I am an immigrant entrepreneur from Turkey.
I became US Citizen through Naturalization in 2014. One of the main reasons I wanted to be a citizen to engage in US Democracy.
I voted in 2016.
I’ll vote today. Elections are the best places to participate in democracy.
No matters what is happening in politics. Still, the US is the best place for people like me.
My only reason to live here: FREEDOM
Please vote today!
Maps are useful If you use it.
It happens to me a lot when I go places I ignore Google Maps’ change the route recommendations. I keep saying “Oh, I know what I am doing, Google Maps just mixed up”.
Guess what happens mostly? Maps are right those recommendations. They are getting data from a variety of sources. They do all calculations and comparisons in multi seconds.
Why am I behaving like this? Because I’m blinded by my built-up knowledge which has been fed by only “my” previous experiences.
What this example tell us?
I think for any topic or idea, we should do research and learn from multiple sources. The more we can expand our vision, we can come up with better conclusions.
According to Wikipedia, Lifelong learning means “ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated” pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons.” Voluntary and self-motivated is the key to this learning process. No one should force you. Maybe they can encourage it.
I started as an “Economics” major in university. After the first semester, I felt too much irrelevant mathematics, so I transferred to an “International Relations” degree. I’m glad I made the right choice. My formal learning of Economics ended in 2007. But, I have never feel stranger to the Economics topic. I always like to read and ask myself questions and learn more.
These days, I follow a couple of Youtube Channels and blogs about many topics. My top 5 are Psychology, Art, Finance, Solo-Travel, Investment, and Music. I feel the joy of new learning keeps my mind sharp, and as a reward, I feel I am earning a new “set of eyes.”
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Bonus: I like the Marginal Revolution blog a lot. They are two Economics professors (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok) from George Mason University. They write every day (last 15 years) on their blog also they have online Marginal Revolution University (FREE!) I enrolled already Micro Economics and International Finance Course.
None of us is self-made. Even we started everything from scratch without any family or friends help or money. Still, on our journey, we got help.
How? Someone you follow on Twitter, the books you read, or Youtube videos you watched had contributed to your dreams. In my case, Naval, Nassim Taleb, Jim Simons, Morgan Housel helped me a lot last couple of years of my personal growth. I didn’t even meet any of them in person ( Technically, I met Naval 4 years ago on the boat in International Waters (Summit Series), and we exchanged Hi! 🙂 ) But indirectly, you got what you needed it.
I am sure everyone has somebody who helped them earlier days with “one email intro” or “introducing people at the party,” etc. Those look like small initiative now, but they were huge back in time. Yes, I hear you; you did all work. That is your job, “Push the doors and keep them wide open.” Still, you were not alone. Saying I’m self-made would be an injustice to all those people who brought you the party.
Today is actually day 303:) I was planning to write and publish this post after a year of publishing this newsletter. But I just felt today is the day!
– You need to learn, think, or rethink every day to share with your audience. Writing every day is almost a full-time job. You had a chance to quit back in time, but after 200+ days, you figured out you committed something perfect for you. It is like water. So, you can not stop learning something new every day.
– Your mind is picking up things faster than before. You are connecting almost everything the posts you wrote it, or you will write.
– You are developing an encyclopedic brain in the process. It is hard to explain what is it that, but it is a cool thing:)
– You can “search” any term or topic after you have built up hundreds of days of writing and figured out what was your mood, feeling, and occupancy at that time. It feels you have lived every day, and you earned those days.
– You are learning; eventually, you are writing for yourself. Not for friends or fans. Just only for you. And, you want to share what you know or learn. That is an amazing feeling. There is nothing a better reward than this.
Moving forward:
I’ll keep writing every day. However, I won’t number it anymore. I am very satisfied with what I have accomplished already. It was a good ride.
I won’t wait anymore to share what I read, watch or listen till the end of the month. I’ll share any time I feel to do
Thank you again for all of you. Let’s start the real journey. As I always said, This is not End; This is not the Beginning. This is just End of the Beginning.
I was doing research on how much money Americans spent on Alcohol? Why I do this research? Because I like asking some weird questions myself then keep searching on the Internet and learn more random things. That is kinda my hobby:)
Anyway, It looks like $565 per year. Pretty much 1% of their Gross Income.
Then, I want to check out what is “Alcohol Tracker” keyword’s search score on iOS in the USA. To try to figure out is there any data it can tell us people want to stop drinking or not?
According to MobileAction* Keyword Trends (aka Google Trends for Mobile) Data, the “Alcohol Tracker” keyword’s average search score is 30 out of 100. That is about a good search volume keyword. Decent amounts of people are searching for it.
If you look at the data between 12/1/18-10/29/2020, You can see 2 peak times of searching the “Alcohol Tracker” keyword. Guess which days are those?
Yes, you are right, right after the New Years’ party. In the first week of January of 2019 and 2020 search score of the “Alcohol Tracker” jumped from 30 to 35. Pretty much, these days everyone making their new year resolutions. Then track their progress and looks like quit after a couple of weeks:) However, 2020 looks different than in 2019.
I saw a big drop (April 2020), Why? Then I did a little bit of research. Yes, I heard from the news people are drinking more alcohol. But Is that really true?
During COVID-19 first wave of shock, “According to a Morning Consult poll of 2,200 U.S. adults conducted in early April, 16% of all adults said they were drinking more during the pandemic, with higher rates among younger adults
It looks like April 11 is the lowest search volume (26) of the “Alcohol Tracker” keyword. That means people are drinking more than usual regular April. If we compare April 2020 and April 2019, Last year pretty much a very flat year for “Alcohol Tracker”
It was a good exercise for me. I learned a couple more interesting things about user behaviors on the App Store and overall consumer behavior. I’ll probably extend this research for other countries and try to understand Is there any repeating pattern or not?
It is great to have smart people nearby. But, not easy to meet up with them every day in person especially these days. So, what should you do?
I know you sort of know your mission. You figured out it. You are a smart person. The more you learn, the more you understand.
But, the more you see, touch, and hear, the more comfortable we become with it, and it turn out less stressful.
Write your mission, print it out on your wall. Record your voice listen from time to time whenever you feel down. Believe me, you will see the difference.
We think we know too much but we have no clue. We are experiencing a knowledge illusion. According to Steven Sloman, if we are around the people who seem to understand the topic, even if we don’t have any idea what is going on, we feel we understand it. Our understanding is basically based on the people around us.
It is a total illusion. Instead of educating ourselves on the topics, we believe what they (aka politicians) are saying.
If someone asks your opinion “How high those mountains they appearing on the horizon”? What will be your answer?
Depends on where you sit? If you are driving, you are probably going to answer something totally different than the person who is on the boat.
Decision making is the same. Depends on where you grow up, who is your parents, when you born (the 80s, 90s, or millennials), and goes on.
More you see repeating patterns you might think you figured out what is going on. Still, Investor, Michael Batnick says, “some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.”
