Game theory teaches that if you have an edge over other players, you must shut up about it. Don't announce you have the winning hand unless that's the way you win. Ed Thorp would only bet when math was on his side: he invented card counting in blackjack and his hedge fund had 20% returns over 20yrs with only 3 months down. (He invented a formula for option pricing that he never publicized; when others did, they got a Nobel prize). Buffett thought the same way; when he felt out of touch with the game, he closed his partnership in 1969. These Masters go around teaching how they did it, but they know no one can compete with them. Game selection is as important as skill, and it can't be taught in a one-hour speech. "If 30 mins into a poker game you don't know who the patsy is, you are the patsy"

It's become incredibly difficult to guard your attention span. Modern, remote work requires you to be chronically online. WhatsApps & emails must be replied instantly if you want to do well. The issue is you need to have your phone at hand at all times. You can't really read or write much. The time for doing deep work has gotten compressed. It's fascinating because it's deep work that gets you somewhere. As you grow professionally, you start doing all these operative things because you've proved you can do the work; you now only need to tell the world about it. I once met a portfolio manager who told me about the advice he got early on. He used to spend his time reading Buffett, doing equity research, etc. And his boss told him: you can't keep doing that, you are not working on the business that way. In finance, or everywhere, really, the business is relationships. Spending time learning about the craft, like Buffett did, takes you nowhere, more often than not. It's more likely to succeed if you work on your network. This is kind of terrible. I enjoy the work itself and care about the product. I'm more prone to reading a 10k than to cultivating relationships with potential LPs. (Just an example.) In my current line of work, I care about the reading and writing. Although I keep a clear schedule for the most part, for the job is structured to do deep work, messages arrive at any time, and I've conditioned myself to reply instantly. The 2-hour-straight reading sessions have ended (for now), and so did the 2-hour writing sessions. The 12-hour deep dive days are kind of gone. I'm not really sure how to deal with this. It's for sure a skill issue, yet I haven't been able to crack it so far.

Reading Rockefeller's biography helped me understand how important secrecy is. People he met would leave the room without knowing what he thought; John always spoke last and reluctantly. We've become too prone to sharing everything; places we visit, thoughts we have, people we meet. More time is spent telling about the doing than doing itself, consuming time from further doing; the elixir of life. The bar is getting so low that anything we might think, we share because we think it adds value. In a sea of nonsensical posts and useless information, it might. However, that's a deep problem of the modern era. We don't spend enough time pondering about the merits and relevance of what happens. People chronically online are fed shallow, top-of-conscience output. It's become a rarity for someone to publish a Pavlov-like work (30 years experimenting, only then to write a book about it). I don't know how to solve this. I'm guilty myself and I'm trying to go back to the roots. It has just become quite difficult to make 'ancient habits' compatible with modern work.