NOAH
JACOBS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
2025.02.09-On-Overengineering
2025.02.02-On-Autocomplete
2025.01.26-On-The-Automated-Turkey-Problem
2025.01.19-On-Success-Metrics
2025.01.12-On-Being-the-Best
2025.01.05-On-2024
2024.12.29-On-Dragons-and-Lizards
2024.12.22-On-Being-a-Contrarian
2024.12.15-On-Sticky-Rules
2024.12.08-On-Scarcity-&-Abundance
2024.12.01-On-BirdDog
2024.11.24-On-Focus
2024.11.17-On-The-Curse-of-Dimensionality
2024.11.10-On-Skill-as-Efficiency
2024.11.03-On-Efficiency
2024.10.27-On-Binary-Goals
2024.10.20-On-Commitment
2024.10.13-On-Rules-Vs-Intuition
2024.10.06-On-Binding-Constraints
2024.09.29-On-Restrictive-Rules
2024.09.22-On-Conflicting-Ideas
2024.09.15-On-Vectors
2024.09.08-On-Perfection
2024.09.01-On-Signal-Density
2024.08.25-On-Yapping
2024.08.18-On-Wax-and-Feather-Assumptions
2024.08.11-On-Going-All-In
2024.08.04-On-Abstraction
2024.07.28-On-Naming-a-Company
2024.07.21-On-Coding-in-Tongues
2024.07.14-On-Sufficient-Precision
2024.07.07-On-Rewriting
2024.06.30-On-Hacker-Houses
2024.06.23-On-Knowledge-Graphs
2024.06.16-On-Authority-and-Responsibility
2024.06.09-On-Personal-Websites
2024.06.02-On-Reducing-Complexity
2024.05.26-On-Design-as-Information
2024.05.19-On-UI-UX
2024.05.12-On-Exponential-Learning
2024.05.05-On-School
2024.04.28-On-Product-Development
2024.04.21-On-Communication
2024.04.14-On-Money-Tree-Farming
2024.04.07-On-Capital-Allocation
2024.03.31-On-Optimization
2024.03.24-On-Habit-Trackers
2024.03.17-On-Push-Notifications
2024.03.10-On-Being-Yourself
2024.03.03-On-Biking
2024.02.25-On-Descoping-Uncertainty
2024.02.18-On-Surfing
2024.02.11-On-Risk-Takers
2024.02.04-On-San-Francisco
2024.01.28-On-Big-Numbers
2024.01.21-On-Envy
2024.01.14-On-Value-vs-Price
2024.01.07-On-Running
2023.12.31-On-Thriving-&-Proactivity
2023.12.24-On-Surviving-&-Reactivity
2023.12.17-On-Sacrifices
2023.12.10-On-Suffering
2023.12.03-On-Constraints
2023.11.26-On-Fear-Hope-&-Patience
2023.11.19-On-Being-Light
2023.11.12-On-Hard-work-vs-Entitlement
2023.11.05-On-Cognitive-Dissonance
2023.10.29-On-Poetry
2023.10.22-On-Gut-Instinct
2023.10.15-On-Optionality
2023.10.08-On-Walking
2023.10.01-On-Exceeding-Expectations
2023.09.24-On-Iterative-Hypothesis-Testing
2023.09.17-On-Knowledge-&-Understanding
2023.09.10-On-Selfishness
2023.09.03-On-Friendship
2023.08.27-On-Craftsmanship
2023.08.20-On-Discipline-&-Deep-Work
2023.08.13-On-Community-Building
2023.08.05-On-Decentralized-Bottom-Up-Leadership
2023.07.29-On-Frame-Breaks
2023.07.22-On-Shared-Struggle
2023.07.16-On-Self-Similarity
2023.07.05-On-Experts
2023.07.02-The-Beginning

WRITING

"if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently."

- Charles Bukowski

Writing is one of my oldest skills; I started when I was very young, and have not stopped since. 

Age 13-16 - My first recorded journal entry was at 13 | Continued journaling, on and off.

Ages 17-18 - Started writing a bit more poetry, influenced heavily by Charles Bukwoski | Shockingly, some of my rather lewd poetry was featured at a county wide youth arts type event | Self published my first poetry book .

Age 19 - Self published another poetry book | Self published a short story collection with a narrative woven through it | Wrote a novel in one month; after considerable edits, it was long listed for the DCI Novel Prize, although that’s not that big of a deal, I think that contest was discontinued.

Age 20 - Published the GameStop book I mention on the investing page | Self published an original poetry collection that was dynamically generated based on reader preferences | Also created a collection of public domain poems with some friend’s and I’s mixed in, was also going to publish it with the dynamic generation, but never did.

Age 21 - Started writing letters to our hedge fund investors, see investing.

Age 22 - Started a weekly personal blog | Letters to company Investors, unpublished. 

Age 23 - Coming up on one year anniversary of consecutive weekly blog publications  | Letters to investors, unpublished.

You can use the table of contents to the left or click here to check out my blog posts.

Last Updated 2024.06.10

Join my weekly blog to learn about learning

On Fear, Hope, & Patience

2023.11.26

Lindy Expectancy: 42 Weeks

Meditations: 7/8

While both hope and fear fuel growth, the ability to have patience with that growth stems from hope, not fear.

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Fear

Fear is a great impetus for change… when that disappointment in continuing to watch yourself make the same mistake over and over mounts into fear that you’ll be damned to live a life filled with the same error over and over again, it’s a good opportunity to kick it into high gear and figure it out. 

When I was a freshman in college, I noticed that I had a bad habit of just agreeing with things and acting like I knew what was going on in some situations in which I actually had no idea what was going on.

I’m not talking about staying calm and controlled in a new environment and figuring it out, I’m talking about the equivalent of someone saying something in a foreign language and me just making noises that sound roughly similar as a response. 

That’s really what it felt like, partly I’m sure, because it was a business school with a cornucopia of jargon. There were some times when I went along with conversations that I had no idea what was being said and I just simply added noise that probably meant nothing. 

Whenever I would catch myself doing it, I would be really bothered by it, until, eventually, I was so afraid of bullshitting for the rest of my life that I slowly but surely forced myself to stop doing it–instead, I would either ask questions at the risk of sounding dumb or try to pick up meaning from context clues and be content not having anything to add to a conversation.

It wasn’t easy, and it was a painful process involving mentally lashing myself whenever I lapsed.

Four Years Later

Four years later, and I rarely, if ever catch myself making things up. If someone talks about sports, which I generally don’t follow other than knowing roughly how Michigan is doing, I’ll usually insert an unassailable statement like “I’m sure we’ll get em!” and move on. If the other person really likes sports, I’ll ask one or two generic questions, but I don’t dwell on it and act like I know a bunch (I really don’t). 

In March, though, I actually had a conversation in which I relapsed to freshman year me: I said some things that simply were not true to sound like I knew what was going on. I was really frustrated and angry with myself—I thought I had moved on from that.

And really, I largely have… after all, the one major time I did it in the last couple of years was significant enough for me to write about it now. Still, the level to which the mistake bothered me was quite maddening. Now, I think it’s because I was originally growing away from that sort of error more out of fear of who I was than out of hope for who I could be. 

Shirtless Pictures of Christian Bale

Imagine you feel unhealthy and low energy and want to grow away from that; you want to feel and look good and live a life full of vigor.

You hear that working out is the solution. However, there’s a catch: you’re not allowed to see or talk to anyone who has worked out for longer than you.

So, on day one, you go to the gym, ready to get away from the body you have. You lift some weights and feel better. But, by the end of the week, you’d probably start getting pretty disillusioned… how long will it take to see real gains? What are you actually trying to work towards?

That’d be hell! You’re uncomfortable where you are, you know that you want to go somewhere different, but you don’t know what it looks or feels like or have any idea of what it takes to get there.

You will lose hope.

I know for my part, I started working out partly because it was very easy to visualize the ideal outcome. In high school, that was other guys on my swim team who were faster, strong, and more energized than me, and then, of course, there was Christian Bale shirtless on the internet... the desired outcome was quite obvious. 



Caption: Good inspiration to get yoked, as we say

Knowing what is possible and what it takes to get somewhere gives you the tools you need to be patient with the process. Otherwise, you’re just in pain with no reprieve. You can get pretty far that way, but I would contend that it is nowhere near as sustainable as if you have your end goal in mind.

Difficulty in Character Growth 

If you are consumed by the fear that the kind of person you are is destroying your life, well, that’s maybe a decent way to get growing, but it’s not a place you want to stay.

Character growth is hard and multi dimensional. Just as lifting is not about just getting bigger arms, but getting bigger legs and chest and shoulders, too, and just like getting more fit is not just about lifting but can also be about running and swimming and calisthenics and yoga which each have their own dimensions, character growth is nuanced.

It can take years to right a ship that’s off course; if you don’t know where you’re going and are afraid of what you’re moving away from, then your ship will be so plagued by fear that even if you’re going in the right direction, you won’t be having a good time.

“You’re not a good guy unless you really made a bloody effort to be a good guy… you’re probably a moderately bad guy and that’s a long ways from being an absolutely horrible guy, but it’s also a long ways from being a good guy.” 

  -Jordan Peterson

It takes years or maybe a lifetime to become the person you want to be.

I’m certainly not the person I want to be yet, and I’d say it’s been roughly 3 years of really concentrated efforts for me, character wise. Too much of that growth has been out of fear, though. I’m making an effort to add in more hope. How could I not, if there’s a whole lifetime of this ahead?

Running Towards or Away from Something?

It’s harder to be patient when you’re only running from something… trust me, I’ve tried. When I wanted to stop saying things that I had no idea of whether or not they were true, I was running from who I was. It was very painful and frustrating when ever I slipped up.

I wanted so desperately to be better than the person that I was that I was not even paying attention to where I was going; I was led by fear instead of hope.

“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”

  -Tony Robbins

The pain of staying the same doesn’t just have to come from what you are if you don’t change. The pain of staying the same can also come from not being who you know you can be.

Now, if I had to make that same anti-bullshitting change again, I might focus more on the positive side of things: I want to be a person who people can trust, a person whose word is worth gold. That’s a noble, motivating goal.

Imagine lifting without any idea what it might look like if you were jacked. Imagine investing in a relationship without any idea of what it could be… the moment it got rocky, you’d leave. Or, even worse: imagine staying in a terrible relationship but never leaving because you didn’t take a moment to ask what a good relationship should be.

Are you running away from something or towards something?

Hope

Fear of staying where you are right now can be a good wake up call, but you’ll go mad on such a long journey if you don’t maintain that unwavering hope of who you can be. 

Here’s something I heard a few weeks ago that really stuck with me:

“My biggest fear was… let’s say you’re god, and we have a big… long line of people. I made it to heaven. 75 years old, I’m 300 pounds, I made it to heaven, I worked for Ecolab my entire life spraying for cockroaches, that’s what I did. David Goggins, I see my name… God goes: ‘Hey, read this man.’ And I’m reading this list and I’m seeing 182 pounds, navy seal, ranger school, motivational speaker, changing lives. I’m like, ‘That’s not me, man.’ And God looks at me and says, ‘That's who you were supposed to be.’”

  -David Goggins

Who do you think you’re supposed to be? How can you run towards that, rather than away from who you are? It’ll be a long journey regardless, you might as well pack a little hope.

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The meditation counter is ticking up as the days grow shorter. I’m not a huge new Years person, I’ve always thought it’s a bit contrived, but I am getting excited for what 2024 may hold.

Live Deeply,