What I Am Reading
Why the ‘paradox mindset’ is the key to success
Although paradoxes often trip us up, embracing contradictory ideas may actually be the secret to creativity and leadership.
Revealed: British accents are the world’s sexiest
Sorry, France: in our latest global survey, accents from the UK swept the world off their feet
Why Do We See Dead People?
Humans have always sensed the ghosts of loved ones. It’s only in the last century that we convinced ourselves this was a problem
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With wellness rituals and techniques like yoga and meditation in the mainstream, almost everyone is aware to some level that mindful breathing is a healthy practice. But what if a simple, straightforward breathing technique could significantly impact your health and even heal an injury?
Ever heard of Wim Hof? At this point, probably so. He’s risked life and limb multiple times to set records, usually involving ice: longest time swimming in icy waters, longest time in direct, full-body contact with ice (yes, that’s essentially being buried up to your chin in ice), fastest half-marathon running barefoot on, you guessed it, ice. He’s also done a few mountain climbs in nothing but shorts and shoes, and in an unusual break from his more polar pursuits, he once ran a marathon… in the desert… without water… and rehydrated afterwards with beer.
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What I Am Reading
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.
The Science of Wisdom
As it turns out, wisdom doesn’t vary only between people who read about hypothetical scenarios in a laboratory. Even the same person typically shows substantial variability over time. Several years back, researchers asked a group of Berliners to report their most challenging personal issue. Participants also reported how they reasoned about each challenge, including meta-cognitive strategies similar to those described above. When inspecting the results, scholars observed a peculiar pattern: for most characteristics, there was more variability within the same person over time than there was between people. In short, wisdom was highly variable from one situation to the next. The variability also followed systematic rules. It heightened when participants focused on close others and work colleagues, compared with cases when participants focused solely on themselves.
These studies reveal a certain irony: in those situations where we might care the most about behaving wisely, we’re least likely to do so. Is there a way to use evidence-based insights to counter this tendency?
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When most business owners hear “taxes” they either stop paying attention or only think about how much in taxes they’re going to owe. However, Research & Development (R&D) Tax Credits are something every entrepreneur & existing business owner MUST understand and utilize. Many expenses that qualify for R&D Tax Credits are expenditures that your business is already encountering which you may not be capitalizing on. Having a thorough understanding of the following rules & ideas can save your business a lot of money each year in taxes.
Let’s start by understanding the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. Tax credits are more valuable because they are a dollar for dollar offset of a tax liability. In contrast, a tax deduction simply reduces your taxable income before the tax rate is applied. A tax credit directly reduces your tax liability in the amount of the credit, whereas a tax deduction only reduces a portion (your tax rate) of your tax liability. Because certain R&D costs are treated as a tax credit rather than a tax deduction, the tax savings are much larger for your business.
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“A small clinical study in California has suggested for the first time that it might be possible to reverse the body’s epigenetic clock, which measures a person’s biological age.”
“I suspect that some meditative or religious practices which extoll the virtue of acknowledging only the present tense, or accepting our fate, might help reduce stress by attenuating our sensitivity to uncertainty,” he says. “Since uncertainty is about what’s going to happen in the future, if you’re completely absorbed in the present, then it seems likely that uncertainty will impact your stress less.”
A cell phone power source that lasts nine years. An auto-battery pack that lasts nearly a century. A pacemaker that is powered to last 28,000 years. These surreal claims are being made by a California-based battery company that says successful early test results recently competed on a nano-diamond battery brings them closer to realizing such claims.
The key to their revolutionary batteries is radioactive nuclear waste. There are massive quantities of leftover nuclear waste from nuclear plant facilities. Such waste is extremely toxic, lasts thousands of years, and poses a challenge when it comes to disposing of it (burying and encasing it) safely.
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411Rx’s RxChat allows you to find and compare pricing of any prescription drug at your local or online pharmacy and receive free money saving coupons which can be redeemed for huge discounts either with or without insurance benefits.
MIAMI, FL. – September 23rd, 2020 – 411Rx, the maker of automated healthcare software solutions, today launched an intelligent Chatbot prescription drug price comparison and saving tool, RxChat, as part of the company’s continuing efforts to help all American consumers find the best priced prescription drugs at their favorite local or online pharmacies.
Whether it’s a daily fitness log, an all-purpose bullet journal, or a traditional “Dear Diary,” there’s no doubt that journaling is a fashionable habit these days.
Personally, I started journaling in 2013, having read about it on a self-help blog that I can’t now recall (maybe Tim Ferris?) and I haven’t missed a day since then.
When I tell my friends and colleagues about my journaling habit, they usually ask what the point is. Did I want to meet some goal, achieve some benefit, hit some benchmark? Ironically, I didn’t start journaling as a means to any kind of end - I just wanted to see where it would take me.
There are a lot of different approaches to journaling, and different things work well for different people. Over time, I’ve found a method that works perfectly for me. Here’s what I do.
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What I Am Reading:
Comfort Is The Silent Killer Of Your Happiness
My motto is to always make myself uncomfortable. This article explains why a lot more eloquently than I ever have been able to. Things you’ll learn:The Nasty Things Comfort Does To UsYou’re Robbing Your Kids Of What They Need Most
Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity
Two millennia after Seneca admonished against how living with haste and expectancy constricts our lives and more than half a century before Hermann Hesse made his case for the most important habit in living with presence, Emerson writes:
“Life goes headlong. Each of us is always to be found hurrying headlong in the chase of some fact, hunted by some fear or command behind us. Suddenly we meet a friend. We pause. Our hurry & embarrassment look ridiculous. Now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of our own heart until it supersedes sun & moon & solar system in its expanding immensity. The moment is all, in all noble relations.”
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Throughout my professional career, I’ve worked hard to stay aware of technology trends & changes. My first gig in college was working for a blog publishing website – well before anyone even knew what a blog was! Since that day, I’ve been involved in many entrepreneurial tech ventures that both increased my awareness & improved my ability to evaluate opportunities. 5G Networks are a major real estate opportunity that landlords are currently overlooking and need to capitalize on.
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You’re more likely to be struck by lightning. You’re more likely to be eaten by sharks. You’re more likely to score a royal flush in your first hand of poker. And on and on it goes. Basically, it’s scientifically proven that playing the lottery is a waste of money. So... why do it?
Every week, I play the lottery, and I have for years. I don’t plan on breaking this habit, either, even though I know that it’s essentially statistically impossible for me to win, and so the $2 I spend is a loss from the get-go. I’ve gotten some strange looks from friends and others when they find out I play or notice the tickets in my wallet. People are often surprised, and in some cases, disapproving-- playing the lottery has something of a taboo about it!
But for me, it’s not about the odds that I might not win-- it’s about the fact that I definitely can’t win if I don’t play. Let me explain ….
What I Am Reading:
GPT-3 Generates Hype in Closed Beta
Open AI’s language model can do things like write computer code from a simple description given to it by a human or generate a thought leadership essay on a particular topic (no matter how esoteric). This is the most exciting and incredible technology I have seen in decades. Some of the things I have seen people do with it are truly incredible!
What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s - The Coinbase Blog
This article was written in January and we are now 8 months into 2020. It’s interesting to see how much of Brian Armstrog’s predictions actually came true as Bitcoin breaks the $10K barrier.
The Ability to Regulate Your Emotions is Quickly Becoming The Premier Skill of The 21st Century
When I am asked about what traits I am looking for in a founder the most important one for me is emotional fortitude. Excerpt: “When something happens, our brain’s automatic response is to be reactive. When our amygdala, the small part of our brain that regulates fight or flight is set off, we have to avoid taking the bait of our raw emotional reactions that make us want to overreact,” Kris says.
As a real estate investor and developer, I have learned that every dollar counts. Development budgets are tight and the returns on any deal are impacted by every decision. One often overlooked is the potential tax savings and planning opportunities available for a transaction. There is no better tax-saving opportunity for an investor than a Cost Segregation Study. Most investors do not fully understand the benefits of a Cost Segregation Study, and it’s amazing how few tax professionals are aware of this opportunity.
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Big thanks to the team at Entre and host Jimmy Douloumbakas for having an almost 1.5 HOUR Founders Series fireside chat.
Founder Fridays Interview Series w/ Shane Neman – 4-time founder, investor, and an all-around great guy. We discussed startups, tech, family, and the struggles of entrepreneurship. This is a great interview with a wealth of knowledge.
Once thought to be an arcane pastime for the socially awkward, coding is growing in popularity- among professionals, hobbyists, and increasingly, among educators. Teachers and educational professionals now posit that it’s essential to teach kids about algorithms, programming, and the big boss of all successful human endeavors: logical, sequential thinking. Furthermore, teachers and parents say that girls in particular need to be encouraged and included in STEM fields, where they often face systemic bias.
I’ve been teaching my 6-year-old daughter about coding for a while now, and it’s been super rewarding. Learning to code may not be immediately appealing to kids - it wasn’t to Olivia - but after getting past the feeling that it was uninteresting and/or “work,” she has warmed up to it. Both of us are learning a lot. Of course, at the age of six, she’s not writing “real” code, but rather doing activities that simulate coding.
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What I Am Reading:
"Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's much more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to be constantly doing things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy. Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one."
I do my best thinking and memorizing while pacing back and forth. This finally explains why!
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Had a blast talking to the gracious host of the Miami Real Estate PodCast Omar De Windt from Cervera for almost an hour about:
✅ Being an Entrepreneur in NYC for almost 20 years
✅ Why I decided to move my home and company outside of NYC
✅ The logistical process of moving to Miami and going through a tough residency audit
✅ What the personal benefits of living in South Florida are and why I don’t regret one minute of moving
✅ My Predictions for NYC and Miami in the Next 10 years
✅ Why it completely sucks to be a startup entrepreneur
#Miami #NYC #RealEstate #Startups #Investing #VentureCapital #EntrepreneurLife #NemanVentures
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My experience in the nightlife industry while developing JoonBug showed me that every new opportunity has two sides - one that complements the status quo, and the other that opens up avenues for innovation. I see Opportunity Zones as the perfect example, because while most entrepreneurs are focused on the tax cuts offered by the program, there is also a way for businesses to earn multiple benefits by becoming the cornerstone of the initiative, relocating or re-focusing their business to these Opportunity Zones.
Opportunity Zones (OZs) are a novelty, introduced barely more than two years ago back in December of 2017 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But they’re also well-known in the sense of being a good idea turned utterly convoluted by heaps and heaps of limitations, exceptions and requirements. In fact, some say that merely understanding the inner workings of the opportunity zones mechanism is the biggest barrier for entry.
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What I Am Reading:
The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
A few months ago I wrote about Donald Hoffman’s Interview on Sam Harris’ PODCast. I had watched his TED Talk and was fascinated by his Interface Theory of Perception. Well now he’s written a book about how Darwinian Natural Selection has actually not selected for us to perceive objective reality as it truly is, but rather has shaped our perceptions as an interface that abstracts away the complexities of whatever the objective reality is. Instead of perceiving the true nature of reality, we perceive everything as icons that give us cues about fitness payoffs in our interface. I’ve drank the kool aid on this one. This book will 🤯.
The Playing Field - Graham Duncan’s Blog
During these uncertain financial times, fear reigns on the markets and investors. This article gave me some great insights on how I should be thinking and acting by breaking down the different levels of investors from the Apprentice to the Expert to the Professional and finally, to the Master. Get to know what it takes to up your investing game and act accordingly.
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I would’ve never imagined that dreaded obligatory rituals and traditions from childhood would become self chosen regular practices in my adulthood. High holiday prayers set me up for meditating and the annual Yom Kippur, or “Day of Atonement,” would be my first introduction into fasting. In Judaism, during the most holy day of the year we ask God for forgiveness and as a way of repenting for our sins, we abstain from food for an entire day. Needless to say, I really did not look forward to the day of “no eating” growing up. I now welcome regular fasting into my life, albeit the reason has nothing to do with soul cleansing or repentance. The day I struggled with for almost four decades of my life has now become something I do regularly with eagerness for the breaks it gives my body and mind from eating or even thinking about food. My fasting practices have evolved over the last couple of years depending on current routines or personal goals and can range from intermittent fasting to water fasts, all for different periods of time. Let me dive into some of their awesome benefits, the drastic ways it has changed my health, and the different types of fasting out there.
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"It’s not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" is one of those quintessential expressions we grow up being taught to live our life by from a young age. And that’s true for Little League and most amateur sports, which is in fact who the sports poet Grantland Ricef was addressing when he wrote what would become one of the most famous aphorisms of all time. In all aspects of competition “how you play the game,” should of course always be conducted with good ethics and morals, honor, and integrity. Sportsmanship aside though, winning matters. As you get older and graduate from the minors to big league, winning becomes essential with real situations in your life and career. With big wins you can take care for your family, rise the ranks at work, or accelerate your own company to new heights. Contrary to popular belief however, competition does not mean there is only one winner. Often in business competition is desirable and necessary to drive growth so that everyone wins.
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