Blog
Logic, Passion, and the Rule of 72
I am passionate about learning and logical, rational thinking. If something does not make sense or fails to explain how things work, then it doesn’t make sense or explain. At a minimum, it is incomplete. Perhaps it answers a different ...
Brooks Writes Stories: How Did It Go in 2024?
Happy New Year. Since 2017, I have submitted and tracked my fiction writing, and posted annual updates (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). How did it go with my short stories in 2024?
In 2024, I submitted versions and ...
Learn One New Thing Today
Beaverball, my book about a season with the MIT baseball team, includes stories about how we sometimes shared a word or fact “of the day” while stretching at the start of practice. At my high school in California, when the baseball ...
How You Think Can Be as Important as What You Think
The economist Mohamed El-Erian, in his book The Only Game in Town, writes about the importance of having and revisiting frameworks to support clear thinking. He tells a story from the 1980s when the International Monetary Fund (IMF), ...
An Ode to Curiosity and Curious People
In 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt published an article in The Saturday Evening Post titled “In Defense of Curiosity.” In describing the benefits of being curious, she wrote:
I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy ...
My Dad’s Teeth
My Dad is the dream dental patient. He role models superb oral hygiene. I remember, as a kid, our dentist saying, “Your Dad is the best patient we’ve had. He’s a poster child, an all-star for orthodontal self-care.” Growing up, I ...
Appreciation for Practical Skills and Keeping Your Word
My parents gave me a sport coat earlier this year. The sleeves were too long, so I looked for an experienced tailor near my home. Multiple calls later, I found a helping hand at the local Men’s Wearhouse, where the staff didn’t ...
Process, Routine, and the Power of Caring Less
In college, my friend and mentor Mark Lundstrom taught me that “earning good grades gives you more freedom.” I had struggled as a freshman, and Mark, an actual rocket scientist, talked to me about how getting straight on study habits ...
Financial Liquidity: Providing Context for Investors
Liquidity – the ability to convert assets into cash – generally worries investors.[1] In talking with clients and in my forestry investment research, I find that the issue of liquidity varies significantly by investor and over time, ...
Context Appropriate Communication: Comparing Investment Performance to Forest Sustainability
The growth of ESG investing – which screens investments and firms based on environmental, social, and governance criteria – and markets for forest carbon and other environmental “services” highlight the importance of clear ...
Dollar-Cost Averaging: An Effective Investment Hack
Classic lessons and finance fundamentals inform my approach to investing. Start saving and investing early to crank the flywheel of compounding interest. Minimize costs to keep more of what you earn. Diversify to mitigate risk. Commit ...
Options and the Risk of Missing Out
In graduate school, I conducted research on managing risk in the forest industry. My working assumption was and remains that vigorous management of organizations requires the deliberate identification, assessment, and management of ...
No results found.