Book: 20211005 to 20211105, "Unscripted" by M. J. DeMarco
20211004 - Preface (Has Life Regressed?)
So I am not the only one who thought about time travel back to the young me, and then teach him about how to live a life.
20211004 - Introduction
M. J. DeMarco is the same author of "The Millionaire Fastlane". Surprise!
PART ONE: THE DISSONANCE... IS SOMETHING WRONG?
20211005 - CH-1: Tales from the SCRIPT: A Monday Story
The controling of time usage is critical. The meaning of life relies on it.
The rights to say no, the rights to change as per our willingness, keep us in peace.
To this extent, I am very, very lucky.
20211005 - CH-2: Careless Whispers: Guilty Souls Have No Rhythm
This chapter reminds me of "Focusing". The voice is our subconscious. It noticed something which is ignored by our mind.
Again, we need plenty of time to think. It's terrible to be too busy. Then how about Elon Musk and the employees in SpaceX and Telsa? Many of them work 60+ hours per week, and it seems they are happy. The difference is whether we are busy in something we love. If yes, then it's good to be too busy.
20211006 - CH-3: What If I Told You...
I don't hate/be scared of Monday, so I am not live in SCRIPT. :-)
What is SCRIPT? A pawn of MEME. In the centre of a herd. Only the cattle live at the edge of the herd can get abundent food, but too faraway from the herd will lead to failure. We need to try new ideas at minimum cost.
The movie Matrix is amazing. We all have the potential capability to see the real world, not just live in the illusion built by our mind.
I believe, SCRIPT is necessary to most of people. Without it, most of people may just watch TV, play video games, do web surfing, etc. Creating value for the society is much better than doing nothing.
PART TWO: YOUR INVOLUNTARY INDOCTRINATION... THE SCRIPT
20211006 - CH-4: The Paradigm Is Shit: The SCRIPT
As I know, only 5% of entrepreneurs succeeded. Most of them failed. And, we cannot/should not encourage everyone go for entrepreneurship.
But, if there are much more people try hard to run their own business, the civilization will grow faster, and employees will get better pay, people will be more creative.
Different from athletes and artists, entrepreneurship is something that ordinary people can learn and practice. So it's the only approach to get rich at young age.
20211007 - CH-5: Inking The SCRIPT: Conventional Wisdom
Conventional wisdom is based on statistical data. It's most likely to guarantee everyone a decent life, if everyone can get a job they love.
But I agree that most of people should try to be entrepreneur. That also helps with normal jobs.
20211007 - CH-6: The SCRIPTED Operating System: Programming Servitude
Meme is complicated. It contains many parts and many layers. But they are all illusions.
The seeders are the ones taught us what the "reality" is.
The hyperrealities are the components of our lives.
The life paths is ?
In summary, Meme is the matrix. It only exist in our mind.
20211008 - CH-7: The Seeders: Scripting the SCRIPT
They let us think that we have choices, but all the choices are in limited spectrum. Because we don't know the things we don't know, we cannot have open mind.
Open mind is the key to reach the edge of the herd. The key to grab the meaning of life.
Information and theory are critical. We just need to be sceptical to them.
20211009 - CH-8: Hyperreality: The SCRIPT’s Illusions
Reticular activating system, or RAS, is the filter between reality and the illusion in our mind. Most of the noise are filtered by RAS, even if the information is actually important. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can see a lot of opportunities, but these opportunities are just noise to other people. Who cared about EV or reuseable rocket in 2005? iPod, iPhone, web app store, Zip2 and Paypal were just strange daydreams in 20th Century. How can an company build better computer chips than IBM, Intel and AMD?
No doubt meditation can help to reduce the impact of RAS, and help us to see the real world.
Meme changes settings of our RAS. If we realize that, it would be much easier to see more reality.
SCRIPT is useful to most of the people. For example, academic degree. Colleges give students stress, resource and guide. It doesn't tell people how to build their own companies, as it's risky and more rely on personal talent. Without SCRIPT, people more likely waste their time for nothing.
Keep "Unscripted" in mind will open our mind to see more opportunities, but it's not that useful to most of people. It could actually be harmful.
20211010 - CH-9: Temporal Prostitution: Trading Good Time for Bad
Trading time for money sucks. If we cannot learn and grow from our jobs, we are trading time for money.
Let's say we can save $20 per hour after paying tax and all other cost, and an new iPhone is $1600. We work 40 hours per week, so this means we trade 2 weeks of our life for a new iPhone.
On average we live 80 years. Remove the first 15 years an the last 5 years, we have around 60 years. That's around 60*52=3120 weeks. 2/3120=0.06%. Is it worth trading 0.06% of our life for a new iPhone? If we like our job, or if we can learn a lot from our job, then maybe it's OK.
But from the other side, where should we use our time to buy if not a new iPhone? 2 weeks is the starting point. After that, we are going to spend much more time on iPhone: wechat, news, games, youtube, etc. For entertainment, if it's not too much, it's definitely worth it. But what if we spend 2 hours on it everyday?
The money today worth more than the money tomorrow. The time today worth more than the time tomorrow. If we need to work for 40 years to get enough savings to support our financial indepedence for the last 20 years of our life, that's not a good investment, unless we like our job.
20211010 - CH-10: The Life Paths: 2 Doors, 1 Slaughterhouse
I don't agree with M.J.DeMarco here, especially about the slowlaner. Most of people don't go at that extreme level, and Index Fund is bound with economy growth, which make it resistent to market crash.
However, Stock Index goes with population and GDP growth. Can we rely on it? Maybe we should not rely on anything. Business has much higher probability to crash than Stock Index.
In general, I still believe Index Fund and Real Estate is much better than other investment options.
20211010 - CH-11: Distraction: Move Along, Nothing to See Here
To fight boredom, we keep ourselves busy in entertainment. Then we forget the real important things need to be done. We forgot to think about our future.
Then we missed the compound effect of time. Our time is wasted.
20211010 - CH-12: M.O.D.E.L. Citizenry: Serial #666-77-8888
Many years later, we start to realize that it is too late. The cost of life changing is too high, or we are too old to change it. We start to regret about our lives, and there is nothing we can do about it.
PART THREE: THE ALTERNATIVE...GOING UNSCRIPTED
20211011 - CH-13: The UNSCRIPTED Life: “Fuck You”
FTE = Fuck This Event
20211011 - CH-14: “Fuck is” before “Fuck You”
What do I want after reaching finance indepedence?
This question is hard to answer.
PART FOUR: THE SOLUTION... THE UNSCRIPTED ENTREPRENEURIAL FRAMEWORK
20211013 - CH-15: The UNSCRIPTED Entrepreneurial Framework
FTE = Fuck This Event. I prefer to call it "melting point". Change only happens when temperature is reach some point.
Study and thinking are not action, but they help to set up correct "Micro Action", which is our perception of the world(including business). After that, we can figure out the correct "Macro Actions" to bring changes to our situation.
BELIEFS, BIASES, AND BULLSHIT (3B)
20211013 - CH-16: The 3(B)s: Beliefs, Biases, and Bullshit
3B is our perception. Wrong perception leads to wrong direction.
No matter how strong we are, we may fall into trap following the wrong direction.
20211013 - CH-17: The Lies We Believe: e 8 Belief Scams
M. J. must read a lot of books, and summerized 8 most common wrong beliefs.
20211015 - CH-18: The Shortcut Scam: Ordinary Doesn’t Compel Extraordinary
Event driven or Process driven? This reminds me of the book "The score takes care of itself." Events come eventually, and we should focus on process.
All tips sum up got this: think ahead, think hard. If we think about how to solve a problem all the time, we are going to progress rapidly.
Meditation? Physical exercise? Looking for business opportunities? If we think about them all the time for years, we are going to get it.
20211016 - CH-19: The Special Scam: “I’m Not Good at That”
What does "think hard" really mean? Think about the problem ALL THE TIME, associating everything with the problem, if possible. Sooner or later, we can solve it. Of course, the problem needs to be solveable.
Gene is critical. Sometimes we need to pay double effort to achieve the same result, and sometimes we have no interest in pursuing a specific profession. But there is no real unbreakable obstacle stops from learning something.
We should always chasing perfection, instead of being better than someone else.
Position is always temporary. It may change at any time, no matter we are billionaire or first class ethlete. No need to feel complacent or dismayed about it.
20211016 - CH-20: The Consumption Scam: How Much Time Did That Cost?
Production inequality vs Wealth inequality. Interesting.
Producer and Consumer have totally different RAS. How long it would take to analyze the whole production and sale procedure? If we grab all opportunities to do that all the time, every time, we can do that quickly, maybe in a few second.
Deliberate practice makes perfection. It's like stock analysis. Warren Buffett can analyze a stock quickly and correctly, just Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can evaluate the value of a company easily.
As consumer, we even don't have chance to practice in that area.
20211016 - CH-21: The Money Scam: I Can Get Rich by Wanting to Get Rich
Money = Perceived Value. Perceived Value is based on real value.
Chasing for value and perceived value, then mony will naturally flow in. Chasing for money, then money will hide away.
20211017 - CH-22: The Poverty Scam: “I’m Poor Because You’re Rich”
Billionairies normally created huge amount of value for the society. They deserve the wealth.
To become rich, we need to create value for other people. Employees also create value for company and society, but they don't need to take risk, and they don't need to be creative. They don't need to think ahead think hard.
20211017 - CH-23: The Luck Scam: You Don’t Play; You Don’t Win
Luck hides more in certain routines. So if we stay in some routine for too long time, we will not get any extra luck.
Good perception helps us to choose better routine, but there is only that much potential luck waiting there. We have to try different things to get more luck.
Don't forget to verify those potential lucks at minimum cost. -"the 4-hour work week"
20211018 - CH-24: The Frugality Scam: Live Poor; Die Rich
What's good work? CUL: controllable unlimited leverage. It means no limit for revenue growth, and not integrated with time.
Based on this definition, all salary income is bad.
But for most of people, they have to take a job with annual salary. My suggestion is this: the one can help accumulate work experience/skill is good. So, engineer is much better than cashier.
20211018 - CH-25: The Compound-Interest Scam: Wall-Street Ain’t Makin Ya Rich
Index Fund cannot turn people from poor to rich, but it can bring in decent passive income.
The major reason is, our expenses are almost fixed. In Australia, normal family may need minimum $50k expenses, but $100k can live very well. The family income could be 50% above that, and only extra income can be used for investment.
This means, if we live frugal lives, there will be only a little be extra income can be put into Index Fund. These extra money is not enough to turn poor into rich.
To get rich quickly, we have to make more money, now.
20211020 - CH-26: The Biases: Your Brain’s Delusions
If we want to change our situation, we have to change our behaviour. Same behaviour leads to the same result.
There are so many traps in our psychological mind. Think ahead + Think hard + First principle + Meditation may fix most of them.
Real world is not the world in our mind.
20211021 - CH-27: Bullshit: Crutches, Cliche?s, and Cults
MEANING AND PURPOSE (MP)
Cancer corollary is good at helping us to figure out what is the most important thing. However, it cannot beat "groupingness".
Identity offers the ultimate power. It beats everything else including groupingness. We are what we are, no willpower/habit/motivation is needed.
Identity shift is always the critical point of time in our lives. What's the difference between FTE and Identity Shift? FTE tells us that we must change. Identity Shift tells us the true "self".
How does it happen? When we keep looking for the true self, then, sooner or later, we will figure it out.
20211021 - CH-28: Meaning-and-Purpose: The Will to Win
What's the difference between IDENTITY and WHY? IDENTITY is what we are, WHY means the ultimate goal. For example, Elon Musk's IDENTITY maybe is engineer and entrepreneur, his WHY is transforming to sustainable energy and Mars colony.
I am a software developer, and my WHY was FI. But what should I do after reaching FI? Maybe, to control my mind?
20211022 - CH-29: The Wonder Twins of Epically Bad Life Advice
IDENTITY > WHY > HABIT with positive feedback loop.
Passion/motivation comes with positive feedback. The most positive feedback is a better self.
A better self can do more contribution to other people. It's verified through value created.
20211023 - CH-30: Finding Your Purpose
Happiness needs two conditions: Self-Growth, Autonomous. ( Family, group connectness and health are part of Autonomous )
"Sensitiveness, Creativity, Action". These means same thing as "Think ahead, Think hard".
Out destiny is 99% in our own hands. If we take different perception and action, then we will get different result.
FASTLANE ENTREPRENEURSHIP (FE)
20211023 - CH-31: Fastlane Entrepreneurship: The UNSCRIPTED Business
Productocracy - Need + Time + Control + Entry + Scale
Although failure is inevitable, correct approach of course can increase the chance of success. If keep trying (at minimum cost, including both money and time/effort), sooner or later, we will win.
20211023 - CH-32: The Productocracy: How to Print Money (and Sleep Well)
We can push the product/service to clients, or we can pull the clients to our product/service. Only productocracy can bring in compound effect of sales, and it can keep the operational cost minimum.
Tesla is a good example. Then how about the iPhone? iPhone is not much better than Android Phones, so Apple has no choice. They have to spend a lot in advertisements.
Facebook didn't rely on ad to grow, just like Google search engine and Gmail.
Productocracy is much more than great product/service.
20211023 - CH-33: The Commandment of Control: Owning What You Build
This "control" means risk mitigation. The business should not be knock out by any single black swan factor. Or else, the risk is too high.
Employee should do the same thing. They should always make sure that they can get another job easily anytime.
The more options, the more power to negotiate.
Another one is Mars Colony. Human civilization should not be knocked out by any black swan event.
20211024 - CH-34: The Commandment of Entry: The Opportunity of Difficulty
Difficulty means moat. How do we know that some difficulty worth spending time to solve? The First Principle.
How to choose goal?
1. It should not be too easy, and should not be too hard.
2. People need to want it, and need it. (The first principle)
3. It's not something we really dislike/hate. Or else it's painful. This is mainly around introvert and extrovert.
To win easy entry competition, Executional Excellence is the key.
20211027 - CH-35: The Commandment of Need: How to engineer opportunity in any industry
How to find opportunity?
Think hard.
Think all the time.
Keep looking for opportunities all the time.
Be sensitive to everything.
Think ahead also means the balance between long term benefit and short term benefit.
Domain experience/knowledge is what we got from a job or a certificate. We get extra advantage if we develop our business based on domain experience. For example, Elon Musk learned a lot about Computer, EV and Rocket before graduate from University.
20211028 - CH-36: The Commandment of Time: Earning More than Money
Build a automated system to make "passive income" without much time needed.
But what is the best passive income for economy recession?
20211029 - CH-37: The Commandment of Scale: Win a Life, Not Dinner
Elon Musk said: "Prototypes are Easy, Production is Hard".
Scaling is similar to it. To do something by ourselves (manually) and making money is easy, to hire 100 people to do something in team and making money is hard. Or, we use existing power to manufacturing or sell the products. We can make production through other factories instead of building our own factory, or sell it through existing channels, such as Amazon, EBay, BunningsWarehouse, etc.
Scaling is the key to make good money. There is no way to get around it.
When the automation system is done, it runs day and night, which don't need our time or attention. So it get us spare time.
To make one million dollar revenue, we need to sell $2740 products everyday.
KINETIC EXECUTION (KE)
20211029 - CH-38: Executing Excellence: Predicting Unpredictable
How to prepare for unpredictable requirement? My guess is the first principle, based on profit and scale.
We must avoid fake execution. To make profit we need to do many micro steps. All these steps are directly impact profit and scale.
20211030 - CH-39: Kinetic Execution: Big Things Start Small
Action, feedback, adjustment.
Action is the start point. It always start from the most basic minor things, and it could be pretty hard and time consuming.
20211031 - CH-40: The 7 Ps of Process: From Idea to Productocracy
Once verified the demand of the product, we should act. Act starts from the functionality, which is the minimum core part. We don't need to register a company, AD or open a bank account to do that, so leave those part to the later stage.
To build a product prototype may take weeks or months without any feedback. So it's better be some work we don't mind to try hard. Or else it's double painful.
Show me the money, or cash is the king. Acutally they mean the same thing: is there someone want to pay money to purchase your product/service? That's the ultimate verification of your plan/imagination. It's the only way to check whether your perception is real, or just illusion.
Only real value lasts forever. Perceived value is one time thing. It brings in temporary cashflow, but cannot turn us into real rich people.
20211102 - CH-41: Make Execution Matter: 13 Best Practices
1. Expect difficulty and changes;\
2. Focus;
3. Forget about life balance;
4. Choose proper external environment (groupingness!);
5. No need to ask for permissions, just do it;
6. Brand is the ultimate long term profit;
7. Consistency builds brands; don't pretend to care about the clients;
8. Story is powerful;
9. Be careful about biases; our perception could be wrong;
10. SEO only helps if you have good product or service;
11. FADs or Treads don't provide lasting value;
12. Politics may alienate half of your clients;
13. Focus on your target clients, and ignore the rest. You cannot make everyone happy.
THE FOUR DISCIPLINES (4D)
20211102 - CH-42: The 4 UNSCRIPTED Disciplines: Design, Then Insure Your Future
This chapter is about how to keep the hard earned wealth. Making good money is quite different from being wealth.
20211102 - CH-43: Comparative Immunity: Well-Dressed Slaves Are Still Slaves
Buy what we need, not what we want. Normally, it doesn't matter what other people thinking about me.
20211103 - CH-44: Purposed Saving: Lifetime Passive Income
Money system is the ultimate target, because it asks for almost no time to manage it.
20211103 - CH-45: Measured Elevation: How to Live Well
Live within your means.
If after tax income increased $100, we can expense $20 more. The point is not the product or service we can buy, it's the freedom of choices.
20211103 - CH-46: Consequential- ought: Preserving Your Future
Avoid fatal choices.
PART FIVE: A NEW DAWN: NEVER WORK AGAIN
20211103 - CH-47: Welcome to “Fuck You”
We need all five factors to succeed.
Belief: attitude towords starting a business
Meaning: why start a business
CENTS Business: how to increase profit
Execution: how to make money
Discipline: how to keep the wealth and avoid fatal choices
20211105 - CH-48: Your Last Business Ever (If You Want)
How to choose the investment strategy? For me,
1. Long term trend;
2. Resistence to economical recession, such as plague, war, etc.
3. Holding cost, including time needed to manage it;
4. Liquidity;
Index fund is good. Tesla stock is better.
Dividen is not bad, but normally means the stock is quite stable, which means no great long term trend.
Real Estate? 3 and 4 are bad.
Compare dividen stock with Index Fund, the former keep the same principle, and the latter get less and less principle. But this is not the whole story. The value of Index Fund is growing much faster than the value of dividen stock. Then, the holding cost if the key difference. 1% fee of $10M stock means $100k. So, Index Fund is a much better choice.
20211105 - CH-49: #UNSCRIPTED NOTES
This book is a guideline. It plants a entrepreneurial seed in our mind. For many people younger than 50, it gives them much higher success rate.
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