Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• Essentialism and the pursuit of less but better

• A better method for price discovery

• Quote on how you spend your time

Essentialism and the pursuit of less but better

Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. Specifically; less breadth but more depth. It is the choice to make significant progress in one direction instead of a millimeter of progress in a million directions. The key is to be percipient at every moment and understand your actions. Constantly ask yourself, “Is this the most important thing I could be doing right now.” Only by staying focused ont he most important tasks, both professionally and personally, can we really make meaningful progress.

Another tip is to switch the mindset from:

“I have to” —> “I choose to”

“its all important” —> “Only a few things really matter”

“I can do both” —> “I can do anything but not everything”

Ideas from Essentialism by Greg Mckeown

A better method for price discovery

The classic bid format is to start low and have bidders increase the price with each bid. Sometimes this is effective and drives prices up through bid-offs between competing parties, but if only one person wants the prize, it can result in underpriced sales.

To avoid this, instead start at a high price and slowly work your way down. This strategy is effective because it is impossible to know how many people want the prize. Interested parties start to get paranoid. People think that someone else is going to buy it before them and end up pressuring themselves into a premature purchase at an inflated price. The bid may be silent for awhile, but soon enough someone will blink and buy it. The best part is that since there is only ever one bid it is impossible to know how off they are from the floor price.

This only works when you have multiple interested parties. Charities should do this during auctions. Companies could try to do this when raising funds from multiple interested investors. This could work when job hunting if you have offers/ interest from two competing companies. This is exactly how the used car market works. Cars get posted for a high price, and slowly the price comes down until someone is willing to purchase it. If your used car sells to fast, rest assured you could have gotten more for it.

Ideas from The Tim Ferris Show Ep.737

Quote I Want To Share

Do not understate the impact of even one hour wasted. Note wasted means different things to different people, simply its just doing something that you do not love and does not contribute to your long term vision. Take inventory every evening and ask yourself, if it was your last day, what would you have done differently?

Thanks for reading!

Lucas