A feedback book.

Working principles, notes on entrepreneurship, and open problems in education. Written for me, published without over-polish, for whoever might get use out of them.

Principles for Work

Field notes on how to work, communicate, and sustain peak performance over time. Written for myself, published in case they help someone else.

§ 01

Meetings: calm is professionalism

In meetings, whether with founders or with providers, the more relaxed I am, the better. The belief that a meeting is important is what skews the way I approach and perceive things. Meetings do not need to be that formal, they need to be direct, precise, clear. Confidence is not proved by concentrating on being confident. It is proved by communicating with professionalism, knowing what I am saying, and being clear about what I want from the other person. Expressing my ideas in a way that fits the person I am talking to is fundamental (the hats game). That we might reach an agreement afterwards does not mean I have to inflate its importance today. Reaching potential agreements lives in the future. Today we are going to get to know each other and talk calmly about what we want to do, our goals, and how we can help one another. There must be mutual respect and self-recognition of value on both sides, and only then should we explore how we can bring value to each other. I know what I want and how I want it, and I trust my intuition every time it recognizes in someone else what I am looking for. That is why trusting intuition is vital, and why knowing what I want, setting limits, and defining my convictions matters so much: it will be in my unconscious the whole time, matching signals from the outside against what I have already registered. Trust intuition in the moments of truth.

§ 02

Deterministic Inertia, Plan 455

Getting up very early (5am). I have kept this habit inconsistent for the last 10 weeks. The new assignment, which requires consistency and discipline, is: get up at least 5 times a week at 5am for the next 4 weeks. I am naming it Plan 455. The goal is to wake up at 5am; to meet that consequence directly (and given my tendency to sleep 8+ hours) I have to be strict about when I go to bed (ideally 9pm). The point is for my body to internalize the new habit through repetition and, as happened with running, vitamins, meditation, journaling, and reading, to make it practically automatic. The real motivation is to own my most productive window (from 10am onward) for academic work, professional work, and my own projects. Repetition reinforces the identity I want to build: a high-quality policy maker, a high-impact entrepreneur, and a macro investor. Habits are the tools for surfing obstacles, and obstacles ARE the path itself. The future is only the accumulation of presents. Only today.

§ 03

Consistent Flow (Hustlin')

Work 5 to 6 hours a day on my goals and projects, daily, thinking in terms of a sustainable system. The first draft came from noticing how often I finish one task and immediately start executing several related ones without being aware of it: an emotional, unconscious impulse that is part of me. I can integrate it and use it in my favour. The algorithm: define and set the time to execute ALL my tasks for the day, pick one task from the list that I actually control (perceived), focus on that task only without thinking about time or other tasks, execute it and remove it from the list, the sense of completion gives me inertia to continue, I check the time and move to the next one (natural flow appears), I stop when the timer I set beforehand tells me to, I respect that constraint, I repeat tomorrow. Short version: define t (overall) and to-do, choose task (controlled), focus, execute and remove, inertia, natural flow, stop at t, repeat.

§ 04

Insistence: virtue and shadow

The fact that it annoys me to see someone else over-insist reflects a part of myself I do not like. It is useful in some situations: my projects, academics, professional life. It is less useful in others: intra- and interpersonal relationships. It is neither good nor bad. It is already part of me. Thanks to insistence I am in France, I have a globally recognized scholarship, I am at TSE, and important professional doors have opened for me, because on top of being insistent, I am curious and open-minded. In other areas it has not played well, because I was rationalizing insistence as a way to demonstrate affection. For different things to happen I need to hold different beliefs about myself and what I do. That gets built from ideas that are reinforced by daily actions repeated consistently over time. The idea-action loop compounds into beliefs, and beliefs become convictions when both the conscious and unconscious mind accept them as fact. I gradually accept the parts of myself I do not like in order to integrate them into the self: it is the vehicle for peak performance along the way.

§ 05

Backward law and moments of truth

When I failed my first-semester math exam in France, after the frustration, I thought: next time this will not happen, I am going to work so this does not happen again. And I failed again. I was not noticing the force of the backward law on my performance: in the important earlier exams (DELF, university admission in Caracas) I was very relaxed because I was not living them as definitive. The strategy for me: one, believe I am the best in the process, because that gives me the proportional motivation to work hard consistently before the exam; two, lower the importance of the exam itself, do not believe I am the best but that I am surrounded by very high academic level, and do not pressure myself because it is just an exam (minimize the ego and the weight I give to the event).

§ 06

Environment: excellence is contagious

Surrounding myself with the best in the world in human capital, research, and entrepreneurship is what lets me get to my full potential. It is using the natural human tendency toward peer comparison to feel the same pressure I felt at TSE. Feeling that everyone was better than me was what pulled the best out of me at each step, without giving up and with a concrete goal. The school was a masterclass in incentive design, and I did not perceive it. That is how it should be, for anyone willing to pursue excellence. Excellence is not obtained only from inner fire, but because the environment plays a fundamental role in defining how far you go. Imagine what I could build in similar or even more competitive and collaborative environments, and the potential of those systems to affect communities, societies, the world.

§ 07

Behavioural Public Policy, Behavioural Business

Behavioural Public Policy for National Growth and Development, and a Behavioural Approach to Business Growth and Development. I am going to build companies and improve nations in public policy starting from the core of it all: the human mind.

§ 08

Break it into blocks, attract your people

One way to execute the tasks that lead to the long-term vision is to split what is perceived as very hard into much smaller blocks and steps, doable consistently over time. When I train, every time my mind wants to give up I return to my conscious mind and think: one block of 5 and that is it, another, another. I usually end up finishing what I planned for the day. While I am doing it, my unconscious mind exaggerates the difficulty through over-weighting, and ends up fooling the body. The fix comes from this conscious control. Applies to studies, projects, work, daily habits. It is only anxiety. I have the power to choose how I perceive what I want to execute. And I also have the power to choose who to work with: it has to be by organic force of attraction, so the responsibility falls on me. I have to become the kind of person I would work and spend time with. Break it into blocks, build inside yourself the team of people you want, so you only attract excellence, wherever it is.

09/03/23

Music, learning, and getting things done

Associate pleasant situations with the ones perceived as unpleasant. The effect of music on my disposition to work is very clear. I once put on music I genuinely liked while working on something tedious, and it increased my productivity and concentration. I can apply this every time I face a learning challenge I have historically perceived as negative or unnecessary. It is humbling to remember that someone like Steve Jobs found in his calligraphy class the idea for how to design part of Apple's products, when for him that subject was not necessary for what he wanted to do. Learning should be fun, and I can make it fun with the music I like. It will be one of the main features of my getting-things-done routine. Is this world class?

31/03/23

Internal locus of control

The insight (or meta-heuristic) I picked up today: to reach peak performance in my habits and personal projects, in academics, in entrepreneurship, in professional life and in anything I choose to execute, undertake, or begin, I have to be present, here and now. The past has already dissolved and the future will take care of itself if I focus on what is in my hands today. In short: focus my attention on the present, on my environment, and on everything that is within my control (internal locus of control).

04/04/23

Consistency, incentives, hardest first

Growth comes from consistency, and for consistency to hold there must be daily incentives to execute the committed task without failure and with increasing efficiency. Assigning a specific time block is not enough: there must also be an ABSOLUTE block on external distractions and full management of internal distractions, so the commitments I set rationally in advance are actually executed and, accumulated over a long enough time, produce mastery. What matters is the daily incentive to execute the committed actions, allocating the block early in the day whenever possible, and ALWAYS starting with the hardest thing. Always a transition from the hardest, real or perceived, toward the easiest at the micro level. This translates into decision criteria at work (active, open, warm communication with the team), in habits and personal projects (training starting with the back, reading starting with the hardest book, writing starting with the heaviest, most uncomfortable thoughts, the morning block of breakfast + shower + inner order starting with the shower and ending with breakfast), in entrepreneurial projects (starting with the part that generates the most internal friction), in private tutoring (always starting with the hardest concepts / exercises), and in every decision where I have to prioritize incrementally from micro to macro.

11/04/23

Team communication, ego to the side

Today I want to practice sharing my ideas with the team and, above all, asking relevant questions so I go deeper on how the operation actually works from the inside. My goal will be to keep communication fluid and assertive at every moment, asking as many questions as I can and advocating for effective, efficient long-term solutions using systems thinking. To do this I have to be fully present and use curiosity both to ask and to propose, and to get to know the team in depth. I have to set aside the ego and the belief that the world revolves around me. Delays in my social adaptation are real and need to be accounted for; they are vital for communication and synergy with my colleagues. The belief that telling my plans makes them fail is superstition. Personally, the ideal is still to work in silence, but in professional environments I flex that habit: I communicate what I am doing as much as possible, document tasks and notes, ask a lot, and request feedback from my superiors. This only creates positive inertia in the long run, and stimulates the kind of positive randomness that brings things I could not have imagined on my own. Focus on now, on the environment, on what I can control. Continuous learning, where error is welcome, feedback is indispensable, iteration is constant, and improvement is infinite.

Entrepreneurship

Notes on building: systems, habits, meetings with the people who decide, and the internal standard of asking myself, every day, if this is world class.

§ 01

You cannot optimize what has not started

Start today.

§ 02

Show up with a proposal

In a meeting with a CEO, or any senior person, always show up with a proposal prepared in advance. They value their time as much as I value mine. I need a clear reason for being there and for reaching out. The proposal matters because it becomes the focus of the discussion and negotiation: it is, in essence, the real objective of the meeting. Without a proposal, the other person ends up bored by questions whose answers are on the web or are irrelevant. People do not want to know what you feel about their project. They want to know what you want from them after they agreed to share a scarce resource, their time. Without a proposal you go nowhere, no matter how polite or direct you are: without a point to land on, the meeting turns into wasted time. The intro is a warm-up; the proposal has to be thought through beforehand. Always.

§ 03

Empirical philosopher: go to the root problem

I wonder if the origin of most problems lies in the real drives and motivations of humans. If we know how to leverage essential human needs in a setting where they apply (as dating apps do with reproduction), then willingness to pay and buy is already built in, without necessarily thinking in market terms, because everything starts from human decision-making under constraints. If I focus with my partners on these details, we can find the root problem, fall in love with it, and reach a solution across many iterations using the technology we have today to build the future. Philosophy, concepts and theories can be useful for thinking; but, leveraging my expertise in observing people, going from details up toward theories, I turn into an empirical philosopher, as Taleb has always dreamed of. The problems I saw at a startup competition I took part in were mostly superficial: they were not looking at the root problem. The solutions proposed were pills for cancer in a world where alternatives many times more effective already exist.

§ 04

The company is an extension of the person

Companies are only extensions of the people that make them up: their values, convictions, goals, every micro decision, every repeated habit, every desire. So I only need to focus on being an entrepreneur today, on living my company as if it already existed, because it already does: it is me. What I perceived as a socialization problem was fixed thanks to decisions I chose to sustain over time, which gave me self-respect and internal value to grow my confidence and my presence outward: new encounters, asking questions in class, presentations. Taking a public speaking course would have solved that pain in that specific area, but it would not have scaled to other domains. That is the key to entrepreneurship.

§ 05

Is this world class?

A Japanese founder and investor told the story of how, thanks to her father's advice, she always asked herself if her work, whatever it was, was world class. Asking this constantly stretches the mind beyond what is expected, pulls us out of the comfort zone and out of the standard, and focuses us on what the best in the world would do. Applicable to everything: personal life, company, profession, every project, every action with a real output. I have historically demanded a lot of myself, but the past motivation was believing I was not enough. Today I realize I do not need to be completed by anyone: I look for someone whole, and to find them I have to become the best possible partner myself. Solid self-worth and confidence grow daily from decisions sustained over time. Today's motivation is the pursuit of excellence, evolution, growth. My daily question: is this world class?

§ 06

Opportunity cost of the obsessive mind

Keeping investment of my resources in failed potential relationships, real or imagined, represents, day after day, a high opportunity cost: the cost of using that obsessive mind on something that produces resources, with the potential to improve, increase, and accumulate resources that let me serve and work for the common good, as I have wanted since I was 18. Today I want to remember Juan's dream, and how unlocking this part of the inner river will let him control his highest-potential state and reach his goals consistently and with discipline over time.

19/03/23

On the Barcelona innovation challenge

I am grateful to have finished third at the Digital Challenge in Barcelona. Something that excites me is being able to go beyond the surface problem seen from the outside and look for innovative, viable solutions. Example: create pools of profiles similar in preferences and availability, both for NGOs and for volunteers, that enable multiple contracts between several NGOs and several volunteers, to meet the flexibility need of those who can sometimes and sometimes cannot. A points and incentives system to attract, retain, and create healthy in-community competitiveness is a feature I want to design. A feed where volunteers see the activities done, with video verification, and posts where they share impressions and inspire others. Another idea, born in Madrid: help talented people optimize their visibility and grow their income, so they can concentrate on doing more of their craft with better tools. Most people playing instruments on the metro or rapping on the street do it for two reasons: income need and vocation. If they get the visibility they need, they can exit those conditions, or even stay in them, with better tools. A personal initiative: dedicate at least 50 EUR to give to talented people I identify in the metro or on the street. If the habit starts, it can only grow the amount reserved and, as a result, the number of people affected.

On Education

Notes on why education, as we live it, falls short, and on the systems that could make it addictive, useful, and world class.

04/02/24

Collaboration and incentives

Learning in groups is the most efficient way there is, and probably the most fun if you choose your company well. The hard part is working with people who are compatible in principles and methodology. The latter is the source of every discomfort between humans: a challenge for managing one's own emotions and conflicts for the sake of the collective. In a nutshell: an educational system based on collaboration, and an incentive set aimed at satisfying the individual needs of its members so that they align with the collective goals of the organization, is the primary source of all technology, innovation, and evolution. It is the source of all progress and of the satisfaction of its parts. It is the mission, vision, and principles that fill a human being over the long run. It is the decision to give up other things that gives life meaning.

§ 02

The base problems

Students are not incentivized to study because, in many cases, they do not know what they want, the way of teaching is outdated or off the frontier, or the content is useless and too theoretical. There is no entertaining system of competition that makes them feel connected to one another, to themselves, and to their individual and collective goals. There are no fast, daily feedback systems in the teacher-student dynamic, nor systems that push for constant disruption of what is taught and how it is taught, and above all why, at the top of the decision-makers. For this, creating performance ratios and defining quality parameters per educational unit is fundamental. Weekly, monthly, and annual reports are fundamental. The transition into the labor market tends to be slow and dissatisfying because of these base problems. There is not enough flexibility for students to try different companies and learn what they want. If the base problems are solved, companies must be given some guarantee about the conditions under which the student is being immersed.

§ 03

Trajectory of an idea

As a kid, the idea was to help students in early stages understand themselves better, their talents and abilities. Then it mutated into mentoring (with the idea of Mentorisable at UPF). The interplay of emotions and rationality consistently affects our decision-making, and that is why InvestInk was an option: helping people make rational decisions, emotionally. Every day more people want to become mono-entrepreneurs. An education that gives visibility on this would be a resounding success in the short and medium term: which tools they can use, which communities they can be part of, how to help them maximize what they need to amplify, how they can use technology to express that gift to the world.

§ 04

Questions I want to answer

How to convey that every field of knowledge actually starts from one, and that the principles that gave rise to them remain. How to make it possible for people to access the best teachers in the world in one click at an affordable price. How to make those teachers automatable so they can teach more people than an amphitheater can hold. How to design a system where the teacher is rewarded for attracting new customers and, above all, for helping them achieve excellent results. How to align incentives so they constantly feel the pressure that they can be replaced, and are rewarded accordingly.