#19 Tings Newsletter 7

Some wise words from Naval, Crypto AI and.. tennis?

I reduced the cadence of the Tings Newsletter as I felt it was slowly becoming a shitty reading list. Also, a monthly substack article probably isn’t the best way to share articles in a timely manner (vs a Telegram channel or just retweeting it on X).

1. I spent my Easter Sunday reading the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, which was recommended by a friend of mine more than a year ago now. It was actually a really easy & short read, covering wealth and happiness.

   

   Thought it was pretty cool that the author responded to my tweet!

2. The 1% of things I took away from Naval’s Almanack are:

   1. The three most important decisions for young people: where you live, who you’re with and what you do. You should free up all your time so you can solve these important problems. I find we usually go to “default settings” on where you live — for me it was either near where I was born (Malaysia or Singapore) or where I studied / worked (UK). I’m starting to be more open to figure out what country suits me best, although it’s much more difficult when you need a visa to move anywhere.

   2. Treat books like a blog post or adventure, skip to chapters that sound the most interesting. The number of books you read is a vanity metric. You don’t have to read cover to cover. Sounds simple & dumb but sometimes I force myself to read every page so I can tell myself I’ve “finished a book”. Most non-fiction books can be summarised in a page (e.g., Thinking Fast & Slow).

   3. Fortune requires leverage. There are three types of leverage: Capital (raise / borrow money to expand business), Labour (hire people to work for you), and Code/Media (things with zero marginal cost). I feel it’s obvious that leverage is needed for a successful business, but few apply it on their lives.

3. Honestly, I probably read 2-3 books a year, but I read a lot online through Substack, Medium, Twitter, and blog articles. I wonder if reading is important or is reading books important? I feel reading books might be a relic of the past, but it feels like having a long discussion with the author, vs jumping from idea to idea between blog posts. I do feel many non-fiction books just explain a concept in 100 different ways to fill 400 pages though. Naval’s mindset on reading will help me a lot.

4. I have been trying out providing compute by renting GPUs and then running specific LLMs for crypto protocols. I started off hating on the command line interface (CLI) but now am a firm believer that the CLI is the best way to run a computer. Also, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without ChatGPT. Mad!

   

   mind=blown

5. The most exciting “crypto x AI” vertical to me is data collection, ie. using tokens to incentivise people to collect niche datasets. It’s no different from Bitcoin which gave BTC to people who did a certain task (mining). Pretty excited about FrodoBots who will be using tokens in the future to incentivise data generation from pavement robots. It starts off looking like a game, but will become a data company.

6. p/s: I’m headed to Sui Basecamp / Paris Blockchain Week in Paris next week. Then, doing Consensus in Austin, Texas next month. Drop me a line if you want to grab a croissant or a Texan barbecue. Honestly can’t wait.

7. I recently started taking tennis lessons and play 2-3x a week. It all started after getting inspired watching Nick Kyrgios (who is technically half Malaysian, yes a win is a win). As a badminton player, adjusting to tennis is much easier. Tennis feels like a slower but stronger version of badminton.

8. My wife got me an Apple Watch for my birthday. As a data nerd, it’s motivated me to run a lot — keeping track of your running distance, speed, heart rate bpm, is very addictive. I also managed to peer pressure 15 of my friends to join a 10km fun run coming later this month. I’m nearing 30 so I obviously I need to work my way to running a marathon.

9. Recently started Zone 2 training, which means running at 60-70% of your max heart rate. The training gets pretty boring — for me it’s maintaining ~140bps which means running ~7min/km which is absurdly slow. But it supposedly builds a strong aerobic base.

10. I just finished Season 2 of Physical 100 on Netflix, where 100 incredibly fit and athletic people go through challenges to determine who has the most performant physique. It’s a great show, but can be slow at times as you have to watch 6 teams repeat the same tasks. Absolutely insane how much you can push the limits of your body. Also, is anyone building a Physical 100 course irl?

If you enjoyed reading this issue, you can “like” this newsletter by clicking the ❤️ below, it boosts my confidence. Thanks for reading!