BOOKS LEAN LIFE LESS BS

Humans have invented a lot since time began. The greatest of these is books.

This January I read Team of Rivals—a biography of Abraham Lincoln. I amused myself and said: "I definitely know more about Lincoln than probably 80% of people who lived in his state during his time." All thanks to the book, built from records, letters, speeches, and documentation from those days.

Reading, I believe, should be synonymous with sleep. It is the only true avenue of self-education. I dare say: the man who does not learn constantly has nothing over the man lying in his grave.

The month that has been, I have read two books, and those are the ones I want to talk about. The first: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. The second: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The former is suited for the entrepreneur; the latter, for one who wishes to fuck up lesser.

The Lean Startup bursts the typical dogmas around startups and gives "old grandmother" kind of advice. The core philosophy: minimize waste. Waste of creativity, time, and resources. Founders should not obsess over the polish of a prototype. Instead, get a minimum viable product into the market and gather real feedback from users—the customers. Customers don't know what they want, but assuming what they are willing to pay for is fatal. Founders shouldn't be hypnotized by metrics that reveal nothing about the customer. The most important metric? The number of failures that give positive feedback—and iterating fast.

Skin in the Game drills one philosophy: Facta, non verba. Deeds, not words. Taleb warns about those who want rewards without risks—people who want to use other people's skin in the game. At this point, I am convinced that the NOs in life determine your trajectory more than the YESs. Warren Buffett believes the same. Skin in the Game gives you a perfect manual for who falls where. Honor is long gone. Everyone is trying to cheat the system. Only that the coin must have two sides. Anyone who doesn't have skin in the game deserves no honor.

Summing up both books: most of what you do has no effect—or if it does, not the effect you desired. And a lot of people are full of bullshit. You need not get caught up in this charade, for I believe you have finite time here on Earth. You need to live a lean life with skin in the game.