⏰ 20 Hours To Greatness

Yes. This is the City Chad, your prosperity professor, about to school you in the art of abundance. Let’s begin the lesson!

In this week’s edition:

• Markets: 😓 Yields Causing Troubles

• Article: ⏰ 20 Hours To Greatness

• News: 🔥 Sweden On Fire

• Power Move: 🔌 Meta Connect

• Chad Of The Week: 📰 Elon Musk

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MARKETS: 😓 YIELDS CAUSING TROUBLES

I am sure that one day the market update will have lots of good news.

But today it ain’t it.

Stocks and bonds continued going down last week. Why? Long term bond yields are continuing to rise. This means that the expectation is that interest rates will stay higher for longer.

This is turn means that risk assets (such as stocks and credit markets) could be facing trouble in the future. With inflation still well above the 2% target, there is not much the FED can do to come to the rescue if that happens.

Not a pretty picture overall.

Crypto is surprisingly performing quite well recently. The SEC’s motion to appeal their loss in the ripple case was denied, which was bullish for XRP and the market overall.

Not any other major news in the space except the start of SBF’s trial. I am sure many people are hoping for justice to delivered swiftly.

ARTICLE: ⏰ 20 HOURS TO GREATNESS

TLDR: Here's an aha moment for you: being great at almost anything does not take 10,000 hours. It's more like 20 hours *gasp*. 

I Know. You've probably wanted to learn about investing or starting a business. Or learn a new language, play guitar or dance like a stripper whose rent is due tomorrow. But you felt scared it would take you years.

The good news is here you'll find out the method of master learner and author Josh Kaufman to master any skill in 20 hours within one month.

Read on to find out the juice.

• 10,000 vs 20 hours

• The Learning Curve

• Use Your Time Effectively

• Why this Works

• Closing Thoughts

10,000 vs 20 hours

I know I sound like a broken record…

But cultivating yourself is the wisest thing you can do.

Not only does it make you an interesting person and help you achieve your goals.

It will make you fearless. You will always have yourself to count on.

But a common worry among us is that we need lots of time to be good at something.

You’ve probably heard of the 10,000 hour rule (made famous in the book “Outliers”).

It’s all over the place.

In simple terms it says that it takes around 10,000 hours to master a skill.

That’s nuts! That is like a regular 9 to 5 job for about 4 years.

There is some truth in that… but that’s for expert level performance.

Think professional level. And in fact, there is an even better book (in my opinion) called “Peak” that actually details how it is not just about putting in 10,000 hours. It is about implementing “deliberate practice”.

But most of us don’t want to be professionals in every field we are interested in.

We want to be good enough (competent) to enjoy it or to get the results we want.

The question should be how long does it take to achieve my goal with a new skill?

I’ll tell you right now, you usually only need 20 hours to be good at something.

See how master learner and author Josh Kaufman explains it here:

The Learning Curve

Choose any skill with a well-defined goal.

Could be learning to dance, a new language, or learning to code. Even learning the basics of investing or starting a business.

People tend to learn really well and really quickly at the beginning.

That’s the famous learning curve!

You start with virtually no skill in the subject.

As you learn the basics you improve immediately, you pass from zero to something and that’s a great step.

After that you will continue to improve by practicing the basics and including new skills and techniques, until you can say you are good enough (represented by the red line).

Once you are good enough, you can still invest time and become an expert in the field (if you want).

However, the learning and acquisition of new skills is not as fast as before.

The good news is that it takes around 20 hours to get to “good enough”.

And that’s probably all you need to achieve the goal you are aiming for.

This translates to just 45 minutes a day in less than 1 month.

Use Your Time Effectively

But I know what you are thinking: “I have tried things for more than 20 hours and I still suck at them”.

Well, there are ways to use those 20 hours more effectively and take the most advantage out of your time.

Here are some general guidelines that Kaufmann outlines:

1. Deconstruction:

Take some time and ask yourself what exactly you want to do. Make it a specific thing like “I want to start an ecommerce website and sell $1,000 worth of products” or “I want to program a special kind of calculator in C++”.

After you have it, then break it into smaller and smaller pieces that you can tackle individually.

A skill is really a combination of small skills combined.

Also, having a clear goal will provide you with a real and tangible measure of your progress.

You can also extrapolate the skills you learned in it to other projects.

2. Don’t fall into tutorial hell:

It’s OK to buy some books about the skill you want to learn. Watch some videos on YouTube. That’s great.

But don’t procrastinate.

You will never learn something that you don’t practice. There must be a point in which you say “OK, enough watching, let’s start doing.”

Use tutorials and learning resources just enough you can start doing it yourself and fixing your own mistakes.

3. Learning time is sacred time:

Television, cellphones, social media, anything that distracts you while learning will slow down your progress.

At that moment nothing else matters. Just you and whatever you are trying to learn.

Willpower is not enough; you must actually put distractions apart.

4. More is not always better.

This I’ve learnt as an amateur multi-instrumentalist.

Just like going to the gym, overdoing it won’t make you progress faster.

It will in fact leave you frustrated.

It is better to practice 1 hour a day during a week with a couple of breaks, rather than 5 hours in just one day.

Why this Works

It’s incredible that this works like this.

Why is that so? You learn a lot faster at the beginning because you master the basics.

What are the basics, you ask?

The basics are those core things that are very very important for a specific activity.

The trick is that they are used all the time.

Take for example playing guitar. At the beginning you’ll learn the techniques to hold it, strum it and make a limited number of chords (up to 7, let’s say).

And in most of the songs you play, you will just need those basic skills, or fundamentals 90% of the time.

And that’s it. You don’t have to learn the secret to Jimi Hendrix’s guitar licks to enjoy hours of playing by a fire with your friends.

Good fundamentals will do most of the time.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The 20 hour rule has been a game changer for me and I hope it is for you.

One last thought that Kaufmann makes is that: "The major barriers to learning are not intellectual, they are emotional."

So once you realize this, anything becomes less intimidating.

The question for you is, do you have the guts to give it a go?

Let me know if you do.

NEWS: 🔥 SWEDEN ON FIRE

Like most Nordic countries, Sweden used to be a safe place to live and raise a family.

But that has changed quite a bit.

Shootings, gang wars, grenades. You name it.

Eleven people have recently died as the result of gang violence, including a 13-year old child.

The situation is so bad, they have now decided to call in the army to help.

The police apparently cannot cope with the situation.

The case of Sweden begs the question, is Europe finally waking up to reality?

A HISTORY OF ALTRUISM

Sweden has a strong history of being a safe haven for people in need.

During World War II, Sweden provided a safe haven for thousands of Jews fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany.

In the 1970s, Sweden welcomed refugees from Chile, Iran, and Vietnam.

In the 1990s, Sweden granted asylum to refugees from the Balkans and Somalia.

Sadly, their altruism has recently backfired.

Sweden’s PM recently pointed out how an “irresponsible immigration policy” and “failed integration,” along with “political naivety,” was to blame for the rise of gang violence.

WINDS OF CHANGE

One of the most popular quotes attributed to Ayn Rand is: “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

We have seen how the issue of uncontrolled migration is now gaining headlines across Europe and the rest of the World.

This is because the reality of good intentions is clashing with the reality of poor outcomes.

The situation in Lampedusa, as we covered in last week’s edition.

The situation on the US Southern border, covered in this week’s edition (see Chad of the Week).

The situation In the UK, where home Secretary Suella Braverman recently talked about the failure of cultural integration in the country.

It seems like the people and politicians are finally waking up and saying enough is enough.

Time for change and rethink policies.

POWER MOVE: 🔌 META CONNECT

Let’s face it, Zuck got ahead of itself when it went all-in at the top of the hype of the Metaverse.

Going as far as renaming their company from FACEBOOK to META to jump into pretty uncharted territory.

Their demo of their version of the Metaverse back in 2022 was frankly, embarrassing:

But you gotta give merit where merit is due. This man does not give up.

And Meta Connect could be the hit Zuck has been batting for for the last few years.

This is what went down:

• A new headset named Meta Quest 3.

• A quite cool augmented reality interface

• Customized AI chatbots

• AI studio, a platform that would allow people to make their own bots.

Will all this actually work in the real world? Who knows.

Everyone expected Threads to be the Twitter killer. Alas, that did not happen.

But you gotta admire Zuckerberg’s determination to keep trying.

Not only that, he is working hard on becoming a Chad:

Like they say in Silicon Valley. Don’t bet against Zuck.

CHAD OF THE WEEK: 📰 ELON MUSK

Good stories deserve a sequel. So we bring Elon as Chad of the Week for the second time.

What made him deserving of this honor?

To make it short. People from many different countries are taking advantage of Biden’s “Open borders” policy.

There is a huge amount of illegal immigration happening on the US-Mexico border. Unfortunately the legacy media brushes over this.

So what did Elon do? He did what any self-respecting billionaire would do.

He put on a badass cowboy hat and sunglasses and went live streaming in the heart of the action.

Elon then speaks to those who are involved in the situation: Sheriff Randy Brown and congressman Tony Gonzales.

What’s (sadly) remarkable is the fact that Musk asks simple direct questions and lets the authorities speak their mind.

Funny how that’s better than what many mainstream journalists do.

He also had the audacity to point out how it is “insane” that murderers with face tattoos are claiming asylum together with those in need.

To make things even sweeter, reporting the truth apparently triggered some sensitive souls on the left like AOC.

Musk, you’re the Chad.

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