After pivoting in 2019, our company has had a very successful year building a great product. As we've learned more about our market and developed our strategy, we're stepping into an arena with a decent amount of competition.
As such, my meta-thinking has shifted away from product engineering (though it requires constant vigilance) to distribution and growth instead.
It's an interesting time to be a startup in higher education amidst the shifting winds and overall weather patterns.
Ideally, we could all win by growing the pie somehow, but if not, then may the best company win.
As a fair test of how accurate my mental models are, I've recently become interested in value investing: What are the second-order effects that others are missing?
By definition, you can always be a higher-order thinker—it just becomes more difficult the more others are doing it too.
Capital markets are therefore an interesting proving ground since it's open to the world of all thinkers interacting with one another.
"The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks has been an inspirational guide on this journey.
I'm trying to get a lot better at music production and songwriting at the moment (and decided in 2019 that it will likely be part of my life going forward).
I care most about songwriting and production at the moment, but arranging, voice, mixing, sound design, recording, and mastering are all of fascination.
Not much attention is being given to marketing or live performance, however. I think performing music live is stressful and am happy to work in the studio.
If I were to do this professionally one day, I would certainly not be an artist, but instead play a behind-the-scenes role as songwriter, producer, or mix engineer.
At the end of 2019, I stumbled upon a comment on HackerNews made in passing about how the common wisdom in the medical community about autoimmunity having genetic origins has been turned on its head in recent years.
If you or someone close to you is struggling with autoimmune disease, I would recommend reading up on "the Coimbra Protocol," named after the Brazilian physician who discovered it. It is not well-known in the US at this time, however.
I have been running n=1 experiments on Vitamin D and trying to understand this hormone's role in the body since the start of 2020. I've gained much practical insight, so it has been time well spent.