polish our craft, and think BIG. Push for societal and technological change.

On both points, we must actively seek risks and double our failure rate.

In summary:

Be playful. We “spawn” into this world as a game character. Have fun.

You might have plenty of time. Take your inner gifts, and polish your crafts. Strive to become a more perfect soul.

Whether you have little time or lots of time, think bigger. Even your wildest possible ambition is a safe, boring choice when placed within the eternity of time. Stop pontificating over trivial things, stop playing small.

Swing for the biggest home runs you could possibly imagine. Make the boldest proposals. Cold call the gods themselves.

Expand your comfort zone with practice. Each week, do at least one thing that could create “home run” progress. Train your identity to be bigger.

Fin.

Jun 12

The Four Pillars Behind All Achievement

By Reflections No Comments

It took me ages to have this epiphany. And now I’m sharing this with you.

To accomplish anything great, you must get these four things right.

And if you’ve ever failed to accomplish something, it was probably rooted in one of them going wrong.

Mindset

Strategy

Tactics

Discipline of Execution

Do whatever you can to diagnose where your issue is. And then fill in the gap.

You heard it here first!

Apr 30

Falling vs. Scaling

By Reflections No Comments

There seem to be roughly two approaches to accomplish something great.

One is to put yourself in a position where, if you don’t succeed, you “die.” There is no backup, no plan B. It’s what’s called “jumping off the cliff and building an airplane on the way down.”

Doing it this way is more chaotic, more exhilarating, and also automatically makes you more focused. It also makes your team more tight, because nothing bonds people better than trying to overcome a large shared threat. The high stress is accompanied by high euphoria.

I’ll call this, quite literally, “falling” to succeed. It takes an ungodly appetite for risk and adventure. And often, the fall can literally handicap you for years. But the fear itself keeps you going and squeezes every ounce of creativity and hustle in you.

But there’s also another way, which is to slowly, diligently scale a mountain. Putting one step ahead of the other. Sometimes taking a few steps back too, but overall you’re always moving in the upward direction.

This style is characterized by the “long slog.” Putting in the reps, the work, day after day, getting better over time and letting the compounding effect work for you. A lot of “artist” type entrepreneurs do it this way.

This style (“scaling”) takes tremendous discipline. It’s very easy to get distracted, to lose momentum, or lose faith. It’s also quite deceptive – it’s easy to delude yourself into thinking you’re scaling the mountain, while you’ve been sitting at “base camp” for years and not even making a move, while other climbers come and pass you by.

Putting one more step forward at a time sounds simple in theory, but is the hardest thing to consistently do over time. Of course, you could get lucky and “break out” sooner than later, but you have to keep scaling (producing a large body of work) or the market will “correct” itself and you’ll quickly become a “has-been.”

It would be nice to strike a balance. While the greatest creations of humankind have come from SCALING, it’s good to have periods of steep FALLING once in a while that gets your blood going.

Because I’m more of a “scaling” person (although some risk-averse people would say I’m more of a daredevil, I know I’m not), this post is actually a reminder to myself that a little bit of falling is essential.

The key, is to always be in a position where you can SLIP – even if you’re supposedly trying to scale slowly. If there’s no risk of a fall, you’ll get stuck resting at the same altitude forever. As soon as you reach a “camp” (i.e. some measure of stable success), get climbing towards the next one. The always-present risk of slipping and falling will keep life interesting, and keep you motivated on a daily basis.

Apr 29

How I Hire: The Heart of a Teacher

By Reflections No Comments

Nobody can be the expert on everything. As an entrepreneur, I always have to find people who know more than me, and trust them to do their job.

But hiring is tough (and that’s probably an understatement). People lie in interviews all the time (from both sides) trying to make the best impression. And often, jobs go to the best salesperson, not the most suitable person (at least for non-technical/managerial roles).

When I’m hiring someone – whether it’s a freelancer on Upwork or Fiverr, or a consultant – I use one key criterion to filter them out, and it works so well that often I’m left with only one candidate at the end.

It’s their ability and willingness to TEACH — to EDUCATE me a little, so I walk away having learned a new thing or two right from my first interaction from them. Good teachers have an excellent grasp on their subject to begin with, they are excellent communicators, and they also have a GIVER’s attitude which makes them decent human beings (in general).

To put this into practice, when I message a freelancer or start an interview, I usually start with a question that goes like, “hey I’m not an expert on this thing, so could you maybe educate me a little about how it works, and what I should be looking for?”

The non-teacher will give me a curt or very concise answer that can be summarized as, “this is what I need from you, and this is what you’ll get from me.” Or at most, they’ll ask me a couple questions and then give me that same answer. Either way, it’s not what I want.

And what will great teachers do instead? We know it when they do it. It’s not hard to see.

A special thank you to Dave Ramsey who first introduced me to this concept in a youtube video.

Apr 25

The Monk Life

By Reflections No Comments

It took me a long time to learn that being a HIGH-PERFORMANCE PERSON demands the “monk life.”

Any great endeavour, personal growth, or massive success is rooted in sacrifice.

A balanced life is an average life. Achieving high performance means you can only obsess over 1-2 priorities (maybe 3) in your life — the ones that bring you the most meaning and joy — and everything else usually has to be renounced.

When looking for the City of Gold in the rainforest, you must be willing to take a machete in your hands and hack away at the vines in your way. To find Treasure Island, you must leave the shore and set sail. You can’t have both. You have to pick and choose.

High-performance living is not for everyone, because for most people, the sacrifices aren’t worth it. And that’s okay too – no judgment.

I lived the “casual” way for a long time myself and kept wondering why I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I had made lists of all the things I WOULD do. But I was afraid to decide what I WON’T do.

What we DELETE from our routines is as important as what we ADD.

The Monk Life is the ticket to success and greatness because once you choose it, you’re no longer held back by things that do not serve you.

Accepting the Monk Life starts to change your self-image. The mere act of sacrifice automatically lifts you up from the “pretenders” and places you among the “contenders.” The proof of your own conviction begins to erode your self-doubt.

Living the Monk Life means you’ve accepted the arena as your home. You belong to it, and are a gladiator by default. Winning is no longer a wish or a dream; it’s your job.

Mar 17

Obsession

By Reflections No Comments

In any project, business or organization, the psychology of the leader is the biggest factor towards success or failure.

I’ve realized I have an obsessive personality. By nature, I tend to get obsessed with things.

I can forget about food. Sleep. Standing. Moving. All so that I can keep doing whatever I’m doing.

But I’m also very easily distracted. My brain is an overly energetic dog.

The only way to keep me productive is to put my brain on the track with a big, clear rabbit to chase. I can chase that rabbit all the way to the finish line.

I also realize that if I had allowed myself to be obsessed with what my inner wisdom told me… not second-guessing everything I came up with… not focusing on other people’s advice and ideas first… I could have stayed consistent with my routines for an entire year.

If I’d tuned out the noise and focused on one thing for 365 days straight, I’d be in a totally different place right now.

So I’ve learned that I will use this fact to my advantage.

Focus on a single project at a time and go all-out on making it succeed, before moving on to the next one.

Patience over tactics. Take it 6 months at a time. Don’t switch things up all the time — just stick it out for 180 days before changing directions (or even horses, for that matter).

All the things I started and left unfinished because of short-term thinking:

  1. DenseLayers.
  2. Promoting the article constantly.
  3. Publishing the book.
  4. Guesting on other podcasts.
  5. The Eccentric CEO Podcast.
  6. Writing Twitter threads weekly.
  7. Networking and making friends on Twitter.
  8. Writing more essays on cool new technologies.
  9. Working out.
  10. Learning French.
  11. Learning Chinese.
  12. Learning to Draw.

You need to do things that scale, but give them time to compound! OR if you’re just going to “flip” things for a quick buck, just do that.

As Noah Kagan says, Law of 100. For doing anything, do at least 100 of them before switching gears or directions.

  • The book: 100 press releases, 100 guest podcasts, etc.
  • The podcast: 100 episodes EACH (ECCEO, AAI), 200+ youtube clips

Feb 06

Lethargy, Procrastination, Ambition

By Reflections No Comments

I’ve been reading a lot again. I sometimes wonder, when was the last time I had the urge to jump out of bed in the morning? It certainly has felt like years.

I believe the last time it happened was while writing or promoting an essay over several days, or any other project that was incredibly meaningful and important to me, was a lot of fun, was challenging to figure out, had a deadline, and usually involved accountability to other people.

I have an obsessive personality — I can, and dare I say need to get obsessed with something to feel great. Take that obsessive focus away from me, and I slowly lose my mind. I become distracted, lethargic, start sleeping 12 hours a day, stop working out or taking care of myself, and just feel like sh!t.

Who not How

On another note, I recently started reading a book called Who not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy (more the latter than the former). It made some interesting claims:

  • All ambitious people procrastinate. You are not alone, and you are not defective.
  • Procrastination is a form of inner wisdom. It tells you that at the moment, you’re not capable of achieving the goal by yourself. You need to find people who can help you get there.
  • Who before how. Before you ask yourself, “how do I do this?” you should ask yourself “WHO can help me do this?”
  • Only work on things you’re uniquely positioned to do. Find “whos” to help with everything else, and it will propel you faster towards all your goals than you could ever do alone.

This is a powerful, fundamental concept that can be transformative, similar to The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Being Driven

I read another book recently called Driven, about people who tend to be incredible hyper achievers but are also prone to addictions and damaging behaviours if not focused.

Everything that book described felt like the story of my life. I hated school for the most part and lived in my own world, even though I got decent grades. I would just stay zoned out, and everyone noticed. I get distracted very easily, and leave things unfinished all the time.

But I can also get super absorbed into things — be it a book, or a subject, or a problem. I remember when I was reading the 4th Harry Potter novel, I finished it in less than 2 days, by just reading the heck out of it every hour.

Singular Focus and Ambition

It’s starting to dawn on me that being focused on a day to day basis, comes down to having a compelling vision in your mind and an identity that keeps telling you, “why am I not there yet?”

Day before yesterday, I was watching Underdog Billionaire on Youtube. Seeing Glenn Stearns and Grant Cardone (albeit with camera crews around them) just actively charge towards what they wanted, and do everything they could to gather strong team members one after another, take HUGE risks, and flip bigger and bigger products one after another. They also always made the vision bigger than themselves, and told their honest story, which helped recruit the right, motivated people to the cause. They also didn’t constantly have “plan Bs.” It was constantly, “if this fails, then the whole thing blows up.”

They almost completely ignored their current circumstances and focused on clawing towards the future.

“When climbing a mountain, don’t look down.” Keep looking at the peak.

What is my “peak”? If I don’t look at the peak and the next step every single day, multiple times per day, then I’ll be tempted to look down.

Steps to productivity:

  • Putting all eggs into a SINGLE BASKET at a time and bet everything on it
  • ELIMINATE TIME SUCKS (swear on your mother you won’t watch TV/anime/movies/Youtube etc until you reach a milestone).
  • Delegate every single task that’s not essential. Even DELEGATE THE OUTSOURCING, so you don’t have to waste hours on freelancer websites.
  • Do whatever you can to surround yourself with the RIGHT PEOPLE
  • Giving those people OWNERSHIP of their respective jobs and getting out of their way

I challenged myself to get a black belt in Judo in 12 months, training at the Kodokan in Tokyo.

I challenged myself to achieve fluency in Japanese in 12 months. The result blew me away.

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