This is a killer idea! Looking forward to seeing where it goes... will be as helpful, if not more, than ERC has been for me while searching for answers.
Interesting how he says that extremely high IQ may even be a disadvantage:
And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that. At the age of 15, Nunn started studying mathematics in Oxford; he was the youngest student in the last 500 years, and at 23 he did a PhD in algebraic topology. He has so incredibly much in his head. Simply too much. His enormous powers of understanding and his constant thirst for knowledge distracted him from chess... Right. I am a totally normal guy. My father is considerably more intelligent than I am.
And that his big shtick is his focus, intuition, and domain expertise - not his IQ:
No. In terms of our playing skills we are not that far apart. There are many things I am better at than he is. And vice versa. Kasparov can calculate more alternatives, whereas my intuition is better. I immediately know how to rate a situation and what plan is necessary. I am clearly superior to him in that respect.
This reminds me of Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs and how it detailed his many eccentric habits and behaviors early on before starting Apple... how he never took showers while working at Atari, his odd dietary habits, his daily wardrobe, etc. But that's why he was able to "think different"...
"A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others. Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)"
Maybe these are also the same qualities required to be a winning investor. Thinking clearly, loving the area that you're working in, and developing domain expertise.
He never had superior intelligence growing up, it's something he trained really hard for. And I actually read his books and audio CDs a few years ago, and competed in one of these memory championships myself. At the peak of my training, I was able to memorize a pack of cards in order in under 2 minutes.
"Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there." - http://paulgraham.com/love.html
Yeah, with his experience I bet he has way more of an edge with private investing.
Good point, several mistakes and failures throughout his tech/investing career path too, like that $100K investment in Luke Nosek's startup that failed. It goes with taking risks and playing the game, only way to learn and level-up.
- Angel investment in Facebook at 37, co-founded Palantir the same year
- Founder's Fund at age 38
Interesting that he's had all of his big wins starting in his 30s, that each success compounded into more successes and enabled him to go up to bat for even bigger wins, and that it's the result of 10+ years of hard work and intense focus.
People never see disruption coming and by its very nature, the best contrarian value investments will always be dismissed, and overlooked, by insiders early on. And probably the same is true of the founders behind them.
WhatsApp and Jan Koum are perfect examples of this.
I like your new default colors and this project in general. So nice job with putting this out there.
But at the same time, I don't use your CSS file. I think the commenter above who's hating on this thinks some of it might be redundant. I guess it depends on your use-case and what kind of styling you do... I am by no means a CSS/web designing expert. For my projects personally, I just your use the HEX code of your new default colors whenever I need it. And I keep it bookmarked it for reference.
What's really instructive about his story is that he started his first retail store when he was in his mid-late 20s, sold that and earned his first stripes in his early 30s. And it wouldn't be a decade later until he started Walmart in his early 40s.
Walmart was a culmination of several decades of Walton's life that he dedicated to mastering, and dominating, retail.