FRIEND ADULATION - POSITIVE FOOD CO. - My dear friend Schuyler is building an incredible food company, Positive, that is making healthy food incredibly convenient and delicious.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK - Overrated or Underrated: Reading *Printed* Books - Your thoughtful opinions and perspectives are humbly requested for dissemination within the eminently curious TD Digest readership :D
COMEDY - Werner Herzog's Yelp Review for Trader Joe's (Paul F. Tompkins' reading) - "Madness reigns."
Read MoreMENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - INCENTIVES - Incentives are a fundamental and powerful driver of human behavior that, when fully appreciated, will help you better understand others, embrace a mindset of loving-kindness, and make better decisions for living your life.
BOOK - Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall In Love With the Process of Becoming Great by Joshua Medcalf (My full Kindle notes) - Focus on the process. Do your best to separate your ego from the work. Be particularly thoughtful about your environment and mindset. Embrace choice throughout your life. None of this is rocket science, and yet it is easy to forget the basics :D
ARTICLE - UMass Student Life: Motivational Interviewing - Definition, Principles, and Approach - A tried-and-true framework for facilitating behavior change from within an individual, rather than trying to solve the problem for them.
"There is only one thing you have to do in life, and that is die. You are always doing what you want to do, because there is always a choice. You may not like the choices, or the consequences, but you always have a choice." ~ Joshua Medcalf
FRIEND ADULATION - VINCENT WEIR'S ANNUAL SKI TRIP STORY (Episode One; All Episodes)- Vincent's work is an incredible, shining example of a few inspiring ideals, including: (1) Finding your own unique creative outlet; (2) Creating your vision for the sake of creating it; (3) Finding a fun excuse to synthesize latent concepts into a coherent narrative; and (4) Incorporating your loved ones into your life and work.
RESEARCH - The Science of Happiness by Happify Health - A concise infographic delineating key findings from happiness research, with concrete recommendations on how to improve your happiness right now.
BOOK - Eat Bacon, Don't Jog: A Contrarian's Guide to Diet, Exercise, and What Actually Works by Grant Petersen (My full Kindle notes) - Grant's delightful, simple book shares another research-backed lifestyle option (Note: NOT "diet") for both food and exercise.
"Increase your happiness in the long run by nurturing relationships, having new experiences, helping others, and being grateful for what you have." ~ Happify Health
TOPIC OF INTEREST - PUERTO RICO / WE SHALL SEE - Our egos love to judge a situation before we know how it will ultimately impact us.
BLOG POST - Wait But Why: Political Disney World by Tim Urban - Tim's Disney analogy for political characterizations resonated strongly with me, as black-or-white thinking from all sides of the political spectrum can still get me emotionally charged.
ARTICLE - Aeon: Playing Chess is an Essential Life Lesson in Concentration by Jonathan Rowson - A lovely exposition on concentration and critical thinking through the lens of chess, complemented by a greatly appreciated emphasis on the importance of concentration in our freedom.
"The unpleasant feeling of existential confusion and intellectual insecurity is the gateway drug to real intellectual growth." ~ Tim Urban
TOPIC OF INTEREST - 2019 ANNUAL LETTER - My 2019 letter
TOPIC OF INTEREST - SOUTHEAST ASIA TRIP - SUCH A BLAST! The trip was an illuminating reminder of the importance of leaving everyday life to engender greater perspective and insight. (Photos & videos from my trip)
PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #72: Happy Habits with Neil Pasricha by Shane Parrish - A fun and research-backed discussion of concrete strategies and tactics for adding more happiness into your life.
"Happiness is the joy you feel while striving towards your potential." ~ Neil Pasricha
TOPIC OF INTEREST - THERMOTHERAPY - Emerging evidence suggests that both hot and cold therapies (e.g., steam room, sauna, ice bath) can have positive health benefits, but it is still early.
BOOK - The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz - Robert's book offers some wonderful ideas about our general orientation towards life (I will oversimplify his take as an active vs. passive orientation), and on specific steps to living into our creative side.
BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating 1930s Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want by Maria Popova (via Marion Milner) - Marion offers us a scientist's field notes for the exploration of mindfulness and its relationship with our happiness.
"I had found that it was not so easy to know just what one’s self was. It was far easier to want what other people seemed to want and then imagine that the choice was one’s own." ~ Marion Milner
TOPIC OF INTEREST - THANKSGIVING
BOOK - Truman by David McCullough (My full Kindle notes) - McCullough's lengthy biography reveals a vivid portrait of a man who, despite modest beginnings, consistently utilized strong values, process, and team to find a way to rise to the occasion of crisis after crisis (and often exceed all expectations).
VIDEO - TED: The new era of positive psychology by Dr. Martin Seligman - "It turns out the pursuit of pleasure has almost no contribution to life satisfaction. The pursuit of meaning is the strongest. And the pursuit of engagement is also very strong."
"It is only by seeing the totality of things, good and bad, that you gain the understanding necessary to be truly grateful." ~ The Daily Stoic
MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - MULTIPLYING BY ZERO - "In some systems, a failure in one area can negate great effort in all other areas. As simple multiplication would show, fixing the “zero” often has a much greater effect than does trying to enlarge the other areas."
SPEECH - The Common Denominator of Success by Albert Gray - Purpose + Habits + Inversion + Candor is a powerful formula for realizing success.
MOVIE - Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino - A classic Tarantino film, filled with phenomenal individual performances, a plethora of memorable lines, indulgently graphic violence, important societal and moral questions, and preposterous fun all along the way.
"While you may succeed beyond your fondest hopes and your greatest expectations, you will never succeed beyond the purpose to which you are willing to surrender." ~ Albert Gray
MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - INVERSION - Think through problems backward, too. Avoiding stupidity is often easier than seeking brilliance.
MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK - DO YOUR FUCKING JOB - Give yourself the freedom to do the hard and painful work that you must do, to move past inertia or paralysis and take effective action.
MUSIC - Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams - A classic rock song reminding us to treasure the past, but also that everything is impermanent, so we must move on.
"Ask yourself, Do I own my assumptions? Or do they own me? You’ll often find that you’re operating in a jail cell of your own making. Instead of cursing the guards, just open the door and leave." ~ Ozan Varol
TOPIC OF INTEREST - HOLOTROPIC BREATHWORK - A breathing exercise that induces hyperventilation, enabling catharsis / emotional release, but is backed by very limited scientific evidence.
BOOK - Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel (My full Kindle notes) - An absolutely indispensable read for cultivating our intimate relationship(s), focusing on the counterintuitively contradictory links between emotional intimacy and erotic desire.
BOOK - The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase by Mark Forsyth (My summary) - A fun, engaging, and rapid-fire primer on effective rhetorical devices that have stood the test of time.
"All organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves." ~ Esther Perel
MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - HANLON'S RAZOR - Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
EXPERIMENT - DATING APP SOBRIETY - Deleting dating apps for the month of November to remember what it is like to meet potential partners in real life.
BOOK - The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman (My Summary) (My full Kindle notes) - Adopting an alter ego can be a viable and fun path to accepting and living into parts of ourselves that we previously wouldn't or couldn't.
BLOG POST - Letter to a friend who may start a new investment platform by Graham Duncan - Graham's eloquent letter elaborates on a number of important and prominent hang-ups related to entrepreneurship, like feeling sales-y, the opportunity cost of not pursuing our dreams, leaning into our compulsions, the role of money in our lives, and the impact of professional volatility on our various relationships.
BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: 13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings by Maria Popova - Maria updated an incredibly thoughtful and insightful listicle with a few more important lessons learned.
"So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality." ~ Todd Herman
MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - CIRCLES OF COMPETENCE
RESEARCH - Rendering a Powerful Tool Flaccid: The Misuse of Premortems on Wall Street by Gary Klein, Paul Sonkin, and Paul Johnson - A detailed yet simple analysis of a powerful tool for strategic decision making, the premortem.
BOOK - Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson (My full Kindle notes) - A thoughtful, actionable treatise on staying present and noticing our self-created bullshit.
"True satisfaction and contentment have more to do with actualizing yourself than with actualizing your concept of who you imagine you are supposed to be." ~ Rick Carson
Read MoreBLOG POST - Farnam Street: The Best of Goethe’s Aphorisms by Shane Parrish - A lovely listicle brimming with philosophical wisdom.
VIDEO - TED: Listening to Shame by Brene Brown - A vivid reminder of the disconnect between our internal monologues about vulnerability and shame (scary! painful!) vs. the external reality (admired! builds trust and connection!).
"To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ARTICLE - The NY Times: Eat Less Red Meat, Scientists Said. Now Some Believe That Was Bad Advice. by Gina Kolata - The evidence leading to current recommendations for red meat consumption is more questionable than public health guidelines suggest.
ARTICLE - The Atlantic: Why Everything Is Getting Louder by Bianca Bosker - Noise pollution can cause (not so) silent, long-term harm, impacting our sleep and mental health.
MOVIE - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Stanley Kubrick - A classic and low-key hilarious movie about the potential for nuclear war, despite good intentions and semi-thoughtful planning.
"When you don’t have the highest-quality evidence, the correct conclusion is ‘maybe.’" ~ Dr. Dennis Bier
MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK - HUMBLE MYSELF TO AIM UP
ARTICLE - The New York Times: How Not to Be Alone by Jonathan Safran Foer - Jonathan's touching op-ed reminds us of the implicit trade-offs we make when connecting via more advanced technologies.
BLOG POST - Wait But Why: The Thinking Ladder by Tim Urban - Tim's 'The Story of Us' epic continues, this time with an incredible deep-dive into the different mindsets of knowledge acquisition.
ARTICLE - The New York Times: Five Lies Our Culture Tells by David Brooks - Another engaging op-ed from David Brooks advocating for self-transcendence and personal leverage over traditional career success and autonomy.
MUSIC - Smash by The Offspring - A classic rock album, and one of my favorites from the angsty teen years.
"If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease." – Sent-ts’an
PODCAST - The Tim Ferriss Show: Tristan Harris — Fighting Skynet and Firewalling Attention - Tristan is at it again, armed with his core narratives of technological optimism complemented by cynicism for the incentives of the actors who create and control that powerful technology.
BOOK - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (My full Kindle notes) - Yuval's initial pop history opus reveals the tremendous power of shared fictions in humanity.
"We live in utter certainty about a world that is highly uncertain. Whenever stress comes about through that process, we might be able to downregulate a lot of that stress by just not taking our thoughts and beliefs quite so seriously." ~ Tristan Harris
RESOURCE - Sensible Living: Reflecting on the Fine Essentials of a Beautiful Life - My ever-evolving framework, principles, and resources for living an examined life.
RESOURCE - TSD Ventures Consulting - How I pay the bills and make large-scale impact professionally! We give Proactive Health companies strategic and financial clarity for the best path forward. 2 years and 25 clients in!
RESOURCE - TSD Ventures Coaching - How I make 1-1 impact professionally! We help our clients build healthy, fulfilling habits. Definitely does not pay the bills, but incredibly meaningful work.
RESOURCE - Key Health & Wellness Behaviors from Research - A snapshot of the handful of key health behaviors that improve productivity across nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mindfulness. Make sure you are doing the basics right! To put it bluntly, fuck silver bullets ;D
RESOURCE - Morning Mantras Poster - My current collection of words of wisdom to help me start every day with my desired mindset.
RESOURCE - The Habit Digest - A smorgasbord of behavior change nerdiness! If you want to change a habit in your life, I aggregated, curated, and synthesized a ton of research and resources back in 2016.
RESOURCE - Applied Mental Health - Practical resources to enhance your emotional and psychological well-being. Mental health seemed stigmatized and complex, so I aggregated and curated a collection of proven tools and providers back in 2017.
RESOURCE - Proactive Health Innovation Market Map - My tracker for companies and investors leading the charge in proactive health innovation.
"The thirst for more sounds comically absurd when you zoom out and see that nothing matters, so it’s about going deep into the zoomed-in life you already lead. Your health, your loved ones, your work, your interests, your desire to help others, your values, your existence." ~ Lawrence Yeo
