About

Welcome to šŸ“™ The Little Almanack! ā€” A weekly newsletter from the creator of Picking Nuggets.

Whatā€™s all About šŸ¤”

You can think of this Newsletter as the ā€œAnti-Newsletterā€ ā€” as it only has timeless information, which is the opposite of news.

Why only Timeless šŸ¤”

Time is the ultimate stressor of information. And the ā€œLindy Effectā€ states that the longer an idea has been relevant, the longer it will still be relevant ā€” for instance, if an idea (or anything that is not biological) has been relevant for 20 years, you can expect that it will still be relevant for another 20 years on average.

Therefore timeless ideas are the most robust and useful. Nassim Taleb even said on his Commencement Speech at The American University of Beirut: ā€œDonā€™t read newspapers. Donā€™t follow the news in any way or form.ā€.

On top of that, I source the information from only influential Doers.

Why only from Doers šŸ¤”

Itā€™s very easy to take credit from the Thinking. The Doing is more concrete. Usually when you dig a little deeper you find that the people that really ā€œdid itā€ were also the people that really worked through the hard intellectual problems as wellā€¦ The Doers are the major Thinkers.

- Steve Jobs

The Doers are in the fastest learning curve possible.

- Naval Ravikant

Doers ā€” defined by their insatiable curiosity, emotional fortitude and highest integrity (e.g./ Naval Ravikant, Nassim Taleb, Charlie Munger, Peter Thielā€¦) ā€” who took the time to share timeless principles (through books / interviews) on:

  • How to get Better (Character) ā†’ Sent every first Week.

  • How to get Richer (Principles of Wealth Creation) ā†’ Sent every second Week.

  • How to improve our Judgment (General-Worldly Wisdom) ā†’ Sent every third and last Week.

Some of them areā€¦

How it works šŸ¤”

Every Friday I send you a 5-min nugget ā€” a timeless idea from an influential Doer (in their own words).

Plus, I craft a visual to make the nugget more clear and memorable! And afterwards, I deliver a personal reflection.

šŸ’„ I even did a visual to summarize all this!

ā€œItā€™s kind of fun to sit there and outthink people who are way smarter than you are because youā€™ve trained yourself to be more objective and more multidisciplinary. Furthermore, there is a lot of money in it, as I can testify from my own personal experience.ā€

- Charlie Munger (from his book Poor Charlieā€™s Almanack)

As an extra, I share the most valuable content I found over the week (tweets, articles, videosā€¦).

About this Publicationā€™s Writer šŸ¤“ šŸ“  (you can definitely ignore this šŸ™šŸ» )

šŸ‘‹ Hi, Iā€™m Julio. Iā€™m 27 (born in 1996) and I live in Barcelona, Spain.

I love

I love picking insights. I get a high when I discover an idea that either I didnā€™t know before, or contradicts an idea that I currently holdā€”because the gap between my worldview and the actual world gets narrower!

I love taking long walks while I listen to my favorite Podcasts, which then makes me to obsessively type on my Google Keep (a note-taking app) anything that I find interesting.

I love reading on my Kindle with a microwaved yet tasty coffee right after waking up, usually for 30 mins - 1 hour. But lately Iā€™ve been switching to physical books ā€” It feels nicer, there are no distractions and I can give my eyes a break from the screen.

I love gray clouds with noisy rainā€”which is funny since I live in Spain. Maybe I should move to the UK?

I love the philosophy of life being a game: in the same way that hardships and challenges make a game attractive and fun, so itā€™s in life that it makes it more beautiful and meaningfulā€”not talking here about basic needs or safety problems, since I havenā€™t experienced those types of issues luckily.

Now some stuff I hate because why not

I hate drivingā€”donā€™t know why I got a driving license (probably dumb mimetic thinking).

Iā€™m scared as f**k of planesā€”and YouTube knows this far too well as it feeds me with the worst plane crashes on my homepage, which then makes me click to solve the negative tension built on the title and thumbnail of the video. But I still fly anyway.

I hate that one day Iā€™m gonna die, but I accept it and it actually makes me more appreciative of life.

More about me, again.

Iā€™m a native Spanish speaker, and my english used to suck probably until I was 20 years old. The english level at my high-school was already pretty low (Spanish people are well-known for their bad englishā€”barely able to have a quick weather talk) and I was one of the worst in my classroom. But after finishing high-school, in the break summer before university, I realizedā€”or rather, became consciousā€”I was wasting my time binging on Netflix, so to feel better about myself I decided to only watch series and movies in English. At first it was hard, but after 2 years I could understand almost everything. As a side-note, it also helped that I lived in Barcelona where English is the official nightlife language, given the sheer amount of party-tourists in the cityā€”Barcelona is kind of Europeā€™s party capital.

Itā€™s been 10 years (as of 2024) since I made that decision and I have never seen any series or movies in my native language ever since. Although to be fair, for the last 3 years I havenā€™t watched any series or movies in generalā€”except for the typical date plan every now and thenā€”I substituted it with YouTube videos and Spotify podcasts.

Iā€™m grateful I made that decision and sticked to it, because that led me to discover (and understand) interviews of great practitioner-thinkers such as Charlie Munger, Nassim Taleb, Mohnish Pabrai and Naval Ravikantā€”my role models for the last 2 years.

Sports?

I played tennis most of my lifeā€”from my first childhood memories until I was 18. Currently I practice Brazilian-JiuJitsu, I like running (not on treadmills though) and lift weights (I do it only with a barbell, to keep it simple).

Hoping my Newsletter editions will contribute to a portion of your learning and growing, but most importantly that you have fun reading them :)

Until Friday!

Julio

Subscribe to šŸ“™ Little Almanack

Every Friday you will get a 5 min nugget. Picked from influential doers (in their own words) who took the time to share their wisdom with the world! Plus, I add a visual to make the nugget more clear and memorable. And also a little reflection!

People

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