Sunday, May 10th, 2026
Writing to you from Uruguay
Planning.
It’s absolutely key in The Preparation.
They say, “all good things take time”. Oh, how true that is. The time you put into planning for future courses—or entire cycles—will determine the quality of your year. Trust me, I’m not a great planner. I’ve learned the hard way. If I had diligently planned every major thing I was going to do over the past 2.5 years, I would have gotten much more done. Instead, I’ve floundered in certain periods trying to set things up on the fly or unsure of what to do next.
Sacrificing a little bit of your time to plan things a few weeks or months ahead is the way to go.
Well, that’s what I spent much of this past week doing…
Aside from making sure I got the 1890 Spanish sword and Napoleonic-era vase as birthday gifts for my dad, I was trying to figure out where I’ll be going next, what I need to do, and how I’m going to do it. The year will be even better with this planning.
Like I said, proper planning changes the game completely…
Learning to sail in the Falkland Islands required planning.
Working on wildfires as an EMT in Oregon required planning.
Flight school required planning.
All good things require planning…
You’ll only get half as much done without it, maybe less.
Here’s the Plan
Everything is up in the air these days. There’s no telling what will happen from one day to the next. I’m not talking about my own life, or yours, I’m talking about large-scale events in the world.
Wars start for no reason, economic problems are caused by them, and the looming financial issues is the states only amplify the potential threat of things.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m lucky to have a place to go to get away from those problems.
The problem is…a lot of the things worth doing are in the states.
So, you just have to be cautious.
My plan for the next couple months is to head back to the states in about 2 weeks and stay there until early August (assuming all goes to plan). The idea is to go through a quick course in the Survivalist Cycle (a 14-day Boulder Outdoor Survival School expedition) from June 7th-20th.
Then, hopefully, there will be some wildfires to work on for at least 2-3 weeks.
While I’m there, I’ll also have to finish my wildland fire annual training, get a DOT physical to be able to drive ambulances, and go to a short rope rescue course in South Dakota.
I’ll still continue working through the Investor Cycle at the same time. As you can imagine, this cycle is purely study.
What I Learned This Week
To clarify again, learning about investing was a minor part of this past week.
Although, after finishing the Stock Market Investing for Beginners course I moved on to a different online course to learn the basics of technical analysis. Fundamental analysis (figuring out and understanding the true, or potential, value of a company) is more my speed, but technical analysis seems to have its merit, too.
I can’t speak on technical analysis in an interesting way at the moment because I don’t know enough about it yet. For the most part, I only understand the definitions of certain trend lines or indicators that show whether a stock is likely to go up, down, or stagnate at a particular price range.
Let me give you a briefing on two of the more interesting things I’ve learned about thus far…
1.) Support and Resistance levels.
A support level is a price at which there is demand (buyers) for a stock. It allows for a good opportunity to buy a stock at a better price—depending on other conditions, of course. On the other end, a resistance level is a price at which there is supply (sellers) for a stock. These levels provide the opportunity to sell or short a stock.
2.) Channels and Trend lines
Channels use trend lines to mark the highs and lows—as well as the direction—of a stock. The information this gives you (combined with other detailed information I’m sure I’ll learn about later in the course) a fairly good idea of where the market is heading and what is likely to happen with the stock price.
Activities
Chess practice (7 out of 7 days)
Going pretty good as usual, but I still need to take more time to analyze each movement.
Worked out (3 out of 7 days)
Just didn’t have time to go to the gym every day this past week.
Guitar practice (5 out of 7 days)
Going fairly well. Still sticking to practicing the same few songs.
Reading
Started reading Bowdries Law by Louis L’Amour
Started reading The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
Last Week’s Post
Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?
Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.
And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.
I’ll see you next week.
-Maxim Benjamin Smith
I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.
All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.
This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.
What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.
Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.
We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.
I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.
You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.
My objective in sharing this is three fold:
Documenting my progress holds me accountable.
I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.
For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.