/ Compilation of old thoughts, mostly from 2021, that have never been posted. I write in bold whether I still agree/disagree/have changed my views. Further below is a write-up from 2023 or 2024?

• Favorite word of this year is value. Value is a good word
• Every individual has a good and bad side. everyone. no exceptions. now the magnitude of these sides can vary, and thats how you can seperate good and bad people, but no one is exempt from this rule in my opinion. it's just about maximizing your good and minimizing your bad, that's the best you can do. MAYBE there are exceptions. Still agree.
• As a function of everything being out in the open, anyone can do basically anything that is physically do-able, but given everything is out in the open, it can be simultaneously easier and harder. Easier since resources are readily available, harder due to competition and open access and opportunity. However, opportunity is always good because for those who want what they want, they can get it, usually. Even though they'll be almost infinite obstacles. It's still doable. Still agree.

Translating Learnings From X to Y

tl;dr I’ve been thinking about how patterns from one area (like investing) can meaningfully translate into another (like content creation). But the hard part is implementation — not just identifying the analogy, but testing whether it holds.

Part 1: Cross-domain Learning

One thing I’ve been thinking about is I like to find patterns and trends in space X, and then think about where it is translated over to space Y. It is commonly mentioned how different principles one learns in investing apply to life, and similarly those experienced in life apply to investing. Two-way street.

It is another challenge to concretely take those learnings from far away and actually implement them to see if it positively or negatively (or doesn’t at all) affect your outcome.

So instead of just sharing a thought and how it can lateral over to something more relatable to me, trying to define the process of how it can be implemented or tested is important.

I think also that intuition and judgment will allow someone to know if something will be valuable and that the challenge is to implement, or if it is easier to implement but it is unknown whether it will be value add (aka it is more of a test or experiment).

Back to my original topic.

Part 2: Creator Lifecycle Examples, Network Effects, and Personal Motivation

Creators do X. X attracts attention and virality. This makes Creator popular and gain a following. This following enjoys when Creator does X. There are slight variations of X, Xv1, Xv2…some do better than others, but for the most part, it is X, and that is what their following likes.

The following will have some unknown time of which they find X entertaining. There will be both growth and attrition of following over time, with different rates, so the following will have a net change over time. Some followings are more sticky and some much less.

Now let’s introduce the problem. Creator X, either because they think doing Y will increase their following/attention, or they are tired of doing X and WANT to do Y hoping it will either maintain the same following or increase it, starts doing Y. Let’s say they are trying it out. They try Y out, reception is poor, they stop doing Y and go back to doing X. No big deal.

Bigger problem if they are a) tired of doing X, b) want to do Y, or both. If they are doing both, and Y receives less attention but still some, it may be ok to do both. Many creators do this. You end up evolving your following to get used to Y (sometimes), and it’ll get less viewers, but maybe it becomes more sticky, but whenever you put X out, it is always a big hit. Maybe the fact you have X out once a month means people will follow Y more, waiting for the next round of X.

Now god forbid you start doing Y because you want to, and you are tired of doing X, and it is less fun. Your following and attention decreases, you get more discontentment from people who like X and don’t like Y because they don’t view X anymore, and it is really a test on how sticky X is in transferring over to Y. Lots of factors. One big one is what do they like about X, what is similar/disimilar from X to Y, and thus will people enjoy or care about Y.