I’ve always found it important to leverage what I have and what I know into more. Make 2+2=5. By leverage, I mean the following:

  • what can I take that I have (whether its an existing asset, knowledge, relationship, etc) and extend it elsewhere?
  • Where can I push to get more results compared to others because of my knowledge, talent or passion for a subject area?
  • What is the compound effect of what I am doing, or is there one, or could there be one if I adjusted it a little?

Leverage means I can do more with what I have. Thus, I always look for leverage everywhere. Leverage = productivity. If I can leverage something to do more, I am more productive, and productivity is critical for increasing wealth (obvious is money, but wealth is measured in more time, better health, better relationships, more satisfaction with who I am, with my life).

Composability is a relatively new term made famous with web 3. It is simply taking existing resources and using them as building blocks to new applications. It is really the same as leverage, but helps me think slightly differently in that I need to ask myself, what am I doing now, learning now, building now, that can be used as a building block to something else? So while leverage is a bit nebulous, I can think about what I am doing now/learning now/building now as a defined block.

But to take advantage of whatever it is I am doing now/learning now/building now, which might offer leverage or be composable (a block) into something else, I need to document it, so I have it as a metaphorical block that I can use elsewhere in the future.

That is probably the biggest reason why I have spent the time to build out my own data and intelligence platform, so that I can quickly and effectively track what I do, what I learn, and what I build, so that I might be able to recall it in the future to use elsewhere.

So to make this discussion more practical, I should ask myself at the end of every day: what are the composable blocks I did/learned/built for today that need to be documented so they can be recalled for later use?

If the goal at the end of every day is to ask and answer that very question, then my day should be prioritized to the following: doing/learning/building composable blocks that not only satisfy the task required at hand, but can be recycled for used again in the future.

And, to take this thought line to a logical conclusion: If whatever I am doing/learning/building does not end in a composable block, then maybe I should not do it – not that it won’t get done, because it has to get done – but I should offload it to someone else to do it so I can focus on doing/learning/building that yields composable blocks. Because, composable blocks – or leverage – means more productivity, which can lead to greater wealth.

See more about leverage in the Strategy Section of my Startup Framework.