Jacob Darkley

Technology and investing

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Mark Manson was right when he said:

“Beware: learning more is a smart person’s favorite form of procrastination.”

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

“The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.”

— Aristotle

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

you wrote an 87-word email. the point was in the last 6 words. the reader gave up before they got there.

in 1963, Barbara Minto joined McKinsey as their first female MBA. she noticed every consultant buried the answer on the last page. she flipped it.

answer first. reasons second. proof third.

McKinsey made it mandatory. Amazon adopted it. Google teaches it. 40 years later, almost nobody outside these firms has heard of it.

I turned her method into 4 Claude prompts:

→ prompt 1: paste your messy draft, get a clean pyramid back
→ prompt 2: write a 4-sentence opener that makes the reader lean in
→ prompt 3: stress-test your logic for gaps and overlaps
→ prompt 4: a simulated CEO grades if they'd act on it or ignore it

the gap isn't talent. it's a method from 1985 nobody uses.

all 4 prompts in this article. rewrite one email tonight.

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@nerdalert Weakened, but the big negativity now looks like a trough we may recover from. But long term the company is much less likely to 10x than I was expecting 6-12 months ago believing it was farther ahead.

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@alojohhardcore Man Oracle sub-$120 is looking very attractive right now too

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“The longer you stay on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get home.”

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@Jonomac83 @alojohhardcore https://t.co/sISTaZu13C

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“Your future is shaped by the habits you repeat, not the goals you set.”

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Underrated life advice: A good life is built by simply doing uncomfortable things sooner. The delayed conversation gets harder. The ignored problem gets bigger. The small repair gets more expensive. Peace is never found through avoidance. It’s found through direct early action.

[Matt Stockton @mstockton]

This is truly my top point of advice for people trying to level up their usage of LLMs. They are *very* good at understanding your semi-coherent thoughts. Particularly when you ask them to *ask you questions* about those thoughts.

It is weird for lots of people to yell at their computers, but typing things is like morse code for the brain - you are losing valuable signal. Just yell things.

If you are skeptical:
1. Go for a walk
2. Turn on a voice memo
3. Talk about the thing you need to do. Talk exhaustively. When you think you are done, keep talking. 10 minutes is probably good.
4. Send it to your computer and transcribe it
5. Copy the text
6. Open your AI. Type "Ask me questions about this idea exhaustively until you know exactly how you can help me do the thing": <transcript>

If you actually do this, and it doesn't work for you, please reply with how it failed. If you are cynical about doing this or think it wont work, please do not reply until you have actually tried it.

[Anant Jain @anantjainxyz]

For as long as I can remember, I've kept a recurring 45-minute block on my personal calendar titled "Chew glass" to force me to get through things I don't want to do.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

One pattern I find useful for working with LLMs is a nice long ramble session. Sometimes the LLM needs more bits to understand what you're trying to achieve, but you're too lazy to type them. In these cases I like to lean back, switch to /voice and just ramble for like 10 minutes, total mess, anything goes, full stream of consciousness. Sometimes I declare it up top, something like "switching to speech recognition sorry for any typos...". Sometimes I turn it into a small interview of a few turns. But I find that the LLMs are somehow very good at reconstructing long incoherent rambles and often their echo of your own tangle of thoughts comes out quite a bit cleaner than what you started with. The result is that you improve the mind meld and have to correct things less from that point on.

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@alojohhardcore @Barchart Weird it's not even in their supposed top 10

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@alojohhardcore K perfect, thanks

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@andreasvl @alojohhardcore Yeah for a company with such clear reads on medium-term revenue

[Jacob Darkley @jldarkley]

@alojohhardcore I'm not finding the first two (just checked X for the first time today). If you deleted the first one, the which seemed wrong but was right, could you post it again please?

[CapexAndChill @CapexAndChill]

Dorsey flipped his portfolio weighting to heavily prioritize management, and mentioned why Buffett's famous quote about buying businesses an idiot can run causes investors more harm than good.

I think this is 100% correct. Unless the business you own has an absolutely unassailable moat (there are not many and they all sell for a sky-high premium), the long-term value is mostly tied to management’s execution.

[No filter Skin @NoFilterSkin]

HOW TO RAISE SIBLINGS WHO ACTUALLY LIKE EACH OTHER.

By age, from a mother who grew up in a rivalry and refused to host one:

1. Ages 3 to 6:

[Kpaxs @Kpaxs]

When you lack a strong opinion of yourself, you become overly dependent on validation.

You need others to confirm what you cannot confirm internally. Compliments become emotional oxygen. Approval becomes addictive. Disapproval becomes devastating. You may end up performing constantly, shaping your personality around what earns acceptance rather than what reflects truth.

And doing so, you abandon your distinctiveness. To avoid disapproval, you smooth out the edges that make you unique. You become more acceptable, perhaps, but less real. Many people become socially palatable at the cost of becoming inwardly disconnected from themselves.

You end up living defensively rather than purposefully.