Tag: optionality
15 posts tagged "optionality".
The value of having choices — options you can exercise if they pay off but are never obliged to use. An asset has optionality when its downside is capped while its upside is open-ended, so that volatility and uncertainty work for you rather than against you. It is the organising idea of this blog and the subject of Richard's book Optionality. In practice it favours asymmetric bets, a barbell strategy that pairs a safe core with a few speculative flyers, and a healthy respect for tail risk — much of it drawn from Nassim Taleb. It connects closely to financial independence and personal autonomy: money in the bank is, among other things, a stockpile of options.
Posts:
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10 Principles of Optionality For an Uncertain World
What is optionality? If you want a thorough answer, check out the big juicy book I spent the last couple of years writing.
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Announcing Optionality, the Book: How You Can Get Involved
As many of you know, I've been working on a book project for the last few years.
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Is Blogging Worth It? A Cheap Option for Attracting Serendipity
Blogging is an endurance sport. As Deep Dish's 4th birthday approaches—a million views, a thousand comments—I have a decent sense of whether it's been worth it.
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Getting Hacked and Getting Hard
CLEARANCE SALE! VANS SHOES CHEAP! I was as surprised as anyone to hear that I'd pivoted from blogging to hawking knock-off footwear on Facebook.
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The Self-Experimentation Guide
A self-experiment that doesn't generate obvious results, like taking tiny, sub-threshold doses of LSD, crosses the line into fiddling on the margin.
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The Embarrassing Problem of Premature Exploitation
Video games give you a clear pathway for leveling up into a muscle-bound hero, and impressing scantily-clad elven princesses with your Very Big Sword.
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Time Travel for Pleasure and Profit
Our meatsack bodies slavishly plod along at the precise rate of one second per second.
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Getting to 'Good Enough'
Time for some Reverse Life Coaching: a shared ambition to become less ambitious. Here's the plan for reaching 'good enough' (and staying there).
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The Optionality Approach to Getting Lucky
What is optionality? My favourite tool for finding juicy asymmetries between risk and reward, and creating your own luck.
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How to Make Your Own Luck
There’s no such thing as cosmic justice. But over the course of a lifetime, at least we can vaguely shuffle in the direction of getting what we deserve.
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Constraints That Liberate
Something I’ve learned the hard way is that you can absolutely have too much of a good thing. Unconstrained freedom is, well... kind of freaky, actually.
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Goals Gone Wild
There’s a huge body of evidence that goal setting works, which is why everyone refuses to shut up about it. But could it be that goals are too powerful?
Also mentioned in:
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Happiness is a Greased Pig Chase
Happiness is a greased pig chase: the harder you grab at it, the more it squirms away. Here's what the happiness research gets wrong about the good life.
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Fuck-You Money Part II
For a refresher on the importance of fuck-you money, go peel off a $100 bill, and subject yourself to the silent, brooding judgment of Benjamin Franklin.
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How to Make Friends as a Solo Traveler
The first stage of being a solo traveler is fear. I flew into Bangkok in the middle of a thunderstorm.
