Travel notes from Goa

- things feel both fast (the roads, the traffic), and slow (cashiers are slow, people hanging out during the middle of the day doing nothing) - they burn trash here. Put all their trash, including plastic, food remains and metals onto a pile with some leaves and put it to

Travel notes from Austin

- Insane product variety. For everything you might want to buy: toothbrushes, milk, kombucha, anything, there’s like 20 different options, brands and flavors of it. - Incredibly lose posture towards trash. I ordered 5 tacos at a place and even though I ate at the place, not takeaway (and

On becoming great

I'm listening to Magnus Carlsen on the Lex Fridman podcast and I feel like he's flipping the whole productivity/success/discipline industry on its head. Magnus Carlsen is, as of the day of writing this, the #1 rated chess player in the world (and has been

26 Lessons for my 26th Birthday

I’m turning 26 today, so as a treat to myself, I’ll try to write down some lessons I’ve learned so far – open to revision by future-Finn. Here we go. 1. Don’t treat yourself like an afterthought. Life’s too short to not work on learning to

On Work and Life

My wife had been nudging me for a while now to take some time off from work — and 3 weeks ago it finally happened. We went to Italy and I did zero work for a whole two weeks. I asked her whether our two weeks of vacation felt vastly different

How the Rich Become Even Richer by Doing Good — and Why That’s Not a Problem

Let’s say you’re a billionaire. You started a business, it did well, you paid some taxes, evaded some, and now you have a billion dollars sitting in your savings account. And now you’re 65 years old, a little tired, and you decide you want to do something

On Jealousy

The #1 thing that helps me deal with jealousy—when I get jealous of someone because they do more revenue, have more money, are more fit, spend more time reading (yup, I get jealous of this 😂), are more funny than me—is a Naval quote: "When you’re jealous

On Orthodox Fasting

A couple weeks ago I started following the Orthodox fasting calendar. Basically means that every Wednesday and Friday I have to eat vegan + no alcohol or sweets. And then once a year, this year it starts on March 7th, a 40-day fast (no meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs,

Favorite Reads of 2021

- Debt, David Graeber - Challenges your preconceived ideas on where money came from. - Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning - Few books I’ve read in 2021 were more worthwhile than this one. You need to understand the evil that people can do to understand the evil that you can

On Getting Rid of Slack

It’s been over 1 year since we got rid of Slack for Project 33—and it’s been amazing. Why did I get rid of it? 1. In my opinion, Slack has an ASAP culture. When people send you a Slack message, they expect an immediate answer. So your

On Over-Optimization

A suspicion that's been growing for me lately: Our obsession with "optimization" is at the core of the mental health epidemic. We're systematically eradicating these little pocks of idleness that used to be built into our day: * going to the farmers market, strolling from

On Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment

I just finished Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, some thoughts: It was an easier read than I would’ve thought based on its reputation, I enjoyed reading it quite a bit. It’s a fun way to learn about the Russian culture, language and sentiment, about St. Petersburg's

When You Advertise, Advertise Like Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton, born in 1874, was an Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Here is one of the (possibly apocryphal) newspaper ads he used to recruit people for

On Atlas Shrugged

Finished reading Atlas Shrugged today. I can see why it has the reputation it has, it takes a special kind of book to include a 60-page monologue. There are two main takeaways for me: 1. The book is a potent antidote to the (communist) slogan "from each according to

On Procrastination

If you think that it’s only natural that one would procrastinate on work, on taxes, homework, cleaning the apartment—think again. Imagine an animal that had to overcome an inner struggle of procrastination every time it needed to hunt for food, every time it needed to look for shelter

Who Cares about Profits?

I saw a LinkedIn post about Monday.com’s IPO and how it’s such an impressive company. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned here, but what was *mind-boggling* to me was that the post didn't even mention their profits. It was all about "85% YoY growth&

Lessons from Grandma

My grandma died on Monday from COVID. She was the sturdiest, happiest, and most headstrong person I knew. She used to walk around her big house always humming some happy tune while going about her tasks. When Anastasiya and I first got together, we invited her out for dinner to

On Suicide

Yesterday I found out that one of my teenage heroes, Reckful, committed suicide. He was an esports player (one of the best rogues on WoW) and my favorite streamer on Twitch, I used to spend hours watching his live stream every day. I still have two of his t-shirts. Just

The Path to Wisdom

The path to wisdom: read, write, walk, do, repeat. Read the classics and the books that stood the test of time, not whatever’s currently on some overhyped bestseller list. Write in solitude and with no interruptions. Walk for hours and walk slowly. Give yourself time to reflect and empty

On Reputation

In the early days of the multiplayer game World of Warcraft, there was a strong ethical code to how players interacted with other players. It was very hard to level your character to max level, so many players had only one main character in the game. You invested hundreds of

Notebook

Jan 4, 2025 A goal of mine: using my own inner compass of right and wrong to define all of my actions, rather than listening to social cues and what is “acceptable” to make a decision.  Signs that you’re listening to social cues rather than your own inner compass