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.

bitcoin

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:

  1. 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)
  2. Create a clean and fresh website, and demonstrate your knowledge (it will become clear after reading up on it)
  3. 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)
  4. 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.

Retard’s foreplay – sticky icky life advice

Foreplay

Executive summary: It’s all about living life and not being a dick

  • Don’t try to impress – live for you, not others
  • Life is a spectrum – not discrete points and precise solutions
  • Always be prototyping – you’re never ‘done’

Reading time: 20 minutes

However, I hope you’ll spend much more than that on it in total. There is more depth to it than might be obvious at first glance.

-foreplay or near dick experience (Greece 1991)


Why would you listen to my advice?

I come from a lower middle class family, with no contacts and no role models, born in a small town north of the polar circle, but eventually found myself in the upper echelons of European finance.

Then I quit, and transcended beyond conventional success.

I’ve experienced 8 concussions, 2 ACL ruptures, spent 2 hours on the summit of Aconcagua (6961 m / 22837 ft), received a physics award straight from the hands of the Swedish King, I was an honorary member of the Swedish Chemistry Association, I’ve received the award for the to date only European hedge fund of the decade, I’ve hitchhiked from Västerås to Marbella (the entire stretch of Europe) and back at the age of 17 (in 1989), been in numerous street fights, and I retired at the age of 41 with an 8-digit USD net worth (from negative between 19 and 24, and zero before that).

In short, I did it.

-Did what?

Lived. Hard and well; with grit, scars, material success, and eventually true progress and a deep sustainable and independent self-esteem and happiness.

I don’t pretend to know everything, or that my my experiences are translatable 1-to-1 to your situation. However, I think it would be worth the while just sneaking a peak at my solutions for development and personal success for inspiration.

Or are you worried about the Joneses across the street? Got a new car, did they? Perhaps diplomas, Whore City and the rat race is more for you then. As you were. 

 

Life after life?

Being fully retarded for over a year now, I’ve had time to think about purpose and pleasure in life after retirement. So, what do you do when you are financially independent and without obligations?

Short answer: Learning and sharing

Longer answer: Man is a pattern recognizer. We use it for collecting food and avoiding danger. We are wired for curiosity and finding pleasure in decoding patterns.

Man is also a social animal. We need others (though I seem to need people less than most).

Once I realized expensive things didn’t interest me, I explored myself in depth. It’s the result of that process that I want to share with you, hoping it will save you time and frustration, and make you a happier and truly more successful person – however you choose to define the latter.

In practice: I’m reading, listening, discussing, synthesizing information (pattern recognition), and then blogging and podding (social sharing) about my conclusions. Those activities lend structure as well as meaning to my otherwise fully retarded life.

 

Retard’s Playbook

In 2016, my big project is writing a book; a book for the lost generation, a life guide for people living in the aftermath of the cold war, for the post-Berlin Wall generation, for the iPhone and Snapchat generation.

Retard’s Playbook is a shortcut to wisdom for the app generation.

Retard’s Foreplay (today’s post) is a preview.

Without scars you didn’t live

 

Game changer

As far as I’m concerned, Retard’s Playbook will be the first thing I do. I expect it to be a game changer for anybody reading it, as well as for me writing it.

Below you’ll find just three of my favorite life heuristics, as well as a taste of my experiences that underlie them.

If this post doesn’t resonate with you, my book won’t either. Good to know.

Here are your short cuts to success and happiness:

 

Don’t be impressed or daunted

-Stop trying to impress. That’s living a second handed life for others, instead of knowing and being yourself.

When I was 7, I bicycled down a slide blindfolded to impress a group of older guys. For the price of one concussion, some blood and a scar in my forehead, I got nothing but a few mean laughs. Another time, I slipped when running and jumping from meter-sized rock to rock, suffered another concussion, blood loss and head scar, but this time purely for my own pleasure, and some heartfelt laughter together with friends. There’s a world of difference.

When I was in my teens and twenties I thought famous people were impressive, and I wanted to be famous too, for no particular reason. I just wanted to emulate their lifestyle, without a thought to what it would take to get there and what it really meant. I mindlessly bought the media hype regarding conventional success.

In addition I thought the top was unreachable. I was daunted and had no wish to even try. It took stumbling onto the scene of high-level money management to learn that overnight success often takes a lifetime of effort.

Remember this: A movie star, a hedge fund billionaire and a Fortune 500 business tycoon are all objectively impressive, but they are still only human. And they got to where they are by putting one foot in front of the other; investing, building one order of size on top of the other. It’s a question of priorities and grit more than anything else.

So, stop being impressed or afraid, and make your choice. Do you want it or don’t you? I’ve realized I don’t want it, and I’m definitely not interested in impressing anybody.

By the way, do you think Elon Musk is trying to impress anybody? He’s too occupied living his life.

A wolf has no business impressing sheep

When I was 21, I threw myself off a 9 meter cliff (30ft) in Spain, more or less realizing right before that the water was less than 3ft deep. However, I couldn’t back down… solely for the shame of it. My pride could have killed or paralyzed me there and then. And, yet, I still hadn’t quite learned my lesson.

Ten years later, I probably stayed in the hedge fund business -more for money, status and pride than anything else. The same thing happened with sports cars, as I worked myself through a BMW, a Porsche convertible, a Ferrari 360 convertible (yes, the one I bought from Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovich) and finally a bright (Midas) yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder (convertible)

Eventually I understood what was going on, and studied myself to find out what really made me tick when I wasn’t playing to the approval of others or chasing an ad agency’s idea of the perfect life. For me the answer was learning and teaching/sharing, for you probably something else.

Don’t make my mistakes. Or, by all means, do, but pay attention to your actual feelings regarding the outcome, and perhaps you’ll be able to change ways faster than I did.

 

Life is a spectrum, not a point

-life is a super positioned state of both black and white and all the grey in between, simultaneously. Just as in quantum mechanics, the truth is revealed by taking action, by the act of observing the outcome of an experiment.

how long is a piece of string?

There is never a final truth, a platonic ex ante truth. The answer to all questions vary from occasion to occasion and is decided ex post.

And, yet, A is A; i.e., it is what it is and nothing else – once it is decided. This seeming paradox illustrates the quantum nature of life. Everything and nothing is fixed – at the same time

How long should you stay in school, at a job you don’t like (Whore Village), with a partner you’re not passionate about? How much money do you need to retire? Do blondes have more fun? Are drugs bad for you? Is love all you need, or is it ‘laughter’? When and how much and how to rest, when to sow, when to reap?

First, you must realize there is no spoon; there is no definitive answer to any important question

Then you can start exploring the ever changing options in between yes and no. Often, in my opinion, the answer is “try”. Dare experimenting, unless trying involves a significant risk of unacceptable loss.

What is ‘unacceptable’? Well, I have this piece of string somewhere…

Quitting your job or relationship is not dangerous, does not involve unacceptable losses. On the contrary, staying put, dwelling in homeostasis all but guarantees wasting your life.

 

From one cityboy to another

Several years ago, I asked the author of Cityboy, Geraint Anderson, for advice on when to quit my job as a hedge fund manager. He told me to hang in there until staying two more years was more or less inconceivable, and then quit right away. So, I kept pushing a 30-month deadline ahead of me, until I in January 2014 just up and left*

*In practice I stayed on for another year, but only as the managing director with no investment responsibilities or partnership dividends. As a perverse turn of fate, the fund was unexpectedly decided to be closed down, starting in September 2014. 

What if I hadn’t quit? Had the fund been closed down with me in it? Then I wouldn’t have been the (voluntarily) Retarded Hedge Fund Manager, but the Dismissed Doofus instead. Not quite the same legacy, or ring to it for that matter.

So, take the proverbial fork in the road, i.e., explore both extremes when deciding. Say yes, take action**; say no, keep your integrity. However, don’t be gullible just because you are a yes:er.

Never fall for the “come on, dare say yes” lure. That is just not daring to say no, which is really, really bad. Superpositioned quantum spectrum of yes and no – it’s a bitch.

** As a general principle in itself, you should always take the active choice whenever there is a close call. The mind has a tendency to obsess over future possibilities and decisions, but also to adapt quickly to any outcome of a decision. Thus, regret is strongest for passivity, no matter the outcome.

Yes, you should

Another way to think about it is that you are responsible for the effort, but the outcome is out of your hands. The latter is also very important in its own right, not least regarding investment success. No matter how sound your reasoning and process, bad luck and black swans can ruin the result completely.

And, just for fun… that time I got lost in the darkness, when descending from the summit of Aconcagua (6 961 m / 22 837 ft). I decided to stay the night, alone, at 6000 m / 20k ft and sleep on the bare ground with nothing but my jacket to protect me. After a while, I realized, I was about to be slowly covered in snow not to mention freeze my face off. When I sat up, one leg went outside some unknown edge, and when I threw a rock in front of me, I never heard it bounce.

Now, that is taking unacceptable risk on the Mountain of Death.

As a final word, when I’m asked for career, relationship or education advice; “Should I do this or that…?“, my answer is typically, though somewhat camouflaged, “Yes, you should“.

 

Go west

Well, that, and a more general “Go west young man, and learn programming“. With programming I mean in the widest and most generous possible sense of the word: as a coordinator, hacker, designer, Photoshop, robot control, AI, h/w tinkering, Human-Computer interfaces, organic algorithms, stock trading; or just Java/python etc., not only for practical use but as a brain exercise.

My own programming experience consists of a high level of self-taught BASICS (incidentally on a Spectrum)and much lower level of hexadecimal and machine code at a young age, followed by varying efforts in Pascal, GPSS (master level), SQL, Excel macros etc, and much later and much more lazily and impatiently, Javascript, XML and a little Python.

I managed to make money from database programming, Excel macros and computer games programmed in BASIC (when I was 10-12 yo). I suspect it also helped me keep my first job as a broker’s assistant. Most importantly though, programming made me disciplined, patient, thorough, structured, logical, good at problem solving, gave me a solid language base, made me good at algebra, confident with symbolic representations and abstract reasoning.

Today, I’m too impatient, lazy and unmotivated to make a real effort in programming. At the same time, I’m a little afraid of being sucked in again, spending my days on optimizing algorithms for no good reason, except the beauty of it.

Again, both 1 and 0 and all the things in between. Superpositioned.

 

Always be prototyping

I’ll keep this one short.

You are never done.

There.

However… (I wasn’t done after all, it seems)

At a certain point I started taking my Spectrum computer apart more and more to explore its innards and perform experiments. For example, once I realized how the keyboard worked, I constructed my own joystick (hand control) from a golf ball, a hockey puck, an aluminium pipe, tin foil, lots of tin foil, glue and tape.

It was quite difficult to get every tiny detail right with just my hands and ordinary tools, and it kept glitching. Once everything worked, I was tempted to just pour a liter of glue or candle wax on top of the entire thing to be sure it stayed that way.

Luckily, my teenage brain was smart enough to realize what central planners don’t – things will always change, no matter how much you try to fix them. Actually, fixing prices in an economy or halting a stock exchange is sure to move real prices faster than ever before.

Instead of an irreversible and ultimately disastrous permanent glue fix (a tip: don’t sniff glue, which I’m sure Bernanke, Yellen, Draghi and Kuroda do all the time), I kept prototyping, learning, improving, back-tracking and treating my disemboweled computer as a living entity. Did I mention (my) life was a Spectrum? Sinclair ZX 48K to be precise.

Certainty is impossible (about the future, the economy, the stock exchange, the integrity of electrical connections underneath a glue fix). Hence, stay humble and keep prototyping.

Thus, don’t go for that ultimate fix, the perfect education or perfect job before starting your life. Take a few steps at a time, see how it feels, adjust and keep moving. That is, unless you positively know you want to waste your life becoming impressive and rich to really show off that you matter*

Unfortunately, chances are all you’ll succeed in doing is fixing yourself as a person of status and importance, underneath a thick layer of glue, making breathing and living all but impossible.

*sadly, ‘matter’ to everybody but yourself…

 

Enjoy the journey, celebrate each boss

I like to liken life to a computer game, where the incremental progress, including beating intermediary “bosses” to get to the next level, is more important and enjoyable than actually finishing off the ultimate “boss”.

If the only thing that matters is winning an olympic gold medal, becoming a Fortune 500 CEO or “the richest” most will fail. Even coming in second would be a failure with that mindset, whereas it would entail hundreds, if not thousands, of sweet victories with my life philosophy.

 

Final words

I had selected 27 snippets* from my book for this post, but I’ll just have to limit it to three I see now. Prototyping. Always.

*including, e.g., Your own speed, Independent not contrarian, Awareness, Strengthen your strengths, Convexity, IRL, Don’t “work hard play hard”, Invest, Walk, Know, Amygdala learning and decision making, Break, One prio, 5 whys, Don’t hate, Input & Inspiration not Motivation & Copy, and as always: “just one more”

 

The article you just read (or if you skipped to here) provides a glimpse behind the curtains of my current book project. Retard’s Playbook is my condensed psychological and philosophical practical insights into effectiveness, success and most of all happiness.

It could save you years, or decades even, of unnecessary regret and anxiety, not to mention a ton of money – both earned and spent :-)

What should you do right now?

  • Share this article and my website with a friend or your social network. Please. Thank you.
  • Subscribe to my newsletter. You won’t regret it (and the unsubscribe link is included in every e-mail)
  • Read my first eBook: The Retarded Hedge Fund Manager for inspiration on how to re-craft your life from a conventional one to bespoke.

Practice today’s three guidelines:

  • For you. Ask yourself: “Is this for me, or for somebody else, before buying, donning or doing something”, “Do I need to tell anybody about it for it to be worthwhile?”
  • Turn off the autopilot. Second guess at least one of your own automatic decisions this week. Maybe there is more than one answer. Be patient with others, think through their position before retorting harshly.
  • Redefine a project (diet, e.g.) you have going, into an enjoyable sustainable investment process without end, instead of a potentially unpleasant discrete project where a successful result is the only satisfactory outcome.
 
 
* The headline of this article warrants some explanation: sticky advice (I hope it’ll stay with you), icky (life is a superpositioned mess; embrace that fact), sticky icky (marijuana – always a click bait, plus signals I’m a libertarian: “legalize it”, where it=everything)

Hard made easy – channeling your inner Sprezzaturian

This article is a 25 minute primer of what this site is about. And a call for you to subscribe to my newsletter for more stories, inspiration and advice.

It’s more than that though. Even if you’ve read dozens of my articles, I’m sure you’ll find a few gems in this one too.

If you prefer Swedish, lyssna på mitt svenska program (podcast) “25 minuter” istället.

Premiär måndag 2 november 2015

 

Why should you listen to a retired money man?

In short: because I’ve been awarded the title The European Hedge Fund Manager Of The Decade, because I can bench press 140kg, because I haven’t had a cold in 9 years, because I have been royally laureled for my math and physics competence, because I retired financially independent at 41.

Because I did all this, despite being the odd one out, the bullied one, the one with no contacts or role models, the computer obsessed Aspberger child from Jukkasjärvi.

Because there is a method to my madness, that you can emulate for increased job and life satisfaction.


 

What would Batman Do?

Do you want to improve?

Then you’ve come to the right place.

Settle in for bite sized, albeit deep, advice and memes, to get you through the day, the years, and help you prosper and find meaning in life. My main goal is to show you how you can be happy and accomplished without being a total dick.

This particular article will give you an introduction to the entire site, so come back and explore the individual articles later, old and new.

Bookmark me for later, when you are in the mood for more tips, tricks, habits and mindsets that can keep you ahead of the pack and avoid being automated into joblessness and oblivion. I’ll even try to make you smile every now and then.

Would Batman give up, give in, have that snack, quit?”

 

Then why should you?!

 

Keep investing

At this site, mikaelsyding.com, you’ll find a wide range of articles about personal development, education, skills, career, futurism, happiness, health, philosophy, decision systems, weight lifting, nutrition, sleep, meditation and finance (some hard core, some more philosophical).

personal development

education

skills

career

futurism

happiness

health

philosophy

decision systems

weight lifting

nutrition

sleep

meditation

finance

If it all seems too chaotic, check out my structured archives and delve into your specific area of interest from there.

My main motto is to “Always Be Investing”. That means to be a constant learner, to always aim for a small step upward, forward, and enjoy the journey (which can turn out to be quite surprising, and you should let it be), rather than only find satisfaction in a certain, successful, outcome.

Don’t try to become rich. Don’t put the horse before the cart and waste your life doing something you hate, in order to buy stuff and possibly quit when you’re 40, 50, 60… Instead try to become better, while enjoying the process.

 

Always Be Investing

 

Hard Made Easy

Sprezzatura is the art of nonchalance, the practice of making difficult things seem like a piece of cake. Think James Bond – when, where and how did he acquire all those skills he seems born with (wine, politics, women, technology, gems, physics, chemistry, geography, martial arts)?

Life should be a fun, albeit challenging, ride; like a computer game, where you complete one level after the other.

Sometimes you have to make more of an effort to get through, sometimes it’s almost as if you see the Matrix and can control the game, just flowing through level after level. Life is like that too – if you keep an open mind, learn instead of hate, try new things without fear and let them go just as easily, to make room for new endeavors.

Do you want to join the rank of Sprezzaturians?

Of course you do. Sign up for my newsletter right away. You’ll get my eBook for free too. Try reading just one page, maybe two. Come on, just one, then forward it to your mother/friend or go ahead and share it with all your social media contacts :). It’s quite retarded.

 

Sprezzatura – Hard Made Easy

 

Please note how the guy to the left is carefully holding his espresso

 

Smorgasbord

Alright, here is a quick taste of what I can give you:

  • Aim low
    • whatever you do, break it down until the first step is ridiculously easy. Don’t aim for the moon or the tree tops. Aim for getting out of bed. Then, perhaps aim to walk up to the tree and touch the trunk, the first branch. Make that first thing so small you can’t not do it. Then do it.
  • Just one more
    • it’s often one more snack or cookie that gets done, but I’m talking about steps, about progress, about making it as easy as possible to exert yourself beyond what you thought possible. Aim for just one step, just the one. But right when that step is finished and you get to quit, make it a habit to think (and do), just one more, just one; that’s not too hard.
  • Live laterally
    • try new things, scary things, experiment with, e.g., 1% of your time. It will make life seems fuller and longer in retrospect, while swift, joyous and flowing in the now. Guaranteed mid-life crisis free. Oh, you’ll be smarter, learn faster and live longer too. Lateral living is the opposite of the debunked 10 000 hour-focus-on-one-thing-your-entire-life BS.
  • Sleep
    • with your feet outside the covers, outside the bed, never using the same pillow two nights in a row, red-adjusting your mobile screens or banning them altogether an hour before bed time, low-threshold meditating in bed for 10 seconds (beginner) to 10 minutes (master level)
  • Meditation – 10 seconds a day, or a week
    • how to for beginners: when going to bed, lie still on your back and go through your body parts mentally “one toe at a time, there it is, then the arch of the foot, the heel, the calves, the shins…”. Just do it for 10 seconds, or 20, whatever you like. With time you’ll like it more – but also fall asleep faster.
    • There are other easily accessible meditation techniques that don’t involve yoga, strange mantras, incense etc.
      • 1) just breathe – in through your nose, out through the mouth, focus on the act of breathing. Never mind stray thoughts; they’re okay, but go back to thinking about the breathing
      • 2) breathe with your abdomen (stomach), using your diaphragm
      • 3) do synchronized breathing with others
      • 4) power-breathing: a Johnny Drama pre-audition primal scream, or a more controlled kapalabhati breathing ahead of any kind of performance 
  • Managed life topology
    • don’t just focus on acquiring lateral skills, clever combinations of practical knowledge and experiences. In addition, hunt high and low, be cold, be hot, be comfortable, and get hurt, love and lose, get drunk or high and revel in your own misery the day after. Don’t go full retard Hangover but don’t hold all the punches either.
  • Challenge everything
    • trust nobody, do the math yourself, be independent. Every man is an island, his own nation.
  • Find yourself, know thyself
    • if you don’t know who you are, if you can’t cut through the noise of media, friends, neighbors and competitors and truly know your own inner feelings and drives, how can you be happy, be yourself, choose the right path? Don’t keep up with the Joneses, don’t keep up with anyone. Just follow your feelings and develop yourself to the next level, and the next, and the next.
  • Stupid stories
    • every now and then, I’ll tell you about that time:
      • I came four hours late (and hungover) to my first board meeting as the CEO of the European Hedge Fund Of The Decade
      • I publically advised Investor to sell its Ericsson and Astra shares at the top of the market in 1999
      • I recommended Buy the Virtual Reality company Prosolvia all the way down into its bankruptcy
      • When I kept yelling “Ola!” to SHB’s CEO “Per Boman” at an investor dinner in London. So what, three letters, typical Swedish name…
      • What really happened at the fund and in my head when the towers fell in New York on 9/11, 2001. When the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster hit and we timed our trades magically, netting me personally almost 2m USD in dividends from just a week’s trading.
      • That job interview when I was asked about a fiction role model and answered “Ford Prefect in the fifth part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy trilogy, when he jumps out the window of a high rise to keep the element of surprise on his side“. I didn’t get the job.
      • I ran out of gas in South Africa’s countryside – I’ve never been as tense in my life
      • I actually went on an all-inclusive Caribbean cruise for ten days without even having a ticket
      • I utterly destroyed two guys that attacked me – and other street fights
      • How I’ve had 8 concussions, actually forgetting my entire family for a day or two when I was 18. Wait, no, I was 17, but I had forgotten that too at the time due to blunt force trauma to the head.
      • Or “Knife Night” 1989, in a druggie shack made of drift wood in Amsterdam. Sarphaatistraat last number…
      • When I was sure I was being kidnapped and sold during a vacation in Napa Vaelly
      • When I was sure I was being kidnapped and sold in Thailand.. What? Wait a minute. Again?!
  • Finance: There will be some boring, but useful, finance talk too: how to forecast index movements, how to value a single stock, what’s wrong with the economy, how to build an investment portfolio, how much leverage (loans) you should use, where house prices are going etc.
    • A note of caution: I am naturally independent, a natural contrarian, maybe too much so for my own (and consequently your own) good
    • This memo by Howard Marks from last Thursday (October 24, 2015) is also representative of my thoughts on investments and risk; Nobody buys that stock anymore, everybody knows it’s a good investment (already)
  • Silly pictures
    • oh, I’ve got troves; there seems to be no end to how stupid I can look, not to mention the things I say or do sometimes (like that time in the line to the Star Wars premiere on Kungsgatan, Stockholm in 2005…)

 

That time in Visby, Gotland, at a political summit when I got caught on camera with a rhubarb umbrella:

A few years later I got caught by the cops too in Visby, and another year. Oh, 5-0 was involved yet another time. And another. And then there was that kerfuffle with fireworks in the shower and being thrown out of the hotel in the middle of the night…

 

  • Taking a loss
    • Losses are in the past. Period.
  • Technical analysis
    • Lines in a chart are not real
  • Smart and easy mobility tips – 2 minutes a week to keep you young
  • Happiness
    • I often point to the importance of fun, of flow, of happiness, of experiencing and enjoying life. Of being aware. Of really seeing, really feeling, really touching, taking the active choice. It can seem a bit new age at the surface, but I promise you, I am scientific to the core. However, I often leave the referencing to others. Like Eric Barker e.g.
    • And here are a few things I’ve said about happiness in the past: Wall of wisdom, and TED Happiness research
  • Expensive things
    • Yes, I bought Zlatan’s Ferrari convertible from him, and then a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo convertible, and a Hublot Big Bang Rose Gold
      • Then I learned they were just things – that needed maintenance, that could get stolen or vandalized. Try it, but be open to realizing it really isn’t as fun as you might think.

 

Summit of Aconcagua, 6959 m / 22 831 ft

In my underwear at the summit of Aconcagua, the highest peak outside Himalaya. There I am, keeping the element of surprise on my side, should any other struggling mountain climbers, Andinistas, make it to the top during the two full hours I camped there.

 

360 spin on Gotland Ring 2006 (I’m driving)

 

It’s all empirical

I’ve lived all my advice.

I’m 44 years old (in January 2016) and I’ve done a lot of good and bad things – from appearing on TV shows like Singled Out and Man O Man to being royally laureled by the Swedish King, in front of a massive crowd as the best math and physics student; acing the chemistry olympics organic chemistry test and not least winning the European Hedge Fund Of The Decade award (and the story that followed that night and morning…, which isn’t included in the eBook).

Some, if not most, of my lessons are backed up by science too, but I’m often sloppy with references, since I believe the ideas are more important than the authors. Anyway, I know I only internalize knowledge from reliable sources. It’s just too bad you can’t know that.

In addition, I think it’s more important that I did it all myself – including tearing both my ACLs without even seeing a doctor afterward. I’m a ninja, what can I say. No, really, I am a ninja. I’ve practiced Tae Kwon Do and Kickboxing as well, and pumped some iron (benching 310 lbs = 140kg).

Bench press 140.3 kg (309 lbs)

 

When it rains it pours

In essence, you just hit the mother lode, so make sure to stick around. Start with subscribing to my newsletter, and if you know Swedish, listen to my podcast “25 minuter”.

There is so much more useful, practical and plainly presented, already written here, and orders of magnitude more planned for the future. One eBook is done and ready – it’s ugly and retarded, but fun and useful. Kind of like myself.

Another book is in the works, Retard’s Playbook: i deals with Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Public Address, Private Address, Having Fun, Zen (not least the Yogi Berra kind), Workout Methods, Why The In Between Is Most Interesting, The Power Of Tautologies, Books, How To Become An Investor, The Importance Of Walking And Brain Plasticity, Omega-3, Beliefs, Principles and on and on…

Yep, you’ll find it all here. From broccoli to BDNF and brain plasticity.

Did I mention I went from three colds a year to none in 9 years? That’s 27 saved weeks of fever, sniffling and general misery. I managed to increase my workout tolerance and my Personal Best Lifts too. Find out how right here.

 

Health in a bottle: Omega-3 fish oil with oleocanthal-rich olive oil from Arctic Med

 

As if the blog and the eBooks weren’t enough, I keep appearing in radio and TV shows, not to mention my own show: “25 minuter”, which is in… Swedish! Premiär 2 november, 2015.

My show, too, strictly follows a no bullshit rule, and focus on practical, actionable advice, albeit with some fun every now and then.

 

 

Is rich, strong, healthy, smart, laid back, successful and efficient, yet deep, something you might be interested in?

Then, be all you can be, by taking one baby step at a time, laughing at how silly and easy it is, celebrating every little victory, knowing the journey is the destination.

Take the fork in the road, end up in the direction you’re heading. Don’t play chess with pigeons…

Oct 25, 2015

Say after me: “Tsuyoku Naritai!”, and I’ll help you navigate around the worst and most unnecessary pitfalls and point you in the direction of personal development, of investing in yourself, for yourself.

 

Tsuyoku Naritai

 

Now, how about that e-mail address? You can unsubscribe at any time, and you’ll still keep your copy of “The Retarded Hedge Fund Manager”.