taborheights

[rayane 𓃮 @EsotericaHQ]

People don't understand the mindset of a self-directed man. He understands that the fastest way to upgrade his life is to master the life he already has. He does his current work conscientiously, no matter how small, boring, or unrewarding it might be. He knows that before he can ascend to a greater position, he must first master the one he's in. He is willing to overdeliver. he concentrates fully on what is in front of him. He never allows his environment to dictate his thoughts. He protects his inner world because he understands that his mind is the cause and his reality is the effect. He operates from abundance instead of survival. He doesn't compete for a limited share. he creates value and adds to the whole. He understands that his desire to become more is a reason to develop the capacity to become more. He doesn't wait for the stars to align. he masters what is in front of him today. Few people truly understand this mindset. This is the type of mindset that allows a man to transcend his current circumstances.

[Grat @PersonGratt]

Jordan Belfort finally explained what “Sell me this pen” really tests, and most salespeople fail it in 1 sentence.

The moment they hear the line, they start pitching. The pen is great, it writes upside down, it’s the best value for the money. To Belfort, that’s the clearest sign someone doesn’t understand selling.

The right answer doesn’t mention the pen at all, at least not at first.

A fan in the audience asks Belfort to sell the pen. He jokes that no one has ever asked him that before, then explains what the test is really for: before you pitch anything, you ask questions. How long have you been in the market for a pen? What have you used before? Is it for business or personal? How much do you usually spend?

Pitching without asking, Belfort says, tells the buyer you don’t give a shit about them. You’re just ramming the product down their throat.

The questions also tell Belfort who to walk away from. If someone says they’re not looking for a pen, he says “Great, have a nice day” and moves on. To him, the biggest rookie mistake is trying to sell to everybody.

Only then does Belfort pitch: “Based on what you said to me, this pen is perfect. Let me tell you why.” And the pen, he says, is just a stand-in for any product.

Rookies sell the pen. Pros sell what you just told them.

Be honest: would you have pitched the pen, or asked the first question?

[Puma @pumamethod]

Miyamoto Musashi fought 61 duels to the death and never lost. not once. in 61 fights where the loser died, he survived every single one. he is considered the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. he wrote The Book of Five Rings, which is still required reading at Japanese military academies and Western business schools 400 years later. he practiced strict celibacy for the majority of his adult life.

Musashi lived as a ronin (a masterless samurai) from age 13 to his death at 62. the ronin life was deliberate isolation: no lord, no wife, no home, no possessions beyond his swords and his clothing. the isolation was not poverty. it was design. he stripped every attachment from his life so that nothing competed with the sword for his energy, his attention, or his fear.

he wrote in The Book of Five Rings: "do not pursue the taste of good food. do not hold onto needs you no longer have. do not collect weapons beyond what is useful. do not fear death." the philosophy is a complete system of energy conservation. every impulse that does not serve the sword is eliminated. sexual energy is the most powerful impulse and therefore the most important to redirect.

his final duel, against Sasaki Kojiro (considered the second greatest swordsman alive), was fought on a small island. Musashi arrived late to disrupt Kojiro's composure. he had carved a wooden sword from an oar on the boat ride over. he defeated the greatest swordsman in Japan with a weapon he made from a boat part in 20 minutes because his preparation wasn't in the sword. it was in the 30 years of energy conservation that preceded the moment.

the Japanese concept of "mushin" (no mind) describes the state a warrior enters when the conscious mind is eliminated and the body moves from instinct and training alone. Musashi described this state as accessible only when the body's energy is undivided. sexual release divides the energy. the divided warrior reaches mushin less often and less deeply. the undivided warrior lives there.

61 duels. zero losses. the greatest combat record in samurai history was produced by a man who lived without sex, without a home, without possessions, and without a single attachment that competed with the single purpose his energy was directed toward. the sword received everything. everything else received nothing. the results speak for 400 years.

the man who fought 61 fights to the death and won every single one didn't just practice better technique. he practiced a stricter energy discipline than anyone he fought against. the sword was the same steel. the body was the same muscle. the energy behind the swing was not the same. it never is.

[Electra @Electrarythm]

Before stepping into the ring, Cus D’Amato would repeat to Mike Tyson that you don’t exist, only the task exists.

The moment you internalize what this really means, all self-doubt simply ceases to exist, because there’s no longer a self to doubt.

What’s left is total immersion in the task, which is what the flow state actually is, where there’s no “you” left to interfere, and action arises by itself, like second nature, faster than conscious thought, through the sheer genius of your unconscious mind.

[Andrew Carr 🤸 @andrew_n_carr]

In college we has `rejection Tuesdays` where you had to try and get rejected.

Homies got married left and right

[gomi @xoxogomi]

nobody is born believing they’re not good enough. you learn that shit. when you were a kid, you fell trying to walk and got back up without questioning whether you were meant to walk. you didn’t care how stupid you looked. you didn’t wonder if you were talented enough. you just kept trying until you figured it out.

somewhere along the way, you started expecting the worst and you started preparing for failure before you even gave yourself a chance to succeed.

imagine what you could do if you started believing things might actually work out for you instead of always expecting them to go wrong.

[shipra @shipranotes]

Neuroplasticity works faster under high emotional intensity. If you can resist a craving when it is at its peak, you create a far stronger rewiring effect. This is why your hardest moments matter most. They are not setbacks; they are high-voltage opportunities for transformation.

[dawood46 @notdwd]

you cannot win if you are not obsessed.

the goal has to consume you to the point where it’s all you think about. every decision, every hour of work, every problem you run into revolves around getting closer to it.

you see this with people who are autistic/have the ability to hyperfocus on one thing. they can spend months obsessing over the smallest details of something because nothing matters more to them than that.

and if that level of obsession can be directed toward the right vision, i genuinely believe it’s impossible for somebody to not achieve their ambitions.

[InfraMarginal @infra_marginal]

Trading firms are building desks to trade GPU compute like a commodity

Jump Trading has hired the founders of GPU trading platform Itô Markets to run a new compute desk, per Bloomberg. DRW and Vitus Commodities posted compute trading roles last month.

DRW's Don Wilson says compute could surpass crude as the world's largest commodity. CME has delayed its planned GPU rental futures.

The constraints look like power markets. Compute cannot be stored, forwards run three to five years, and the CFTC has flagged concentrated pricing power.

CoreWeave shows the credit side. It finances GPUs against offtake contracts, and Bloomberg currently says its debt prices a 60% chance of default within five years.

Compute curves will end up tied to power curves. The desks that price both will set the market.

[lesabre @lesabrefomo]

for any large position you take in your portfolio you should know more about that project than 99% of everyone else

This is a fairly durable edge to have in crypto because most people simply do not do the work

I take this idea of "being in the top 1%" and apply it to basically any new idea, niche, sector or project that im researching. I usually dont allocate any capital but the process of this compounds

you can imagine that after a few months (or years) of doing this you start to have an insanely good understanding of a wide variety of topics in crypto. This "map" that you build out eventually becomes your edge in the space

so my $.02 is to have a goal of becoming the top 1% in understanding any area of crypto that you are interested in. It will pay dividends forever

[Toan Truong @LearningToan]

Angela Duckworth on how talent is just how fast you improve.

And in her data, the most talented people often don't keep showing up: ↓

"Here's my definition of talent: talent is the rate at which you increase in your skill with effort. Some people are going to increase their skills faster than others, and I think it's legitimate to say those are the quick studies, those are the talented people.

"But in my data I find two things. One is that more talented individuals don't always keep showing up.

Woody Allen famously once said 80% of success in life is just showing up. There are many people who could write a great book, or who are talented in the sense that when they write they get better faster, but they'd never finish what they begin. So what I find in my data is that talent is no guarantee of actually showing up and finishing the things that you start.

"The second thing characteristic of high achievers in any domain is this kind of daily discipline of trying to get better, sometimes in microscopic, infinitesimally trivial ways.

All those little details add up to excellence. And it's not always the people who are the quick studies who are willing to put in those hours and hours of behind-the-scenes, unglamorous work."

Hi! If you're new here, I'm Toan. I homeschooled at 15, graduated at 16, and got my bachelor's at 18.

Now I write about education, learning science, and psychology. Also building @GeniusGTX.

Follow me at @LearningToan if that interests you.

And if you're building something in EdTech or education, I'd love to catch up and hear what you're working on.

Angela Duckworth, psychologist and author of Grit, on Talks at Google

[Guillermo Flor @guilleflorvs]

Alex Karp doesn't want well-rounded people at Palantir.

He specifically looks for "malshaped high aptitude" — someone whose intelligence is almost disqualifying everywhere else precisely because it's so extreme in one direction.

The logic is sharp: a super high aptitude doesn't fit into a normal org. It breaks the system. So you build a company that only works with people the system already rejected.

That's not a hiring philosophy. That's a deliberate filter for the kind of minds most companies accidentally screen out during the interview process.

Palantir even launched a paid engineering program recruiting straight from high school — before the credentialing machine gets a chance to smooth them out.

The best technical talent isn't the most hireable. It's often the least.

[vladuah @vladuah]

SpaceX will capture an asteroid with more gold than Earth's crust and land Optimus robots carrying American flags on Mars within 8 years.

Starship parks Psyche in geosynchronous orbit over an American Pacific atoll. No humans within 50 miles. Optimus robots extract the metals. Delivery to Earth is free though some burns up on entry.

Bezos said 15 years ago Earth gets zoned residential as heavy industry moves to space. Vast distances make emissions irrelevant.

The same fleet lands on Mars in 8 years max. Optimus robots deploy solar panels, batteries, compute, and Starlinks for 4K video before humans arrive.

SpaceX moves the factories off the planet.

[Goshawk Trades @GoshawkTrades]

poker is one of the most important cheat codes in trading. jeff yass trains susquehanna traders with it, and MIT turned it into an actual course.

8 lectures on poker theory and how it applies to investment management and trading. completely free.

the guest lecturers:
- bill chen, susquehanna quant, 2 WSOP bracelets, co-wrote the mathematics of poker
- aaron brown, AQR's chief risk officer at the time, wrote the poker face of wall street
- matt hawrilenko, ex-susquehanna, won a $1M WSOP bracelet

[Incentivising @incentivising]

You need to realize that there is almost no competition right now. More and more people are drawn to escapism. Dopamine traps such as TikTok and Reels have effectively fried about 70% of humans. Attention spans decrease; ambitions drown. You have no competition. In a few years, you will be able to see a clear elite.

[🍂 @Lovandfear]

Desperation has a smell.

People can feel it before you even speak. The forced energy, the chasing, the trying-too-hard shit, it shows. Whether it's attention, love, success, or validation, desperation pushes things away instead of pulling them closer. And yeah, that sucks to hear, but calm confidence always wins over needy energy. The moment your happiness depends on being chosen, approved, or noticed by everyone else, you start losing yourself. Real power comes from being good on your own, staying grounded, and moving with purpose instead of panic. Because the truth is, the less desperately you beg life to happen for you, the more naturally things begin to flow your way. Stop forcing every damn thing. What's meant for you won't need that much bullshit chasing.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

Master the fundamentals to free up your working memory for creative work. If you have to think about the tool, you can't think about the masterpiece.

[PROFESSOR @SIGMAPROFESSOR]

Talent & intelligence without ego are virtually futile. Ego is an amplifier, it multiplies ur capacity, velocity, productivity, and outcomes 20x. But u must possess a vindictive mentality. The sort of cvck who resorts to blocking and muting has unwittingly castrated his own ego. He won't succeed.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

If your fundamentals are weak, everything you build on top feels harder, takes longer, and becomes more fragile than it should – and this puts an artificial ceiling on how high you can climb.