Deep Work | Karl-Mikael Syding

All the things that are wrong with school

Length: 3000 words (pretty long)

Purpose: making you aware of best practices (and worst = school) for studying

Style: a recount of my actual (and random) study methods in high school, with a distilled summary of recommended study ‘tools’ toward the end

How do you expect pupils to remember the lesson if you just knock them senseless with homework, instead of first and foremost provide techniques for learning?

Executive summary: The first thing formal school should teach you is how to learn, but that never happens.

This article lists a few study techniques that I wish I knew about as a teenager, and are still highly useful for acquiring new skills within investing, sports or whatever you can think of…

…including: Motion/BDNF, Deep Work, Grit/Consistency, Sound Wall, Hyperthermic therapy, Spaced repetition, Word definitions, Novelty, Overreaching, Curiosity/Application, Gamification, Failing (deliberate practice)

Google it!

I was the worst kind of pupil in middle school; troubled, the youngest and smallest in class, bullied, fighting, divorced parents, a recently drowned big brother, good at math and English contemptuous of everything else.

When grades were introduced in 7th grade, I changed pretty radically (“soooo, you’re going to judge me, are you? Let’s do all the things that you wanna do” –Slinky Scene) and immediately moved to #1 in my school, but I was nevertheless no more than the cleanest dirty shirt.

“Do you know how exceptional this is?”

“Yes…” (I didn’t, but thought I would look stupid if I said ‘no’)

In the summer between 9th grade and high school, I happened to take an IQ test that kind of surprised both the supervisor and myself. That gave me some extra confidence going forward; from then on I ‘knew’* I should and could be able to learn anything better than other people.

However, more importantly, during the 10 minutes I waited to get started, I browsed a simple book about study techniques.

I took away one single lesson that I have stuck to since then: If you loose track of what you’re reading go back and look for a word or a sentence you actually didn’t fully understand. Look up every word you can’t define and make sure you can before moving forward.

That’s how you start building a truly solid knowledge base. I think that single idea is what changed me from a very good pupil in 9th grade to a superior one in high school.

“You can’t build a skyscraper on sand”

-a high school teacher of mine to a friend

Not only does the word habit help you in keeping focused, making sure your knowledge is well founded and make you learn more words per se. It aids in and accustoms you to identifying what you don’t understand and enables you to ask the right questions. (so you can Google it)

*Today I know better than to subscribe any value to an IQ test, but back then it helped raise my level of self-confidence.

How to focus in less than optimal environments

In high school (10th-12th grade), I early on realized the benefits of focusing for longer stretches of time (as opposed to distracted and chopped up studying and reading). I also soon realized that listening to familiar music helped drown out any distractions, without breaking my focus by providing new ones.

I discovered the Sound Wall Technique when I started noticing that certain favorite songs “disappeared”, and had to be restarted, unless I actively paid attention. The songs became more or less invisible. That actually began as a problem of sorts, when I actively wanted to enjoy them. I soon understood, however, there was a valuable potential in the kind of immersion that playing ‘invisible songs’ on high volume provided.

The music I listened to btw was almost exclusively Sisters Of Mercy.

I had a cassette player with slots for two 90-minute cassettes, that could be set for endless repeat of all of the 180 minutes available. And I did, both when studying and otherwise. Gothic messages like the following were hammered into my subconscious a million times (3 years x 1000 hours/year x 3600 seconds/hour =>10 million seconds of goth)

Pain looks great on other people; that’s what they’re for

Because the world is cruel, and promises are broken

-No wonder I’m a little ‘dark’

Luckily, I later learned to like Britney Spears just as much. I still prefer SOM to Britney when going deep though.

Deep Work and Grit

Of course, I had no idea I was practising Deep Work behind my Sound Wall.

I didn’t even have a concept of good or bad study techniques. Just as everybody else I got my homework handed to me and was told to learn it until then next time, but not how to learn it, except answering the questions in the reading material and keep repeating until it stuck…

It’s just that I was actually a bit pressed for time. I only had about 2 hours a day to study, and I had to make that count for more than what everybody else did. Hence, I had to be effective.

-Yes. Pressed for time.

Yes, in high school.

This is why; I was a ninja:

All through high school, I had ninjutsu (ninja) practice for two hours per session several times a week, and I often ran there and back (almost 10 kilometers, or 6 miles). I also spent a few hours a day in the school gym to beef up from my ridiculous 54kg on a 183 cm frame (119 lbs /6’0″). In addition I liked playing tennis as often as I could, playing computer games & coding every day, as well as tinkering with electronics.

Finally, as I still do to this day, I liked keeping my evening schedule open for fun with friends, or just sneaking around the neighborhood in ninja gear (that I don’t do anymore, though).

To make my days work with that schedule, I set aside exactly 2 hours every single day, from Monday to Sunday, of intensely focused studying. Sometimes a little more on the weekends (4h rather than 2h, if an important scheduled test or suspected unscheduled test was coming up next week).

Over the months and years that consistency (grit, if you will) accumulated to much more than most of my class mates. Intuitively I understood Anders Ericsson’s ideas about the value of practicing more than others. Unfortunately nobody told me it should be deliberate and smart practice, outside my comfort zone (even if some of that too came naturally).

As an added bonus from keeping busy, I just didn’t have the time to procrastinate, and I knew I wanted my evenings as free as possible, so I always made sure to finish my 2 hours of Deep Work as soon as I got home from school or the gym. In thus very early on found out the joy and benefits of regularly finishing projects well before any deadline.

It seems I had stumbled upon the idea of consistently adding a set amount per day of time spent on whatever was important (exactly how the Prio One rule works, and how authors typically stay productive).

I knew most of my fellow students postponed doing their homework to the last moment in the day. Or, worse, didn’t even study every day but waited until there was a scheduled test. By going for 2 hours every single day, I kept pulling ahead of the pack.

Spaced repetition

Scheduled tests were one thing; by putting in 10s of hours shortly ahead of those, certain gifted students performed well on known tests (neurotic students even pretended to come down with a cold, to take a few days off, to study for the major scheduled tests).

However, my school had plenty of unscheduled tests, that were allowed (wtf?) to include whatever we had studied during the last four weeks. Since I wanted to ace every test, I kept repeating the last four weeks on a trailing basis (every day), while also reading one week ahead all the time (see next paragraph).

I read ahead (starting in 7th grade, i.e., 2-3 years before high school), since I figured it wouldn’t entail any extra work, while making me prepared in the classroom (prepared for sneaky questions by the teachers to keep students on their toes; and prepared for paying extra attention to whatever I might have struggled with during preparation), not to mention the extra repetition it meant.

The constant repetition, before and after the actual allotted teacher time, meant that whatever I learned eventually stuck forever (“neurons that fire together [often enough] wire together”, as brain scientists say).

What if teachers taught good study techniques early on, would that be something you could be interested in?

Wouldn’t it have been great, if teachers told students from the beginning that a certain schedule of repetition is more effective than other, when it comes to rote learning (foreign words, grammar rules, historical events etc)? Instead of having the students figure out the most effective ways of studying by trial and error?

In French and English, I “invented” the equivalent of flash cards, where I programmed my Spectrum to show words in English or French to translate into Swedish or vice versa, in a random order and random direction. The idea was to avoid going over the same list in the same direction over and over again (which otherwise risks conditioning one word to the word before, instead of having multiple contextual associations in the brain).

Thus, by chance, and by the luck of having a computer and knowing some simple coding, I introduced novelty, surprise, spaced repetition, redundant storage/contextual association, grit and curiosity (the struggle with staying a week ahead and having to understand the material beforehand, without the guidance of a teacher) – all of which have subsequently been shown to be some of the best practices for learning there is.

Brain research and motion

Don’t forget my physical regimen either; the constant running, biking (4km to school), ninja training, tennis, bodybuilding. If there is one place to start with a kid that’s struggling in school, it’s usually with getting him or her physically active.

Modern brain research (tip: listen to all 127 hour-long episodes of Dr Ginger Campbell’s Brain Science Podcasts) shows brains evolved thinking in order to analyze motion. Daily physical activity increases the BDNF “learning hormone” that increases brain plasticity, both during and after the activity. In addition, a more fit body, including one that oxygenates efficiently, can focus for longer periods of time.

By pure chance, I can in retrospect check almost all scientifically proven boxes of study techniques. Almost…

Brain food

Oh, if only I had enjoyed fish more back in the day, not to mention eaten less corn flakes, ketchup and drunk less coca cola. Perhaps compensating for the nutritional offside, I only tried alcohol once in high school before graduation (and it was in the last semester as a senior, when I turned 18).

Collaboration

Further, I probably should have found other people like me to study with.

The lone wolf approach was good for improving, but a few fellow four-eyes would probably have added an extra dimension (as it did for the group of illiterate 3rd world kids that learned genetics by themselves).

There was only one subject in which I took advantage of the group effect, philosophy, and there I achieved a perfect score on exactly everything.

These days, thanks to the internet, you can collaborate on anything with like-minded people, from open source programming with Linux to Samir Madani‘s OOTT oil analysis Twitter project.

Heat

I remember one final trick I applied; taking saunas regularly:

My family liked hot saunas, so I took a lot of those, including rolling in the snow in between (saunas are good for so many things I won’t bother to go through them; however there is a link in last week’s post you should read, if you’re interested in some serious self improvement).

I took saunas for pleasure, for pain (competing against myself or others), for when I had a fever (perhaps not fully advisable, but felt very good when shaking from cold).

No wonder I co-founded this floating sauna company

My hyperthermic stroke of genius was to add “studying in the sauna” to the list of uses: I brought my math, physics or chemistry books into the sauna, and forced myself to complete one more question, one more chapter, one more test (when going over tests from earlier years ahead of a larger examination) before being allowed out of the torturously hot sauna.

In a way my sauna math sessions amounted to going outside my comfort zone (as recommended by Anders Ericsson), albeit probably not in the most effective manner conceivable for math and physics… To be honest, I tended to focus more on being extremely comfortable with whatever we were supposed to know, as opposed to actually overreaching into areas I didn’t know.

Some ten years later, in 1998, I learned straight from the horse’s mouth, that the world’s foremost cross-country skier, for several years during the period 1984-1991, had simultaneously applied a similar tactic of seeking out the worst possible environment for training.

Just as Gunde Svan revelled in seeing rain, wind or other kinds of bad cross-country skiing weather on the morning of a competition, I knew I would always stay cool and focused with plenty of time to spare for checks, re-checks, triangulations (alternative solutions) and verifications. I was used to solving three full tests in a hot sauna in less time than I would get for just one test in an air conditioned and tempered room.

Moreover, I actually applied my knowledge, which is considered the final nail in the coffin for ignorance or poor memory:

I liked and needed to use formulas when coding, e.g., for natural jumping or breaking movements in a game. I liked reading books in English, and all my necessary computer literature was in English. Even if I didn’t care much for French, I made sure to read a few books in French to secure highest grade there too (a very natural conclusion after seeing how easy English became already after just reading “It” by Stephen King).

A similar approach is called immersion, e.g., going abroad to study a foreign language. Some schools currently experiment with local immersion emulation techniques.

So, that’s my specific high school experience of studying, but let’s summarize the general points and principles.

What’s wrong with school is that:

it doesn’t teach you how to learn (based on plasticity research), it only tells you what you should learn and then crudely tests and scores you on certain flat and dead facts that are easy to gauge
it doesn’t explicitly tell you to look up words you can’t define
it kills creativity, curiosity and questioning, by teaching only ‘the one truth’ in a machine like manner
it turns natural grit into hate of certain subjects, since temporary failure is treated as being ‘wrong, period’.
it focuses on rote learning, instead of research methods and searching, experimenting
the focus on forcing the same pace on everybody, kills enthusiasm in some, while ruining the potential in others as the latter have to move forward before building an adequately solid base
there is no sense of solving real and relevant problems, only abstract or ridiculous mathematical “problems”
it doesn’t inspire you to create, to seek out and solve problems, to help, to be an entrepreneur, to enjoy the process of being curious and to apply all your faculties in making the world better (just your vicinity or earth in its entirety), forwarding the fields of the big 5 technologies to solve the Big 5 challenges. Instead the focus is on making robots out of the students, to fit as workers in shrinking companies in a society that will look very differently once they are done with school
Among the worst of all, school makes you believe certain truths are set in stone, thus discouraging you from questioning. That is one of the reasons behind our economies being run by Keynesian madmen, since other theories have been discredited in favor of Keynes’ misinformed and misunderstood (mere) hypotheses.

Other tricks for learning would be gamification, as well as learning as a child. Children learn to walk, to speak etc. by an extreme application of broad perspective, trial and error, and fun. They simply play themselves to master a set of very difficult tasks. Grown-ups could just about replicate that, if we just dared failing more.

Older children gladly spend 100s or 1000s of hours to master computer games (while yet other groups of 3rd world children can learn biochemistry and genetics, in a foreign language, with no particular guidance, and just a computer [which was something they had never seen before] connected to the internet).

What school and parents should do is apply all the things I’ve mentioned in this article, including learning based on:

Motion/BDNF
Deep Work
Grit/Consistency
Sound Wall
Hyperthermic therapy
Spaced repetition
Defining words
Novelty
Overreaching (deliberate practice and temporary failure)
Curiosity/Application
Gamification
Not procrastinating (just do it right away)

Share these important lessons on how to learn

Apply: The reason I wrote this article is to encourage you to apply the above principles in your own life when acquiring interesting skills, or necessary knowledge for your line of work, investing, sport or other endeavors.

Dare: Not least I want you to see that the reason you’re sometimes discouraged to learn new things, is less because it’s hard, and more likely because school taught you that learning is boring and failing is bad.

Encourage: I also want to encourage you to forward this knowledge to younger people, perhaps your own children, and to authorities like teachers (who probably know this), and more importantly to the teachers’ bosses and relevant politicians.

How hard can it be? Consult on Blockchain/Bitcoin

Executive Summary: How to make money consulting on Bitcoin and Blockchain technology

Two steps: 1. Learn it, 2. Consult

Article length: 338 words

There is a way, do you have the will?

Hardly anybody knows anything about Blockchain.

That leaves huge room for you to make money.

If you’re reasonably intelligent and used to learning things quickly through deep focused work, you should read up on Bitcoin/Blockchain, package a convincing offer and start consulting. 20 hours of preparation is plenty in this context. Then you’ll learn enough to become a true expert over the following 100h.

I think most organisations, authorities and companies need (and want) to understand the technology. In addition, I’m certain they’ll soon start budgeting for training their employees.

So, what you need to do, if you want to make money and become an expert in a very hot area, despite lacking an education, is this:

Learn about Bitcoin. You could start by reading Princeton‘s recently released free text book on the subject (perhaps “Princeton” is enough to make you see this is a highly lucrative area, or soon will be)
Create a clean and fresh website, and demonstrate your knowledge (it will become clear after reading up on it)
Create a few template applications and offers, i.e., ideas of how and why your local start-ups, your multinational HQs, your municipal authorities, politicians, police etc. should use knowledge about the Blockchain technology (you should be able to do this after bullet 1. above)
Demonstrate a pedagogical streak, through extremely clear, as-to-a-child, infographs and examples, that scream to decision makers that they need to hire you to explain:
1. Why it is important
2. What you can use it for, or risks you want to avoid

There, free advice for you or that unemployed friend of yours (share the article!).

Consulting on Bitcoin is basically free money.

Have you signed up for my free newsletter yet? No? Do it now and get my e-book “The Retarded Hedge Fund Manager” for free.

Expelliamus – life lessons from an unlikely career path

Warning: this is a long one, 5300 words

Executive summary: The article deals with blows dealt, burdens carried, triumphs achieved and some of the most important lessons my unlikely educational and career path taught me.

For example:

Save your alcohol for when you want to drink
You decide where you fit in, but there is a time for charades and another for being yourself
Turn on your metacognition as soon as possible (I almost missed the chance)
Make sure you have a Plan B, then you can be spontaneous
Don’t let prejudice come in your way (like I almost did with economics)
Sleep and take care of your body
Deep Work – maintain and enhance your ability to focus and learn deeply and rapidly
Close calls are just that, “close”. Don’t let them shape you

If you aren’t really interested in the personal details behind the lessons, you can stop reading now. Unlike most of my articles, there aren’t any profound insights hidden deep in this article, just more or less inspiring anecdotes about my shortcomings and naivete. Mistakes you can and should avoid.

Tip: Sign up for my newsletter to get future articles about personal development, career, education, finance and technology for free (and my free eBook with my most important investment lessons)

Not interested? Try this article on how you can prosper from the coming era of robotics instead. Or, alternatively, this really cool article with 16 useful quotes. Guaranteed.

But first…

A few facts that make the picture more nuanced. I actually don’t want to come across as fully retarded or one-dimensional.

I’m complex. We all are, but it’s easy to forget.

I didn’t drink any alcohol or try tobacco until I turned 18, i.e. in 1990. A wager with my father. I definitely don’t have a drinking problem.

I thought exercise was for pre-computer era cavemen only, until I turned 13 and saw Rocky IV…

Now, at 44, I benchpress 140kg (309 lbs) and aim to increase that PB this year. And I run 2 miles (3.2 km) in 12 minutes as a warm-up before lifting weights.

I was bullied as a child, but actually didn’t really understand it until my 20s. I somehow thought the fighting and name-calling was normal. Mean, but normal.

I’m certain I have a (high functional) autism spectrum disorder, “Aspberger’s”. I only realized this a few years ago, first as a joke, but gradually more and more as fact.

I’m naturally contrarian… independent to a fault, but also inherently gullible (well, I was the latter. Not anymore)

I can be unbelievably oblivious to obvious phenomena, and stubbornly certain of “facts” most people miss. In that respect, I do bear a certain resemblance with Michael Burry in The Big Short.

I’m extremely risk avert, and extremely risk-tolerant at the same time. This one is just weird, as I take immense financial and physical risks at times, while acting as chicken little incarnate at others.

Patient – you have no idea how patient, and I’m only getting worse/better. Already as a teenager I was known to just wait idly for hours at whatever meeting point was decided or bus was supposed to come.

A shy exhibitionist…

Alright, enough, let’s get this story started. There are valuable lessons in here.

No (business) sense at all

I had no business going into business (finance) to begin with – and yet, it was the perfect match; obvious for everyone to see from middle school and onward.

Since I was 10, I made money programming, later lending money to class mates (hungry for sweets) at a steep interest rate. I was always good at math, and I loved counting money, loved stories about money… So, born to be an investment banker it seems.

And, yet, in middle school, I praised Sweden for making sure I could live off of welfare once school was out. That was my plan.

Who would have thought that weird kid with a northern accent, failing in school, wearing but a t-shirt in winter, always hurting himself (8 concussions) and a communist agenda would become a full blown libertarian and managing the European hedge fund of the decade? Still enjoying the occasional barefoot walk though.

Train wreck

Actually, I really had no business going into anything but natural sciences. I loved physics and chemistry, I was proficient at math, philosophy and logic, and held nothing but contempt for economics and similar social “sciencies”. I hadn’t even heard about the Stockholm School Of Economics until a few days before the application deadline.

Despite no business doing business, a few years later I graduated with flying colors, with a Masters in Business Administration and Financial Economics.

Actually not only should I never have applied (contempt, ignorance and lack of ambition, just ‘happened’ to get the perfect grades required for getting in), I should have been expelled…several times over.

All this ‘no business doing business’ business is of course meant ironically; apparently it was exactly what I was meant for

I was 18 when I commenced my first semester at SSE. I was 18 when I had my first taste of alcohol. It was a beautiful disaster, a train wreck in slow motion. Luckily I was both poor and cheap and thus only drank at home before going out, and had no habit of partying every weekend, just a few times per semester. Luckily, since…

At the prize ceremony after the hazings during the first week, I had to be restrained and carried out by six older students.

Another time I apparently decided to lock myself in one of the toilets overnight after a party to save time. I was quite unruly during class that day.

After a school pub, I woke up in a small outside air and water cabinet at a gas station some 20 miles from home, wearing a t-shirt in early winter and with surprisingly bloody jeans.

But the partying was only half the story, or a third. E.g., during the first year, I usually brought a sharp knife to school every day… for my loaf of bread and jar of honey, that I kept in my big jacket, for lunch and snacking during the day.

In Harry Potter, the spell “expelliarmus” disarms the opponent.

There is a new HP book coming out this spring. HP was close to not getting in, as well as expelled, himself.

Expelliamus

The final third was when I and my closest friends at SSE turned in an assignment to our female and feminist teacher in Management, with a seminude picture of Madonna, marked below, in a ‘romantic’ font in italics, with the word for “female teacher”.

Today, we would have been expelled no questions asked. And that would have been the end of it.

In 1990, however, questions were asked, all the way up to the head of the faculty of Management, as well as the dean of SSE. We got away with just a warning though, after I made the case that a male teacher would just have laughed at a Schwarzenegger picture from “Conan the barbarian” on his assignment.

So, what should have happened is this:

I should have been expelled from Sweden’s most prestigious school and had to start over somewhere else, probably studying to become a chemistry teacher in the small city of Uppsala (which I had given serious thought before going for SSE).

Given I had tried making cocaine from coca leaves when I was 17 (I liked chemistry and I had a stock of the right chemicals at home, as well as a bag of leaves), it’s not unreasonable to assume I could have become a real life Walter White (“Breaking Bad”) and probably done hard time sooner or later.

Instead, I soon realized I actually had decent grades already, despite doing my best to ruin my studies of the lowly subjects of economics and accounting. I’ve had to re-take one test… accounting 101. I just couldn’t get those debits and credits right in the t-accounts… They kept switching sides all the time.

Whatever wasn’t top notch would later disappear in the aggregation process to the final grades. And with a conscious effort in the key subject during the last semester, I aced it so hard I could hardly believe it myself, and thus got perfect grades from the school I had dissed so uncompromisingly during the first year.

Did I mention I used to sit at the very back of the auditorium, one level up where there were a few seats typically reserved for latecomers? Up there, I made childish signs that I showed to the lecturer… and threw airplanes at my fellow students from 15 feet up.

Talk about being “retarded” and wanting to ruin any prospects of “making it”.

I think I subconsciously protested against my decision to go to SSE, when the “right” choice obviously was physics at the Royal Institute Of Technology (which I actually also had applied to and been accepted to).

A thousand flaws, and only one right

One thing only saved me from day one:

I learned to read and write, to count and do math by myself, watching TV (clip below from the 1973 pedagogical children’s show) when I was 4 years old.

Math always came easy and I always “over studied”, thus making the next step almost too easy and so on and on. That meant that no matter how disinterested and slow to learn I was in “text subjects”, I had all the time in the world to master those too.

I did it mostly because I thought it looked more symmetrical with equal numbers on all subjects on my grades in secondary school (not to mention the few bucks my father gave me for every perfect score on a test [1 USD] or grade [5 USD each per year for subjects 1-10, and 50 USD each for subjects 11-17).

Street fighter

So, I was admitted to SSE. And once in, I wasn’t expelled, even if it was a close call. Consequently I never turned to meth cooking or did any hard time.

But I fought.

I fought in the streets, I fought at school. I fought in my neighborhood. I fought abroad. I tried not to, but there were always people attacking or challenging me.

I tried to back down, handing the victory to them verbally, but they almost always pursued.

Once, I got accused of wanting to be the “king of Vallby (my neighborhood). I said I was happy letting him keep his crown. He, however, was very eager to fight me over it, and started with a right kick to my left shoulder. That ended very badly. For him. My immediate response was a long, straight punch to (through) his larynx.

Fortunately, I almost always ended on top (except in middle school where there were always too many fighting me at the same time), sometimes plucking their teeth from my elbow afterward, or finishing them off with a series of knees to the, face peeling the flesh off their cheekbone, or with a straight punch to the back, or front (that does it quite nicely!), of the neck.

Blood, teeth, hair, flesh, naked bone, but never gouged eyes, broken bones or death. I had a code.

I don’t regret a single punch, kick, knee or elbow. They started it. One of my most hard-core principles is ahimsa=non violence. However, if you have other principles you’d like to use… Sure, we can do it your way.

Yup, no business doing business.

So, you see, I should have become a hacker (programming and selling games at the age of 10-12, remember? I also loved the movie “War Games” when it came out in 1983) or a drug cook, being my own crazy ass bodyguard.

And I graduated. Kind of.

I actually started working in spring 1994 as a broker’s assistant, before finishing my thesis. I finally got around to it two years later when an inner voice said “you may have your career cut out for you, but you don’t want to be a quitter“.

Mainly, I wanted that diploma, in order to go back to Argentina and marry the young girl I met after my stint as a mountain climber there (“andinista”; reaching the summit of Aconcagua, mountain of death, 6961m/22838ft), and still have a way back (Plan B) in case it didn’t work out.

Always have a plan B

She was the daughter of a shoe mogul, one of Argentina’s richest men, at least one of the top legitimate tax paying men, so as a bonus I could look forward to a life of relative leisure – which was tempting in my state of constant sleep deprivation.

Summit of Aconcagua – I wonder why so many amateurs die on that mountain

Now on to the real struggles

I studied at SSE 1990-1994, during which time Sweden experienced a deep financial crisis, with among other things all major banks at the verge of defaulting, and the national debt inflating out of control. Not unlike Greece these days.

In 1993 and 1994 I applied for jobs at the largest management consulting firms and investment banks, as well as a few other top notch jobs. Eventually, due to wanting to secure just about anything in the crisis, I went for a broker’s assistant employment at a third tier broker. After several interviews there I (barely) got it.

Phew.

Six months later, my test employment was up for review and possibly made into a real hire. The following words sealed my fate: “The others think you are a little weird and don’t really want you, but I think you could grow into this”.

And there it was, toward the end of 1994 I had secured a real full time employment with a salary of 14 000 SEK per month (20k USD per year), before Swedish taxes, no paid overtime or bonuses…

In parallel, I worked extra at my father’s business, making and translating technical manuals for pulp manufacturers and programming real time databases for the same.

Since the head broker stayed late, I did too, usually until 10-11 pm, and then I stayed some more – not seldom until midnight or later. Sometimes, after that, I had to head over to my father’s office to do some programming before going home to catch 3-4 hours of sleep.

I was in charge of the morning report and had to get in by 6-6:30 am to write it (based on Financial Times, the Lex column and some other sources nobody in Sweden seemed to read) and put it in the fax (1994-1995, remember? Very few had e-mail back then). Once I got the comment my report was the best in the market, it became sacred to me, which basically ensured I never got to sleep in.

Doing 110 on the financial freeway

A few weeks I hit 110 hours of logged work. My average was over 80. And we still squeezed in quite a few nights out on top of that. Many times I felt weak, shaky, right on the brink, but was more or less ordered out and about on weekdays – and still had to take care of my sacred morning report. A few times I slept just one hour or so in the staircase outside the office and went in together with security at 6 am. Later I got my own key and could sleep in the reception couch instead.

For a while I seriously considered moving to the office, and save my rent (approximately 10% of my wages before tax)

I didn’t know any better; I thought I would risk my job if I didn’t drink.

Don’t do what I did. Put quality before quantity.

Think about what’s actually reasonable, and ask outright what your priorities should be if you aren’t sure. Typically, drinking on weekdays is not requested or desired. I would have gained more respect and authority sooner, if I had been sober, slept more, performed better. So, decide explicitly who you are and what you prioritize to make it easier to stick to.

I didn’t

Among other stupid things…:

I didn’t take a single day of vacation during my first 18-20 months and I typically worked weekends.

I gave up martial arts and working out. Between 1990-1994 I used to work out 10-15 times a week.

I even broke up with my girlfriend the day before my first day at the job “I won’t have time for you anyway”.

I ate at McDonald’s three times a day (lunch was paid with food coupons that were included in my wages, after office hours dinner and late dinner were paid by the company). Soon I was pale and fat enough that my ten year older colleagues noted “You have given up, no question about it”.

During my first vacation, the Aconcagua expedition of Christmas 1995 I got even fatter. So, by the start of 1996, I was fat, pale, sleep deprived and bottom feeding in Swedish finance and with no graduation diploma. You could say I had exactly lived up to expectations set in middle school a dozen years earlier.

The turning point

Then, in early springtime 1996, I made a decision: I was going back to Vicky in Argentina.

What?!

Not what you expected, was it?

I got out of my chair several times, heading for the Managing Director to resign. In the end, however, I realized I had to have a plan B, before burning any bridges, and decided to finish my thesis and get that Masters diploma before buying a no-return ticket to Mendoza. In the meantime I got asked to consider a job as head of IT research at Sweden’s largest bank. Around the same time I got in shape for a TV show, learning a lot about dieting in the process.

The summer of 1996, much like that of 1994, was one of the best in several decades, with warm, dry weather – the perfect Swedish summer -both of them. But I never saw them apart from through the office (1994) and school (1996) windows, as I worked long hours or wrote my thesis.

I love summer. I love the sun. I love being outside. And the two best summers of my lifetime were completely wasted, spending myself futilely at a line of work I still didn’t understand and a worthless thesis.

Anyway, by the end of 1996 I had my diploma, I was back to lifting weights (albeit at half my previous weights), and I was the head of IT research at a big bank right at the start of the internet era.

A little less work, much less partying, and no 100+ hour work weeks

At Swedbank I reduced my workload to some 70-75 hours a week on average. Sure, during earnings season, I often worked past midnight, but I partied less and probably averaged 6 hours of sleep a night. Still too little of course, and I often longed for a normal job, normal hours, a full night’s sleep. Sometimes not even my evil and very loud alarm clock could wake me…

In addition to sleep deprivation I didn’t eat any fish whatsoever. Hardly any greens either. I lived off of cheap minced beef and pork chops. I had colds at least twice a year, often 4-5 times. My guess is my average daily intake of Omega-3 was less than one gram.

At least I started lifting weights again, first alone in the bank’s employee gym in the cellar. Later with a colleague and friend at a gym club. After 3-4 years at Swedbank I was pretty fit again and had a 110kg bench PB (243 lbs).

“Pretty good” compared to my broken down, sleep deprived drunken self a few years earlier that is. Pretty weak compared to now, 16 years later, when sleep and Omega-3 rich fish oil have helped me manage a 140kg bench press.

Anyway, by the year 2000 I had become a top ranked analyst, increased my income more than 10-fold, almost slept enough and “only” had 1-2 serious colds a year.

My tip to you is to make up your mind and prioritize. Decide what’s important to you and go after it. I just did a lot of things I were told or thought I was expected to do, without ever asking them, or me, what the end game was.

More tangibly I would advice you to practice deep work, to shut out the rest of the world, turn off all notifications for an hour or two once a day, and produce high quality intellectual work at the top of your ability. It will make you relaxed, fulfilled and amazingly productive at the same time. Everybody will respect you for it, and never think twice about why your e-mail turnaround time sometimes extends to several hours or days.

There are bad days, an there are bad days

Oh, before I forget, there was still room for the occasional crazy bender. Like that time by the end of 1999, when I woke up on a workday morning, in a small room with nothing but a thin plastic mattress.

Yes, the police station. With no keys and no watch it turned out when they released me. Eventually I found my way back to the crime scene of the night before, where both items were retrieved from a glass full of water. Thank you Omega for making the James Bond Seamaster so sturdy and waterproof.

Once I got to my apartment, I learned that one of my friendly neighbors had filed charges against me, and in addition would do his utmost to get me evicted. And, then, I dragged myself to the office, hoping I wouldn’t get fired. One thing kept me up that day, I knew that most of my anxiety was purely chemical with no real bearing on reality.

Not like other children

Well that thought was just about as f*** up as when I less than a year later crashed on a motor bike alone in the woods, bending my right knee sideways, thinking, while screaming my lungs out, that in due time nanotechnology would fix that knee perfectly. I actually had torn my right knee ACL 8 years earlier without knowing or checking. My days as a ninja had raised my pain threshold a bit… I didn’t check my knee this time either, despite limping severely for months.

Still not right in the head

I still suffered from chronic sleep deficit though. During my summer holidays I partied a lot and often slept far into the afternoon. I often took a break from working out as well and typically returned 20-25% weaker just a few weeks later.

Early in the year 2000, I was 27 years old, a top ranked analyst, and attended Swedbank’s key employee management program “Top 25”, or something like that. The final week was held at Wharton, Philadelphia. Despite all the hype, I just wanted to sleep, to stop burning my candle from both ends with 70-80 hour work weeks and client liquid dinners. I was thinking about downsizing, going back to my home town, perhaps get a 9-5 job as a bank teller. And sleep.

Then it happened. Something weird and unlikely. This burned out wreck of a 27-year old, who just wanted out, was suddenly hired by a hedge fund startup.

I decided to keep office hours in check, to sleep well, drink less and be fully focused on work while working. I thus finally planned to really work at the top of my ability.

Just one thing… I was interviewed twice that spring and made quite big headlines, making the bosses of my bosses to be consider not letting me start at all. Yup, that close of no retarded HF manager, just a retard. Again.

The first few months, I was like a machine. I worked exactly 12 hours a day on weekdays, from 7 am to 7 pm, completely focused on building the perfect excel models and learning as much as I could about the companies I covered. Every little detail I might have overlooked at the sell-side, I was now hell-bent on finding, understanding and putting into context.

After a while, I finally realized there are no perfect Excel models. And finding everything out isn’t optimal either (due to time constraints). I also gradually reduced my typical workweek toward 55 hours rather than 60. On the other hand more and more work sneaked home with me through cell phones and faster and faster internet connections. Almost every day I was on the phone, or reading earnings reports or monitoring the US stock market for several hours after leaving the office.

By and large, when I was made partner and portfolio manager in 2004, I was back to 70 hours a week on average. At least I managed to squeeze in 3-4 workout sessions a week but I hardly had time for anything else.

During the most intense years, let’s say 2004-2006, due to increased responsibilities as analyst, managing director and client responsible in addition to my main gig as portfolio manager my aging body took issue with the stress, long hours and amount of alcohol that went through the system. I decreased the number of weight lifting sessions from 4 a week to 3 a week, and started planning for backing down to 2/week. I thought I had peaked at 32 and the game was basically over.

And right there and then, my golden era started. I established a pattern of working 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, i.e. 50 hours a week at the office, and limited amounts of time from home (mainly during earnings seasons). Thanks to eating better (more fish and fish oil), I stopped getting several colds a year after 2006 (I haven’t had one since). I also increased the number of weight lifting sessions to 4/week and added a couple of hours of cardio each week.

The period 2006-2012 was truly amazing. We grew, I worked less but better, we hired several really good analysts, we won awards, I made a lot of money, and not least, remarkably my yearly colds just vanished. In addition I became a lot stronger, increasing my benchpress 1RM by 30%.

We were walking on water, but gradually I was losing my Deep Work routines. First I noticed I didn’t really learn as much as I used to. I also had trouble focusing in the hectic environment at the trading desk. I tried hiding behind my headphones, blasting very familiar gothic power ballads to drown out all else. It worked, but I still thought I had to respond quickly to e-mails, DMs and other calls. That made me distracted, as if all the meetings with clients, brokers, analysts, CEOs, presentations, board meetings, IT and admin meetings, accountant meetings didn’t already crave too much of my time.

I gradually lost my ability to focus, which morphed into an unwillingness to focus. I found it harder and harder to remember names, even inside my Dunbar number. Often the days just passed in a blur of non-productive reactive behavior. Only when I really had to get things done n time and with a certain quality, I made sure nothing could disturb me and I went deep for a few hours, increasing my productivity 10-fold. If I had only known about the framework of Deep Work back then. Now, I had an intuitive feeling for the concept, but not enough confidence to consistently benefit from it.

As an added burden the summer of 2012 was when Futuris lucky streak ended with the head of ECB, Draghi’s retarded “Whatever it takes” speech. Just about a year later we were back on track, but for various reasons were wrong-footed again.

Lacking the ability to focus, feeling I didn’t learn as much anymore, having central bankers and others push the fund around out of my control, I eventually lost my last appetite for the business toward the end of 2013.

What really did it in the end was the realization that there was almost no correlation whatsoever between my efforts and the outcome for the fund. Thus I longed for a situation where a certain input would more or less reliably render a desired output – at least on average and over time.

It’s almost ironic; I finally slept well, almost enough, even if I still had psychological scars from my earlier severe sleep deprivation and was looking forward to retirement with plenty of sleep and some calm and quiet. I made a lot of money (OK, not in 2013, but there was no reason not to expect more going forward). I had found a nice rhythm for my workout routine. And yet, I had all but decided to quit.

I quit

At our first Portfolio Managers’ strategy meeting for 2014, I said I’d better go first: “I quit”

When I said the words in January 2014, I felt a wave of relief. No regrets, no negative feelings at all, only relief and happiness. Maybe, just maybe the thought “I should have done this sooner” surfaced momentarily, but was quickly replaced by “No, this was just perfect”.

I agreed to stay on as just the managing director for about a year, to make the transition smooth, I started sleeping 7 hours a night, maybe even a little more. The biggest change, however, was not having to engage in the market chatter anymore. That freed up almost 50 hours a week for reading blogs and articles about self improvement and science. I studied Portuguese, French, Javascript, Python, math and even signed up for a Stanford course on AI (but quit after a few lessons).

That’s when Alexander and Mike (Cernovich) inspired me to start blogging for real in June/July 2014 at my previous site AlwaysBeBruceWayne.blogspot

And outside the office I built up a list of science podcasts that I listened to during my long walks in nature – sometimes barefoot, even below freezing. As of today I listen to over 20 podcasts regularly, every single show.

The articles are still there; and I often draw from them when writing new posts. Slowly I found my own center again and gradually realized all the profound insights I had accumulated during my 20 years in high finance. I’m still often surprised by the underlying quality there and the important thoughts I put down in writing in 2014.

All my struggles, all the hard work, all my mistakes, gullibility, all the flaws I exhibited between 1994 and 2014 now power me instead. During, it felt like my entire life, but after, it’s actually just 20 years, which really is nothing.

Summary

Phew!

That was a long way to say: “think through who you are, what you want to accomplish and the most effective path there”.

In short: don’t be me. But do keep reading me, in order to avoid my mistakes. Sign up for my free newsletter by providing your e-mail and you won’t miss a thing. You’ll get my most important investor lessons for free as well in my eBook “The Retarded Hedge Fund Manager”

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