LIVE WELL: Book - Becoming a Supple Leopard (2nd Edition) by Kelly Starrett

THINK WELL: Directly Responsible Individual

DO MEANINGFUL WORK: Role Playing Model Reflections

DO MEANINGFUL WORK:: Book - Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

THINK WELL: Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule)

Podcast - Making Sense #261: Belief & Identity by Sam Harris

Podcast - The Tim Ferriss Show #536: Diana Chapman — How to Get Unstuck, Do “The Work,” Take Radical Responsibility, and Reduce Drama in Your Life

LIVE WELL: Q3 2021 Ritual Realization Takeaways

THINK WELL: Scale

DO MEANINGFUL WORK: The "Happiness Formula"

Essay - As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

LIVE WELL: Sun Exposure after Waking Up

THINK WELL: Probabilistic Thinking

DO MEANINGFUL WORK: Ikigai

Podcast - The Tim Ferris Show #532: Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project — How to Navigate Hard Conversations, the Subtle Art of Apologizing, and a Powerful 60-Day Challenge by Tim Ferriss

Article - Psyche: How to know who’s trustworthy by T Ryan Byerly

LIVE WELL: Periodization

THINK WELL: Multiplying by Zero

DO MEANINGFUL WORK: Six Lives Exercise

Blog Post - Testing The “Impossible”: 17 Questions That Changed My Life by Tim Ferriss

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Logical Fallacies

Book - Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Via Negativa

Book - Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Dr. Martin Seligman

SENSIBLE LIVING: Visualization (Positive & Negative)

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Incentives

Book - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Second-Order Thinking

Blog Post - Brain Pickings: Bruce Lee’s Never Before Revealed Letters to Himself About Authenticity, Personal Development, and the Measure of Success by Maria Popova

SENSIBLE LIVING: Thermotherapy

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: First Principles Thinking

Book - Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat (Full Kindle highlights)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "There is an old Buddhist saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water." Life is chop wood carry water. There is no hacking our way from chopping wood and carrying water. There is only the present." ~ Jerry Colonna

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Restarting "Real" Life in NYC

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Law of the Instrument (Maslow’s Hammer)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Podcast - Reboot #60: The Work of Your Life with Khe Hy by Jerry Colonna

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Poem - If— by Rudyard Kipling

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "[Y]ou don’t truly know if you can do something until you have tried absolutely everything." ~ Rob Jones

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: The Red Queen Effect

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Podcast - Modern Wisdom # 348: Daniel Schmachtenberger - Building Better Sensemaking

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Blog Post - I Can't by Rob Jones

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Podcast - The Knowledge Project #62: Cracking the Code of Love: My Interview with Psychologist and EFT Pioneer, Dr. Sue Johnson by Shane Parrish

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin." ~ Steven Pressfield

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Portugal Trip Micro Takeaways

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Law of Large Numbers

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (My full Kindle highlights)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (My full Kindle highlights)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves." ~ John Gardner

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Vipassana Course Reflections (6 Years Later)

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: The Lindy Effect

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Speech - Personal Renewal by John Gardner

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Life is richer and more fulfilling when we actively invest our time and energy in the things that are most important or meaningful to us." ~ Russ Harris

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Community / Junto Cultivation Resource Guide

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Chilling Effect

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT by Russ Harris (My full Kindle notes)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "The only way to be rational... is to recognize that you are irrational. That you are mostly following your emotions. That your ideas are generally emotionally based. And with that knowledge, you can then begin to challenge yourself, to question yourself, to question why you believe this..." ~ Robert Greene

TOPIC OF INTEREST: The Challenges of Returning to Normality Post COVID

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Fog of War

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Podcast - Daily Stoic: Ryan and Robert Greene Talk Plagues, Politics, and Polarization by Ryan Holiday

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Install systems and rules that encourage the behavior you want." ~ Peter Bevelin

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Project Freedom Retrospective - Am I Doing Meaningful Work? (Really?!?)

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Unintended Consequences

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Using Wedding Rituals As An Excuse for First Principles Thinking

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Principle of Minimum Energy

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Movie - Layer Cake (Trailer)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas." ~ Carl Sagan

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Rathering (False Dichotomies)

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Podcast - The Knowledge Project #112: Adam Grant: Rethinking Your Position

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Article - Skeptical Inquirer: The Burden Of Skepticism by Carl Sagan

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Don't identify with your beliefs, because if you do, you'll start to see challenging or interesting new information as a threat." ~ Andy Norman

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Meal Timing Recommendations Refresh

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Local vs. Global Optima

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (My full Kindle notes)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (My full Kindle notes)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: The perceptions we layer onto objective reality define our felt experience.

MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK: All Matter, So Far As We Know It, Is a Mental Condition

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Narrative Instinct

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Article - UMass Student Life: Motivational Interviewing - Definition, Principles, and Approach

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "In each moment, consciously or unconsciously, you choose. It’s your choice. It’s your life. Your awareness can lead you or you can lead it. And that choice is with you here and now." ~ Rick Carson

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Opportunity Costs

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way by Rick Carson (My full Kindle notes)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world... When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process." ~ Robert Pirsig

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Decision Calculus for Moving Back to The City

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Catalysts

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert Pirsig (My full Kindle notes)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "We each have a calling. Do it or don’t do it." ~ Steven Pressfield

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: My Mental Health Reminders for Fighting Internally Generated Creative Blockage

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Gresham’s Law

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon (My full Kindle notes)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (My reduction)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "All you have to do, if you want everything in life from everybody else, is first pay attention; listen to them; show them respect; give them meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Convey to them that they matter to you. And show you love them. But you have to go first." ~ Peter Kaufman

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Emergence

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick by Wendy Wood (My full Kindle notes)

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Speech - The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking by Peter Kaufman

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald Reinertsen (My reduction of full Kindle notes)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "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." ~ Paul Graham

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Reflections on Q1 2021 Ritual Realization

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Forcing Function

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Blog Post - The Acceleration of Addictiveness by Paul Graham

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live." ~ Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

TOPIC OF INTEREST: My (Validated) Key Levers for Sleep Improvement

MENTAL MODEL FUNDAMENTALS: Scientific Method

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "[A] Scientist knows that the truth is always buried somewhere in the wrinkles of nuance, and that a satisfying, clean-cut, one-sided viewpoint is almost always wrong or incomplete." ~ Tim Urban

FRIEND PLUG: Aaron Rothstein's recent writing - Covid-19 and the Erosion of Civic Trust, Death in the Young, and Little Data, Big Headlines

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Compounding

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Podcast - Making Sense #241: Final Thoughts on Free Will by Sam Harris

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Blog Post - Wait But Why: The Thinking Ladder by Tim Urban

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue. This is one of the most basic tactics for avoiding emotional escalations." ~ Chris Voss

TOPIC OF INTEREST: My (Amateur) Key Levers for Sleep Improvement

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Fermi Problem (Fermization)

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Anyone can hit excellence for a day, even a week or a month. That’s easy. But a high performer is one who does it consistently for years over the course of a career." ~ Mark Verstegen

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Multiplying by Zero

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: Book - The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Every Day Is Game Day: The Proven System of Elite Performance to Win All Day, Every Day by Mark Verstegen

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "If you don't have the right thinking tools, you, and the people you seek to help, are already suffering from your easily removable ignorance." ~ Charlie Munger

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Failing Into Serendipitous Success

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Probabilistic Thinking

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Charles T. Munger and Peter E. Kaufman

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

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

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

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Without understanding, I was at the mercy of blind habit; with understanding, I could develop my own rules for living and find out which of the conflicting exhortations of a changing civilization was appropriate to my needs." ~ Marion Milner

TOPIC OF INTEREST: My Nutritional Supplement Stack

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Occam’s Broom

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: 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)

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "The key to understanding the limits of our knowledge is to check the results of our decisions against what we thought was going to happen and why we thought it was going to happen." ~ Sam Kyle

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Your Amazing Replies to Last Week's Topic of Interest (Struggling with the Question "Do I Want to Have Kids?")

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Scenario Analysis

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: Book - The Decision Checklist: A Practical Guide to Avoiding Problems by Sam Kyle

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

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

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!

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

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

TOPIC OF INTEREST: 2020 Annual Letter

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power." ~ James Allen

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mindful Moments - I struggle in moments of silence. Waiting in lines, waiting for friends, waiting for the subway, etc. Instead of messing around on my phone, I want easy, simple, tried-and-true exercises to embrace presence in these otherwise scattered moments. So I created Mindful Moments! This is now my go-to resource for any moment of silence, allowing me to cultivate presence and mindfulness at any time.

MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK: I Can Decide to Be The Happy One - Remember, you can always start right now. What will you let get in the way of deciding to be happy right now? Why?

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Game Theory - Use math to model the strategic interaction of rational decision-makers.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: ESSAY - As a Man Thinketh by James Allen - A uniquely impactful essay illuminating the power of our thoughts.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: We have the opportunity to cultivate the quality of our awareness, focus, and lived experience in every single moment.

TD'S TOOLKIT: Sensible Living - My personal answers to the question “How do I live well?”. 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 (but feel free to steal from me as you see fit ;D).

TOPIC OF INTEREST: The Three Choices We Make in Every Moment - There are three awareness choices available to us in every moment - When, What, and How – that fundamentally impact our mental health and the quality of our lives.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Directly Responsible Individual - Making a single person explicitly responsible creates clear accountability.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: BLOG POST - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson - 'Not giving a fuck' is the opposite of indifference, it is actually caring a lot about a very small number of things, so much so that you do the necessary work despite adversity, risk of failure, pride, and ego.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” ~ Charlie Munger

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.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Living Decisions for a Winter with COVID (Part 1) - To figure out where to live this winter, I am leveraging my happiness formula, first principles thinking, inversion, and candid data gathering.

MENTAL MODEL: (Preserving) Optionality - There is value in keeping extra options open until there is more situational certainty.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: BLOG POST - The Power of Anti-Goals by Andrew Wilkinson - Use the power of inversion thinking to establish boundaries and cut out your least favorite parts of [life / work / relationships / etc.].

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life." ~ Viktor Frankl

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

MENTAL MODEL: Confirmation Bias - Humans tend to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in support of existing beliefs.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Reflections on Purpose in Work - I thought it might be helpful to share my reflections on purpose and meaning in my professional life (from my quarterly review process), in case this inspires something in your quest for purpose and meaning in your work. (To learn more about the importance of Direction in our lives, see Sensible Living)

MOST FAVORITE RECENT CONTENT: BOOK - Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman - David's afterlife anthology is really a collection of thought experiments in disguise, allowing us to reflect on our lives as we live them right now.

MOST FAVORITE PAST CONTENT: BOOK - Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - Within each of us exists the full spectrum of human nature.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives, and we will call it fate." ~ C.G. Jung

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mindful Moments (No Code App) - I struggle in moments of silence. Waiting in lines, waiting for friends, waiting for the subway, etc. Instead of messing around on my phone, I wanted to find an easy way to leverage simple, tried-and-true exercises to embrace presence in these otherwise wasted moments. So I created Mindful Moments! This is now my go-to resource for any moment of silence, cultivating presence and mindfulness at any time.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Inversion - Think through the problem both backwards and forwards. Note: For more mental models, see our Mental Model Fundamentals 'no code' app.

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Acting When Rights are Violated (But Needs are Not) - Installing a default way of being wherein I stand up for all of my boundaries, even if my core needs are not violated, will help me better live my values and minimize regrets.

ARTICLE - Psyche: How to stop emotional eating by Nina Savelle-Rocklin - Nina's article does a wonderful job of connecting the dots between our external coping mechanisms and our internal emotions and needs, providing a clear call to action and next steps for better understanding our coping strategies.

PODCAST - Reboot #51: The Love that Heals: Welcoming in our Shadow – with James Hollis by Jerry Colonna - Jerry & James' conversation inspires me to continue searching into the darkest reaches of myself, with a frame of love and compassion for whatever I find.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness." ~ Dale Carnegie

TD'S TOOLKIT: Sensible Living (No Code App) - My personal answers to the question “How do I live well?” are now at your fingertips! 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 gets you excited to borrow some for yourself, too :D

TOPIC OF INTEREST: Three-Year Anniversary - Reflections on the Journey

MENTAL MODEL FUNDAMENTALS: Cooperation - Humans find ways to coordinately work together toward shared goals for mutual benefit.

ARTICLE - Psyche: How to make friends as an adult by Marisa Franco - Marisa's thorough and thoughtful piece does a wonderful job of spotlighting the vital importance of both intentionality and vulnerability in cultivating long-lasting friendships.

BOOK - How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (My full Kindle notes) - Timeless wisdom on relationships and emotional intelligence condensed into thirty actionable principles.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "...[A] few necessary characteristics of a viable story virus: Simplicity... Unfalsifiability... Conviction... Contagiousness... Incentives... Accountability... Comprehensiveness... So far, you might notice, the story of Santa Claus is crushing it." ~ Tim Urban

TD'S TOOLKIT: Learning - Mental Model Fundamentals (No Code App) - Answer the question “How do I think well?” by leveraging timeless, multi-disciplinary wisdom. 130+ mental models from across disciplines at your fingertips! This Glide app is built specifically for your smartphone, for easier use in your everyday life.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Activation Energy - A minimum energy must be available in a system to create a reaction.

BLOG POST - Wait But Why: A Story of Stories by Tim Urban - A long, beautiful, thoughtful, imaginative, and fun blog post that does an absolutely wonderful job walking through the importance and power of stories in our lives.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "All Facts require observation, context omission, and trust... The trouble is, there is no objective way to decide what context to omit." ~ Mike Elias

TD'S TOOLKIT: Habit Change Blueprint (No Code App) - Proven concepts empowering you to create the life you want, one habit at a time, are now in your pocket.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Information Asymmetry - Situations where one party has more and/or better information.

POEM - If— by Rudyard Kipling - A beautiful, short blast of life philosophy and aspirational values from one of the greats.

BOOK - The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant (My full Kindle notes) - Will and Ariel's punchy book distills eons of human experience into a short and insightful read.

BLOG POST - ribbonfarm - Wittgenstein’s Revenge by Mike Elias - A mindfuckingly important series of points that, to me, explains many of our key issues with social and mainstream media outlets today.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Take this one thought, I love myself. Add emotional intensity if you can it deepens the groove faster than anything. Feel the thought. Run it again and again. Feel it. Run it. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter, just focus on this one thought. Make it your truth." ~ Kamal Ravikant

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mental Health - Mindful Moments (No Code App) - I struggle in moments of silence. Waiting in lines, waiting for friends, waiting for the subway, etc. Instead of dicking around on my phone, I wanted to find an easy way to leverage simple, proven exercises to embrace presence and happiness in these otherwise wasted moments. So I created Mindful Moments! My goal is for this to be the go-to resource during any moment of silence, to cultivate presence and mindfulness at any time. Enjoy :D

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Scale - Relative size can determine efficacy.

BOOK - Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant (My full Kindle notes) - A short and timeless case for self-love as a way of being.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

TD'S TOOLKIT: Mental Health - Morning Pages - Per Julia Cameron, whose book The Artist's Way first showed me this tool, "Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages* – they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page...and then do three more pages tomorrow."

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: Fragility – Robustness – Antifragility - A system’s default response to negative variability can be negative, neutral, or even positive.

TOPIC OF INTEREST #1: Sensible Living Value Chain - By explicitly visualizing our most important personal priorities, we can quickly figure out what is going well vs. what is off the rails.

TOPIC OF INTEREST #2: Using the Peter Thiel Question as a Lens for Entrepreneurship - Being both contrarian and correct is a useful starting point for creating value and improving others' lives.

ARTICLE - Aeon: Complex System Science Allows Us to See New Paths Forward by Jessica Flack and Melanie Mitchell - Jessica and Melanie's article surfaces myriad valuable mental models related to systems thinking, while also being incredibly well written, and providing a thoughtful and concrete analysis of our COVID-19 situation.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - You have your own unique life operating manual living inside your head. Revitalize your conviction, improve your execution, and fundamentally alter the trajectory of your life by simply writing it down and being explicit about how you want to operate.

TD'S TOOLKIT - RELATIONSHIPS - My Personal CRM Excel Template - After graduating from college and starting a crazy hard job in a new city, I did not have the right tools or processes in place to sufficiently keep in touch with my closest relationships, so I fell out of touch with some amazing people. Most people can do this organically (or at least think they can ;D), but I have learned that I often cannot. Because I never want to forget to stay in touch with my people, I created and maintain a list of the most important people in my life, along with when I last connected with them, in an Excel sheet. Some friends think this is bananas and robotic, others appreciate my extra effort and humility. Ultimately, I now never forget to reach out and I am there for my people, which is what matters most to me.

TOPIC OF INTEREST - SENSIBLE LIVING - My Sensible Living life operating system now has ~900 resources to help you learn more about the important pillars of living well, including 131 books, 74 articles, 175 blog posts, 65 podcasts, and 318 research papers.

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule) - A large amount of a phenomenon is often created by a small amount of the causes.

VIDEO - The School of Life: How to Find Fulfilling Work - Give yourself sufficient time and space to introspect and think creatively, and the confidence and optionality to go after what you truly want.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task." ~ Dr. Viktor Frankl

TD'S TOOLKIT - EXERCISE - Fitness First Slam Ball - With gyms closed and barbells inaccessible, I have been searching for other fun ways to fit high-intensity compound movements into my life. Enter the 'Slam Ball', which Evo Fitness describes as "a weighted, rubber-coated ball which can be used in a range of exercises...Though very similar to medicine (med) balls, slam balls have one crucial difference – they have thicker surfaces, making them ideal for high-impact throwing exercises." My favorite exercises so far are The Slam Ball and The Wall Ball. Be very sensitive to the weight you use, especially if these exercises are new or unfamiliar. I chose 25 pounds out of thin air, and it's fine, but I wish I had accidentally chosen 30.

MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK - LIFE IS EITHER A DARING ADVENTURE OR NOTHING

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - PROBABILISTIC THINKING - The future holds a wide variety of potential future outcomes, with distinct probabilities and consequences.

BOOK - Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl (My revised Kindle notes) - Finding meaning, embracing our freedom to choose, and forgetting ourselves are important keys to a happy life, regardless of external circumstances.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - "Ninety percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world but by the way your brain processes the world." ~ Shawn Anchor

TD'S TOOLKIT - MENTAL HEALTH - Stoic (iOS App) - Stoic's box breathing widget is free and invaluable for regaining presence during the inevitable fraught moments of daily life.

BOOK - Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat (My full Kindle notes) - The single best book for personal mental health and happiness cultivation that I have ever read.

BOOK - How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life by Dr. Bob Rotella (My full Kindle notes) - Dr. Bob's treatise on championship performance was a wonderful revelation for me, jam-packed with actionable advice.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - "[Y]ou can shape your love relationships, relationships make sense. This is about biology. There is a deep logic behind our emotions. There is a deep logic behind our needs." ~ Dr. Sue Johnson

TD'S TOOLKIT - SLEEP - Mack's Slim Fit Soft Foam Earplugs - Comfortable, quality, and <$10, I bring these earplugs with me to any foreign sleep environment (e.g., vacations, retreats, business travel, slumber parties, etc.). If you have ever struggled to fall asleep due to uncontrollable environmental noise, you know how valuable comfy earplugs are to have around. Best ROI ever ;D (Note: I used to put foam earplugs in incorrectly! Check out the CDC's quick guidance for correctly inserting soft foam earplugs.)

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - BAYESIAN REASONING (BAYES’ THEOREM) - Your belief is only as valid as how well it fits all available evidence, relative to alternative hypotheses.

RESEARCH - BMJ: How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network by Steven Greenberg - "Unfounded authority was established by citation bias against papers that refuted or weakened the belief; amplification, the marked expansion of the belief system by papers presenting no data addressing it; and forms of invention such as the conversion of hypothesis into fact through citation alone." (This summary visualization is delightful!)

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #62: Cracking the Code of Love: My Interview with Psychologist and EFT Pioneer, Dr. Sue Johnson by Shane Parrish - A really powerful podcast about love relationships, diving deep into subjects like enabling secure attachment and cultivating an amazing sex life.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - "Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear."

TD'S TOOLKIT - RELATIONSHIPS - BestSelf: Intimacy Deck - A collection of thoughtful prompts to promote intimacy, vulnerability, and connection in your romantic relationship. If you are long-distance and searching for more ways to strengthen your bond, this is especially helpful (it worked well for me and my ex).

TOPIC OF INTEREST - TRIGONOMETRY FUNDAMENTALS - While intimidating at first, the fundamentals of trigonometry can be relatively easy to grasp.

BOOK - Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L'Amour (My full Kindle highlights) - At its core, this book is about a man on a (writing) mission, who deeply values reading, self-education, exploration, curiosity, empathy, and storytelling, and who demonstrates a thoughtful appreciation for all of the vicissitudes of life.

BOOK - Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (My full Kindle notes) - A vivid, inspirational, and fun story about a WW2-era Japanese school with a very different methodology for educating children, focused on developing autonomy and individual self-respect.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA - Distracting yourself from the important challenges in your life will not resolve them. In fact, they may compound while you aren't looking ><

TD'S TOOLKIT - EXERCISE - Hakeno Adjustable Pull-Up Bar - When COVID lockdowns started, I had no idea what the hell I was going to do for exercise without gym access. Over the past few months, I have invested in a small handful of in-home exercise equipment that is silent (because of a downstairs neighbor situation), affordable, and effective. My strong preference in strength training is for compound movements, and pull-ups are one of the best for the 'vertical pull' category. Sadly, my tiny NYC apartment has odd doorway widths, and so I ended up needing an adjustable width, no-screw setup via Hakano. There were definitely slippage issues at first, but now that I have my setup locked in, it's been a tremendously positive investment!

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - VIA NEGATIVA - “Instead of concentrating on what you do, the focus turns to what you don’t do.”

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - BECOMING UNBUSY - Testing the hypothesis that explicitly cutting Great and Good activities from my life will enable more of the Amazing.

BOOK - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (My full Kindle notes) - Aldous' classic dystopian novel makes some fantastic points about society's fundamental constructs and invites meaningful personal reflection.

SPEECH - This is Water by David Foster Wallace - David's legendary commencement speech invites us to examine the surface ripples of life - the raw moments and stimuli that populate our perception of consciousness - and to truly own our implicit choices of perception as life unfolds around us.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "Once the situation is upon you, it’s too late. You have to be prepared in advance. You need to know, already, who you are and what you believe... not what your peers believe (that may be exactly the problem), but what you believe. How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude?" ~ William Deresiewicz

TD'S TOOLKIT: MENTAL HEALTH - Insight Timer - A leading meditation app with a wide variety of free content. My most favorite meditation right now is Tara Brach's Gateway to Presence! It is a lovely way to start or end your day while moving your practice forward :D

BOOK - Anathem by Neal Stephenson (My full Kindle notes) - A delightful sci-fi novel that is essentially the combination of two thought experiments: (1) Asking the question, "What if we created a separate caste for scientists and mathematicians, and cloistered them away from the rest of civilization?"; (2) Asking the question, "What if multiple, simultaneous cosmos co-existed across spacetime?".

ESSAY - Principles of Effective Research by Michael Nielsen - Michael's highly practical and concrete guide reminds us of timeless principles for doing incredible work.

ARTICLE - Harper's Magazine: A Letter on Justice and Open Debate - In order to achieve our long-term goals, we must resist the temptation to weaken our principles of public discourse for the sake of short-term gains.

SPEECH - Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz - William reminds us of the importance of doing meaningful work vs. hoop-jumping; of finding ourselves via focused, concentrated work separated from the distractions of the world; of the deep intimacy and connection available in our relationships; and of coming to our own conclusions about how to live and lead.

THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEA: "When you simply ignore the box and build your reasoning from scratch, whether you’re brilliant or not, you end up with a unique conclusion." ~ Tim Urban

TD'S TOOLKIT: SLEEP - Manta Sleep Mask - After using ~10 different types of sleep masks over the past five years (in addition to [almost] blackout shades), Manta's sleep mask is my #1 favorite for comfort and efficacy, and well worth the investment. Shout-out to Chris for recommending / demonstrating to me in January on Culebra!

TOPIC OF INTEREST: What Will Not Change (In The Next Decade) - In order to resolve my recent difficulties making medium or long term plans, decisions, and commitments in the face of unprecedented uncertainty, I want to follow the guidance of Jeff Bezos and explicitly lay out what I think will not change in the next ten years.

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK: Explicit Dating Strategy - I wrote out a 'dating strategy' document to see if being explicit with myself, and forcing myself to reflect, leads to meaningfully better process, execution, and outcomes in cultivating a meaningful romantic relationship.

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #86: BJ Fogg: Create Lasting Change by Shane Parrish - BJ provides us with a thoughtful overview of his most important findings in (health) behavior change theory.

INTERACTIVE DATABASE - History of Philosophy by Deniz Cem Önduygu - Deniz created an absolutely gorgeous and efficacious tool for delightfully navigating the diverse, vast world of philosophy.

BLOG POST - Wait But Why: The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce by Tim Urban - Tim's epic and delightful work offers almost too much to think about in terms of how and why we live our lives the way we do, viewed through the lens of innovators like Elon Musk and first principles thinking.

TOPIC OF INTEREST - NYC RE-OPENING AS AN EXCUSE TO SHARE SILVER LINING - My favorite ~20 photos from my NYC COVID-19 lockdown experience

PODCAST - Mindscape #102 - Maria Konnikova on Poker, Psychology, and Reason by Sean Carroll - Maria shares her intriguing journey into the world of poker, and thoughtfully reflects on how playing poker improved her decision-making throughout her life.

INTERVIEW - The Observer Effect: Marc Andreessen by Sriram Krishan - Marc shares many thoughtful reflections on working, thinking, and living.

BLOG POST - Wait But Why: The Thinking Ladder by Tim Urban - An incredible deep-dive into the different mindsets of knowledge acquisition and discussion.

BOOK - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle (My full Kindle highlights) - For all of the credible justifications to dismiss this book entirely, there is ~10-20% that is really worth considering and embracing, if only as a fun twist and re-examination of Buddhism's core 'noble truths'.
"Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction. This is an especially deadly combo because it prevents you from improving. It not only leaves you without real knowledge, it deprives you of the humility needed to gain real knowledge or grow into a better thinker." ~ Tim Urban

MENTAL MODELS - Mental Model Fundamentals - Announcing Version 2, a.k.a., the only slightly embarrassed edition, with ~140 mental models for understanding and describing how the world works.

PODCAST - Daily Stoic: Ryan and Robert Greene Talk Plagues, Politics, and Polarization - Robert and Ryan's conversation thoughtfully communicates the vital importance of analyzing and understanding our feelings and ego, especially if we want to take ownership of our lives and realize meaningful progress towards our goals.

PODCAST - The Tim Ferris Show #373: Jerry Colonna — The Coach With the Spider Tattoo - Tim and Jerry's far-reaching, vulnerable, and fun conversation touches on topics like the roots of depression, changing patterns in our lives, how to be compassionate with ourselves and others, the anxiety and busyness of overachievers, and the acceptance of our fundamental goodness.

BLOG POST - Ribbon Farm: Jonathan Livingston Corporation by Venkatesh Rao - Venkatesh's thoughtful criticism of the typical corporate grind offers us the majestic 'aliveness heuristic' (I swear that I came up with the 'Deathbed Regret Aversion Test' before seeing this ;D).
"There is a lot of injustice in this world...It is good to be angry. But it is good to be able to channel your anger productively and get results. And the only way to do that is to be able to have some degree of self-distance and self-analysis." ~ Robert Greene

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - INCENTIVES - “All creatures respond to incentives to keep themselves alive.”

KILL MY CONFIRMATION BIAS - USING 'VEIL OF IGNORANCE' AS A PRIMARY MENTAL MODEL FOR ASSESSING FAIRNESS - Is 'Veil of Ignorance' a valuable tool for thinking about fairness?

ARTICLE - The Guardian: We often accuse the right of distorting science. But the left changed the coronavirus narrative overnight by Thomas Chatterton Williams - Thomas' piece highlights the importance and necessity of full, honest, and transparent accounting of both the costs and benefits of important decisions.

ARTICLE - The Atlantic: History Will Judge the Complicit by Anne Applebaum - Anne's piece does an incredible job of leveraging vivid, historical case studies of complicity to both empathize with the complicit, and to illustrate the potential dangers of traversing that slippery slope.

BOOK - Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin - An efficient synthesis of wisdom from a variety of interesting subjects, yielding a lollapalooza of knowledge nuggets, proactive checklists, and leveraged tools to use for our most critical decisions.

BOOK - The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell (My summary) - This is one of those old and timeless books that still feels like it was written yesterday, and specifically for your biggest challenges.

"Correcting the wrongs have to start with our behavior." ~ George Raveling

MENTAL MODELS OF THE WEEK - PROCESSING THE GEORGE FLOYD MURDER AND PERSISTENT RACIAL INJUSTICE - As you process the unfolding events, I want to help you think through this situation for yourself, to reach your own conclusions and decide on your best actions, so that we can utilize this moment to create meaningful, positive, lasting change.

PODCAST - The Lawfare Podcast: Rashawn Ray on Police Violence - An incredibly thoughtful, data-driven, nuanced, and action-oriented synthesis of a panoply of persistent issues of racial discrimination in American law enforcement today.

BOOK - Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Dr. Martin Seligman (My full Kindle notes) - Marty provides us with a simple, intuitive 'ABCDE' process for transforming pessimism into optimism.

ESSAY - As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (My full highlights) - A uniquely impactful essay describing the power of our thoughts.

"Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself." ~ James Allen

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - VELOCITY - “Velocity is speed plus vector: how fast something gets somewhere.”

BOOK - Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (My full Kindle notes) - Battling through hardship with others can ultimately be more rewarding than living more affluently but individualistically, as the experience of striving together taps into core human virtues and needs.

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: Bruce Lee’s Never Before Revealed Letters to Himself About Authenticity, Personal Development, and the Measure of Success by Maria Popova - "...there is a difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization."

"The findings are in keeping with something called self-determination theory, which holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others." ~ Sebastian Junger

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - INFORMATION ASYMMETRY - Situations “where one party has more or better information than the other.”

ESSAYS - Oaktree Capital Management: Memos from Howard Marks - Howard's way of thinking serves as a phenomenal example of intellectual humility, balancing trade-offs in an uncertain world, and staying within your circle of competence.

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: Rethinking Fear - "Our imaginary fears harm us more than reality ever does."

BLOG POST - The Playing Field by Graham Duncan - Graham gives us an excellent framework to gauge our progress in the various works of our lives.

BOOK - Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (My full Kindle notes) - Our communication tools, and their framing of informing vs. entertaining, fundamentally alter the volume, type, and nature of discourse, with semi-predictable repercussions.

"The real question is whether you dare to do the things that are necessary in order to be great. Are you willing to be different, and are you willing to be wrong?" ~ Howard Marks

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - FORCING FUNCTION - “Any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result.”

ARTICLE - Skeptical Inquirer: The Burden Of Skepticism by Carl Sagan - Balancing openness and skepticism is paramount for all of us, and yet it is also quite elusive, especially when it relates to an issue that is emotional for us.

BOOK - The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald Reinertsen (My reduction of full Kindle notes) - A really nerdy book about optimizing product development that also unexpectedly reveals a variety of principles that we can all apply directly across our lives.

BOOK - The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani (My reduction of full Kindle notes) - Vishen ultimately invites us to reflect and to question, so that we may fully appreciate and embrace how much of our lives is negotiable, and begin to transform those negotiable elements towards our vision, goals, and values.

"You must be prepared to stand firm in your pursuit of your own happiness." ~ Vishen Lakhiani

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - SERENDIPITY ADVENTURES - Adding novelty into my walking routine by exploring more of NYC's finest makes the day feel truly unique, provides a feeling of accomplishment, and engenders meaningful positivity.

BLOG POST - Interfluidity: Four Functions of Markets by Steve Randy Waldman - Steve does a wonderful job of quickly and concretely highlighting the prominent macro benefits and costs of markets, framed within a neoliberal context.

BLOG POST - The Technium: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice by Kevin Kelly - A collection of aphorisms containing timeless wisdom from the co-founder of WIRED magazine.

BOOK - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert Pirsig (My full Kindle notes) - In the work of our lives, we have the opportunity to embrace choice in how we perceive the world, our guiding values in riding towards our goals, and the baggage we bring along for the ride.

BLOG POST - Mr. Money Mustache: Hacking Hedonic Adaptation to Get Way More For Your Money - Incredibly practical and unconventional heuristics for overcoming the inevitability of hedonic adaptation when investing in upgrades and novelty across our lives.

"Most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships." ~ Robert Pirsig

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - SUNK COST BIAS - “A greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made.”

BOOK - FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street by Frank Portnoy (My full Kindle highlights) - An exciting and personal story about perverse incentives across the financial derivatives ecosystem in the 1990's.

BOOK - Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner (My full Kindle notes) - A thorough, validated, and concrete framework for being a better forecaster.

ARTICLE - Quilette: The Scientific Importance of Free Speech by Adam Perkins - All of our theories today, in all realms of life, are wrong to some degree. Free speech and debate are essential for continuing to explore and improve our theories.

PODCAST - Reboot #60: The Work of Your Life with Khe Hy by Jerry Colonna - Figuring out suffering so as to minimize it is not the answer. Shifting from conventional materialism to spiritual materialism is not the answer. "It's all a defense against annihilation."

"There is an old Buddhist saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water." Life is chop wood carry water. There is no hacking our way from chopping wood and carrying water. There is only the present." ~ Jerry Colonna

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - OCCAM'S RAZOR - "When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

TOPIC OF INTEREST - PERCEPTIONS OF TIME IN QUARANTINE - My recent experience of "Groundhog Day" while in quarantine can hopefully be mitigated by engineering more Velocity and Novelty into my life.

PODCAST - Reboot #81: The Identities That Rule Us with Semil Shah by Jerry Colonna - A really thoughtful conversation about the identities that our ego clings to, and how those identities can both serve and harm us.

BLOG POST - Productivity by Sam Altman - A wonderful read providing specific guidance for realizing the full potential of our productivity.

"It doesn’t matter how fast you move if it’s in a worthless direction." ~ Sam Altman

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - FIRST PRINCIPLES THINKING - “Break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.”

BOOK - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug (My full Kindle notes) - Steve's delightful book shares concise, concrete, thoughtful, and thorough design principles that can be applied in media well beyond the web.

BLOG POST - RibbonFarm: Deep Laziness by Sarah Perry - Sarah thoughtfully applies nature's bias to preserve energy to focused behavior change in our lives.

"Behavioral “centers” are the things that feel most like reflections of your own self, that seem to connect effortlessly to the underlying wholeness in your life." ~ Sarah Perry

MENTAL MODEL FUNDAMENTALS - Mental Model Fundamentals is a (WIP) collection of my most important ~150 mental models across ~15 disciplines. For each mental model, you will (in time) be able to learn what it is, examples of where it arises in our lives, how it relates to other models and concepts, and additional resources to learn even more about it.

BOOK - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Charles T. Munger and Peter E. Kaufman - A beautiful 500-page tome sharing Charlie Munger's life, philosophy, and his most important talks and principles.

BOOK - Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century by Chuck Klosterman (My full Kindle notes) - A timely injection of fun and insight derived from random samples of pop-culture and celebrity.

BOOK - Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (My full Kindle notes) - Life is a ridiculous adventure to be explored with people you care about.

"If you don't have the right thinking tools, you, and the people you seek to help, are already suffering from your easily removable ignorance." ~ Charlie Munger

ARTICLE - Financial Times: The world after coronavirus by Yuval Noah Harari - "....[T]emporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies..."

PODCAST - Rad Awakenings #40: Mihir Desai, The Problem with Optionality by Khe Hy - Khe's wide-ranging conversation with Mihir highlights many opportunities in our lives to eschew option value in favor of commitment and leverage.

"The science is clear on this, that people who embed themselves in a set of meaningful relationships, and commit to each other, are the happiest and the healthiest." ~ Mihir Desai

ADAPTATION TO QUARANTINE LIFE IN NYC - By accepting our new constraints, knowing our goals and values, and holding a curious and experimental mindset, we can each adapt our lifestyles to the 'new normal'. I have started down this path across my life, but in particular, the spheres of mental health, relationships, and exercise.

ARTICLE - Sustainability Institute: Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows - Donella's thoughtful piece provides a tremendous head start for anyone doing systems thinking, handing you an expert-curated checklist for where to find leverage.

BOOK - The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT by Russ Harris (My full Kindle notes) - Russ' primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy [ACT] provides a wonderful framework for realizing a realistic version of happiness.

BOOK - The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (My full Kindle Notes) - There are a handful of simple, validated, proactive means for all of us to improve our perception of happiness, both in the moment and ongoing.

"We have a choice: we can embrace the situation as an opportunity to grow, learn, and develop, or we can fight, struggle, and try whatever we can to avoid it." ~ Russ Harris

MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK - ALL MATTER, SO FAR AS WE KNOW IT, IS A MENTAL CONDITION - The perceptions that we layer onto objective reality define our felt experience.

PODCAST - The Tim Ferriss Show: Jack Kornfield — How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos - When we acknowledge and face our fears and anxieties in the right ways, we give ourselves the opportunity to move past them.

BOOK - Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being by Martin Seligman (My full Kindle highlights) - Marty's book, while meandering at times, is filled with nuggets of wisdom from positive psychology that you can act on immediately to improve your life right now.

SPEECH - Personal Renewal by John Gardner - John's brilliant speech eloquently and inspiringly reflects on the importance of learning, growth, and challenge in our lives. John ultimately invites us to recommit to our journey, whatever that happens to be.

BOOK - Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron (My full highlights) - By embracing the inherent uncertainty in our lives, it becomes easier to be present and fulfilled in the moment, regardless of how that moment is or the meanings we have layered onto it.

BLOG POST - Optimal Stopping: How to Find the Perfect Apartment, Partner, and Parking Spot by Brian Christian - Mathematical shortcuts provide helpful heuristics for figuring out when to stop searching and make a choice.

"We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixed, unbiased." ~ Pema Chodron

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - COGNITIVE BIASES - As fallible humans, we have hundreds of cognitive biases (and growing) that cumulatively have a meaningful negative impact on our judgment. The more fluent we are in these biases, the better decisions we can make.

BLOG POST - Operator's Manual: How to Stop Procrastinating for Good by Jerry Colonna - Jerry's short and sweet e-mail dialectic surfaces penetrating questions that we can ask ourselves in the face of procrastination.

BLOG POST - If Self-Discipline Feels Difficult, Then You're Doing It Wrong by Mark Manson - When it comes to behavior change, self-acceptance and re-wiring rewards can take you much further than an approach focused on self-discipline or willpower.

"Ultimately, self-discipline is not based on willpower or self-denial, but it’s actually based on the opposite: self-acceptance." ~ Mark Manson

Conquering Coronavirus Fear with Probabilistic Thinking, Stoicism, Second-Order Thinking, and Inversion - We can utilize mental models and Stoic practices to transform fear into meaningful, thoughtful, and self-selected actions that mitigate key downside risks.

BOOK - The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga (My full Kindle notes) - Kishimi and Koga's work serves as an intriguing introduction to Adlerian therapy via dialectic, adding energy and concrete action to the abstract concept of choosing choice in our ways of being.

BOOK - How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership by Plutarch (My full Kindle notes) - A collection of essays from Plutarch offering a few nuggets of wisdom, but not worth the full read.

BOOK - Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright (My full Kindle notes) - Robert's brilliant, secular discussion of Buddhism and meditation uses incredible intelligence, humor, humility, and transparency to satisfy the skeptics and energize the believers.

"Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live." ~ Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

ANDREW TOWNE (DRAKE'S PASSAGE AND CANDID CONVERSATIONS) - Andrew's rare ability to lead candid conversations helped his team achieve history, becoming the first people to row across Drake's Passage unassisted.

BOOK - Learning From the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease by Rafe Sagarin (My full Kindle notes) - Rafe's quirky book derives lessons from nature regarding systems design, primarily recommending prioritizing adaptability (via natural phenomena like symbiosis, redundancy, and evolution) over perfection.

TWEET STORM - 40 powerful concepts for understanding the world by Gurwinder - A thoughtful and eclectic collection of powerful concepts from human nature.

BOOK - Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are by John Kaag (My full Kindle notes) - Discovering and becoming ourselves is an active, ongoing process that occurs as we diligently pursue our highest goals.

"Set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in pursuing the great and the impossible." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (via John Kaag)

TOPIC OF INTEREST - SENSIBLE LIVING - I moved Sensible Living to a new website format, and added a self-directed course for you to create your own version.

BOOK - An Emotional Education by The School of Life (My full Kindle notes) - An absolute must-read on emotional intelligence, bringing insightful and delightful eloquence to myriad meaningful subjects like cultivating healthy relationships, being a strong listener, and self-judgment.

BLOG POST - The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You by Zat Rana - We have an opportunity to face the fear of boredom and silence, to embrace our solitude and enjoy every single scarce moment that life gives us.

"...[T]he way to greater confidence isn’t to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to live at peace with the inevitable nature of our ridiculousness." ~ The School of Life

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK - STURGEON'S LAW - 90% of everything is crap, and it is the 10% that is not crap that is important.

BOOK - Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (My full Kindle notes) - Ed's management book is often too long and repetitive, but there are plenty of amazing nuggets and ideas floating around that can make it a worthwhile and exciting read.

MUSIC - Rage Against the Machine - Legendary rock group that created one of my favorite albums and also one of the best live music experiences of my lifetime.

"What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it." ~ Ed Catmull

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."

MENTAL 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

BLOG 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

BOOK - Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss (My summary) - An incredible book on negotiation that is really a book about empathy, emotions, and self-awareness in disguise.

BLOG POST - Wait But Why: A Story of Stories by Tim Urban - A long, beautiful, thoughtful, imaginative, and fun blog post that does an absolutely wonderful job walking through the importance and power of stories in our lives.

MUSIC - Shimmy Shimmy Ya by Ol' Dirty Bastard - Raw, unadulterated, classic hip-hop gold.

"One can only be an exceptional negotiator, and a great person, by both listening and speaking clearly and empathetically; by treating counterparts—and oneself—with dignity and respect; and most of all by being honest about what one wants and what one can—and cannot—do." ~ Chris Voss

ARTICLE - Farnam Street: The Four Tools of Discipline by Shane Parrish - Shane's short and sweet summary of the primary tools to embolden our discipline, which he positions as a crucial tool for solving problems.

VIDEO - Black Mirror: White Christmas by Carl Tibbets - A double whammy thought experiment about both the nature of consciousness and self-hood in hypothetical A.I. copies of us, as well as the consequences of 'blocking' other people completely from our lives.

"It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn." ~ Shane Parrish

BOOK - Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action by Dr. David Fajgenbaum - David suffers from a rare disease that put him on the brink of death multiple times, and he responded by building and leading the infrastructure to research, treat, and cure the very thing that is trying to kill him (and many others).

KILL MY CONFIRMATION BIAS - DEPLATFORMING - What resources can you share to help sharpen perspective on deplatforming?

BLOG POST - A Guide to Getting Unstuck by Chris Sparks - Chris' piece does a wonderful job highlighting the different opportunities for getting unstuck, along with a large variety of tactics to experiment with.

ARTICLE - Aeon: If work dominated your every moment would life be worth living? by Andrew Taggart - An intriguing thought experiment that shines a bright, interrogating spotlight on the impact of prioritizing productivity throughout our lives.

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Shane Parrish - When we stop to think about it (heresy!), the first-order benefits of speed are vastly outweighed by the second- and third-order costs.

"Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. It is about making real and meaningful connections— with people, culture, work, food, everything. The paradox is that Slow does not always mean slow." ~ Shane Parrish

TOPIC OF INTEREST - TRIP TO SCANDINAVIA (My favorite photos)

BOOK - Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (My full Kindle notes) - A vivid, inspirational, and fun story about a WW2-eta Japanese school with a very different methodology for educating children, focused on developing autonomy and individual self-respect.

BOOK - Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career by Scott Young (My summary notes) - A concrete and highly tangible guide to learning new skills with incredible velocity.

MUSIC - Gnpwdr by Spark Master Tape - Really dirty, really Trappy, and, for whatever reason, really resonated with me in Copenhagen.

"Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear." ~ Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

BOOK - Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris (My full Kindle notes) - A short and fun primer on the latest from science and philosophy on the what, how, and where of consciousness.

MOVIE - Ex Machina by Alex Garland - An exciting and thought-provoking story blending the moral and ethical questions of creating general AI with a vivid example of the "hard problem" of when consciousness truly arises.

BOOK - The Mind’s I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett - A collection of classic works on the nature of consciousness, complemented by thoughtful, insightful critiques from Doug and Dan.

"All matter, so far as we know it, is a mental condition" ~ Will Durant

BOOK - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (My full Kindle notes) - Sci-fi novel offering a beautiful, vivid, and fun portrait of human social dynamics in the face of imminent extinction.

ARTICLE - Aeon: To be resilient, face tragedy with humour and flexibility by Steven Southwick - Our resilience can be strengthened with known and proven processes and tools, as well as with experimentation and personalization for our various contexts.

BLOG POST - First Round Review: Our 6 Must Reads for Cutting Through Conflict and Tough Conversations - A thoughtful summary piece with plenty of specific recommendations for resolving conflict and ensuring tough conversations are productive.

MUSIC - Borne On The FM Waves Of The Heart by Against Me! - One of my favorite punk rock love songs, as it evocatively reminds me of the difficulty of having crucial conversations with the people we care about the most.

"The consequences of not identifying and addressing conflicts and corrosive team dynamics are always dire." ~ Laura Gates

ARTICLE - Aeon: A Theory of Jerks by Eric Schwitzgebel - A delightful essay on jerkitude, including what it is, how one can slip into it, and how one can resolve it.

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #62: Cracking the Code of Love: My Interview with Psychologist and EFT Pioneer, Dr. Sue Johnson by Shane Parrish - You can shape your love relationships with known psychological and biological principles.

MOVIE - Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino - Even in the worst of situations with the worst of people, we have the opportunity to empathize with them to better understand the world, and to be more effective in the service of our goals.

"The best recipe for a great sex life, throughout your life, is safe emotional connection." ~ Dr. Sue Johnson

TOPIC OF INTEREST - PRINCIPLES FOR STRATEGIC DECISIONS - I am creating a one-stop resource for anyone making strategic decisions (at work, in life, etc.) and would greatly appreciate your feedback!

ARTICLE - The Point: Spoiled Rich Kids by Agnes Callard - Our perceptions of injustice seem to be based on our individual normative equations, i.e., what we each subjectively deem to be 'fair'.

VIDEO - Cleveland Clinic: Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care - "Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" ~ Henry David Thoreau

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: Our Yearning for Immortality: Alan Lightman on one of the most Profound Contradictions of Human Existence by Shane Parrish - Eloquent essays expounding on the multitudinous scientific evidence that argues for the impermanence of everything, despite our longing for permanence.

ARTICLE - MIT Sloan Management Review: With Goals, FAST Beats SMARTby Donald Sull and Charles Sull - "[L]eaders must set ambitious targets, translate them into specific metrics and milestones, make them transparent throughout the organization, and discuss progress frequently."

BOOK - The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (My full Kindle notes) - Julia's seminal work proffers an incredible blend of emotional inspiration and concrete actions and tools that will add joy to your life, and give you a powerful toolkit to unleash your potential in any realm.

BLOG POST - Mindfulness Hack: How To Use 4th of July Consumer Explosives to Augment Your Meditation Practice by Nikki Campo - "Pause for a moment to recall why you’re meditating with consumer explosives today. Recognize and release any desires, say for safety or well-being, you’ve brought along."

"The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention." ~ Julia Cameron

ARTICLE - Psychology Today: How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others by Susan Biali Haas - Understanding our envy triggers, and designing gratefulness and appreciation into our days, can help us bolster our contentedness and avoid comparison traps.

ARTICLE - New York Times: You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything by Bonnie Tsui - Create space within your work periods, work days, work weeks, and work years for meaningful idle time, to refuel and replenish yourself.

BLOG POST - How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably by Steph Smith - Leverage the powers of compounding, diligence, and experimentation to boost your odds of greatness in anything you set out to achieve.

ESSAY - Heterodox Academy: All Minus One - John Stuart Mill’s Ideas on Free Speech by Richard Reeves and Jonathan Haidt - "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility."

"No person is free who is not master of himself." ~ Pythagoras

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #60: Leading Above the Line: My Interview with Leadership Expert, Jim Dethmer by Shane Parrish - Conscious awareness and acceptance of our body and mind states enable deeper and more impactful interactions, especially within the contexts of leadership and teamwork.

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long by Maria Popova (My full Kindle notes from the book) - Making decisions through the lens of our scarcest resource, time, can help us live a more meaningful life.

ARTICLE - The Atlantic: Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think by Arthur Brooks - We can learn from common patterns in professional career evolution to better design our lives and careers around our inevitable changes in capabilities.

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works by Shane Parrish - Operating systems of legendary thinkers like Charlie Munger can help us design our own rules for living well.

"Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die." ~ Seneca (the Younger)

BLOG POST - UX Essays: The world needs a tech diet; here is how designers can help by Fabricio Teixeira & Caio Braga - "Designing your life begins with designing the environment around you."

BLOG POST - Lessons from Keith Rabois Essay 3: How to be an Effective Executiveby Delian Asparouhov - Your efficacy as a manager (in all realms of life) is largely dictated by your management operating system, which can be engineered and improved in myriad ways.

BLOG POST - 52 key learnings in 52 weeks of 2016 by Tre Wee - Regularly reflecting on our life creates opportunities to synthesize timeless principles for living.

"Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant." ~ Stephen Covey

ARTICLE - New York Times: You Accomplished Something Great. So Now What? by A.C. Shilton - Linking our happiness to goal achievement (a.k.a., 'the Arrival fallacy') is a recipe for failure.

PODCAST - The Tim Ferris Show #373: Jerry Colonna — The Coach With the Spider Tattoo - When we accept our fundamental goodness, and open ourselves up to candidly question our patterns, feelings, and commitments, we afford ourselves the opportunity to make radical changes in the service of simply living lives that we can be happy with.

MUSIC - She's Always a Woman by Billy Joel - Robust relationships include appreciating the vicissitudes of our loved ones, as well as the unexpected and nontraditional parts of their being.

"I believe that I am a fundamentally good person, and that I accept the fact that I often fail to act in accordance with that. But that feels, to this guilt-ridden, anxious-ridden, angry child from Brooklyn, that feels radically transformative." ~ Jerry Colonna

SPEECH - You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - The recipe for doing great work is relatively simple, yet incredibly hard to execute well (Note: But not impossible ;D).

PODCAST - Where Should We Begin? by Esther Perel - A relationships podcast featuring wonderful, vulnerable couples counseling with one of the greats.

MOVIE - Baby Driver by Edgar Wright - An incredible and unique action movie with witty writing and a killer soundtrack.

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

PODCAST - Reboot #105: Reboot Your Definition of Success – with Alex Rethore by Jerry Colonna - As we go through 'resets' in life (which are always available to us :D), we have the opportunity to bring our lives into internal and external alignment, and to push back on that nagging inner voice asking "Is this enough?".

BLOG POST - Reasoning From First Principles: The Dumbest Thing Smart People Do by Byrne Hobart - Knowing which principles you are aligned with and against can be tremendously valuable, even if you cannot reasonably live by them most of the time.

BLOG POST - 88 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life by David Cain - Seeing and evaluating others' core beliefs and principles can help you better understand and hone your own.

BOOK - Every Day is Game Day by Mark Verstegen (My full Kindle notes) - Defining what pillars of living are most important to us, and our operating principles and rituals within each pillar, enables better living in the service of what we uniquely define as most important.

"We spend so much time inculcating and internalizing those expectations. You have so much potential, that the whispery fear behind that is, and so you better not blow it... Whereas the message is not necessarily, congratulations, you are enough. The message is, congratulations, someday you may be enough." ~ Jerry Colonna

ARTICLE - The New Yorker: Can We Live Longer But Stay Younger? by Adam Gopnik - As aging research evolves and expected longevity improves, lengthening our lives, there is still the important and deeply personal question of purpose and meaning in our final act.

ARTICLE - The Economist: Death of the Calorie by Peter Wilson - Nutrition science continues to illuminate the nuanced incompleteness of the simple, but insufficient, mental model of caloric balance for weight control.

BOOK - Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (My full Kindle notes) - Battling through hardship with others can ultimately be more rewarding than living more affluently but individualistically, as the experience of struggling together taps into core human virtues and needs.

"Whatever the technological advances of modern society—and they’re nearly miraculous—the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit." ~ Sebastian Junger

BOOK - Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (My full Kindle notes) - Our communication tools, and their framing of informing vs. entertaining, fundamentally alter the volume, type, and nature of discourse, with semi-predictable repercussions.

VISUAL ESSAY - The Pudding: The Structure of Stand-Up Comedy by Russell Goldenberg & Matt Daniels - A delightful and ingenious visual experience sharing the structural brilliance of Ali Wong's stand-up comedy.

BOOK - Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton (My Summary) - The lying we do to ourselves and others, of any scale and variety, takes meaningful energy and effort, and often robs us of experiencing life for what it really is.

"The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation." ~ Neil Postman

BOOK - What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (My full Kindle notes) - There is a tremendous intangible cost of exercising ruthless ambition in the service of one's goals.

RESEARCH - ScienceDaily: Patterns of compulsive smartphone use suggest how to kick the habit - Our smartphone compulsions are primarily triggered by escapism and anticipation, and can be mitigated by having better alternatives in real life, and finding comfort with discomfort and silence.

MUSIC - Worlds by Porter Robinson - Porter's music can feel like an infusion of happiness.

"We only hate the results of people. But people, Henry, aren’t just results. They’re a process. And to really give them a break we have to judge the process through which they became the result we see when we say So-and-so is a heel." ~ Budd Schulberg

TOPIC OF INTEREST - HIP FLEXIBILITY

BOOK - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig (My full Kindle notes) - In the work of our lives, we have the opportunity to embrace choice in how we perceive the world, our guiding values in riding towards our goals, and the baggage we bring along for the ride.

MOVIE - Battle Royale by Kinji Fukasaku - The Japanese precursor to The Hunger Games and other movies in the 'dystopian society forces kids to fight to the death' genre.

"Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed." ~ Robert Pirsig

BOOK - Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel (My full Kindle notes) - Contrarian thinking and the dedicated search for truth proffer compelling opportunities to create new forms of abundance for the world.

ARTICLE - First Round Review: Our 6 Must Reads for Honing Focus and Managing Your Time - The key areas within our locus of control that we can manage for effectiveness gains are our energy, priorities, focus, and environment.

ARTICLE - Aeon: In defence of disorder by Alan Lightman - There is tremendous opportunity available in both order and disorder; eschewing disorder removes many beautiful aspects of life.

PODCAST - Reboot: #90 – The Fear of Being You with Leonie Akhidenor by Jerry Colonna - We can learn from, challenge, and show compassion to our inner voice; the voice that can drive us to success and achievement, but simultaneously lead to us question our self-worth, and sense of love, safety, and belonging.

"The prospect of being lonely but right—dedicating your life to something that no one else believes in—is already hard. The prospect of being lonely and wrong can be unbearable." ~ Peter Thiel

TOPIC OF INTEREST - CANNABIDIOL (CBD) - CBD is a nonpsychoactive derivative of cannabis that is safe, legal, and clinically proven to be effective for treating epilepsy, with initial research suggesting efficacy for anxiety, insomnia, and pain, too.

BOOK - Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery by Christie Aschwanden (My full Kindle notes) - "Insofar as there exists any magical secret for recovery, sleep is it. The benefits of sleep cannot be overstated. It’s hands-down the most powerful recovery tool known to science."

ARTICLE - The New York Times: The Moral Peril of Meritocracy by David Brooks - In our life's journey, we each have the opportunity to transcend the self and our pursuit of success to instead focus on building loving connections and doing meaningful work.

"If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self, the second is about shedding the ego and dissolving the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution." ~ David Brooks

PODCAST - Reboot #102: To Actually Live Your Life – with Khe Hy by Jerry Colonna - Extensive worrying about living the "right" way can paradoxically inhibit our ability to live well.

ARTICLE - The New York Times: Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) by Charlotte Lieberman - Procrastination is an emotional coping response that can be resolved with compassion, curiosity, and thoughtful design.

ARTICLE - Aeon: Sailing into the storm by Joseph Trunzo - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy [ACT] develops mindfulness and psychological flexibility to enable thoughtful action in alignment with your values and in pursuit of your goals.

BOOK - The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT by Russ Harris (My full Kindle notes) - Russ Harris' primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy provides a wonderful framework for realizing a more realistic version of happiness.

"You have to let go of the need to have it all figured out in order to just actually live your life." ~ Jerry Colonna

KILL MY CONFIRMATION BIAS - CHEAT DAY

BOOK - Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (My full Kindle notes) - Life is a ridiculous adventure to be explored with people you care about.

ARTICLE - Quartz: What’s that next dollar worth to you, and what are you giving up to get it? by Khe Hy - More (money) is not always better, as it often comes with difficult-to-measure trade-offs.

BLOG POST - The Acceleration of Addictiveness by Paul Graham - In most consumption categories, social norms are usually a poor indicator of your unique, optimal level of consumption.

"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" ~ Paul Graham

BLOG POST - Remains of the Day: Status as a Service (StaaS) by Eugene Wei - Social media platforms often directly serve our human desire for status by leveraging proof of work and scarcity dynamics.

ARTICLE - Vulture: How Podcasts Learned to Speak by Adam Sternbergh - Podcasting offers a sense of companionship that is neatly packaged in a recurring audio format.

BLOG POST - The Players' Tribune: Letter to My Younger Self by Ray Allen - Our path to success is unique, unsexy, and rife with failure, yet proudly and dutifully walking that path, not just reaching the end, contributes meaningfully to a life well lived.

"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

BOOK - The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (My full Kindle Notes) - There are a handful of simple, validated, proactive means for all of us to improve our perception of happiness, both in the moment and ongoing.

BOOK (SNIPPET) - Model Business Plan from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - Business plans can actually be hilarious. Really!

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: These Truths: Jill Lepore on How the Shift from Mythology to Science Shaped the Early Dream of Democracy by Maria Popova - The lessons of history, despite the inherent biases in any individual account and the flaws of the decisions made over time, will have so much to teach us if we can observe objectively and inquire with an open mind.

ARTICLE - Aeon: The growth mindset problem by Carl Hendrick - Translating exciting academic findings into the real world is incredibly hard and faces a few difficult hurdles.

"[This trend], which everyone knows about, and [that trend], which is so incredibly arcane that you probably didn't know about it until just now, and [this other trend over here] which might seem, at first blush, to be completely unrelated, when all taken together, lead us to the (proprietary, secret, heavily patented, trademarked, and NDAed) insight that we could increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]. We will need $ [a large number] and after [not too long] we will be able to realize an increase in value to $ [an even larger number], unless [hell freezes over in midsummer]." ~ Neal Stephenson

ARTICLE - Outside: Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? by Rowan Jacobsen - A mix of complexity and myopic incentives may be biasing U.S. sun exposure recommendations, which could mean that many people can improve their overall health by using less sunscreen and getting more direct sun exposure.

BLOG POST - Optimal Stopping: How to Find the Perfect Apartment, Partner, and Parking Spot by Brian Christian - Mathematical shortcuts provide helpful heuristics for figuring out when to stop searching and make a choice.

ARTICLE - ProPublica: I’m a Journalist. Apparently, I’m Also One of America’s “Top Doctors.” by Marshall Allen - All credibility signals are human created fictions, and ought to be subject to personal due diligence.

MUSIC - R.A.P. Music by Killer Mike - Find an hour to fill your life with perspective and lyrical bliss from Killer Mike.

"[O]ptimal stopping’s most fundamental yet most unbelievable assumption — its strict seriality, its inexorable one-way march — is revealed to be the nature of time itself." ~ Brian Christian

BLOG POST - If Self-Discipline Feels Difficult, Then You're Doing It Wrong by Mark Manson - When it comes to behavior change, self-acceptance and re-wiring rewards can take you much further than an approach focused on self-discipline or willpower.

BLOG POST - Medium Health: Why Your Brain Needs Idle Time by Markham Heid - Idle time promotes learning and productivity.

BLOG POST - Examine.com: The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019 by Michael Hull - The depth and nuance of nutrition research means that the current "truth" does not fully align with conventional wisdom, creating an opportunity for us to correct common mistakes.

MOVIE - Ace Ventura: Pet Detective by Tom Shadyac - Jim Carrey + early 1990's + ridiculous story = hilarity ensues.

"Ultimately, self-discipline is not based on willpower or self-denial, but it’s actually based on the opposite: self-acceptance." ~ Mark Manson

BLOG POST - Cognitive Journaling: A Systematic Method to Overcome Negative Beliefs by Richard Ragnarson - CBT-based journaling enables us to understand and upgrade our beliefs about the world.

VIDEOS - The Art of Manliness: Barbell Training with Mark Rippetoe by Brett McKay - For best results and lowest risk of injury in weight lifting (which can be part of everyone's exercise routine), make sure you nail your form.

ARTICLE - NY Times Magazine: America's Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable by Charles Duhigg - In our professional lives, our individual sense of meaning, autonomy, and team respect matter way more than salary and prestige.

TWEET STORM - You can tell what is constraining someone in life by who they judge by Tiago Forte - Behind our judgment lies opportunities and avenues for growth.

"When you sit down and write about your experiences and feelings, you choose to dedicate a special time window to reflecting on your own life." ~ Richard Ragnarson

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - JIM COLLINS METRICS - Adding two simple metrics to my Life CEO Dashboard, incremental to the current rituals tracked there, can help me stay focused on the right things and enable me to better understand key drivers of my daily happiness.

TOPIC OF INTEREST - AMYGDALA HIJACKING - Amygdala hijacking is our "fight or flight" response, but often kicks in unconsciously in non-life-threatening situations. Improved mental hygiene and awareness via therapy and meditation is thought to reduce the frequency and intensity of amygdala hijackings.

BOOK - Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are by John Kaag (My full Kindle notes) - Discovering and becoming ourselves is an active, ongoing process that occurs as we diligently pursue our highest goals.

RESEARCH - Annals of Internal Medicine: Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity by Nedeltcheva AV et al. (The University of Chicago) - Insufficient sleep can negatively impact body composition and weight-loss efforts.

RESOURCE - Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies by The School of Thought - Understanding how to identify the many flavors of faulty logic will help improve your reasoning and conclusions.

"No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself" ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

TOPIC OF INTEREST - DRUG HARM, ADDICTIVENESS, AND CONTROL - Social norms and laws for drugs are not well correlated with their actual harm and addictiveness.

ARTICLE - Vox: Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong by Brian Resnick - We all have cognitive blind spots and make mental mistakes, so we ought to caveat our convictions with appropriate curiosity and humility, and reward others who do the same.

ARTICLE - New York Magazine: America’s New Religions by Andrew Sullivan - Our core human desire for meaning leads everyone to adopt some form of 'religion', whether that is traditional monotheism, a political party, a philosophical framework, or something else entirely.

BLOG POST - The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You by Zat Rana - We have an opportunity to face the fear of boredom and silence, to embrace our solitude and enjoy every single scarce moment that life gives us.

BLOG POST - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson - 'Not giving a fuck' is the opposite of indifference, it is actually caring a lot about a very small number of things, so much so that you do the work necessary despite adversity, risk of failure, and feelings of pride and ego.

"...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

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - HIGH ENERGY + LOW EFFORT

PODCAST - The Tim Ferriss Show #355: How to Master Essentialism with Greg McKeown by Tim Ferriss - We can learn to choose choice in every area of our lives, so that we can focus on our highest point(s) of contribution.

PODCAST - Making Sense #146: Digital Capitalism with Douglas Rushkoff by Sam Harris - Our digital technology ecosystem has some pernicious incentives which lead to bad practices in innovation and growth.

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #50: Inventing the Future with Josh Wolfe by Shane Parrish - Intellectual humility and curiosity enables better questions and, ultimately, a more refined and accurate map of what the future may hold.

RESOURCE - Slumber Bear by Kieran Parker - You have options for designing your best sleep routine.

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.

"It's not being unhelpful to the world for you to say No to something that is less important... Your obligation is to the highest point of contribution that you can make." ~ Greg McKeown

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - TEA TIME (TAKE TWO)

TOPIC OF INTEREST - BIRTHRIGHT TRIP TO ISRAEL

BOOK - Dune by Frank Herbert (My full Kindle notes) - Even in the harshest of environments, we can paint a compelling vision of the future that inspires everyone to work together towards a common goal.

TOOL - Habit Tracker Template by Kelsey Whelan - Chunking opaque goals down into concrete steps, and tracking progress, can enable significant forward momentum.

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: How to Do Great Things by Shane Parrish - Preparing for success is as important, if not more important, than simply investing time and energy.

PODCAST - The Knowledge Project #18: Naval Ravikant: The Angel Philosopher on Investing, Making Decisions, Happiness and the Meaning of Life by Shane Parrish (Complete transcript) (My complete highlights) - There are tremendous opportunities to update our core mental models for realizing happiness and living our lives, primarily through dissolving our ego and seeing the world with clarity and equanimity.

"Happiness is really a default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in your life." ~ Naval Ravikant

SPEECH - This is Water by David Foster Wallace - The subjectivity of society is ubiquitous; and if we learn to pay attention to the nuance, we can see other options and choose choice throughout our lives.

"...if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options." ~ David Foster Wallace

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - TEA TIME

ARTICLE - The New Yorker: The Philosopher Redefining Equality by Nathan Heller - The requirements for securing equality and freedom vary significantly based on context, so embracing intellectual flexibility over rigid ideology can lead to greater success more often.

BLOG POST - Medium: Connection Is a Core Human Need, But We Are Terrible at It by Brianna Wiest - We must both show up for others and show up authentically to realize our core human need for connection.

VIDEO - Wireless Philosophy: The Problem of Free Will by Richard Holton - Free will is still heavily debated among philosophers, with many fun nuances to explore.

MUSIC - Bad Religion - If you create twenty-plus albums over forty years, you'll inevitably bring something awesome into the world.

"I love my computer | For all you give to me | Predictable errors and no identity | And it's never been quite so easy | I've never been quite so happy | All I need to do is click on you | And we'll be joined | In the most soul-less way | And we'll never | Ever ruin each other's day | 'cause when I'm through I just click | And you just go away" ~ Bad Religion

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - SILENCE (PART 2)

DOCUMENTARY - Wild Wild Country by Chapman and Maclain Way - When groups with different fundamental values come into conflict, the ridiculousness of human dynamics can unfold in unbelievable ways.

MOVIE - The End of the Tour by James Ponsoldt - No one is too "smart" or "brilliant" or "aware" to suffer from mental health issues. Embrace a mental health toolkit and do the work, the world is better with you in it and fully alive.

ARTICLE - TechCrunch: We finally started taking screen time seriously in 2018 by Catherine Shu - As evidence stacks up against screen time, we have opportunities to leverage existing tools and perform self-experiments to optimize our usage for our individual goals and context.

BOOK - Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl (My revised Kindle notes) - Finding meaning, embracing our freedom to choose, and forgetting ourselves are important keys to a happy life, regardless of external circumstances.

"The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life." ~ Dr. Viktor Frankl

TOPIC OF INTEREST - 2018 ANNUAL LETTER (My 2018 letter)

EXPERIMENT OF THE WEEK - SILENCE (PART 1)

BOOK - Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (My full Kindle notes) - We can all unleash our creativity if we get over our fears and diligently do authentic work.

BLOG POST - Medium: The Unifying Theory of Alcohol by Dan Kieran - All of our consumption choices, regardless of rituals and social norms, can add positively to our lives with thoughtful experimentation and re-framing.

MUSIC - Christmas in Hollis by Run-D.M.C. - Christmas makes me long for quality 80's hip-hop juxtaposed with egregiously dorky video production.

"The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust—and those elements are universally accessible." ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

MORNING MANTRA OF THE WEEK - MAINTAIN MY SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE MOMENT

KILL MY CONFIRMATION BIAS - ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES TO CONSUME

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: Love, Happiness, and Time by Shane Parrish - When we shift our perception of the world from solid to liquid, from perpetual states to moments in time, we can unlock an appreciation for each moment, as well as an acceptance of the inevitable vicissitudes of life.

ARTICLE - Washington Post: Liberalism is Loneliness by Christine Emba - Liberalism's myopic focus on individual freedom affords tremendous benefits, but also leaves a gaping void when it comes to living outside ourselves.

ARTICLE - The Atlantic: The Reason Many Ultrarich People Aren’t Satisfied With Their Wealth by Joe Pinsker - Material wealth does not buy happiness, as our human tendency is to adjust both the rules of the game and the hurdle rate as our performance improves.

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 to our internal truths.

"Commonsense at its worst is sense made common, and so everything is comfortably cheapened by its touch." ~ Vladimir Nabokov

BOOK - Against Everything: Essays by Mark Greif (My full Kindle Notes) - There are plenty of other perspectives from which to view the world, enabling expanding comprehension and increasingly accurate mental maps.

NEWS - Bloomberg: Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 - The age of governments rating and controlling their citizens is nigh upon us.

COMEDY - Live at the Met by Robin Williams - Our work can continue to inspire others long after we are gone.

"Beautiful nature is beautiful for men and women because it strips our life to essentials, reflects us, dismisses us, and smashes our idols and objets d’art." ~ Mark Greif

BOOK - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari (My full Kindle notes) - Accepting the fallibility and limitations of the human animal will enable us to improve our individual and group processes to solve the key challenges of the 21st century.

PODCAST - On Being: The Difference Between Fixing and Healing with Rachel Naomi Remen by Krista Tippett - Our imperfect, wounded, authentic self is more than enough to heal the world immediately around us.

BLOG POST - Reboot: The Gifts of Relationship by Ali Schultz - Our intimate relationships offer tremendous opportunities for growth.

MOVIE - Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis - Serving others is one of the easiest (and counter-intuitive) paths to deep joy and meaning.

"Yet if you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, explore dead ends, make space for doubts and boredom, and allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth." ~ Yuval Noah Harari

DOCUMENTARY - Free Solo by Alex Honnold & Jimmy Chin - Human potential is beyond imagination; nature is awe inspiring; and climbing still scares the shit out of me.

MEDITATION APP - Waking Up by Sam Harris - Sam Harris created a new meditation app that offers a more intellectual and analytical entry point into meditation practice.

ARTICLE - Aeon: Can relationship anarchy create a world without heartbreak? by Sophie Hemery - There are myriad ways to construct meaningful relationships, and your personal choices ought to reflect your (and their) needs and goals.

BOOK - Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (My full Kindle notes) - Within each of us lives the full spectrum of human nature.

"You will always feel fear, but over time you will realize the only way to truly manage your fear is to broaden your comfort zone.'' ~ Alex Honnold

TOPIC OF INTEREST - FEEDBACK

VIDEO - Wired: How Humans Get Hacked: Yuval Noah Harari & Tristan Harris Talk by Nicholas Thompson

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations by Maria Popova

BLOG POST - Farnam Street: What’s Staying the Same by Shane Parrish

COURSE - Harvard: Positive Psychology 1504 by Tal Ben-Shahar

TOPIC OF INTEREST - PHYSICAL HEALTH INFORMATION BLACKOUT

MUSIC - Emotionless by Drake

PODCAST - The Tim Ferriss Show: 10 Strategies to Be Happier Through Gratitude by A.J. Jacobs

ARTICLE - The Atlantic: Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition by Emily Esfahani Smith

ARTICLE - NY Times: The Ambition Explosion by David Brooks

MUSIC - Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

TOPIC OF INTEREST - ATTACHMENT THEORY

ARTICLE - Quillette: The Incentives for Groupthink by Neema Parvini

BLOG POST - Breaking Smart: Self-Interest and Seized Initiatives by Venkatesh Rao

ARTICLE - NY Times: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley by Nellie Bowles

MUSIC - Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations

BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION - GLOBAL WELLNESS INDUSTRY OUTLOOK 2019

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful Letter to Van Gogh on Fear, Bravery, and How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns by Maria Popova

ARTICLE - Aeon: There is no middle ground for deep disagreements about facts by Klemens Kappel

PODCAST - The Tim Ferris Show: Nick Kokonas — How to Apply World-Class Creativity to Business, Art, and Life (#341) by Tim Ferris

RESOURCE - The Ultimate Learning Guide via Shane Parrish by Ryan Reeves

RESEARCH - Ergo-Log: Ketogenic diet may help prevent dementia

KILL MY CONFIRMATION BIAS - DETERMINISM

BLOG POST - NY Times Opinion: In Praise of Mediocrity by Tim Wu

ARTICLE - The Guardian: Net worth v self worth: do we all need inequality therapy? by Maia Szalavitz

BLOG POST - The BPP Blog: Solution Aversion by Tony Hockley

ARTICLE - Nature: The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation by Heidi Larson

BLOG POST - Wait But Why: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy by Tim Urban

TOPIC OF INTEREST - NYC APARTMENT SEARCH

ARTICLE - The Atlantic: Why Kids Want Things by Joe Pinsker

BLOG POST - Thoughts on Relationships by Tynan

ARTICLE - Aeon: Religion is about emotion regulation, and it’s very good at it by Stephen Asma

BLOG POST - The Best Way To Add Yield To Your Portfolio by Meb Faber

RESEARCH - Psychoneuroendocrinology: Aerobic exercise lengthens telomeres and reduces stress in family caregivers: A randomized controlled trial

BOOK - Principles by Ray Dalio

TOPIC OF INTEREST - MENTAL HEALTH OF YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS

BOOK - The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer (My full Kindle notes)

BOOK - How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (My full Kindle notes)

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

ARTICLE - New Yorker: The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media by Mark O'Connell

PODCAST - Reboot: #90 – The Fear of Being You – with Leonie Akhidenor by Jerry Colonna

ARTICLE - The Guardian: Nick Littlehales: the man who showed Cristiano Ronaldo how to sleep by Russell Jackson

BLOG POST - First Round: The Imperative Practice of Relaxing Constraints by Howard Morgan

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love by Maria Popova

COMEDY - The Top Part by John Mulaney

TOPIC OF INTEREST - MENTAL MODELS THAT I AM WORKING ON

DOCUMENTARY - HBO: The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling by Judd Apatow

ARTICLE - Aeon: Against Mourning by Brian Earp

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing” by Maria Popova

MUSIC - Bush

BOOK - Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach (My full Kindle highlights)

PODCAST - Joe Rogan Experience: #1158 - Chuck Palahniuk by Joe Rogan

RESEARCH - American Journal of Public Health: Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate

RESEARCH - The Lancet: Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis (via The Guardian)

ARTICLE - Aeon: Hume the humane by Julian Baggini

BOOK - Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

PODCAST - Hidden Brain: The Sorting Hat by Shankar Vedantam

BLOG POST - I Can't by Rob Jones

ARTICLE - Aeon: The unreality of luck by Steven Hales

BOOK EXCERPT - The Guardian: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’ by Yuval Noah Harari

TWEET STORM - Some heuristics to make decisions by Shane Parrish

ARTICLE - National Geographic: This Is Your Brain on Nature by Florence Williams

ARTICLE - Scientific American: Why the Most Important Idea in Behavioral Decision-Making Is a Fallacy by David Gal

ARTICLE - Aeon: The respect deficit by Richard Reeves

MOVIE - Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino

TOPIC OF INTEREST - FIGURING OUT WHERE TO LIVE

BOOK - Essentialism by Greg McKeown (My summary)

TOPIC OF INTEREST - MY MENTAL HEALTH REMINDERS

BLOG POST - Brain Pickings: David Whyte on the True Meaning of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak by Maria Popova

BLOG POST - The Story of My Life by Russ Roberts

ARTICLE - Aeon: Loneliness is the common ground of terror and extremism by Nabeelah Jaffer

BLOG POST - Solutions Journalism: Complicating the Narratives by Amanda Ripley

BLOG POST - Above the Market: Proof Negative by Robert Seawright

MUSIC - Torn by Natalie Imbruglia