when a point of view becomes mandatory

Moontower #257

Friends,

I was poking around on Matt Zeigler’s website Cultish Creative and this post grabbed my attention:

Process Saves Us From The Poverty Of Our Intentions (1 min read)

A few excerpts:

The quote comes from sculptor Elizabeth King. It’s the idea that process and the act of doing are how progress is made. The poverty of our intentions, or the obsession over only accepting narrowly defined outcomes, is the toughest obstacle we face. Fortunately and unfortunately, it’s self-imposed…When we make the decision to just act, when we do so with vulnerability and take the risk, we embrace process. If we only accept perfection, if we think we need more confidence or we convince ourselves we don’t belong, we‘re stuck in the poverty of our intentions.

The quote inspired Seth Godin’s The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. Godin paraphrasing: “Doing what you love is for amateurs. Loving what you do is for professionals.” Eventually, we have to stop brainstorming, stop negotiating with ourselves, and start working.

I’m sharing it because it echoes a message from Jack White who I’ve found to be inspiring ever since I discovered the White Stripes 20 years ago. Jack pushes back against the cartoon of an artist waiting for inspiration. He treats making music like a job.

The attitude is captured in another quote, this one by writer W. Somerset Maugham:

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

I went looking for that quote because I’ve heard it before but I didn’t know who Maugham is. I went to the heading of his Wikipedia entry called “Reputation”. He died in 1965 at age 91. He was an active writer for about 65 years. Six. Five. And still he gets dealt this:

The critic Philip Holden wrote in 2006 that Maugham occupies a paradoxical position in twentieth-century British literature. Although he was an important influence on many well-known writers, "Maugham's critical stock has remained low". Maugham outsold, and outlived, contemporaries such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, but, in Holden's view, "he could not match them in terms of stylistic innovation or thematic complexity".

And he doesn’t seem inclined to object.

Maugham himself, although he never used the terms "second rate" or "mediocre" about his work, was modest about his status. He said that lacking any great powers of imagination he wrote about what he saw, and that although he could see more than most people could, "the greatest writers can see through a brick wall – my vision is not so penetrating".

I just find all of this comforting. I think the greatest battle we face when it comes to what we do is just doing it. It’s like the timeboxing thing. Don’t judge the day’s effectiveness by the outcome but by whether or not you actually focused on the task you said you were going to focus on for 4 hours or whatever.

It’s possible that someone is just consistently wrong on what they choose to work on but I doubt being Costanza makes up the bulk of disappointing outcomes. I’d bet it’s just not doing what you said you were going to do.

I don’t know. The world feels complicated but I think truth disguises itself as simple and boring.

Maybe it’s a Detroit thing. Here’s 60 seconds of Akon stunned by how Eminem works.

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I guess if you write for 65 years, you’d blind pig yourself into a few banger quotes. 2 more from Maugham that slap:

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

My wife and I never take it for granted that we have grown together. You are naive about those odds when you get married and whether that naivety was useful or not is only known retroactively. Getting older teaches that there is no front in life in which entropy rests.

And one last one from Maugham tells me he was inured to his reputation:

“I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of tribulation. First, he must endure poverty and the world's indifference.”

At least he did not endure the poverty of intention.

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Money Angle

The account @BowTiedFox quote-tweeted the above the post with its own thoughts. This fox account’s bio says “software engineer interested in automating sales and tech jobs with AI agents” so add salt to taste but I’m sharing the fox’s thoughts because my antenna have been vibrating at similar frequency lately.

It’s a long excerpt for a tweet but I’ll share it unedited and meet you on the backside with a couple of my own thoughts.

This is what the fox said:

you know, I've been thinking about how there's a shrinking window of time to jump social classes and why I'm leaving my j*b in a few months

I'm going to explain why by showing you the bullshit I have to deal with at w*rk

corporate software engineering has never been as cucked as it is today. and it's only getting worse

large-scale software is a completely different game than building your own projects

at w*rk, I sit through useless meetings for at least 2 hours a day:

• managers actively waste your time so they can seem productive

• bureaucratic red tape makes it so that small changes take weeks

• everything requires tons of reviews and approvals

• anything done different from the norm is too risky

• anyone you upset is risky so everyone is treated like a child

• any disagreement is risky so always say yes

np I don't have to waste much brain energy right? just smile-nod-agree to everything

plus, every time I have a problem, I can just throw it to a team that deals with that problem:

• pipeline issue? not my problem, gl devops

• database slow? database admins are on it

• auth? we have an internal security team

• incident monitoring? on-call SREs

• customer support? filipino VAs

• testing? let QA deal with it

• network? IT and cloud guys

imo this is fine if you want to do nothing. some people might even call me retarded for giving up easy money. "bro I'd love to coast, send me your lead's @"

but it's soul-sucking to do shit work, and it makes you half-ass everything else in your life. every action creates a habit which affects your identity

I only have one life, and I don't want to waste it when I can create something magnificent and beautiful, while pursuing freedom and excellence

even if you don't buy that, staying at a bullshit j*b is becoming higher risk because AI will just replace you

but there's no way your boss is going to tell you that your position is a ticking time bomb. yeah it's nice for a little while, but it's eventually going to be "move up or move out." evolve or die

and I'm not even factoring in the opportunity cost of not building your own projects:

1. you'll learn nothing if every problem is handed to a different team

2. you can build stuff at lightning speed because no corporate monkey rituals, can use any AI tools, and because you'll know your own codebase way more than one that's handed to you

3. if you're context switching too often, you won't be able to focus. and every extra hour on yourself is worth more than the next because you're continuously improving the product and your knowledge

imo I think these next few years will be the last chance to make an enormous amount of money before social mobility becomes extremely difficult

think about it: wealth comes from being lucky or being early

jeff bezos is a good example of this. left a comfy senior VP position at a hedge fund to yolo all-in on amazon during the beginning of the internet era

you have one last chance now to take the same gamble as him. the future belongs to those who are willing to take a bet on the future

we will probably get to a point where AI starts closing all market inefficiencies and innovates much faster than you can

the only way to make money in the future will probably be with an eccentric invention, something culturally revolutionary, or becoming an entertainment star

we're in a weird period where anyone from anywhere can make money because of the internet. if you look at any other point in history, you can see that most big money was made from:

• industrial monopolies

• stock market manipulation

• resource exploitation

• war profiteering

• political corruption

• land grabs

• media control

and this is why a lot of people hate money and think it's "dirty." only recently has the internet made it so that you can actually make a lot of money legitimately because of network effects and open information

but this won't last long. I can't emphasize enough that competition is increasing across everything everywhere

people are becoming more comfortable using AI to replace humans on a mass scale. plus they're using it to learn any skill with AI tutoring. it's harder to stand out when everyone levels up, AND when there's way more AI-generated slop to sift through

I mean have you seen how much more competitive high-paying careers have become? like med school, law school, investment banking, management consulting

or even university admissions. getting into harvard used to be simpler for boomers. "I like apples, apples fall from trees, gravity makes apples fall, I want to learn more in your physics program" -> congrats accepted under our 36% acceptance rate (now 3.6%)

now you need to go work in a foreign country building houses, "publish" (ghostwrite) an NYT bestseller, author a research paper, have internships, play two instruments, speak three languages, be a multi-sport athlete, have exceptional grades in every subject, perfect exam scores, impeccable interview skills, and partake in whatever other nonsense song-and-dance

I remember even getting a software job in the 2000s was more like "I like computers, can I work here?"

we're reverting back to the income inequality in older civilizations like in europe and asia:

• most wealth concentrated within old elite families

• intense segregation between rich/poor

• one mistake and you're cooked for life. "C students hire A students" meme doesn't exist without the internet

• decreasing standard of living like small bug apartments with multiple people

• regulations are always added, never removed

and if you think the competition isn't that bad, you probably haven't reached the upper tiers. it's easy to become complacent when everyone around you is a monkey

but the margin for error at the top is razor-thin. elite performers do every single thing nearly perfectly

that athlete you're trying to compete against? he's eaten the same hyper-calculated meals for the last two decades, engineered for peak performance, with AI analysis of his genetics and the latest studies

and if you're struggling with the basics? rip in peace!

my point is that elite competition is brutal, so every minute right now is more important than you think it is

minimize the time you waste on stupid bullshit and unhelpful people–the smallest improvements are going to make the biggest difference

think of it this way: you know Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world…

who's number two?

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The last few weeks here I’ve been thinking aloud about the econo-political-cultural environment with a slant of how to focus on what you can control. This groping is deeply connected to a sense that no matter what the VIX says “vol is high”. The tree of forking cultural paths before us culturally is wide.

I’ve been musing aloud because this topic is like the tag in my shirt stabbing my neck. Low-grade bothered. The fox might be closer to correct than not and that feels like a major change in the playbook that has been a reliable path to a better life. A playbook immigrants passed on to their kids who are now having kids but might find themselves fighting the last war. The doctor/lawyer/software/banker prestige path looks increasingly vulnerable.

Saying “this time is different” whenever an all-purpose technology that raises productivity across the board flirts with your sense that it will reshuffle the deck has a poor track record. Conventional intelligence, the kind school grades you on, has been rewarded at every step of innovation since I’ve been alive. The world has belonged to nerd kids who loved their Apple IIc.

I suspect we are in a goldilocks moment right now where if you use all the new tools you feel powerful. LLMs have raised the put strike on your weakest link. But in the coming years, the red queen treadmill will be at max speed — being massively productive will be the standard. You will be expected to be able to do all the things.

When I read between the lines of Satya’s words I hear a “you will learn or else” even though the formal message sounds more empowering. The hustlers will accelerate, the disengaged employee or person with an email job that knowingly nods to the term “bullshit” job is toast.

[From an economic POV, if these visions turn out to be directionally right then I wonder what happens to all these $2mm 3-bedroom houses from the 1950s in CA underwritten by mid-6-figure W2 jobs. The same ethos that uses “productivity”, “GDP per capita” and “efficiency” arguments to bludgeon more generous PTO and leave policies also thinks you are the biggest cost to its goals. Losing sight of why we choose capitalism to serve the abstract “story” of capitalism is a dystopian maneuver that we seem uniquely prone to.

In a real economic sense, we are both costs and clients but the rules we write are a choice about which role we emphasize.]

I used the word “hustlers” for a lack of better word. It’s a bit low-res but I want to clarify what it’s not: it’s not kids who are just smart and good at following instructions.

When I asked followers to push back on the Fox’s tweet, this one did a great job of explaining why I think the value of smart is reaching a secular peak:

https://x.com/optionsly/status/1885473842644344878

The red queen means they will still need to be able to do that but also have a point of view. Conviction and relentless wrapped around something more than “keeping your options open”. I want to say creativity but the word is a bit too artist-loaded. I think it’s really about risk. They will need a real relationship with risk. The ability to take it (that’s what commitment is…making yourself vulnerable) and the capacity to reason about it. And this only comes from practice.

If that sounds obvious, then how do we reconcile it with the obsession to reduce [perceived risk] via grade-maxxing and college admissions? The reconciliation is we ourselves are fearful. Nobody wants to experiment on their kid even if they see the tides turning.

And it doesn’t go away. When I left my job, my mother turned into the same person who stood over me when I did my math homework. She wants the best for me, of course, but she also doesn’t want to worry about me. If I am financially secure, the impact on both her own material and emotional left tails are shortened. Understandable but I can’t accept her context as my own. It’s a consideration I must discount appropriately.

Look, I expect my kids to get good grades. I want them to have choices. But the number one thing I want is for them to be well-matched to what they do. I’m not sure how much influence I have on that but I do believe you can’t underestimate someone who loves, cares, is good at, and tireless at what they set their sights on.

It’s a cliche, but a good one — you want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. Chris Cole has this idea that you can’t suppress volatility. It just changes form. You can try to backstop the price of assets but if it creates moral hazard you create inequalities. The volatility comes in the shape of guillotines not sigma. If risk-aversion creates dull boys and girls are we just trading an anti-fragile sense of self for an Audi and private school.

In closing, if you scroll down that first Twitter thread you’ll see a recent clip of Bezos urging us to compensate against our default impulse to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. He adds, “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy”. Many will say “survivorship bias” but they are overly focused on the obvious fact that he way outperformed his own advice. But it doesn’t make him wrong. Instead, I focus on what he repeatedly said and written over many years. To me he is not defined by his billions but by the fact that he had a point of view, bet on it, hammered it, and would have lived with the consequences.*

Is a point of view and the spirit to follow it going to guarantee anything? Of course, not. But I’m starting to think that the absence of a point of view will leave you stranded.

*And what of the consequences? If he was wrong, he wouldn’t be Jeff Bezos. But he still could have gotten that Audi by cashing checks from David Shaw. Maybe what I’m feeling right now is that the vol is so high that the paths that weren’t risky are now risky and it’s not yet common knowledge. If the spread between risky and not risky is narrower, then on the margin you are a better buyer of the risky path. The historically sure path is overbid if the gap between the tallest and shortest serf narrows.

Money Angle For Masochists

I wrote this tweet a while back that bears repeating because I’m not sure if there’s any topic that seems to come up more when I’m asked about risk management.

Risk management continuum very bluntly stated:

1. Rules for cutting risk when you lose (P/L memory)

2. Rules for how big you can be constrained by aggressive portfolio shock assumptions (ie no P/L memory but positions that can lose X% AUM not allowed)

I'll just say from option trading context #2 is preferable because the best opportunities likely occur when everyone else is constrained by #1

But that framework is not typical, harder to implement and will often make you feel like you are leaving $ on the table

But you don't lose your business on an idio risk. There's an irreducible amount of systematic risk already. Don't make idio something that can take you out.

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From My Actual Life

I played CYO basketball growing up. It’s organized through Catholic dioceses across the country but you don’t need to belong to a parish. Everyone’s welcome. My boys have been doing it since they were eligible in 2nd grade.

[I started (assisted) coaching this year for my 6th grader Zak. Our first playoff game is later today. Obviously we’d like to win. His soccer team lost in the first round of the playoff after an undefeated season and this basketball team went 10-0 but we’re playing a tough squad we haven’t played before. Zak might feel cursed if he gets bumped in the first round again.

In any case I haven’t coached the kids in a few years and it was nice to be getting that time with them so promised I'd coach both of them during their middle school years of CYO.]

Since the league is through a diocese we say a prayer at midcourt before the game. We had a game yesterday so I picked the one my favorite HS teacher said before every class. (He passed away last year).

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

It’s a famous prayer but the only one that resonated with me growing up. My history teacher used that one which always made me think of him different. Like he didn't just pick an Our Father or Hail Mary like the others on autopilot.

He was a quirky guy. Wry sense of humor. He had certain catchphrases…like in understanding motivation he always liked to follow the money. “Greedy nasty little oafs”.

He was a bit of a conspiracy theorist which felt less common in the early 90s. Even the term getting pilled Matrix-style hadn't originated yet. He was pilled. And that's gonna work on HS students whose only source of knowledge was textbooks and 24 volume Encyclopedia hawked door-to-door (ours was Colliers not Britannica. Like McDowells is to McDonalds). He claimed Paul Revere was in jail the night of the midnight ride so couldn’t have made it. He believed the US knew the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor. He was pretty ruthless as an instructor. But it was my favorite HS class and I was saddened to learn of his passing. I haven’t been required to say a prayer since HS. So I picked the Serenity one and said it was in an honor of a teacher that I'll always remember.

[Random personal bit: Tony Reali is a good friend. We were super tight in HS although only get to see each once a year or so now. He and I did a school project in that class where we roleplayed Sportscenter but with history topics instead of sports. Tony always wanted to be a sportscaster if he wasn't gonna be a Yankee. Well, if you know who he is you know dreams come true.

Tony’s the same mench he was when we met over 30 years ago when we'd jam out to Aerosmith’s greatest hits on the way to our own CYO games for St. Leo's.

My mom still gets a charge from seeing him on TV. “He loved my cooking”.

Mr. Matson was both our favorite teacher. RIP.]

Stay Groovy

☮️

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