Aviv Weinstein

A Short History of Drunkenness

2026-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

A Short History of Drunkenness

I don’t always read books about beer, but when I do, I prefer A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth. In this book, Forsyth takes us on a whirlwind tour through 10,000 years of human drinking culture — from ancient Mesopotamia to Viking halls to Wild West saloons. It’s a funny, well-written book packed with fascinating facts about drinking culture throughout history.

Humanity has been getting drunk for longer than we’ve had writing, farming, or cities. In fact, the leading theory for why we invented farming is that we wanted a reliable supply of beer. Civilization might just be a side effect of not wanting to sober up.

A few highlights:

The Ancient Egyptians had a yearly religious festival called the Festival of Drunkenness. State-sponsored, mandatory, held in a temple — and priests added emetic herbs to the beer to ensure everyone vomited. Nothing says “thank the gods” like communal ritual nausea in a house of worship.

The oldest “X walks into a bar” joke is from Ancient Sumeria: “A dog walked into a tavern and said, ‘I can’t see a thing. I’ll open this one.’” Why that’s funny has been lost to the ages, but the format has survived completely intact. The dog joke is immortal.

The Greeks thought getting drunk was a philosophical exercise. Plato’s argument: you can only demonstrate self-control when tempted, and nothing is more tempting than wine. Therefore, a man who refuses to drink has never proven he has any self-control. His conclusion: you can’t trust a teetotaler.

The Ancient Persians debated every major political decision twice — once drunk, and once sober. If they reached the same conclusion both times, they acted on it.

The Aztec phrase for being very drunk was “as drunk as 400 rabbits.” There were 400 divine rabbits — the Centzon Totochtin — each representing a different flavor of drunk. One for happy drunk. One for weepy drunk. One for violent drunk. And so on.

The Vikings had a cup called the bragarfull — the promise-cup. Any oath sworn over it was absolutely binding, enforced by a sacred boar and reported directly to the goddess Freya. One man accidentally swore to marry his brother’s wife. His brother’s response: “a promise is a promise.” It did not end well.

Australia was founded as a dry colony. This lasted approximately as far as Plymouth harbor, where the marines mutinied over the no-alcohol policy before the ships even left. The colony eventually became a rum-based economy, had its only military coup over rum, and built its first hospital via an elaborate rum-related con. The hospital was nicknamed the Sydney Slaughterhouse. It is now the New South Wales Parliament.

Prohibition actually worked, sort of. Alcohol consumption halved. Liver disease dropped. Industrial output went up. What it also did was invent organized crime, make drinking feel thrillingly illegal, and destroy the entire American distilling industry so thoroughly that when repeal came in 1933, nobody could remember how to make good beer. The mediocre American lager that dominated the 20th century is Prohibition’s most enduring legacy.

George Washington was, at one point, the largest whiskey distiller in America. Before that, he had some kind of career in the military and politics — but let’s not let that distract us.

Forsyth’s argument, underneath all the jokes, is serious: the way a society drinks tells you everything about it. The Greek symposium was a test of character. Medieval alehouses were the only place serfs could talk politics away from their lords. The Gin Craze was what happens when you rapidly urbanize a population with no social safety net. Every era’s drinking culture is a mirror.

It’s one of the funniest history books I’ve read, and one of the more quietly profound ones. Short enough to finish on a flight, weird enough to make you want to tell everyone about it immediately.

Maybe So. Maybe Not

2023-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

Maybe So. Maybe Not.

Embracing Uncertainty. Lessons from a Chinese Parable

During today’s uncertain times, I often think of an old Chinese parable. It goes something like this:

————————————————————————————————————————————— A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbors cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” —————————————————————————————————————————————

The simple phrase, “Maybe so, maybe not” reminds us that life is unpredictable and that the future is often uncertain. We can’t always know how today’s actions are going to affect tomorrow.

At its core, this proverb is a reminder to stay open-minded and flexible. Instead of getting locked into a particular outcome or point of view, it encourages us to approach the future with a sense of openness.

This mindset can be particularly helpful when dealing with difficult or stressful situations. When we’re facing a challenge or a crisis, it’s easy to get caught up in our emotions and lose sight of the bigger picture. But, by reminding ourselves that the future is uncertain, we can take a step back and try to view the situation more objectively, allowing for cooler heads to prevail.

It gives us permission to take things one step at a time, and to trust that things will work out in the end.

By staying open-minded and flexible, we can navigate the ups and downs of life with greater ease and resilience. So the next time you’re feeling uncertain or doubtful, remember this simple phrase, and see where it takes you.

Don’t Worry About Being an Expert

2023-09-25T00:00:00-07:00

Don’t Worry About Being an Expert

When learning a new skill, you don’t have to worry about “mastering” the skill or becoming an “expert.”

Say you don’t know how to paint, but want to learn. Here’s the absolute worst way to go about it: compare your current level of ability (below average 3rd grader) with Picasso, Michelangelo, or any of your favorite Pinterest artist. Anything that you produce will look like garbage in comparison, so why bother?

Even worse, you may have heard that it takes “10,000 hours” to master a skill. That’s at least 4 hours of practice every single day for almost 7 years. Who has time for that?!

Here’s the thing: you probably don’t need to be an expert.

Skill acquisition is tied up in many ways with social status: being good at something is a status signal, so our brains track our perceived competence vs. others constantly. When you don’t think you’re as good as other people at something, it’s common to feel self-conscious, and your mind starts looking for ways to protect your fragile ego from feelings of inferiority.

That’s why you get so uptight when you try to learn something new: your brain kicks into social comparison mode, even though it’s unnecessary at best, and counterproductive at worst.

Most of the time, you don’t need to be an expert – you just need to practice enough to get the results you want, whatever they might be. Comparing yourself against other people during the beginning stages of skill acquisition is wasted energy, and it’s a very real barrier to improving your skills.

In the vast majority of cases, people decide to pick up a new skill to either (1) get a particular valuable result or (2) have fun. That’s it. Social comparison is meaningless – who cares what other people can do if you’re able to get the results you want?

When you decide to learn something new, you’re not competing against other people: you’re competing against your own previous lack of ability, and any improvement is a win. Once you grok that early phase skill acquisition isn’t a competition, leveling up your skills and abilities becomes much, much easier.

Aviv’s Challah Recipe

2023-09-13T00:00:00-07:00

Aviv’s Challah Recipe

Back in 2021, I got obsessed with being able to make great challah. As such, I spent the next several months to a year iterating and iterating over challah recipes; all in order to arrive at my perfect challah recipe.

Forget other recipes, I have experimented around enough so far and think (completely unbiased thinking, might I add) that my recipe is the best one out there. You don’t need a heavy and expensive stand mixer or any fancy bread flours for my recipe. I keep things simple in my super secret recipe.

With that said, my recipe is a mix of the following two recipes:

Ingredients

4 to 4 ¼ cups of AP flour (480g — 510g)
¾ cup (160g, or about 10 grams less) of warm water (used to bloom the yeast)
It’s always easier to add water than to deal with a sticker dough
¼ cup neutral oil (I use canola) (~60g)
¼ cup of white sugar (50g)
2 large eggs
2 egg yolks (from large eggs)
2 teaspoons salt
1 packet of yeast

Instructions

Measuring Ingredients

Empty your packet of yeast into a bowl.
Add ⅔ of your sugar (total sugar = ¼ cup) into the bowl with the dry yeast.
Add your ¾ cup of warm water into the bowl of yeast and sugar.
Mix the yeast/sugar/water mixture to dissolve the yeast.
Weigh 480g of flour into a bowl.
In a separate bowl, weigh 30g of flour
This will be used when kneading the dough
Add the salt (12g) into the larger bowl of flour
Add the remaining sugar into the larger bowl of flour.
Mix all the dry ingredients so they are well dispersed
Separate two egg yolks.
In a bowl, crack two eggs and add the two egg yolks. Whisk the eggs and extra yolks together
Add ¼ cup of neutral oil to the egg mixture.
Assuming your yeast looks good/alive, mix the oil/egg mixture with the yeast mixture
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Using a wooden spoon, combine everything until a shaggy dough forms.

Kneading/Proofing

Once you have a shaggy dough formed, turn the bowl out onto your work surface.
Make sure you scrape the bowl to get all the flour/dough out!
Knead the dough until all the dry flour is incorporated into one large dough ball.
Keep kneading the dough until you can “kind of” pass the windowpane test
I say “kind of” because you can under-knead your dough, and get away with it, if you let your dough proof long enough and add in some strength building folds along the way.
When your dough is too sticky, add in some of the “side flour” that we set aside for kneading. Keep kneading until that flour is incorporated. Repeat if the dough is still too sticky.
Flour the heel of your palm when kneading
Use of a dough/bench scraper is useful for this step.
Once you are satisfied with the amount of kneading you have given your dough, usually takes 10–20 minutes, place your dough in a bowl that has been greased/oiled.
10 minutes of kneading is the absolute minimum, when working by hand
Cover your dough ball with some greased plastic wrap, to keep it from drying out, and then a kitchen towel.
Depending on when you want to bake your challah you can either:
Let your dough proof for a couple of hours on the counter or in the oven with the oven light on
Proof overnight in the fridge
No matter how you proof your challah dough, DON’T RUSH THE proofing process.
Enriched doughs take longer to proof than non-enriched doughs, so be patient.
The trick is to make the dough — and then forget about it.

Braiding/Baking

Once your dough has finished its “bulk” rise/fermentation, you can divide your dough into as many pieces/divisions as you’d like.
Fact: 4 strand challahs look the best.
If you use the slightly more complicated braiding method. Which I believe is called the high braid method. See the below videos for a demo of those braiding techniques:
https://youtu.be/KsQdgxs-bC4?t=396
https://youtu.be/llhB1eNh580?t=64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TOKt18P7z4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5cuTpvp0U&t=109s
There is an “easy” 4 strand challah braid, but it creates a flatter challah.
Flatter looking challahs are not as pretty IMO
Once you have braided your loaf, it needs to finish its second rise/proof. This takes ~1 hour in a warm place
Leave challah covered with oiled plastic wrap during this time
If you want a darker crust on your challah, brush it with egg wash every 10–15 minutes and leave the challah uncovered, for the egg wash to dry.
After an hour of final proofing, preheat the oven to 350F.
Before putting your challah in the oven, apply a final layer of egg wash. Then, if desired, put whatever toppings you like on your challah
Can’t go wrong with sesame seeds or everything but the bagel seasoning.
Or literally anything else. Zaatar is good.
Bake challah for 30–35 minutes
Once challah is done baking, remove from the pan and place on a cooling rack.
Let challah cool completely before cutting.

The Algebra of Happiness

2023-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

The Algebra of Happiness

I finished reading a book called The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway recently and really enjoyed the book. Galloway is an entertaining writer and has a ton of real world experience from his time as professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. This book offers advice on both professional success and personal fulfillment. It is brash, funny, and surprisingly deep.

Here are a few interesting ideas that Scott makes throughout his book about how we can achieve success in our professional lives and happiness in our personal ones.

Sweating vs. Watching

The ratio of the time you spend sweating vs. watching others sweat is a forward indicator of your success.

Show me a guy who watches ESPN every night, spends all Sunday watching football, and doesn’t work out; and i’ll show you a future of anger and failed relationships.

Show me someone who sweats everyday and spends as much time participating in sports as they do watching them on TV, and I’ll show you someone who is good at life.

The Myth of Balance

Everyone seems to know someone who is uber successful. They are top of their field, in great shape, play in a band, close with their parents, volunteer at the ASPCA, and have a food blog.

Assume you are not that person.

To achieve success/crack the top 10%, plan on spending 10-20 years working. And not much else

Successful people have a lot of balance later in life, because earlier on they had none.

The Arc of Happiness

Life in your early years (childhood, teen, college) are pure magic. This is one of the two stages in life when you are happiness

However, from your mid 20s to your mid 40s, shit gets real. Work, stress, and the realization that, despite what your mom told you, you won’t have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As you age, the stress of building the life you’ve been told you deserve begins to take a toll. This is when you are generally at your least happy.

Then as you hit your 50s, if you’re soulful, you start to register your blessings, acknowledge your mortality, and begin affording yourself the happiness you deserve.

So in adulthood, if you find you’re stressed, recognize this is a normal part of the journey and just keep on keeping on.

Happiness waits for you.

Zip Code + Credentials

We have a caste system in the US: higher education.

Economic growth is increasingly clustering around a handful of supercities, which is where you will find most economic velocity.

As soon as you can, get credentials and get to a city. Both of these get more difficult, if not impossible, as you get older.

PS: There will always be great stories about Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jay Z, and other college dropouts. Again, assume you are not that person.

Money and Happiness

There is a correlation. Money can buy happiness, but only to a point.

Once you reach a certain level of economic security the correlation between money and happiness flattens.

Work your ass off and get some semblance of economic stability. But take note of the things that give you joy and satisfaction and start investing in those things.

Compound Interest

The idea of putting money away is most important to the cohort that least understands it: young people.

Start putting away money, early and often. Think of it kind of like a magic box. Put $1000 into a box and in 40 years it’s $10k-$25k.

If you could have this magic box, how much money would you put in it?

Equity = Wealth

It’s difficult to obtain economic security with just your salary, because you will naturally raise/lower your lifestyle to match your current income. As soon as possible, buy properties and stocks. Find a job that has forced savings for a retirement plan or options on the firm’s equity.

The definition of rich? Passive income that is greater than your burn.

Scott has friends that receive 50k a year from dividends, interest, and social security and spend 40k a year. They are rich.

Scott has other friends that earn between $1-$3M dollars per year, have several children in private schools, an ex-wife, and a lifestyle fitting a master of the universe. These people spend most, if not all of their money. They are poor.

Alcohol

The presence of one thing in a man’s life predicted unhappiness in a man’s life more than any other factor: alcohol.

It led to failed marriages, careers coming off the tracks and poor health.

As much as I love a good drink, I have noticed that alcohol has made me a mediocre person. Being frank, it stopped me from reaching my potential and caused me to do things and behave in ways that I now regret.

Take stock of your relationship with substances. If they’re getting in the way of your relationships, professional trajectory or life, address it soon.

Things vs. Experiences

Studies show people overestimate the amount of happiness things will bring them and underestimate the long term positive effect of experiences.

TL;DR: Drive a Prius and take a trip to Asia.

Happiness = Family

The happiest people are those in a monogamous relationship who have children. You dont need children to be happy, but providing for a family and raising kids with someone you love begins to answer questions we all struggle with.

Questions like: Why am I here?

Success = Resilience/Failure

Everyone experiences failure. Everyone experiences tragedy. You will get fired, lose people you love, and likely have periods of economic stress.

The key to success is the ability to mourn and then to move on. Some people have marriages fail, go bankrupt, get laid off, or have loved ones die.

While these events suck, treat them as obstacles rather than barriers.I had a marriage fail, businesses go bankrupt and lost. Armed with a great education, good friends, some talent, a little luck (and being in the best zip code in the world, the USA), you can overcome these obstacles.

Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.

Market Dynamics Trump Individual Performance

Your successes and your failures aren’t entirely your fault.

The number one piece of advice seniors would give to their younger selves is they wish they’d been less hard on themselves.

Your limited time here mandates you hold yourself accountable, but also be ready to forgive yourself so you can get on with the important business of life.

Work. Partner. Friends.

The most important decision you’ll make on future happiness is who you’ll choose to partner with for the rest of your life.

There are many people that have impressive careers, wonderful social lives, and a spouse they love. But they aren’t happy, as their spouse isn’t their partner. They’re out of sync on their goals and approach to life.

On the other hand, there are those with less economic success and that spend less time with friends but have a real partner to share their struggles and successes with are tangibly happier.

69 Pieces of Advice

2023-09-03T00:00:00-07:00

69 Pieces of Advice

Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
Don’t be the best. Be the only.
Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
Promptness is a sign of respect.
When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
Trust me: There is no “them”.
The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
Art is in what you leave out.
Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
Be a good winner. And a better loser.

Productize Yourself

2023-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

Productize Yourself

To succeed in today’s competitive job market, saturated with tech talent due to the downturn in the tech industry, it’s not enough to simply have skills and expertise.

If you are applying to jobs or trying to succeed as an entrepreneur simply on the amount of raw knowledge you have, you will struggle to stand out amongst the competition. To succeed and attract attention as a freelancer, entrepreneur, or other professional, you need to be able to differentiate yourself and communicate your unique value proposition to potential clients, customers, and employers.

A useful phrase on how to market your unique skill set for any future opportunity is: “productize yourself”. It is this phrase, “productize yourself”, that I’d like to spend the next few minutes exploring.

I first heard the idea of “productize yourself” from Naval Ravikant, an angel investor, podcaster, and entrepreneur, best known for being the founder of AngelList. In one of his podcasts, Naval hammers home the idea of how productizing yourself, your talents, and your skills, makes you rich.

So what does it mean to productize yourself? Well, in the simplest terms I can muster; productizing yourself means packaging your skills and interest into a product that you can sell to society.

Said a little more verbosely:

Productize/Productization: you are going to create a product out of whatever you naturally and uniquely do really, really well. The product you are building is the set of things that you uniquely know how to do. That hopefully society wants/needs and that you can scale up to deliver to society.
Yourself: you don’t have to compete with anyone else. You are being yourself, playing to your natural strength and own interests means that you are going to be the best in the world in your chosen areas. And society will reward you for being the best in the world.

Productizing yourself is about creating a clear and compelling value proposition that communicates the benefits of you and any products or services you can offer to potential clients or customers. - While easily explained, this is not an easy thing to do. Naval himself says that productizing yourself takes decades. Simply finding out what unique skills/traits you can try forming into a product could take the better half of a decade.

To productize yourself effectively, you need to start by identifying your unique skills, knowledge, and experience. You can then Ask yourself what problems you are uniquely qualified to solve, and what value you can offer to potential clients or customers. Then, develop a clear value proposition that communicates the benefits of your product or service and how it can help your target audience. This should be an ongoing process that requires constant refinement and adaptation to changing market conditions. It’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in your field, and to continually evolve your product or service to meet the changing needs of society

Productizing yourself is an effective way to establish yourself as an expert in your field and differentiate yourself from competitors; ultimately making you an irreplaceable and invaluable individual. By identifying your unique skills and packaging them into a marketable product or service, you can increase your visibility, credibility, and profitability in today’s competitive job market.

“Your work is your product. You must productize yourself.”

Hello World

2023-09-01T00:00:00-07:00

Hello World!

This is going to be my first post on my website. Thanks for checking it out!

Aviv Weinstein

A Short History of Drunkenness

A Short History of Drunkenness

Maybe So. Maybe Not

Maybe So. Maybe Not.

Embracing Uncertainty. Lessons from a Chinese Parable

Don’t Worry About Being an Expert

Don’t Worry About Being an Expert

Aviv’s Challah Recipe

Aviv’s Challah Recipe

Ingredients

Instructions

Measuring Ingredients

Kneading/Proofing

Braiding/Baking

The Algebra of Happiness

The Algebra of Happiness

Sweating vs. Watching

The Myth of Balance

The Arc of Happiness

Zip Code + Credentials

Money and Happiness

Compound Interest

Equity = Wealth

Alcohol

Things vs. Experiences

Happiness = Family

Success = Resilience/Failure

Market Dynamics Trump Individual Performance

Work. Partner. Friends.

69 Pieces of Advice

69 Pieces of Advice

Productize Yourself

Productize Yourself

Yourself: you don’t have to compete with anyone else. You are being yourself, playing to your natural strength and own interests means that you are going to be the best in the world in your chosen areas. And society will reward you for being the best in the world.

Hello World

Hello World!