Natural Longevity, Health, and Entrepreneurship
I am not vaccinated against COVID-19. Just five years ago, in a sane and free society, I’d have laughed at myself for feeling obliged writing publicly about such a personal health choice. Unfortunately, our society is not that free anymore. The personal decision to get a COVID-19 vaccine or not ought to be an absolutely free and voluntary choice. Is this really the case?
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We see so many problems around the globe. Experts are warning about massive inflation, we see forests burning. The ocean is full of plastic rubbish. The COVID-19 pandemic halted the world economy. The virus and the lockdown measures are costing millions of lives. What role does corruption play, and why is it our world’s most important problem? Which tools can be design to fight corruption once and for all?
Read more “Corruption – Solving the World’s Most Important Problem”
We are entering the third week of 2022. I have reflected on my personal progress as well as the progress of Valenus. I came to the conclusion that a course correction and reorientation is necessary. Let’s dive into where I want to go, the reasons, and how this reorientation will look like.
Today’s morning started different from expected. As I unconsciously opened my Amazon app, I saw a notification which informed me of changes on my ‘wish list’. The MacBook Pro 16’ suddenly was €2.388. This price was too good to be true (and ignored) so I pressed “buy”.
After this impulse buy, I somehow thought: “Marius, no matter what, this still is a lot of money. Are you sure?”.
It’s not that I cannot afford it. I easily can. As I just thought about it, I realized it is a more overall mindset that I have.
I like to focus on investing, earning, and saving. Spending – on the other hand – somehow invokes a negative feeling in me. I cannot really describe it. I’d have felt good investing €2.388 into Apple stock, but spending €2.388 on a laptop???
In general, I’d describe myself as a simple and Stoic man. I don’t need any luxuries. I prefer minimalism to consumerism. I still drive a cheap used car – which totally does its job of getting me really reliably from A to B. We still live happily in a simple apartment because we see no point in upgrading to a larger and more luxurious apartment.
For me, it’s not a question of whether I can afford something, but whether I could allocate this money in a better way.
What could I’ve done with €2.388 instead? I could’ve hired a freelancer to program a web app for me, pay my rent for 3 months, or simply invest in Apple stock.
Whatever. I knew that – earlier or later – I will need a new laptop. I’m still working with my 13’ MacBook Pro from 2014. It works fine – as long you restrict yourself to 2h of battery life, writing, emails, and 4 or 5 Brave Browser tabs. Everything beyond that? Not really.
So, the purchase was totally fine.
What I philosophize about is this “scarcity” mindset I have. Which, for quite a while after I pressed “buy” I thought “are you sure?”.
After a while, I realized that the better way to think about (and a better mindset to have) is to say to myself: “Great purchase! Now, how can I earn €2.388 today?”.
This reframing helped me to go from doubting my impulse buy to instantly getting back to work, be productive, and now trying to earn €2.388.
The quintessence is the following: pay attention to your mind and reframe negative connotations to get into an abundance mindset again – as soon as possible.
I wish you a beautiful day on which you focus on earning instead of spending.
Sincerely,
Marius Schober
This is a constantly updated overview of the best resources you may find useful for learning and studying human longevity.
Read more “Getting Started in Longevity: Resource Collection”
In 2013/14, Christian, a good friend and travel mate of mine, and I travelled and worked in Australia for a couple of months. We loved the country, we loved the nature, we loved the people, we loved the cities. When our stay came to an end, we filed our tax return. We had to choose whether we will or will not return to Australia for work purpose in the future. I crossed “No”. At that time, I did it to avoid further bureaucracy. I questioned my “cross” at that time, as I was pretty certain that I will return and one day move to Australia.
Today, I’m asking myself: what went wrong in Australia? One of the (previously) most liberal countries became totalitarian. Citizens are stranded abroad, citizens are not allowed to leave the country (not even intrastate travel is allowed), not allowed to leave the house. South Australia is even working on an Orwellian app to monitor its citizens.
So totalitarian that I know, at that time I crossed the right answer: I’ll never return to Australia for work.
However, I wish it were not like that. I hope that Australians will wake up and stand up against their completely totalitarian dictatorship. By doing so, you show me (and the world) that Australian people still stand for freedom and liberal values.
Read more in this article worth reading: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/
This is an article translated by me from English to German called “Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics” by Dr RollerGator PhD, first published on Substack on 07/30/2021. I decided to translate the article into German to make it accessible to a wider audience. I explicitly do not have any copyrights to this article.
Successfully selling a small business to an investor, group, or competitor in your industry requires preparation. Otherwise, your business will be less interesting to the potential buyer. Which means that you will struggle to find a buyer in the first place. If you do find a potential buyer, you might be dissatisfied with the purchase price. With a bit of preparation you can achieve both: Your business becomes more attractive to potential buyers and the purchase price will be higher. So, what do you need to consider?
Over the last few weeks, the crypto market has suffered from substantial losses. The last months showed once again brutally how volatile Bitcoin – and with it the entire cryptocurrency market is.
Ever since I first read the Bitcoin white paper and learned how the blockchain technology works – I have been a big believer and fan of decentralized currencies. However, for over five years I have been telling people that while the blockchain technology is great and decentralized applications will be the future, there is no value in any of them – neither DAPPS nor cryptocurrencies – unless there is a real-world usage of them.
To think about the future of a certain industry, we must start by asking questions. These questions should be honest, and they should be challenging. Right now, we can see entrepreneurs and technologists who are re-inventing entire industries. They do so by identifying a problem and then asking the RIGHT questions.
