THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "We pay a very high price for our self-ignorance. Feelings and desires that haven’t been examined linger and distribute their energy randomly across our lives." ~ Alain de Botton

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Enabling Healthy Conflict in Relationships

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Proximate vs Root Cause

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Podcast - Modern Wisdom #285: The Freemans - How To Have Better Arguments With Your Partner by Chris Williamson

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - An Emotional Education by The School of Life

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "To be intellectually humble doesn’t mean giving up on the ideas we love and believe in. It just means we need to be thoughtful in choosing our convictions, be open to adjusting them, seek out their flaws, and never stop being curious about why we believe what we believe." ~ Brian Resnick

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Cultivating My Values

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Technology Adoption Lifecycle

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Television - The Sopranos by David Chase

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Article - Vox: Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong by Brian Resnick

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: A very simple equation for happiness - spend time with people you care about, preferably outside, preferably in nature, preferably moving.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Retiring My Hiking Boots

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Confidence Interval

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are by John Kaag

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book Excerpt - Model Business Plan from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?" ~ Esther Perel

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Struggling with the Question "Do I Want to Have Kids?"

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Leverage

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Twitter Thread - George Mack: Rules of thumb that simplify decisions

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "It is randomness plus a simple iterative rule (or rules) that makes the complexity of the world." ~ John Gribbin

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Systems Thinking

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity by John Gribbin

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Podcasts - Nutrition Debate Double Feature - Joe Rogan Experience #1175 - Chris Kresser & Dr. Joel Kahn & Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton by Joe Rogan

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Sensible Living helps answer the seemingly simple (but actually incredibly complex) question, “How do I live well?” There is no single correct answer to this question for everyone; but there is a unique and exciting answer for every one of us. The experimentation process, the journey to discover who we are and how to live well, is the paramount work of our lives. Per Paul Graham, “You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.” I created Sensible Living to help make that work easier, more fun, and more efficient for you by curating and synthesizing the best available information!

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work. It's perfectly obvious." ~ Richard Hamming

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Relationship Guiding Principles

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: (Portfolio) Diversification

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Blog Post - ideopunk: 100 Tips for a Better Life by Conor Barnes

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Speech - You and Your Research by Richard Hamming

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: (Customer) Segmentation

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Blog Post - Brain Pickings: Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds by Maria Popova

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Blog Post - 52 key learnings in 52 weeks of 2016 by Tre Wee

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TOPIC OF INTEREST: 2020 Annual Letter

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Best of What I Consumed in 2020

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "But dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." ~ Benjamin Franklin

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mental Model Fundamentals - Answer the question “How do I think well?” by leveraging timeless, multi-disciplinary wisdom. Mental Model Fundamentals provides details for ~130 fundamental mental models from 17 disciplines, based on references to over 1,000 sources.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Availability Heuristic - Humans most easily recall what feels salient, frequent, and recent.

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - Franklin's Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin - Ben's life provides us with an intriguing example of living by the famous Epictetus quote, "No man is free who is not master of himself."

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Blog Post - Brain Pickings: Against Common Sense: Vladimir Nabokov on the Wellspring of Wonder and Why the Belief in Goodness Is a Moral Obligation by Maria Popova - Commonsense is fundamentally subjective, fickle, myopic, and blinding in the pursuit of truth.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning." ~ Tal Ben-Shahar

TD'S TOOLKIT: Habit Change Blueprint - 21 proven behavior change concepts empowering you to create the life you want, one habit at a time.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Creating Your Life Operating Manual - A simple process can help you align your current way of being with how you define living well.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Tribalism - People have an innate instinct to think or behave in ways that prioritize loyalty to their social group above everything else. (For more mental models, see Mental Model Fundamentals.)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Course - Harvard: Positive Psychology 1504 by Tal Ben-Shahar - A gold mine of elegant wisdom for how to live a happy life.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "In seeing impermanence, the mind becomes disenchanted from the grasping. In the disenchantment, it becomes dispassionate. In the dispassion, it lets go. In the letting go, there is freedom." ~ Joseph Goldstein

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mindful Moments - Exercises to discover presence and mindfulness at any time.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Living Decisions for a Winter with COVID (Part 2) - Moving home to Brooklyn for the COVID winter is a mix of excitement, adaptation, and preparing for the unexpected.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Randomness - Much of our lived experience is fundamentally unpredictable and random, yet our human instincts for sense-making and pattern-seeking fool us into seeing causal relationships where none exist.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: PODCAST - Making Sense #4: The Path and The Goal with Joseph Goldstein by Sam Harris - Meditation is ultimately an exercise in greater awareness of the impermanence of all phenomena, which creates a path towards freedom from our monkey minds.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Well-being theory has five elements... positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, and accomplishment." ~ Dr. Martin Seligman

TD'S TOOLKIT: Sensible Living - If you want to upgrade your 'life operating system' in fundamental pillars of living like Direction, Nutrition, Exercise, Mental Health, and Sleep, our website now includes over 900 resources to give you a head start and unfair advantage!

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Discovering Meaningful Work - I am launching a coaching program to help successful overachievers discover a meaningful next act in their professional lives.

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: BOOK - Becoming a Supple Leopard (2nd Edition) by Kelly Starrett (My summary notes) - Kelly's book is a no-nonsense, straight to the point mobility encyclopedia, chock full of frameworks, principles, and concrete recommendations for taking action to improve.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: BLOG POST - Fuck Yes or No by Mark Manson - When you set high hurdles with strong boundaries, you can unlock more of the amazing in life, with every No ideally leading to more Fuck Yes.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "The center of all prejudice, all discrimination, is thinking about other people as less than human." ~ Dr. Phil Zimbardo

TD'S TOOLKIT: Sensible Living - My personal answers to the question “How do I live well?” by leveraging timeless wisdom. This includes my pillars for living well, as well as my reflection tools, purpose statement, and more. I hope my framing helps you clarify your own version of Sensible Living (and feel free to steal from me ;D).

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Second-Order Thinking - Think further ahead, analyzing both the immediate consequences and the subsequent effects of those consequences, by asking the question: “And then what happens?”

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Reacting to The Vow: Thinking Through The Limits of Free Will - Where does free will end, and coercion and brainwashing begin?

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: PODCAST - The Tim Ferriss Show #226: How to Not Be Evil – Dr. Phil Zimbardo - Tim's conversation with Dr. Phil Zimbardo (of Stanford Prison Experiment fame) highlights myriad ways in which our choices, contexts, and environments may cause us to act out of line with our values.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Every day for the rest of your life, you’ll have to choose. Do you want to fit in, or do you want to embark on the lonely pursuit of greatness?" ~ Ray Allen

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mental Model Fundamentals - Answer the question “How do I think well?” by leveraging timeless, multi-disciplinary wisdom. Mental Model Fundamentals provides details for ~130 fundamental mental models from 17 disciplines, based on references to over 1,000 sources.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Circle of Competence - Operate within the boundaries of your competencies and expertise.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: The Essentialist Choice to Not Have a Political Opinion - I have a strong hypothesis that removing politics from my life will improve my relationships and happiness, and free up a tremendous amount of time and emotional energy.

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: ARTICLE - Psyche: How to know who’s trustworthy by T Ryan Byerly - Ryan eloquently and thoughtfully lays out a vocabulary and set of principles that we can immediately use to make better choices about our information sources.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: ARTICLE - The Players' Tribune: Letter to My Younger Self by Ray Allen - Our path to success is unique, unsexy, and rife with failure. Proudly and dutifully walking that path, and not just focusing on reaching the end, contributes meaningfully to a life well-lived.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms." ~ Will Durant

TD'S TOOLKIT: Habit Change Blueprint - Proven concepts empowering you to create the life you want, one habit at a time.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Logical Fallacies - Using invalid or faulty reasoning in constructing an argument.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: The Seven Layers of Entrepreneurship - Understanding the many flavors of innovation can broaden our options for points of entry into entrepreneurship.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: BOOK - The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant - There is tremendous perspective to be gained from reading works that have withstood the test of time. When you are open and ready to update your beliefs, principles, and values, this is a fantastic book to get started on that journey!

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