Next year, I'm betting on love, learning, and risk. You should too.

Three buckets of unsolicited advice from someone who just can't help himself.

Hi guys,

Hope you are doing well. I'm doing okay, Alhamdulillah.

Today's newsletter is quite different. I write this not on an early Sunday morning or a late Saturday night. I write at 8:16 pm on this Tuesday evening not because I fear I may not have the time to write later, but because I got this weird urge to do it now. I don't know yet whether I will publish this on Sunday, push it till later, or add it to the other half-finished pieces in my drafts that might never see the light of day.

O man shele be.

You see, I am supposed to be on holiday right now. Like most people on planet earth who are not coronavirus healthcare workers, oil and gas Field Engineers stuck at sea, or accountants struggling to finish end-of-year audits, the bulk of my work for the year has ground to a halt.

But I struggle with holidays. I work and work and look forward to the break, then when the break comes I look for something to fill it up with. I was actually doing a short startup investing course when I paused to start writing this. Do I need that course? No. But I like it. It is paraps a weird thing to like, I'll give you that.

Ah well.

Two random facts about me that you did not ask for. One, I am a furious note-taker. Two, I spend a lot of time soliciting for advice.

If you happened to go to university with me, you will call foul at the first statement. And I would have to agree with you. 😂 

I had no need to take notes back in school, as Apostle and Aishat were more than enough for me. During classes, I did the noble things instead - pressed phone, caught up on sleep, disturbed Oghenaogie. And when classes were over, I pulled out my phone, took pictures of Apostle or Aishat's notes (depending on the course), and used a wonderful app called CamScanner to collate them and created pdfs to study later. This of course led to threats from Oghenaoghie whenever exams approached and I needed him to bring me up to speed. Ever gracious, he always came through in the end.

Good times.

If you have been subscribed to this newsletter for more than a few weeks, you should know by now that I digress a lot. Some are intentional, some are not - but I leave them anyway. If I proclaim to share a personal newsletter, then it is only fair that you get a small insight into how scattered my thought process is.

Back to furious note-taker.

In conversations and situations I deem to be important, I tend to have my Notion tab open in the background, trying to pen as much of the value as possible. I write and keep all sorts of notes, from ‘Engagement Activities’ - should I need to someday plan a youth event - to 'Post Corona TDL’ - a list of things to do and people to see in person when this pandemic finally leaves us.

The second thing. I am perpetually seeking advice. Mostly from people I know who are older and or wiser, because they have experience dealing with many of the issues I have. And sometimes (though I do admit this is inefficient and does not scale), I seek this advice from books and movies. More on this later.

On the flip side, I am perpetually giving (unsolicited) advice. 😂

I have been known to call my friends out of the blue and say, ‘Guy I think you should gauge this babe’ or 'Bro I don't think you should go for your Masters'. 😅

Of course, this is mostly internal, and very few people receive those calls. If I thought there was a chance to share a random idea with someone I cared about, I would take it. You should know, you're reading my newsletter.

You might think (and rightly so too), what on earth gives this Hameed guy the right to give random advice about life to me? What does he know?

To that, my answer is nothing. I know nothing, I just can't help myself.

Anyhoo, I shall share three buckets of unsolicited advice. I hope they are as useful to you as they are to me.

Relationships are everything

During the Great Depression in 1938, researchers at Harvard began a lifelong study to determine what truly helped people live healthier and happier lives. They collected all sorts of data on 268 young men. Everything you can imagine from their health, finances, wins and failures, marriages and divorces, number of kids, cholesterol levels, physical activity, intellectual trends, level of drinking and smoking, etc. 80 years and 1300 descendants later, the Harvard Study of Adult Development is one of the most exhaustive studies ever undertaken.

So what did they find? What truly makes people be happy and healthy for a lifetime? Money? Fame? Power? Regular exercise? Eating fruits? Writing a newsletter?

Simple (and I do agree cheesy) answer - love. And not just the two people in a relationship kind of love, but the love that comes with happy families, friendships, and shared communities. According to Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and current director of the study,

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. When we gathered together everything we knew about them, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old, it was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”

So give everything in your relationships. Tell the people you love that you love them. Build powerful relationships with your partners, families, and communities.

This is the hack to a happy life.

Don't outsource your learning

For the vast majority of us, our approach to learning is like passengers on a ship. We pay somebody to take us from point A to point B, and hope x trust that they would do a good job. Somebody else sets the navigation compass, takes control and steers the ship from beginning to end. Even though we have a general idea of where we are and where we are going, we are never in control.

This is what we do when we outsource our learning to schools, parents, and workplaces. We take jobs assuming we would learn everything that matters on the job. We go to university assuming the curriculum is oh-so-perfect to cover our lifelong needs. They are not. You see, these institutions are designed to teach what is best for them, not what is best for you.

The best thing any young person can do is to develop a lifelong learning habit. You want to learn about the 2008 financial crisis? Read a book. Why the world is running out of water? Watch a documentary. How to be more empathetic? Listen to a podcast. The history of slave trade? Watch a movie. What is this Bitcoin sef? Do an introductory online course.

Make an intentional and consistent effort to learn something everyday. People are different, so don't be carried away by how or what other people are learning. Just do you, and it will pay dividends over time.

I recently watched a commencement speech by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's business partner and Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He said many things, but this is my favourite takeaway.

“I see people rise in life who are not the smartest or even the most diligent, but they are perpetual learning machines. They go to bed every night a little smarter than when they woke up. And boy does that help when you have a long run ahead of you.”

Take (calculated) risks

Last week, I spent 30 minutes on a call with a VC in London and I asked her for general advice. A small snippet below.

VC: I think the biggest predictor of success for early-stage ventures is how different the cofounders are. For people who are genuine polar opposites, they tend to do very well.

Me: But isn't that counter-intuitive? Are they not more likely to disagree and be fighting all the time?

VC: Well, yes. You see, when the team members have different skills and different ways of looking at things, it increases the quality of what they are able to do.

Me: So you should be trying to minimize the overlap of skills x personality between you and your cofounder? This really works?

VC: Absolutely. For many people, they can't make it work and the team falls apart. But for those that do, it's amazing. I think it's a risk you have to take.

I do not pretend to have the expertise in investing in early stage startups. She may or may not be right, but that is irrelevant.

Risk. Like many people, I am fairly risk averse. I generally play games I can win, invest in things I understand (oops Tradera people), and always optimize life decisions to increase the probability of success. In fact, I'm generally home by Maghrib. Simple, jeje, lifestyle.

But to get ahead in life, you have to take some risks. Millions of people emigrate globally, risking second-class citizen status, language barriers, and social isolation to create a better life. Others take a sabbatical from well-paying jobs, spending ridiculous amounts of money on graduate education, betting that it will increase access to future opportunities.

As of 2002, Elon Musk owned 11.7% of Paypal which had just been acquired by eBay for $1.5B. Automatically, he became worth about $165m, more than enough for him to spend for the rest of his life. As I see it, he had 3 options.

Option 1: Cash out with $165m, create a trust fund for his family, and spend the rest of his life on beaches in Barbados, occasionally visiting conferences and giving speeches.

Option 2: Leave the bulk of his net worth in PayPal. If he was sure that he had built a profitable and sustainable business, that value would have grown over time.

Option 3: Use his $165m as capital to take interesting risks and bet on the future.

We all know how this story ends. The market capitalization of Paypal today is about $280B. If Elon had followed option 2, he would be worth $32.8B. Instead, he risked it all, betting on Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity (also later The Boring Company, Hyperloop, Open AI, and Neuralink). Today, he is worth $147 billion. Amazing.

He wouldn't have achieved any of these if he did not develop an appetite for risk. I do not advocate for a life of reckless abandon. But taking (calculated) risks will make all the difference. So run that marathon. Start that vlog. Invest in that company. Switch to another job. Move cities. Live a little.

As 2021 approaches (and I am not one to make a big deal out of a new year), set aside some time to think about how you will improve on your relationships, your learning, and your risk profile.

I cannot promise you success, but I guarantee it will make your life a little more interesting.

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If you found this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends. Have them read it and subscribe. I like to share personal stories and life lessons I am learning. They will be super random, but common themes will include business, personal development, human relationships, and Islam.

Gracias, and see you around.

Hameed

** Author’s note: Our small community grew in the last week by 40 people! There are currently 845 people subscribed to this newsletter. With 4 days to go in 2020, we need a final push to get to 1000 subscribers! Don't ignore. Click the share button. Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, wherever you like. Please subscribe and share with your family and friends.

Shukran! 😀

*PS: I got distracted on Tuesday night, and did not return to this till Sunday morning. God Airpuss.