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Creators and Assemblers
I had tea with my friend Joey the Cat today. He’s the number one ranked skeeball player in the US and has a small skeeball empire of his own, refurbishing machines, and then renting them out or reselling them. He told me about a skeeball trailer he made– two skeeball lanes that you can pull…
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Two New Bloggers on SETT!
I can’t tell you how excited I am to share this news. As some of you may have already noticed, there are two more blogs on SETT, bringing the count to four. As I’ve mentioned before, I only read about four blogs regularly. One of those is Sebastian Marshall, which is why I’m especially proud…
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Tynan vs. the Peruvian Andes
A couple months ago I was minding my own business, reading a book, about to go to sleep. I give twitter one last check on my phone and see a message from my friend Jenna telling me of a deal to go to Lima, Peru for $380 round trip. I have no particular reason to…
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What Shape are You?
This post is a guest post from my friend Brian Sharp My post before this was a kind of therapy / Buddhism / personal growth kind of deal, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about how to run effective teams and to be a responsible, thoughtful manager of people. It is my…
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Where the Line Is
When you’re doing something hard, the effort curve looks something like a bell curve. At first, as you’re dabbling in it, you don’t put in much effort. Then it progressively gets harder and harder until you finally reach that peak. That’s when you “make it” and things start to get a little easier. But we…
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Beating Someone at His Own Game
As babies we learn through imitation. We use our unrefined motor control skills to mimic what our parents do, and eventually with enough practice, most of us master the basics like eating and speaking. The problem is that many people stay in this imitation phase for their whole lives, always having someone that they’re trying…
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The Most Valuable Day
I slept in until eleven thirty today. Three months ago that would qualify as an early morning, but I”ve shifted to becoming an early riser, and now that feels late. Usually I have my writing done by twelve, but it’s one thirty now, and I’m still working on the second sentence. Okay, third now. I…
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The Hustler’s MBA
I’ve been saying that college is obsolete for a very long time. I dropped out in 2000, because even back then I could see that it was a really poor value proposition. I didn’t predict this because I’m some crazy genius, but because I’m willing to discard emotional attachment and stare plainly at the facts.…
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Nine out of Ten
Eight years ago, I lived in a house that we called Project Hollywood. A group of the four best pickup artists in the world– and me– rented out Dean Martin’s old house on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles. This was a big deal in the pickup community, and it spawned clones all over the world.…
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Strengths and Weaknesses
Something I wrestle with from time to time is whether to focus on my strengths or my weaknesses. On one hand, weaknesses often represent the lowest hanging fruit. If I’m really bad at, say, programming, a small amount of effort can radically increase my abilities. If I was excellent at programming, that same amount of…
