DEV Community: Lucas Schiavini

🎱 🧠 Building a Second Brain - How Online Creators Never Run Out of Things to Say

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 10:00:28 +0000

There's this misconception that great writers sit down to write and words just fall into the page. They finish their writing session, hit Publish and a perfect blog post/book/copy goes into the world.

They receive praise and acclaim from others and life is perfect like that.

That couldn't be further away from the truth. For sake of brevity, I'm going to specifically target content creation on the internet in the form of blog posts and articles. I'm going to show you how the sausage get's made. Buckle up!

How Content Creators have an Endless Stream of Good Ideas

One thing great online creators have in common is their note-taking skills.

Most tend to be very religious in their note-taking style, and know they can't create stuff if they don't have a bank of ideas to pull from.

This bank of ideas should also help them think through, filter, and edit ideas. This is what is called a Second Brain.

Graph with all my notes on my personal vault in obsidian.md

This second brain shouldn't just be a collection of notes, but a living beast, that constantly challenges how you think, and improves your ideas. One way it's been done is by using the Zettelkasten method.

In summary, it's treating each note as a separate Thought. It must be in your own words and be addressable. That way you can find your notes by their addresses and know they have a single Unit of Thought.

Then all your notes become Units of Thoughts relations between them (using their addresses) become arguments.

The genius of this idea is that you can connect one note to infinitely many more.

Another brilliant part of this whole schema is the addresses in the notes.

That means you can capture thoughts on the fly and know you'll find them when you need them.

All Written Work is a collection of Byproducts

What are byproducts?

Source

Every time you're working on a project, other ideas that do not fit the current project will arise. Those are byproducts , and having a way to store them quickly with a way to find them later is what Second Brains are good at doing.

The Zettelkasten uses special addresses, but if you are using a writing software that allows for searching notes, that will do as well.

I've written about my personal Second Brain using Obsidian here.

Repurposing Work

After you gather enough thoughts into a longer form article, then you can jump to the next level of content creation: Repurposing.

A long article can become a Twitter thread, which can become a script for a long video, which can in turn become short clips.

Repurposing work means you can reutilize the same information in multiple ways to engage different kinds of audiences. Some people might like consuming content as video, others as podcasts, and others as long articles.

What have you learned from this Article?

Let me know in the comments 😉.

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I'm in love with this Keyboard ⌨️

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 10:00:28 +0000

Yeah yeah I know you'll judge me for it, but damn I'm not even being paid to write this.

I just genuinely like this effin keyboard.

The keyboard's name is Keychron K3 V2 with RGB lights and Hot Swappable keys + Brown switches (It's a long name I know).

Let's take a closer look at it.

Short Version

I like how the click sounds and how it feels to type. And there is really all it is to it.

Plus I get to switch from windows to a mac computer hassle-free.

Longer Version

Well, the longer version will take a little bit more to take into account.

I type for about 6 hours a day(if you discount times between meetings and reading code documentation), about 10k words (if you count code as writing, which I do). So having a keyboard that doesn't make my hands hurt, and even better makes me look forward to typing is a huge plus.

Multiple Computers

Other than that I want to be able to use a single keyboard between two different computers (my employer gave me a MacBook pro to work, and I have a personal computer that runs windows). With a keyboard that allows me to do something like "fn + 1/2/3" for separate computers, changing between them is a BREEZE.

Also on the subject of having two operating systems, I kinda have to adapt my thinking from Ctrl + Key to Cmd + Key which is already a pain, but having to also adapt to different language keyboards just adds more stress to the matter.

So having a single keyboard that changes between computers fast and painlessly + not having to constantly adapt between languages and letter spacing makes the experience much more flow-like.

65% Keyboard

I realized that I loved the 2022 MacBook pro keyboard and I wanted one that would be as compact, but still kept the feeling of it while being mechanical. I chose the K3 model because it is a 65% keyboard (meaning no Numpad, which always annoyed me).

Plus it brings the arrow keys closer to the rest of the keyboard, making it easier to type and use the arrow keys, which was the thing that finally sold me the 65% version.

Brown Switches

From Switch and Click's Ultimate Guide to Brown Switches:

Brown switches are tactile. They have a slight bump on each keystroke which makes them excellent for typing and programming but they are not the best for gaming. Brown switches produce a moderate amount of noise. Brown switches are named that way because the color of the stem is brown.

Or as I already put it "I like how it clicks and how it feels to type".

Enough said.

Closing thoughts

Could I achieve all of this with other keyboards? I'm sure I can, but for sizing/price/quality + long-term durability, I think I didn't go wrong with this one.

It's pretty good, and the hot-swappable feature allows me to switch any switch if it stops working, without having to replace the whole keyboard.

Yeah, I'm finally back, you can expect me to publish a new article every Wednesday. Stay put y'all!

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⛺️ Third Culture Kid

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 10:00:34 +0000

I just read about it and although I don't enjoy making self-congratulatory posts, I think this can help many other TCKs out there by sharing a bit of my story and what being a TCK actually is like.

So feel free to share to help your friends if they also apply to this definition.

And more importantly, how can we start talking about things that matter to us, and how different we might be from our peer groups?

Early morning, all packed, my parents wake me up to get in the car because the trip is going to be a long one.

I muster enough strength to get up just enough to collapse back again in the car.

I wake up at 9 AM, we are on the road. Everywhere I look filled with trees and pasture.

It's just us and the road for most of it. So I get to have some time to think about what it all means to me now.

Does this mean I'll have to start all over again? Chit-chat, and then make new friends in a different town?

What about my old friends? Will they keep in touch? Will I keep in touch?

A billion thoughts rush into my head and I keep reassuring myself "I've been through this before, it's going to be alright".

School year arrives shortly after. I start class and everyone seems to know each other already. I am introduced as the new kid, for the 5th time or so.

"Hi everyone". I sit at my desk and try to get some sense of peace by getting all my stuff out of my bag, the books, the pencils, everything for that particular class.

Teachers seem nice in this new town, I've talked with some boys over the intervals. But I'm still distant, this time isn't like the other ones, I've lost so many friends I can't muster any motivation to make new ones. Why bother? It's all so impermanent anyway.

I sit alone on the bench to eat my morning snack, an apple, and some chocolate milk.

I look at all the kids playing soccer, or basketball. Some girls are dancing, and others just talking to each other.

This is going to be a long year. I'm not very comfortable here at this school. I just stay away from everyone at intervals until I can come back to the classroom. At least there I have an excuse to not talk to anybody.

The final bell rings. I leave for home. My dad picks me up and leaves me at my auntie's house. That's where we are staying for the time being.

Neither my auntie nor my folks stay at home for too long, so I get to have the afternoon all by myself.

I play video games and sometimes watch the History Channel. Play with the dogs, Nero, Madonna, and Princess.

Princess is the older one, and very fragile.

Nero is a strong young pup.

And Madonna is a rescue dog that looks almost like a fox (but all yellow), she was my favorite, but she used to get angry when she heard loud noises. Who knows what she's been through?

Anyway, when I'm not playing with my dogs I'm on my bike up and around the neighborhood.

I'm lonely but at least I've got stuff to do.

It was about then that I started feeling very self-conscious about not being "good at anything". Even though I got the highest grades in the class. That to me meant nothing, I wanted a real skill, painting, making games, programming. I had none. Or so I thought.

If I had made the mistake of succeding my self-harm attempts back then, I might have never found out about my other talents. Never mind meeting amazing people since then.

About 6 months in, a new kid arrives, he is very smart, and charismatic and was the one that finally got me out of my shell. I started talking and engaging with the rest of the class because of him.

It's very much like that meme, where an extrovert adopts an introvert, I felt very introverted back then (although my friends would disagree nowadays on that).

Good things aren't forever though, by the end of that year I would move out again. Change schools, all that again. That would be my 6th move or so.

New school, same issues, I see the jocks, the popular girls, the nerdy ones. This time I at least get to study with my cousin (that is just like a sister to me). So I eventually eased into her friends' group that I still keep in touch with to this very day(big win, such awesome people).

I moved out about 2 times since the previous school (number 5). One in the middle of high school and one to go to college.

Now, what is a Third Culture Kid you might ask? I'm going to get into some technicalities so that you can fully comprehend this unique situation some people face.

In a simple sentence:

Someone that grows up without a particular culture or place to call home.

Now the long version:

Kids growing up in a culture other than their parents', or country of nationality.
Kids living in a different environment during a significant part of their development years.
TCKs move between cultures before they have the opportunity to develop personal and cultural identities.

Who Coined the term?

John and Ruth Useem in the 1950s used Third Culture Kid to describe children from American citizens living abroad.

They studied these kids' behaviors and then showed their different standards for interpersonal behavior, work-related norms, lifestyle, and communication.

Benefits for these kids growing up in this type of environment

Expanded worldview(especially when they moved between different countries and had the experience of learning other languages). That leads to them being more aware of having more than one way of looking at something. But this can pose a challenge later on.
Third-dimensional view of the world. With more experiences, TCK eventually grow up to have a multicultural view of the world(source).
Interpersonal Sensitivity. TCKs are more keenly aware of their own emotions and register societal norms to produce higher sensitivity to other cultures and ways of life(source).
Cultural Intelligence - capacity to function well in many different environments and cultures (national, ethnic, organizational).
The major benefit tends to be on the side of language exposure, with opportunities to practice a second, third, or even fourth language(source).

Challenges

Confusion about loyalties. With no place to call "home", many TCKs experience confusion on politics and inner values. Tend to change views often and find a hard time creating an identity(source).
Painful awareness of reality. Seeing other cultures might influence the way you interact in a mono-cultural environment, especially if people in that environment aren't aware of "other ways" people might look at the same issue(source).
Difficulty adjusting to adult life. Sense of belonging and identity tend to be lacking for individuals growing up with very different cultural experiences. Feelings of rootlessness and restlessness are common challenges TCKs suffer and can make it harder to transition to adulthood(source).
Special attention is needed for TCKs in educational settings to make sure they are supported when entering new schools(source).
Female TCKs tend to hesitate when starting new relationships and have shifted focus from getting a sense of belonging to merely adjusting socially.
There have been studies showing how TCKs tend to have less emotional stability than those that grew up in more socially and culturally stable environments(source).

Some Statistics if you are not yawning already

TCKs are 4 times as likely as non-TCKs to earn bachelor's degrees(source).
Teenage TCKs tend to be more mature than teenage non-TCKs, but in their twenties, they take longer than their peers to discover and set their aims(source). This is also called Prolonged Adolescence.
Highly skilled positions are most common for TCKs(source).
Depression is comparatively very prevalent among TCKs(source).
TCKs may also experience stress and grief from relocation experience(source, source2).

So all this brings us back to the thing I wanted to talk about at the beginning of the post.

You should just think just like I do, so that you won't be wrong...

Life can be so ironic

How married to your thoughts are you?

I always ask "Is there ANYTHING I could say to you that would make you flip your position on this?".

This is how I measure how open-minded someone is.

It is my default mode to look at the pros and cons of everything. Dark and White thinking just doesn't fit me at all.

I do realize relativizing everything comes with a cost too, not being certain about things that could give one a sense of security and peace.

In any case, I've learned just as much from gray thinking and black-and-white thinking to realize discussions will always be needed for a civil life among peers.

Taking common understanding for granted doesn't work for people who have vastly different life experiences than you do. That happened to me many times, where my common sense didn't match some people's common sense from their city.

Now with far more globalized work and remote-first cultures, talking about personal differences is even more important.

We need to talk it out, we need to communicate with others so that we can go forward on the same grounds.

If you think you have irredeemable differences, just remember that the study of philosophy started when cultures with far different religions started coming in contact with one another.

Let something positive grow out of disagreements.

Be different.

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Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe (hint: it’s here).

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How To: Learning Anything - A Harmonious Clear-Cut Way

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 10:00:32 +0000

Here’s my learning process and how it can help you.

Learning can be subdivided into 3 different skills, and there are then people who are good at one, two, or three of them.

First Skill: Perception

This skill means “perceiving things, and identifying what you don’t know with exactness and precision”.

That means you look at a confusing problem and are able to point out where in that problem lies your lack of understanding and knowledge.

Second Skill: Searching for The Right Information

Your search for the right information to fill in your knowledge gap to solve your problem.

That encompasses both “knowing where to look”, and “knowing where NOT to look”. There is a distinction.

Third Skill: Understanding – known as – Execution, Trial, and Error

Some people are able to translate information into understanding very easily, those are the “quick” learners. They talk with someone before a test and understand what the person says, what she/he doesn’t understand, and they can easily deduce from what they mapped from the problem.

Some people though need more trial and error in order to transform information into an understanding of the subject. So it’s a balance, some people learn faster and need less trial and error, while others learn more slowly and need more of it.

How Fast do You Learn?

The “how fast” you learn then becomes a matter of maximizing those 3 skills.

No matter who you are, you can still maximize your learning skills by focusing on the right Mind Habits.

And the best way to do it is by picking a hard thing to do, that you must learn how to do it well, and you’ll get feedback quickly.

Model for Learning

Here’s my model:

Basically, you need to get constant and preferably quick and personalized feedback on your actions towards your result.

Strategies for each Skill

Perception

For perception , my recommendation is to practice with a simple activity that has very quick feedback. And here's the important part, find someone you know is good at perceiving and dissecting problems into fundamental units.

Ask them to share their feedback on your problems, pick their brains whenever you can, and find out how they approach a novel problem.

One book that I highly recommend at this stage is How To Solve It by G. Polya. He goes in-depth on how to solve mathematical problems you have no idea how to even begin solving. He is very thorough and very didactic, even if you never were a fan of mathematics at school, this is a fundamental book on my general problem-solving strategies that I find myself constantly looking back to.

Searching, aka "Googling it"

Searching for the right information is the second skill. I would recommend picking something to learn where there's plenty of online information on it. Like coding, marketing, or anything you can easily do with a computer. If you are going to train to search, you might as well learn to google things.

Again, depending on the area you are looking at, join a few online communities around your desired activity you want to learn, talk to them and be shameless into sharing your problems.

You'll find that a lot of people are more than willing to help someone out if the person is willing to look like a fool for a while.

As you stumble and fall and get up again, you'll start learning where your efforts to search for things don't pan out and where they do.

You'll then start building the muscle (or heuristic) to better search for useful information around it.

Understanding

This is the deeper level of knowledge, here is where all those muscles we've trained in the previous stages start working like magic.

This is where you get the problems behind your problems. Where you learned to map out what exactly it is you don't know about something, you know how to search for the missing pieces of the puzzle, and practice it until it becomes closer to your goal.

There isn't a straightforward way of building understanding, but I can tell you that it requires careful thought towards a topic of interest.

Think "reading 1 book very slowly to digest it over a whole year " instead of "plowing through 52 books a year very quickly".

This is where you take notes from things using your own way of writing. Maybe using a method like The Zettelkasten Method, maybe a different method.

Understanding happens when you've practiced and thought about something deeply enough, reached roadblocks, and still kept at it.

It is almost a byproduct of trying to solve a problem using those two other skills before:

Identifying what you don't know;
Searching for the missing pieces.

So how is this whole method different than your own? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section!

That's all I got for today, I am very excited about the next post of myIntelligent Investments series, but it's going to take longer than I initially assumed it would. I probably will only be able to publish it by the end of November.

In the meanwhile, do check out the previous posts if you haven't already:

That is it and I will see you at the next one 😜☕

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🏅Extremistan - The Place Where Winners Take it All

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 10:00:08 +0000

The top 1% of Chess Players have 90% of medals, the top 1% of books get 99% of sales, the top 1% of researchers get all the credit, the rich seem to get richer and the poor seem to get poorer.

Let's talk about some inequalities.

I wanted to get more in-depth on this concept, Extremistan, that I mentioned in a previous post (Intelligent Investments with Nassim Taleb).

But I'll keep introductions short so everyone can grasp the concepts.

Behind the Extremistan is a very curious 2000 years old effect.

Cumulative Advantage

Here'sMatthew 13:12:

For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

It's amazing to see that this was understood back in a time when people didn't know anything about exponential functions or cumulative returns.

This is the consequence of cumulative advantage , and it can be applicable to fame/status/money/etc. This effect can also be applied to the popularity of ideas(More on this at a later post when we discuss Karl Popper and his ideas regarding scientific research).

Matthew Effect - Preferential Attachment

The term Matthew Effect was coined by two sociologists: Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman. At first, it was used by social scientists when describing the inequality among themselves in how their research papers were ranked.

This sociological term was then used to describe the fact that renowned scientists would often get more credit than lesser-known ones, even if their themes or objects of study are similar.

It follows then that those who are already famous will get more credit. And that even applies to a singular project, the senior researcher will get more credit for a paper even if most of the work was done by a graduate student.

But the key thing is that Merton argued that not only did the most famous get more credit for equal valid work, but even high-quality articles by lesser known scientists would get inferior citations and credit than worse ones by famous scientists.

The result of this would lead famous scientists to feel more self-confident and end up exploring more risky areas of research.

But then scientists and economists realized that this comes up in many other contexts. The systems that follow the Matthew Effect are said to show preferential attachment (That's the catch name common to all the different articles and publications out there if you are wondering).

Examples

Network Science

Nodes with more links attract newer links more often than nodes with fewer links, even if the links were randomly generated at the starting point(Source).

That can show how a social network is preferred over another that has fewer peers.

Notice how we didn't even mention WHY one node would have more links than another? It could be due to random chance and the effect still applies.

Metabolic Networks

There have been research papers demonstrating the same pattern of connectivity amongst enzymes inside Escherichia Coli (Source).

Sexual Networks and Actors in Hollywood

Preferential attachment (Matthew Effect) has been demonstrated with a ceiling limit(likely due to physical limits) in sexual contact networks and the number of co-actors in a movie.

Interestingly it seems as if the number of collaborators or co-actors in a movie might have a lower limit than the number of maximal feasible sexual partners (Source).

In simple terms and grossly oversimplified: "It's easier to have more sex with a large number of people than it is to have a large number of collaborators/co-actors in a movie".

Extremistan

Now we get to the end result of an environment based on the Matthew Effect. This is a place where very little data can have a huge impact on the overall statistical properties of a system.

This is where we rank all people with Chess Medals and 1% of players have 99% of medals, and also pick everyone that lives in the isle of Manhattan and compute their net worth.

If there is one billionaire in this group, their money will dominate over the sum of all the other folks there combined.

So when you see Extremistan, remember this: one small observation can significantly change the overall amount observed.

We have then one piece of what characterizes the Extremistan , which is how one observation can dominate over the observed data measurement results.

But there's still one piece missing about what Extremistan actually is.

Merton Missed a Spot

In Merton's idea, the Matthew Effect would mean that the winners would keep on winning, and the losers keep on losing forever. But that's not quite what happens...

Sometimes a winner comes out of nowhere to replace the current #1. In fact, we have lots of data points to show this as it happened in the past.

Netflix replaced Blockbuster.

BlackRock became the world's biggest investment firm in the last 10 years(their story is indeed impressive, look it up)

Homo Sapiens came out and wiped 99% of fauna before we even invented agriculture.

Google Replaced Alta Vista. And there have been reports of how the new generation(Gen Z) are using TikTok as their main search engine(Source). As Nassim pointed out, he is ready to replace Google with some newcomer in the next editions of his books.

No one is safe.

Theories involving preferential attachment don't explain newcomers taking all the wins from previous winners. They only explain a part of the picture, not all of it.

How did Rome, with over 1.2 million habitants in the first century AD end up with a population of 12000 in the third century AD? How did Philadelphia's economy get obfuscated by New York's? How did the US come to replace England as a World power?

Just because you are winning today, it does not mean you are protected from Black Swans (highly unlikely events that completely change the properties observed in a system) taking over your spot.

We can have lots of fun looking at authors that were renowned in a specific century and completely forgotten in the next one.

Luck is the Great Equalizer

Just like luck might have gotten you a headstart on the preferential attachment game, it might eventually lower you down and lift up someone else. And that is especially true in the Extremistan, where the unseen changes the game.

Just like no one is safe, no one is completely doomed to extinction either. Where there is life, there is hope.

It's true that the internet creates a small concentration of the most accessed websites (Google is one of them). But it also allows proto-Googles to quietly emerge, and also the inverse-Google: People with a specific product or service to have a small, stable monetizable audience.

Let's see an example for book writers. A small bookshop down the street that can store about 5 thousand books can't afford to offer books the owner knows aren’t best-sellers. They can't afford the risk.

Even a big Barnes&Noble can't afford it with its 130k book storage.

But an online bookshop? Because Amazon or other websites that sell books have the option of listing a book without having it in storage, they allow newcomers to publish without the risk that physical bookstores face. Newcomers might get enough traction on their books and eventually get to a point where _ preferential attachment _ runs its course.

There's even more exciting news. Now Printing on Demand is becoming a real thing for online creators, people are able to design t-shirts, books, hats, and all sorts of things, and companies like Printful will handle the manufacturing only when an item gets sold.

Fat Tails

Here they come again

Remember Fat Tails? here's a refresher:

Source

Fat tails host rare, never seen before events that completely change the observed environment.

Those events give the small fish in the sea a collective power to dominate a considerable market share for culture and commerce (more on successful businesses with small client bases in a later post).

Thanks to the internet all the niches and specialties can survive in an environment whereas before it they would never have the chance (think of all the content creators with themes such as how to train a dog to do X and Y trick, how to create houses made of pure mud and clay, yes they exist, look it up on youtube).

The Extremistan becomes a little bit less unfair than we’d initially assumed, sure we'll live in an ocean with a few enormous fish and a lot of small ones which focus on specific niches. But every once in a while a newcomer will knock out a big fish and take its place. This is the environment we are living in, both economically, culturally, and even in the realm of ideas.

This is the Extremistan. It is ever-changing, no one is safe forever, and no one is doomed to extinction either.

Fat tails are the foundation of the Extremistan. The world isn't fair to small fish but it's at least a bit better for them than a world of pure Matthew Effect. And the world then becomes much more unfair to big fish when compared to the pure Matthew Effect, they don't have their spot forever, and need to constantly watch out for newcomers.

Now that we know what Extremistan is, we can learn to recognize our advantages in it and how to gain from all this luck and chance.

Next, we'll talk about how to position ourselves, and our portfolio, in a way to not only protect ourselves but also benefit from Chaos.

👏 Special Thanks

Thanks to my mate André Mariano for helping me review the text and giving me some tips on which parts I could make clearer.

😗 Enjoy my writing?

Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe (hint: it’s here).

Anything else? Just say hello in the comments :).

Join an Exclusive Tech Friendly Community! Connect with like-minded people who are interested in tech, design, startups, and growing online — apply here.

Resources

The original paper by Robert K. Merton: The Matthew Effect in Science (link to article)

Emergence of scaling in random networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Reka Albert: (link to article)

An assessment of preferential attachment as a mechanism for human sexual network formation: (link to article)

Ghost Creator Community - Week 1

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 10:04:00 +0000

So this is the current state of things as of now of this blog:

I've just recently got my latest follower (counting 8 as of today). And I'm in the middle of Week 1 of Ghost's Creator Program.

It's a pretty cool program and it's divided into a 4-week course.

🏗️

Week 1 - Building a Platform

✍️

Week 2 - Meeting new People and Publishing Great Content

💗

Week 3 - Growing an Audience

💸

Week 4 - Building a Business

Since we are in week 1, we are focusing on our tech stacks and sharing with other cool creators.

So I'm also gonna share my tech stack here.

Tech Stack

I'm sharing verbatim my answer to other's questions

Research

Zero clue, I'm mostly being guided by curiosity.

Idea Tracking + Content Planning

I take lots of notes on Obsidian.md and try to follow the Zettelkasten Method to facilitate grabbing notes around and merging them in a post.
I use the Backlinks from one of my notes "Blog Post ideas", I always have new ideas every week, on a Sunday I revisit them, and almost always a post comes out of it.

Analytics

I use Google Analytics + Pinterest analytics (I've linked my blog to my Pinterest via RSS feed so it uploads automatically).

Images

I'm using Unsplash from ghost's GUI, but I'm open to the idea of generating images using AI.

Marketing

Right now I've set up 2 Applets on IFTTT(If This Then That -> https://ifttt.com/explore) so that any new post with the tag "linkedin-post" or "tweet-post" gets updated to each social media automatically.

Writing

Grammarly (free version)
Ghost
Docs -> for some friends to give feedback on some special posts before they are published

Gaps

I'd want to understand how it is the process for those of you that publish more frequently. I'm in the middle of working through a few hard topics and it just takes me 2 weeks to get a really good post out.
I blog mostly in my free time out of the job, so either mornings or evenings.

Other Cool Creators

The cool part of this program is meeting and talking with other people. Here are some of them and what I found amazing about what they do.

[

alexbowe.com

Data structures and algorithms, cryptocurrency, interviewing, and free-writing.

alexbowe.comAlex Bowe

](https://www.alexbowe.com/)

This dude is cool as f%%%ck, talks about what he's learning in the field of AI, compressed data structures, bioinformatics, python, programming interviews, and more.

Did I mention he also has a cool photography website?

[

Vashinator

Focused on Linux and Open Source

Vashinator

](https://vashinator.com/)

The Vashinator, also known as Michael, dude has a youtube channel alongside his blog. He talks about tech, Linux, and Open Source.

[

Machine learning nuggets

Thoughts, stories and ideas on data science and machine learning.

Machine learning nuggetsDerrick Mwiti Google Developer Expert - Machine Learning

](https://machinelearningnuggets.com/)

Derrick coming directly from Nairobi has a blog about data science and machine learning.

[

Ebony Ascent

The spectrum of what’s possible

Ebony Ascent

](https://ebonyascent.com/)

David from Atlanta writes about mental health, finances, and other topics involving the black community. Do check it out!

[

Rachid Guejdad

Idées et travaux d’un professeur de mathématiques qui cherche constamment à améliorer sa pratique.

Rachid GuejdadRachid Guejdad

](https://www.rguejdad.com/)

We have someone from France, and although his blog is in french I managed to read a couple of articles by using google translate, so don't be a stranger.

He writes about mathematics and also shares things with his students using the blog.

[

The Second Button

The Second Button a men’s style blog here to help you see what menswear enthusiasts love about clothing. Guides, inspiration, deeper articles, and reviews.

The Second ButtonDaniel Hakimi

](https://thesecondbutton.com/)

Daniel writes about men's styles and has recently started using Medium as a way to share more of his content. Give the brotha a hand and check it out 😜 .

[

Towven

Towven provides Insight, Guides, and Steps to Become a Successful Real Estate Agent in 14 Months, or less. Become the best real estate...

Towven

](https://www.towven.com/)

Here's someone I would call Highly Adaptable. Joe started with a startup trying to replace real estate agents, and in the middle of testing his MVP started actually giving content to real estate agents to help them be better at their jobs.

PS: He also runs ultramarathons "for fun".

[

Innovation Copilots

Consultancy agency focused on leapfrog innovation, at the crossroad of emerging consumer behaviours & the rapid introduction of game-changing technologies.

Innovation Copilots👩🏻‍💻 Stéphanie’s articles

](https://www.icopilots.com/)

Philipe and his wife run a boutique consultancy business, they started using Ghost recently and with it started a paid newsletter for their top customers (B2B). Pretty cool!

[

Josh O’Neill

The official website for Josh O’Neill. Content creator and fitness enthusiast.

Josh O'Neill

](https://www.joshoneill.co.uk/)

Josh writes about personal development, health, and fitness.

Here's one of my favorite posts: 3 Tips to Best Utilize Caffeine for Productivity

[

Black Expat Stories

We showcase the beauty in the Blaxit by documenting the journeys of Black Expats living all over the world - one unique story at a time.

Black Expat StoriesCourtney Bowden

](https://www.blackexpatstories.com/)

Here we have Courtney, she's doing a multimedia publication to document the journey of Black expats living in the world.

If you consider yourself an empathetic person with good taste in writing, I'd definitely check it out. Each post is a very touching experience.

[

erin mikail staples

Very online human working to build better connections with other humans, on and offline. Currently thinking about the way that we communicate, educate, and elevate others.

erin mikail staples

](https://erin.cool/)

Erin Mapes, a hobby stand-up comic with a LOT of energy. She writes about the technical community and developer advocacy.

[

Flavien Bonvin

Tech, productivity and personal development

Flavien BonvinFlavien Bonvin

](https://www.flavienbonvin.com/)

Enter Flavien, a talented developer writing on tech, productivity, and management. Feel free to check out his latest posts on NestJS and Web Development!

And that is it so far everyone, as soon as I have more news I'll share it.

Lots of kisses and buhbye. 😉

Bricolage - Doing the Best with What you Have

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 10:00:20 +0000

The world has been inundated with DIY things, Ikea, and all that, but ancient humans have created a word that better encapsulates the idea of "Doing the best with what you have".

Bricolage

This is one of the few French word exceptions that I like (alongside Flaneur).

Bricolage is "Trial and error with adjustments with whatever pieces are available".

Turkle writes: "The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next."(Source).

It is human endeavor improvisation in its best light possible.

Daily Dispatch 37 - On Politics and Decentralized Apps

Lucas Schiavini — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 19:42:14 +0000

I can't help but think that left-wing ideology is born out of naivete. Because it takes a certain degree of naive optimism to think "oh, maybe we can organize ourselves better, maybe the unknown is positive".

Meanwhile, right-wing ideology is born out of fear of the unknown. It takes fear to think "life is complex enough, I want to have more certainty about things, about my neighbors, and how to conduct myself to minimize personal risk".

So this is how I see both sides:

We need tradition to govern our lives up to a point while keeping an open mind to new ideas
Following either to the extreme seem like a bad idea.
Going full-on Neomania(Loving new things just for the sake of them being new) degrades tradition and the "knowns" in society, opens up everything for questioning, and decays social order. If we don't know what to expect from a neighbor, they are no longer part of the same tribe, and therefore possible enemies.
However, going full-on tradition will stop us from innovating and creating new, better ways of conducting ourselves/businesses/communities.

Those are my two cents on the matter.

On another topic I was asked "Why are DApps useful", and here's my response:

It all boils down to the principle of Robustness of Systems. Have a single point of failure (if all your cloud services are on AWS, if it ever goes down, your business goes with it).
So how do we improve our systems beyond that point?
We can divide among several cloud services, using Oracle Cloud, Azure, and Google cloud, so that if one service goes down, you can still recover and offer your products).
Then there's the next level of paranoia on top of it. What if every service goes down? Or do all of them become mafia and just raise prices beyond what's profitable to my business?
That's where DApps have an edge, it runs on the internet and on each computer where the app is installed, the only way for the service to completely be shut down is if the internet itself gets shutdown (or energy, whenever there's a civil war and all that).

So it's all about how much paranoia you have, or in better words, how much risk you are willing to take in proportion to the work you have to put into your system to make it more robust.

Daily Dispatch 36 - Current State of Things over here

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 16:22:25 +0000

So I'm on the path to posting 2 posts every week.

This is still a young blog at heart, although I've been posting semi-regularly for the past 6 years.

I didn't find the Show Your Work book before so that's why I took a different approach to post things online now.

This marks the first year where I post about things that are:

Interesting to others
Useful

Before I'd go for very deep personal issues that not necessarily would help someone else, and might even put people off my other useful content.

So that's why I chose to start these daily dispatches where I take some liberty of going offroad and off tangents so that I don't completely cut off my more personal rants, but then people know it's not a polished post.

Anyhow, I just published two killer posts that you should definitely check out:

[

🧠 Intelligent Investments with Nassim Taleb

How to measure risk for a well balanced portfolio?

Lucas SchiaviniLucas Schiavini

](https://dev.to/lschiavini/intelligent-investments-with-nassim-taleb-4n06-temp-slug-1574571)

[

📖 How to Read a Book

Ever wondered if you are reading well?

Lucas SchiaviniLucas Schiavini

](https://dev.to/lschiavini/how-to-read-a-book-19kl-temp-slug-6664116)

That is it for today, and I'm excited to continue dissecting Nassim Taleb's ideas further on.

🧠 Intelligent Investments with Nassim Taleb

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 12:59:50 +0000

I started reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham right after reading Black Swam, Antifragile and Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb.

Here are some interesting notes so far:

Differently from Nassim Taleb, I've noticed far greater confidence in "knowing the real value behind stocks" from Benjamin Graham. However, he does mention how "not acting in an immature manner" is better than "giving tips on how to get the most out of your investments". This approach matches a lot of what Nassim wrote in his books.
Both do tend to value emotional intelligence when picking stocks and knowing what to expect from a reasonable investment (ergo, NOT 4% a day with a secure investment lol).

I started reading more on investments because I want to follow what Nassim Taleb described as a Barbell Strategy.

The Barbell Strategy

90% of one's portfolio on very conservative low-risk investments, 10% of exposure to high-risk, uncertain, assets.

But before we start measuring Risk(You can't, according to Nassim), we need to understand the types of things that are measurable or predictable.

The Turkey's Problem

You see as the time approaches thanksgiving, the turkey gets more and more confident that "on the next day a peaceful human will feed and take care of me".

Turkey's induction reasoning is correct, but there are limits to where induction-based reasoning can lead us. There are things that will appear before us that we could never have predicted because they had never happened before.

Nassim called them Black Swans.

Black Swans

These are events that are extremely rare, unpredictable, and are easily rationalized after the fact (think of every economist trying to explain how a bubble formed and why it popped when it did but who also didn't profit from it beforehand).

It should not surprise you that Black Swans are not predictable, and therefore, not measurable before the fact.

If we can't measure them, nor predict them, then how do we act? We limit our exposure to events like these.

4 Quadrants

Source

Here are the 4 famous Quadrants, from this we can reason where we should actively attempt to use mathematical models to predict things, and more importantly, know where our investments lie in it.

First Axis - Payoffs

The first axis is the Payoff axis. The first type is Simple Payoffs (Binary results). It is black/white, true/false results.

It allows for reasoning using ideas like "if the green light is on, should you accelerate or stop?"

The other type is Complex Payoffs (Results measured in Magnitude).

It thinks about how black/white/true/false something is, it is more complex and allows phrases such as :

"How likely are we to get hit by a car on A, B, or C street at noon?"

Here's a table with examples to help us better visualize it:

Source

Second Axis - Complexity of The Environment

Extremistan vs Mediocristan. This is where things get complicated.

In very simple terms here's what they mean:

Extremistan

Inequalities are the rule, where one single observation can radically impact the aggregate result.
Think people's wealth, if you pick 500 random people in the street to calculate average wealth, should one of them be a billionaire they'd be accounting for over 90% of the sample data (and raising the average result amongst all 500 people).
We also see this in Chess tournament medals, and any human informational activity, like 1% of the pop songs dominating the entire market, 1% of movies getting 90% of box office results. It leads to "Winners take it all" environments.
This environment produces Black Swans.
This is where things are unpredictable and compound with a few improbable events.

Mediocristan

When your sample is large, no single observation will radically change the total aggregate
Think: "Height or Weight distribution among humans". Hardly we will see something radical, but even if it is, it's not as pronounced as in Extremistan.
No one will have millions of kilometers in height vs no height at all. Something that does happen when we measure Wealth, box-office movie(games, books, etc) successes.

Let's look at a more detailed view of the 4 quadrants again:

Source

We can see what the 4 quadrants look like from a Venture Capitalist's perspective.

1st Quadrant: Consumer goods are a simple payoff (people either buy milk or they don't). Also, in the case of commonly used food, hardly anyone will buy 1000000% above average, so we can say consumer goods follow a Normal Distribution.

In case you need refreshing, here's what a Normal Distribution looks like:

Source

This figure presents a normal distribution, which means most consumers buy something in the middle, and exceptions are rare and pose a less important contribution to the overall sample data.

2nd Quadrant: Complex payoffs but still normal distribution, meaning from a pool of VCs one will not be overly dominant in the overall sample data. And yet to deem VCs successful takes years and multivariable analysis. More importantly, even, we have to ask "How Much" a VC was successful, not just if they are/aren't.

3rd Quadrant: Simple payoffs in elections, Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton for example. But because a single candidate might dominate the % of votes, it lives in the Extremistan.

4th Quadrant: The land of Black Swans, unpredictable events happening here that change the status quo completely. Here we have the PC revolution, Great Recessions, and Smartphones.

Fat Tails

Source

We can see in this figure what a Fat Tail distribution looks like. Where there are few unseen rare events that are more and more unlikely to happen.

However, when they do happen, they cause a massive change in the statistical properties observed (more wealth to computer geeks when the PC revolution occurred).

Now What?

Now going back to the Barbell Strategy mentioned earlier, secure investments lie in the 1st, and 2nd quadrants, things that live in the mediocristan. They are more predictable but offer lower returns on investment(ROI).

Things that are highly risky live in the 3rd (although with limited exposure to breaking) and 4th quadrants.

What Nassim suggests is that one should lead a Highly conservative / Highly risky approach.

With 90% on the 1st and 2nd quadrants, and 10% on the fourth one. Exposing a small part of your wealth to high payoff events (such as bitcoin, NFTs, highly risky stocks, etc).

The larger part would be in highly conservative investments (S&P500 indexes, some funds, ETFs, Treasury Bonds, etc).

👏 Special Thanks

Thanks to my mate André Mariano for helping me review the text and giving me some tips on which parts I could make clearer.

Tell me what you think

Do you agree with his approach, was there something not quite clear from this article? Let me know 😜

😗 Enjoy my writing?

Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe (hint: it’s here).

Anything else? Just say hello in the comments :).

Join an Exclusive Tech Friendly Community! Connect with like-minded people who are interested in tech, design, startups, and growing online — apply here.

Resources

(https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-the-fourth-quadrant-a-map-of-the-limits-of-statistics)

(https://www.naveedjan.com/notes/black-swan)

(https://www.silverandsteel.org/steel/fourth-quadrant-startups)

📖 How to Read a Book

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 10:16:40 +0000

Some tips I've gathered along my way:

From The Boron Letters: Read a book first for the enjoyment of it(which means if you lose curiosity with it as time goes on, just drop the book and pick it up later if that curiosity ever comes back).
The second read of the book means taking notes along the way, I use the Zettelkasten Method for that and put on my second brain on Obsidian.
As you take notes, feel free to write important lessons from the book into a blog post or notepad, even if you never publish it.
If the book Blew your Mind, reread it every couple of years. Compare your understanding of the previous reads with the new ones(notes help with this).

That's it so far, but I'll have more tips after I read "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler.

That is it and I will see you at the next one 😁

Quote as Code - Be the Best in the World at What you Do

Lucas Schiavini — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 10:38:55 +0000

There's this quote from Naval Ravikant that really struck me. Here it is:

"Become the best in the world of what you do, keep redefining what you do, until this is true".

Here's how I understood it:

while(notYetTheBestInTheWorldAt(x)) {
    x = nextBet()
    for(N honest tries) {
        workHardAt(x)
        getFeedbackOn(x)
        if(foundABetterThingForYourSpecificTalents()) {
            x = nextBet()
        }
    }
}

This basically means, practice for N honest tries to do something you think you can be world-class at and work really hard at it before you decide to move on to another thing.

Some Context

But the thing to understand is when this quote turns out to be useful.

It's not meant to enforce you to keep changing your mind around and never sticking to anything serious. If you want to be world-class at something, you gotta do your best, for years!

This quote proves its usefulness when it finds someone that believed that "I want to be the best at X in the world because that's my dream since I was little". This person does not take into account what his/hers attributes are and whether they have the potential for that particular skill, or even if they eventually grow out of it.

"I want to be the best runner in the entire world and beat Usain Bolt," - this belief in someone that has a much inferior height or has musculoskeletal deficiencies will only bring disappointment to the person.

This quote is there to remind us that "Hey you did your best at this and you know for sure this isn't for you? Don't sweat it, pick something else and give your best and watch what happens".

I use this quote as a reminder to not optimize something too soon.

To allow oneself to do some exploration before settling into a particular objective. And even then, let the objective change if another proves to be better for your particular talents and circumstances.

How many tries before quitting?

Once you do pick a goal, then you gotta put in the work.

The thing is that N should be a number way above your comfort zone because that's the only way to really know.

However, just because you practiced a lot a particular skill, does not mean you should marry your end goal for it.

What if I've found A Better Match?

If you are learning to write for a book project, and then suddenly you realize your writing could be better used to sell a product on a landing page, and it matches your circumstances better, go for it.

The thing to keep in mind is that as you progress towards a certain skill, other paths might open to you that wasn't directly linked to your objective, and you could be more successful on those paths.

Some parting words

So if you are able to keep changing what your objective is , until it arrives at your specific knowledge, situation, location, and innate talents, you increase the odds that you'll be the best at it.