2024 Year in Review and A Shift In My Learning Approach

Constant learning and staying updated is an essential part of any professional’s journey. For me, as both a product manager and investor, the stakes are even higher—I need to keep up with changes, form opinions, and make decisions that create value. That’s why I’ve titled my blog The Opinionated Investor.

So, how do you stay ahead of the curve and keep learning effectively?

My Learning Journey Pre-2024: Books, Books, Books

Before 2024, my learning was heavily focused on self-help books and business biographies. My goal was to finish at least one book a month. While books have their place, I ran into a few challenges:

1. Backward-looking content: Books often analyze past successes or failures, which can become outdated—especially in fast-evolving industries like AI.
2. Low time ROI: Most books convey just 2-3 core messages over 200-400 pages. Articles, podcasts, or summaries often deliver the same insights in a fraction of the time.
3. Lack of multidisciplinary exposure: Inspired by Charlie Munger’s talk on “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” I realized my reading was too narrow. Munger emphasized cross-disciplinary thinking, mapping ideas from diverse fields like business, law, economics, and the arts to create unique insights.

The Big Shift: My 2024 Learning Framework

In 2024, I redefined my approach to focus on blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and in-person events. These formats offer fresh, concise, and forward-looking perspectives—perfect for staying agile.

Here’s what my learning routine looks like now:

Daily Learning Habits

• Morning Reads: I skim The Wall Street Journal and bookmark articles for deeper dives using the Pocket app.
• Commute Podcasts: My favorites include Acquired, The Investors Podcast, and How I Built This. Podcasts turn idle time into learning time.
• Bedtime Newsletter Read: After dinner, I read Finshots, which provides bite-sized insights into Indian equities and financial trends in southeast asia.

Weekend Deep Dives

• Barron’s Saturdays: My weekend ritual starts with a physical copy of Barron’s, covering markets, investments, and macro trends.
• The New York Times: Every once in a while I’d pull up interesting op-eds to read from the NYT.

In-Person Learning

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area means there’s always something happening. I aim to attend 2 events a month to stay updated on AI and tech.

Apps like Luma and Partiful help me find events, and Mariane Bekker’s curated list is a goldmine for tech related Bay Area happenings.

For Product Managers, my friend Dan Olsen organizes a monthly in person meetup with well known speakers such as Marty Cagan.

My Go-To Resources

Blogs & YouTube

• Product Management:
  • ProductHabits by Hiten Shah
  • The Skip podcast by Nikhyl Singhal
• Business Strategy:
  • No Mercy No Malice by Scott Galloway
  • Stratechery (free articles only) by Ben Thompson
  • AJuniorVC (focuses on southeast asian businesses)
• Valuations & AI:
  • Prof. Aswath Damodaran’s channel for Valuations and broader market trends
  • Andrej Karpathy’s channel for all things LLMs and AI

Investing Insights

• Investment Idea Sourcing:
  • Seeking Alpha (paid)
  • Bear Cave (free articles only – I don’t short, but it helps me understand what companies to avoid)
  • Dataroma (great visualization of 13-F filings)
  • Insider Arbitrage (for assessing insider transactions)
  • Merger Arbitrage (for event driven opportunities and spinoffs)
  • Value Investors Club (good source for seeing what other value investors are chatting about)
  • SumZero (paid ideas from other portfolio managers)
  • Trendlyne (focuses on Indian markets)
• Financial Analysis and Data:
  • Tikr Terminal (paid) or Finchat.io (provides 5 year financials globally for free)
  • Quartr app (for listening to past earnings calls)
  • Edgar Full Text Search (for searching free text across any SEC filings)

Why This Shift Works for Me

• Efficient Time Use: Short-form content delivers key insights quickly.
• Up-to-Date Knowledge: Blogs and podcasts are forward-looking, perfect for fast-evolving industries.
• Cross-Disciplinary Thinking: My broader reading scope mirrors Munger’s approach, helping me map connections across fields.

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This approach has revolutionized my learning and keeps me excited to explore more. I’d love to know—what are your best learning hacks or favorite resources? Share them in the comments!