Week 14 – Ten Timeless Tests of Strategy

Hi Reader,

This week, I'm embarking on a new chapter by starting Auditless, where we will build developer tools for smart contracts. Please get in touch if you are building on Ethereum and would like to improve your workflow.

This newsletter touches on planning. We combine McKinsey's strategy framework, David Cummings' ambitious planning exercise and John Bogle's reflections after a long career in in investing to help you start your personal planning cycles for 2019.

🐦 Tech (mainly) tweets I'm reading

David Cummings shares a valuable planning exercise.
Ryan Selkis reveals his crypto holdings.

♞ Strategy

Ten Timeless Tests is a proven framework for thinking about business strategy, tested by more than 100 years of strategy work at some of the worlds largest corporations. As a McKinsey consultant, I learned to appreciate the elegance of this framework and used it time and time again to guide my own thinking.

📉 Investing

John Bogle: RIAs are the future; trading is the investor's enemy is an interview with the Founder of Vanguard who pioneered low-cost index fund investing. The ideas behind low-cost index funds echo our investment principles, but the interview also touches on John's personal investments, the nature of ETFs and the marginal benefit of wealth.

➡ Planning

Career Planning Tool is a free service from 80,000 hours that maximizes your impact on earth. I've been a fan of 80,000 hours' structured research-intensive approach for a number of years and this guide summarizes a lot of the learnings on the website in an engaging and actionable way. I encourage you to try it.