DESIGN PRINCIPLES.

So, this is a list of design principles I got:

1. Nice to have versus absolutely effing necessary?

So for example, when you’re designing a home, there are all these cool designer homes, but the really wise thing to consider… Is if each single room bedroom floor is absolutely effing necessary?

Also, the new iPhone is an abomination. Adding that stupid camera control was like one of the most embarrassing things of all time from the Apple design team. It’s kind of a cheap marketing tactic to add a feature, to get people to buy the new thing.  the genius of Steve Jobs was opposite: each new generation of the thing to subtract superfluous features, spending insane amount of time to figure out what to cut.

In some ways, Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. Delete delete delete, cut cut, or the idea you have to keep deleting until failure, and then you have to add it back?

For example, his genius of figuring out cutting and getting rid of the stalks. Also, the cyber taxi, just getting rid of the steering wheel and all the controls! Insanely bold, amazing.

I think also with social media it’s kind of the same thing, 100% thousand percent absolutely critical versus nice to have?

For example, if you are an MSTR shareholder, you technically don’t even need social media you just go on strategy.com to get all the important vital information, which is typically a reflection of the real market conditions of bitcoin. Or you could just look at the price of bitcoin.

I’m constantly on this ruthless quest, trying to figure out what to add and what to subtract. But remember my general principle:

Every single day, delete at least one app utility or thing from your phone, your laptop, your iPad, your life. 

2. Raw is better

So for example, the most hilarious innovation of the modern day condo is trying to make it as thin, invisible as possible. Everyone knows that coitus feels best without any sort of condom or thing on. And therefore, ideally the best design principle is raw, like even a funny thing is that if it is actually really really really hot outside, just taking off your shirt is often the easiest way to pull down. The best outfit is being naked.

And then also if he apply this principle to everything else, subtraction is the most effective strategy. For example, with foods, substances beverages, the simple thought:

If it does not cause your pain don’t fix it!

For example, like 99.9% of the substances we put in our bodies are not 100% necessary. The only thing that I do not imagine ever quitting is coffee or caffeine because if I do not drink coffee first thing in the morning, it causes me pain.  Yeah yeah yeah I know that’s not good for me but screw it, I’m like the most sober person I know. I don’t why I haven’t touched alcohol in like seven or eight years, and I don’t take drugs not even painkillers. No marijuana or hallucinogens for me. I think I have only smoked weed twice in my life, like six years ago, the first time it was kind of funny, the second time I didn’t really like it.

Same thing with alcohol, only problem with alcohol is that it just doesn’t make me feel good. I always get a hangover the next day, it ruins my sleep, and also the biggest thing… It probably doesn’t help me maintain my 5% body fat six pack.

3. Reduce reduce reduce

Reduction and cutting often has no downsides.

4. If it does not cause you pain don’t fix it

So for example, the only time I think you should ever like change your car is if the car yours currently are using is causing you pain. Like for example, I had one former student who told me that his old BMW X.3 or some other car caused him to severe back pain, and it had to do something with the seat or the armrest?

As a similar thing, I have not touched a laptop in like eight years because it causes me severe back pain and also carpal tunnel pain?

5. Nice to have, and convenient or 1000% critical?

Another big idea, is that thing like 1,000,000,000,000% critical or is it just nice to have and add convenience to your life?

For example, currently in Cambodia, most people don’t really use cash. They use ABA pay, which is the local QR code popular bank here.

Apparently if you get a APA account, it will make your life a lot easier. But, I’ve actually figured out that I am able to pull the local currency, the KHR, KHMER RIEL ALSO FROM THE ATM, AT A LOCAL ABA ATM.

So I think that assuming that I could still pay cash, with the local currency, it might add a little bit of friction to my life, but it is fine!

6. Clothes

Clothes and shoes, once again, the pain issue.

The reason why I discovered the view from five finger shoes was in fact because all the traditional shoes I had was causing me severe tendinitis pain on the bottom of my foot plantar fasciitis, very very simple, it can be cured by just wearing these five finger minimalist shoes.

My personal thought is the only reason people don’t wear them is that they look weird. But then again, crocs look weird and it seems like everyone wears those.

I think there’s a certain point in your life, I’m 37 now, I really care less. All I care about is Seneca Cindy, my family and friends, my bitcoin in my MSTR stock. To reduce your sphere of concern is wise.

7. Life is like Lego bricks

I just recently watched the new Pharrell Lego movie, piece by piece. Probably one the most interesting watches of my life.

 so one of the big principles from Pharrell which is super interesting is thinking that life is like Legos. Infinitely configurable, and the idea is that assuming that this planet, a lot of of it is built and designed, that that means that you cut yourself on your own reality.

Lately I’ve been having fun with Seneca, buying Lego technics, and just making new inventions by ourselves and what’s really fun and interesting is that there is like an infinite amount of configurations that you can make, even with like a $10, 70 piece set.

So my personal thought is that you could design your own reality! A designer, your designated what is important and what is not important.

For example, nobody is holding a gun to your head and saying that you must use Instagram Facebook WhatsApp or whatever to stay alive. You have the option to believe it. Certainly there might be loss of entertainment I suppose, but that is a small price to pay for your freedom .

I think for mental health and physical health, deleting all social media from your phone may be the most effective strategy of all time. And the hilarious things that it costs you nothing.

Typically whatever I encourage, it’s Bree! To delete stuff doesn’t cost money.

And also, one of the best ways to spend money is to simply pay for services or things which blocks advertising, and other annoying stuff.

Like my ideal thing is that if we had some sort of like augmented reality glasses, and you can pay like $50 a month to have this thing automatically block advertisements in the real world, this would be a great invention.

And all of the Safari plug-ins and extensions that I have purchased, the ones that continue to live on my devices, are all of the paid ad blockers.

Come on, nobody likes advertisements, not kids, not Google employees. Not you.

8. Friction

So some simple thoughts:

If there’s a certain behavior you want to change adding a little bit of creative friction is a good idea.

For example, if you’re addicted to social media, try to figure out ways that you could make it more difficult to access stuff. For example, am I quest of getting rid of Twitter and X, I’ve just been logging out of my account occasionally, and using rss.app to access @saylor

Also, the funny thing with networking is that actually, to become more wealthy and prosperous isn’t to augment and add more contacts to your contact list, but to selectively prune, and delete contacts from your list.

Some friction is good some friction is bad.

So for example, reducing friction on Amazon prime could be good, but assuming that you want more sexual pleasure, adding some sort of friction is good.

And this is actually the funny thought about pornography, nothing morally wrong against it. But almost it’s too easy? And therefore as a consequence, people will get bored of it? Because it is too easy to access?

Like you know women who play hard to get, even men who play hard to get. It’s like the difficulty in the chase which makes it fun for people.

Similarly speaking, with games and video games, it is only fun when we have a little bit of difficulty. Like in StarCraft, it is no fun killing easy computers, it is more fun challenging and interesting to play against difficult human opponents.

Also with weightlifting, it is only fun if it is difficulty challenging and uncertain. When the weight becomes too light and easy it becomes boring.

And this is the hard thing for people to understand, is that often times, adding more difficulty and Christian can make life more fun! I think it’s just a selective principle.

For example, having soft sheets is probably better than having sandpaper blankets. And having some sort of lubrication is better than having squeaky wheels.

And I think this is a hard thing to understand about money and wealth, assuming we truly do believe in the via negative about principal, there really really wise things to do in life is to cut subtract and get rid of superfluous stuff.

If anything, the best way to use money is to use money to get rid of stuff.

For example let us say you have a storage unit a full of crap. My fun idea is that it’s a better idea to just pay somebody 300 bucks to figure out what to keep and what to throw away, or even a better idea… Give them like a 50% incentive that they could just resell the valuable stuff in your storage unit and they could take half the profits, and you keep half the profits.

The richer you become, the fewer concerns you want. You don’t want to manage your house as manager, you don’t want to manage your manager‘s manager‘s manager. The fewer the things you have to manage, the better.

.

UTILITY.

so I’m currently going through this very very annoying thing… Trying to get new lenses for my glasses. Since the last five years, unfortunately my vision has degraded significantly, maybe like 20% down, and as a consequence, being here in Cambodia Phnom Penh, I thought… Hey, everything in Asia is cheap cheaper, why not get some new lenses while I am here instead of getting ripped off in the states?

Some generalized thoughts:

First, one of the most amazing things is that these Lindberg frames, titanium frames that I’ve been wearing for almost like 15 years, which I’ve become iconic, even generative AI OpenAI knows what I look like, have lasted this long! When I was like 21 or 22, I remember getting them with my friend and local guide Siddarth, while in Calcutta India. At this time I was just starting off my photography journey, and I wanted new frames and I figured that in India… Economically it was a good lever and a good leverage because they are like insanely good at making classes, and once again, far cheaper than in America.

So at the time, when I bought the frames, they seemed perfect to me, and also the sales person told me that it was like the same frames that Bill Gates used? I figured if he is insanely light, strong titanium frames were good enough for Bill Gates, it would probably also be good enough for me.

Anyways, things which have been interesting, once again I got these framed when I was like 22 years old, and I’m 37 years old right now. 15 years!!! When is the last time that you bought anything that you actually use every single day, multiple times a day, for the last 15 years?

And also what has been quite incredible is the fact that I have been able to simply swap out the lenses so easily! I think this is the first huge design principle of modular, which is amazing: once again, your vision degrades, and or the lens technology Advances. Rather than swap out your eyeballs, or burn holes into your cornea, it seems a lot safer, more effective, and also more logical to instead, just swap out the lenses!

Also a big pot, you know eye doctors, who make their living and enjoying vision stuff… Note that practically 100% of them all wear glasses, 0% of them ever get Lasik. Rather than asking the opinion of somebody, what they think… Ask them what they actually do. 

For example never ask somebody for financial advice, just ask people what percent of their portfolio do they have in XYZ?

Why this matters

Anyways, I first went to this high-end location and then I later went to another local place to price compare… and at first I felt really smart and good about myself because the first place quoted me like 700 bucks, which was certainly reasonable, given that I literally use my lenses and glasses like 24 seven 365, and it was like super super super super super top of the line everything. The most advanced lens technology, Essilor EyeZen, all of the fancy Crizal anti-blue light UV whatever codings, which surprisingly I think actually makes a difference if you look directly into the sunlight it’s almost like mini sunglasses? I found that, if you have the right layering things on your lenses, the sun is actually less bright if you wear glasses?

Anyways, the second place I went to was a local Cambodian place, very very clean brand new and nice, all the workers spoke Khmer, and they had to phone in their manager boss lady, a 27-year-old woman who studied abroad in Australia for a bit, perfect English.

Anyways, they priced me and quoted me like $320, which is like less than half the price, apparently the same thing! At first I was like quite happy about this because I had the maybe feeling, but the first place, which had an impressive foreigner International eye doctor, and also, a more upscale Location and office, I thought I was getting ripped off because of simply the decor of the place.

Anyways, the second place also said that they would give me the thinnest lens possible, eyezen essilor etc… all of the good stuff. Surprisingly after only about a week, they told me that it would take two weeks, which also is a good tactic, it is always better to tell people that is going to take longer than shorter, and better to deliver “ahead of schedule“, even if the initial number is inflated? 

For example, let’s say you’re a contractor, and you’re trying to build like a garage or a kitchen. Let us see the historically it takes you like three months, it’s better to tell people that it will take six months, and deliver it in three months, rather than Tell people that it will take three months, and deliver it in three months? Or worse, I’ll be a little bit late of schedule, four months instead of three months?

Once again, it was a good tactic that this place told me that producing the lenses would take two weeks, and note, at least here in Asia, Essilor lenses are produced in Thailand, then shipped here. So if you want some new prescription lenses, doing it in Thailand Bangkok seems to make the most sense.

Anyways, I got the new lenses, the full service was very pleased. Yet I think that’s a little bit shocking for me, I know that my prescription has gone up, which would mean that I need stronger lenses, which means that it will probably be thicker and also heavier. Yet it was a lot more thicker and heavier than I anticipated, superficially it seems like 20 to 25% Thicker than my old lenses, and in terms of the weight difference, which weighs on my head, feels maybe like 17% heavier?

Note, if you wear these things like 18 hours a day, every gram and ounce counts. I was randomly using Grok and deep search to try to see and research the white differences between 1.74 lenses, and 1.64 lenses, and apparently, most users on the web say the differences are mostly “aesthetic”, and most users do not notice a difference. 

The reason why this is not a good metric is because also… Most people eat three meals a day, most people drink Coca-Cola, most people are overfat, most people watch YouTube Netflix Disney+ Hulu whatever, most people look at and click on ads. Therefore, the general idea of “most users: ends up not being a good metric because you are exceptional. You are not the masses. 

The difference

Anyways, I’m only like half a day, a day in, so I cannot give any conclusive findings yet.

First I’m just going to go back to the place that gave me the lenses and I’m gonna ask why they made only the medium tier thin lenses instead of the top-of-the-line thin lenses. Because it was my intent to pay more money for a thinner, lighter lens.

So a kind of random thought associated to this was also thinking about iPhones. I tested the new iPhone Pro for a week, and eventually I just returned it because aesthetically, it was too fat and too thick! It’s like a man with 30% body fat, rather than a man with 5% body fat, demigod Achilles, Brad Pitt ERIC KIM fight club aesthetic.

And this is a big thought, actually, if I had the option with my lenses at least… If you give me an ultimatum that I would choose lenses which had all this better technology blah blah blah, but was 20 to 25 30% thicker and heavier,  order the more basic lenses, which were a lot thinner and lighter, the part of me which is easily swayed by marketing might choose or think that I want the more superior thing, even though it is heavier. But the truth of the matter is, is that lightness and thinness is always supreme. 

And I was thinking about this also metaphorically and almost applied to everything.

For example, what is the best Tesla car? Probably the Tesla model three performance, in ultra red. Why? Ultra red red is the most dangerous color, it is the color of danger so as a consequence people will notice you and not hit you.

Second, it is the most skinny and thin and close to the ground car, which in terms of physics is supreme.

I think this becomes interesting because now that I have unlocked the infinite money glitch, bitcoin MSTR MSTU,,, I really have the privilege now that all the decisions I make or philosophize are based on ethos, my own personal aesthetics? 

Once again, even if you’re a billionaire, I would not wish an iPhone pro on my worst enemy. Why? You cannot use it with your left hand, one handed, and also it will probably give you carpal tunnel and require you to get some sort of steroid injection in your wrist, Like Kanye West. In fact, someone perhaps needs to do a deeper research study on this, about like ever since Apple introduced the really big and heavy iPhones, how many poor people on the planet are suffering from carpal tunnel? 

Currently, it is my personal belief that the best iPhone is either the new iPhone E, E for ERIC, or just the normal one.

Actually, no I will just say it is the new iPhone E, in white. Why? Aesthetically you don’t have that stupid camera control, which is like the worst abomination of a fake ass innovation I’ve ever seen. Steve Jobs would have been very angry.

In fact I would encourage the whole design team to think and consider, re-read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and whenever you make some sort of decision in terms of design: especially now that Jony Ive is not at the head anymore …

What would Steve do?

or better yet,

What would Steve Jobs do, what would he not do? What would Steve think? 

For example in the past, Apple was divine. They spent so much brain power and creative ingenuity to figure out what buttons to get rid of, what features to slice and chop off. Also for myself, I was like insanely obsessed with this too. Perhaps I need to get back on this gravy train.

Anyways, once again, if you take this design principle and apply it to everything, it makes total sense. Cut reduce and chop off all the superfluous weight even if your design thing, could share a few ounces or a few grams off of that thing, it is worth it.

Even with cars and supercars or whatever, you do not want to lose your Lamborghini. You probably want a McLaren, or a Porsche 911 GT 3 RS, or something that is made mostly of carbon fiber, and is lighter.  this is why a 1990 Mazda Miata five speed manual, no air-conditioning no power steering no nothing is so fun to drive! It’s like one of the lightest cars of all time.

Heavy cars are no fun. Cars are dumb, uninteresting, and also, unaesthetic.

I actually have a funny thought: I wonder if the fashion and taste of cars closed etc. is simply based on the average human bodily physiology.

For example, because everyone is becoming so fat, so short, so hairy, so ugly, everyone wants to buy a beautiful big tall car SUV truck or something in order to try to change something about themselves?

Or, in terms of fashion, I think the reason why everyone’s wearing all these ugly frumpy clothes is because the general aesthetic for people now is ugly, fat, skinny fat, anemic, no body shape.

Think about it, if you don’t work out, you’re skinny fat, or whatever… Of course you’re gonna wear like loose jeans, loose flannel shirts, wear a baseball cap to cover up your balding head, grow facial hair or a Hitler mustache to hide your double chin, Wear a blackout sunglass lenses to kind of obfuscate the unattractive or the round features of your face, and also, to promote your cowardly behavior of not making eye contact with people or interacting with other people? Same thing with these cowards who drive these huge blackedout Range Rovers, with limo tints, and just honk at everybody in the road? 

back to products

Anyways, the same thing is with your shoes. The reason why I am so religiously committed to the Vibra five finger shoes is that it makes so much sense. You want maximum connection to the ground, maximum sensation, but also minimum weight?

Whenever you are doing any sort of product comparisons, then the most logical thing to consider is weight differences. Like if you’re gonna shop for and do something, pull up the tabs and see what is thinner, and also what is lighter?

Even consider everyone’s favorite technology, the condom. The goal is to have it as light and thin as possible, or more sensation and more pleasure. Would you want your condom to weigh like 10 ounces, and have the thickness of a soul of a HOKA shoe? No!

Cameras

I guess Ricoh has been having some sort of supply chain issues. Even if you want to buy a Ricoh GR, you cannot?

Anyways, still the more I think about it, Rico GR is the way to go. I think that the fact of life is they will just keep breaking and getting updated and it’s fine, it’s cheap enough, you could afford it.

I also suppose the same thing is with iPhones. There have been many attempts to create a modular phone, but they have all failed because ultimately people want something which is lighter and more beautiful. Even if you cannot use it for more than like five years.

How long should you keep it anyways?

In finance and investing we typically thinking four year or five year cycles. So I think if it could last you at least four or five years it’s probably good enough.

Also as a better thought, before you desire to buy something, think to yourself whether it will be outdated four or five years from now, and think and consider how you would feel about it.

When are the virtues of having an old car, as you know it will never get outdated because it already is. 30 years from now, my 2010 Prius will still drive the same, look the same, perform the same I don’t have to worry about upgrading the touchscreen or other features.

In fact, I still feel that the 2010 model Prius really nailed it. I really like the design, it’s edgy enough, compared to the higher model, which is too round and bubbly,… and another big thing is that there are no annoying touch screens.

Apparently a big issue is with the older Tesla model S cars, the touchscreens are too slow and unresponsive.

Even when we were randomly sitting in a Tesla, Cindy said that the brightness from the screen gave her a migraine?

Even now, the privilege of reading a paperback book is that first, it hurts your eyeballs less, and second, you are less distracted?

Future thoughts: it is the privilege of the new elite to have their kids not use touchscreens, devices and the internet?

In fact all of these new elite schools for kids, the best ones are the ones that are all like organic, wooden toy based, no plastic, no technology. Technology is actually the new crutch for the poor? 

I’m so fucking happy!

Double safety

Why am I so happy?

.

Bitcoin is the will to power.

The city in which you live in is actually really important

.

How to become insanely happy?