Best of The Lake Street Journal: Year Two

I send a weekly newsletter every Friday called The Lake Street Journal. It’s a curation of the best things I read, watched, listened to, learned, and created every week. This piece is a collection of the links I sent during 2021.

I broke the content into five categories: business/investing, great writing, self-improvement, society, and odds & ends.

I hope you enjoy what follows, and make sure to drop your email in the box below so you can get new reading material every Friday.

Business/Investing

Rules for Running a Business - James Clear just finished ten years as an entrepreneur. He also just passed 1 million email subscribers - amazing! He posted this Twitter thread with the rules he uses for running his business. A lot of them are also good frameworks for running your life.

Why a Great Company Culture Doesn't Start with Pizza and Ping Pong - A few weeks ago, I published an article about company culture. This week, somebody saw that article and followed me on Twitter. We had a short conversation, and he shared this piece he wrote on company culture nearly six years ago.

I loved these lines, "Values live in the heart, not on the wall...Nothing significant will ever happen unless you personally embody the values, and associated behaviours."

This is a great short read for anyone in a leadership role. I'll be thinking on it as I prepare to start my new position in April.

How People Get Rich Now - Great piece from Paul Graham. What I found most fascinating was how fortunes today and in the 1890s were largely created by starting companies, whereas fortunes in the 1980s largely came from inheritance. From the essay: "In 1960, most of the people who start startups today would have gone to work for one of them. You could get rich from starting your own company in 1890 and in 2020, but in 1960 it was not really a viable option. You couldn't break through the oligopolies to get at the markets. So the prestigious route in 1960 was not to start your own company, but to work your way up the corporate ladder at an existing one."

Trying Too Hard - I enjoyed reading this talk on investing from 40 years ago. It feels as relevant today as it did then. I took away two main points:

First, forecasts are mostly bullshit. This was my favorite bit on forecasts:

"Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same. And when it comes to forecasting—as opposed to doing something—a lot of expertise is no better than a little expertise. And may even be worse. The consolation prize is pretty consoling, actually. It’s that you can be a successful investor without being a perpetual forecaster."

Second, consistency is the most important factor for investing performance in the long term. I loved this story:

"...for the last ten years the best investment record in the country belonged to the Citizens Bank and Trust Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. Forbes magazine did not miss it, though, and sent a reporter to Chillicothe to find the genius responsible for it. He found a 72 year old man named Edgerton Welsh, who said he’d never heard of Benjamin Graham and didn’t have any idea what modern portfolio theory was. “Well, how did you do it?” the reporter wanted to know. Mr. Welch showed the reporter his copy of Value-Line and said he bought all the stocks ranked “1” that Merrill Lynch or E.F. Hutton also liked. And when any one of the three changed their ratings, he sold. Mr. Welch said, “It’s like owning a computer. When you get the printout, use the figures to make a decision--not your own impulse.” The Forbes reporter finally concluded, “His secret isn’t the system but his own consistency.”

Yes...I Read the Whitepaper - This was a fascinating read on cryptocurrency. The author speaks to the potential future value of Ethereum by way of explaining the difference between centralized and decentralized finance.

Who knows if he's right, and if I'm being honest, the article was slightly above my intellectual capacity. That said, it gave me a better understanding of the use cases of Ethereum and a framework to think about how it might be valued.

How to Win $1,000,000 - This is a fun read about a guy who won $1 million playing fantasy football. The author talks less about football than about investing and the role luck plays in success. 

My favorite part was on why we mistake luck for skill:

"I don’t think [anyone] accurately understood the role that luck played in the outcome. My thesis on why that’s hard to understand is that our brains have a difficult time processing incredibly low probability outcomes. There were 227,000 entries in the contest that day. Assuming it was a level playing field (which it probably wasn’t), I had a 0.00044% chance of winning. Said differently, I had a 99.99956% chance of losing. But I didn’t lose… and that’s why so many people think that I must have somehow tilted the odds in my favor."

Crazy New Ideas - Another top notch, thought provoking piece from Paul Graham. This one offers actionable advice around finding good new ideas. 

The basic premise: if an idea sounds crazy but it's coming from someone with expertise in the area, it has a high probability of being a good idea. 

We're too quick to dismiss ideas that sound crazy. It's a fatal human flaw. The better approach, Graham suggests, is to ask questions. This was my favorite paragraph from the essay:

"The wise response to such an idea is not to make statements, but to ask questions, because there's a real mystery here. Why has this smart and reasonable person proposed an idea that seems so wrong? Are they mistaken, or are you? One of you has to be. If you're the one who's mistaken, that would be good to know, because it means there's a hole in your model of the world. But even if they're mistaken, it should be interesting to learn why. A trap that an expert falls into is one you have to worry about too."

A Bull Case for Ethereum - In my continuous quest to understand cryptocurrency, I read this long piece from Packy McCormick earlier in the week.

It was the most helpful explanation of Ethereum I've read to date. Packy uses Excel as an analogy to explain Ethereum. The short version is, like Excel, Ethereum is a highly customizable platform upon which countless applications can be built. 

He outlines numerous reasons why he thinks the price will continue to rise, and at the end he lists a few scenarios in which he could be wrong. I agree with his bull case, and I appreciate his intellectual humility. 

Although I still don't full understand Ethereum, with each analysis I read, I pick up another piece of the puzzle. This one was convincing enough to make me add a little bit to my position.

Tim Ferriss Episode #506 - Balaji Srinivasan - This is one of the best podcast episodes I've listened to in a long time. Balaji is exceptionally thoughtful which, in turn, makes him exceptionally articulate. 

This is a looooong conversation, but I especially enjoyed hearing Balaji explain his argument against a standing media. Instead of journalism being a profession, he advocates for specialists to write about their professions. This shift would mean a decentralized media more concerned with conveying truth and accuracy than swaying public opinion.

Balaji is full of these novel concepts, which is why I found the entire conversation to be enlightening and thought provoking. 

Founder's Mentality - As companies grow and transition from insurgency to incumbancy, they often trade the Founder's Mentality for the benefits of scale and scope.

Founder's Mentality is comprised of three qualities:

- Insurgency - A dogged desire to upset the incumbents and provide better products or services.
- Owner mindset - A sensitivity to spending, a bias toward action, and frequent experiments followed by big bets on winning propositions.
- Frontline obsession - A huge focus on translating strategy into frontline behaviors and actions.

If you can ensure your talent keeps pace with your revenue, your people are still accountable for outcomes, your decision makers are connected to the front line, and your founder can scale with the company, you'll have a better chance of maintaining Founder's Mentality.

The video has many more details and moving pieces. Anyone building a company, working in a startup, or investing in small cap companies should watch the full 19 minutes.

Solana Summer - I've been following, and slowly buying, Solana since I read about it in Packy's Own the Internet piece back in May.

To my delight, the price popped in the last couple weeks. 

This piece is an excellent deep dive on Solana. It's probably the most comprehensive and approachable resource for learning about this relatively new crypto ecosystem. As I understand it, Solana has a few big benefits:

- Lightning fast transaction speed. SOL can process 65,000 transactions per second, whereas ETH can process 30, and BTC can process a whopping 7...
- Transaction cost is MUCH lower. A SOL transaction will set you back about $.0001, while a BTC transaction costs about $3, and an ETH transaction ranges between about $8 and $40.
- Proof of History & Proof of Stake for validation of transactions, which improves transaction speed
- They provide useful services to developers, which incentivizes devs to build on the Solana blockchain

I'm still a total crypto novice, but SOL seems to have a lot of potential, and Packy's piece helped me understand it in much more detail.

The Idea Maze - Starting a company is like navigating a maze. The best founders know which turns to take based on four categories:

- History. They learn from others who had similar ideas.
- Analogy. They use models from established, successful businesses.
- Theory. They study the decades of available data on startups.  
- Experience. They work at early stage companies before starting their own.

Early Business Mistakes - This is a thread of 17 early business mistakes to avoid, sourced from founders who made them.

My favorite one: 

"Nice ≠ Helpful"

Sugar coating with employees doesn't help anyone. 

Being clear & direct is more important than being nice.

If you're an entrepreneur, what was your biggest mistake?

Brains Podcast - I found a new podcast I'm enjoying, particularly the episode with Anthony Pompliano and Sam Parr. This episode was heavy on personal finance and investing, and it had a lot of interesting ideas. My favorite idea was about finding the right companies to invest in:

Bet on the companies that taxes an entire industry. 

Amazon Web Services is the startup task. SpaceX rockets are the space exploration tax. If companies want to play in these industries, they have to pay the tax. 

Find the tax collectors and invest in them.

Standard Oil on Acquired - Acquired is quickly becoming my new favorite podcast. The hosts, Ben and David, tell the stories of the greatest companies in the world.

In this two part series (part 1 | part 2), they cover Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller's infamous empire. 

In telling the story, they draw heavily from Titan, Ron Chernow's bio of Rockefeller, so I found it to be a riveting refresher of the best parts of the book. I had two main takeaways from this series:

- Rockefeller was one of the most brilliant business minds to ever live. He was the Jeff Bezos of the 19th century.
- Monopoly is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. Peter Thiel makes the same point in Zero to One (see point six in this summary), and the story of Standard Oil supports his point.

How Much Do You Need To Be Financially Independent? - Being financially independent doesn't mean you have to quit your job. It means you don't have to do things you don't want to do. 

By that definition, everyone should want financial independence. So how far are you from your number?

Do you know how much money you spend every year? Do you know how much money you have in savings and investments?

If you answered yes to those questions, you can pretty easily figure our how far you are from financial independence. In this article, Nick Maggiulli walks you through some simple calculations. It's a quick read and a valuable piece of information for everyone.

Great Writing

My Favorite Teacher - Story from Robert Kurson about a high school teacher who abducted and murdered a hitchhiker.

My Favorite Author - Conversation between Noah Kagan and Robert Kurson. Kurson explains how his childhood as a traveling salesman prepared him to be a good story teller. He outlines his three year process for writing a book - from finding an idea, to researching, to writing. Kurson also discusses why he made the transition from high paid lawyer to struggling author, even though he'd never taken a class on writing. 

The Sicario - This is a fascinating article from 2009 about a sicario who worked for the Mexican drug cartels. A sicario is basically a hitman, and as I learned from the article, "the term sicario goes back to Roman Palestine, where a Jewish sect, the Sicarii, used concealed daggers (sicae) in their murders of Romans and their supporters."

I enjoyed the article for two main reasons. First, it humanized this person who most would consider a demon: “'We are not monsters,' he explains. 'We have education, we have feelings. I would leave torturing someone, go home and have dinner with my family, and then return. You shut off parts of your mind. It is a kind of work, you follow orders.'”

Second, the author is an amazing writer. Check out this character description: "We will never see him coming. He is of average height, he dresses like a workman with sturdy boots and a knit cap. If he stood next to you in a checkout line, you would be unable to describe him five minutes later. Nothing about him draws attention. Nothing."

The Uber Killer - This is an absolutely wild article. It's the true story of Jason Dalton - a seemingly normal man with a seemingly normal life - who went off the rails on a terrible night in 2016. 

By the time he was arrested, Dalton had killed six people and wounded several others. He committed the murders between shuttling Uber passengers to and from their destinations. 

Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away - Sometimes I like to sit down and read an interesting piece of investigative journalism. This is a bit of a heavy read, but it's well written and eye opening.

As a user and investor I think Airbnb is fantastic. But every enormous company has skeletons in their closet. This piece pries apart the closet doors and scatters the skeletons around for you to see. 

If you're into these dark pieces, I also recommend this (much darker) one on Facebook's content moderators.

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind - I'm always impressed with journalism from The Atlantic. This piece is no exception. It captures the raw emotion of that terrible September day 20 years ago, and it traces the footsteps it left on one family's life.

It's the story of one family—how they coped, how their relationships changed, how their family evolved—but it's really the story of 2,996 families. It's a unique version of the same events, all stemming from one of the most impactful events in American history.

Hanging By a Thread - An incredible article from Morgan Housel about how the tiniest events can result in world shifting outcomes.

He tells three stories where, if one tiny detail were different, the world we know today would be unrecognizable.

From the article: "No matter what the world looks like today...everything can change tomorrow because of some tiny accident no one’s thinking about. Events, like money, compound. And the central feature of compounding is that it’s never intuitive how big something can grow from a small beginning."

I Just Wish I Could Stay a Little Longer - Jack Thomas has been a writer for the Boston Globe for over 60 years. He was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, and wrote this moving essay about his family, his career, and the things he'll miss the most.

I like the idea of thinking about your own death frequently. It makes every moment here a little sweeter. Pieces like this one are an often needed reminder. Here's the paragraph that moved me most:

"As death draws near, I feel the same uncomfortable transition I experienced when I was a teenager at Brantwood Camp in Peterborough, New Hampshire, packing up to go home after a grand summer. I’m not sure what awaits me when I get home, but this has certainly been an exciting experience. I had a loving family. I had a great job at the newspaper. I met fascinating people, and I saw myriad worldwide wonders. It’s been full of fun and laughter, too, a really good time.

I just wish I could stay a little longer."

Beauty and the Brief - The first sentence of this short essay drew me in and brought me back in time.

"Remember how it felt to be eighteen?"

Yes I do. I bet you do too. This brilliant piece of writing gave me goosebumps.

Tech’s Most Unlikely Venture Capitalist - The inspiring story of an Iranian sports journalist turned refugee turned rug salesman turned venture capitalist. It's a riches to rags to riches tale and a great example of the importance of resilience.

The Greatest Investor You've Never Heard Of - Herbie Wertheim was a truant, a sailor, a NASA employee, an optometrist, and an investor. Now he is a billionaire. This is a wonderful profile of an interesting, intelligent, and self-made man.

The Power of the Perfect Manhattan - The best writers don't tell you about an experience. They pull you into the experience as if it were your own. 

They make your mouth water with the taste of the food. They make your head bob with the beat of the music. They make the conversation come alive with the click of their keyboards.

Charlie Slack is one of those writers, and this is one of those articles. Enjoy.

Pursuing Greatness - This is an excellent profile of Giannis Antetokounmpo, better known as "The Greek Freak." He is the 26 year old star of the NBA Champion Milwaukee Bucks, and he didn't even start playing basketball until age 13.

Time and again, I'm struck by the maturity of this young superstar. From his thoughts on humility in this clip to his outlook on money—he sees spending $300,000 on a private jet flight as forgoing the future returns on that money—he has wisdom well beyond his years.

But what struck me most about this piece is the same thing I've been finding every time I study another "great" person. It's the fact that greatness doesn't come without consequence. Achieving greatness always has tradeoffs, and it leads to a life without balance.

These two quotes from the profile stood out to me the most:

"For eight years he put his head down and chased greatness. Then he won a championship. Now, he said, he was working on all the things greatness cost him. Peace of mind. Life outside of basketball. A family. That kind of thing."

"In the end, greatness is fundamentally isolating. What you have to do to achieve it separates you from everyone else in a way that is difficult to undo."

This is why I believe pursuing greatness is more important than achieving it. In pursuing greatness you exhibit noble qualities—courage, persistence, and resilience. But falling short of greatness allows you to retain the balance that makes for a happy life—the same balance that many of the "greats" give up to reach the pinnacle in their pursuits.

Self-Improvement

Gripes Go Up - One of my favorite scenes from Saving Private Ryan. The men are walking through a field in France early in their mission to save Private Ryan. They were all complaining about the mission, and the Captain (Tom Hanks) was tactfully listening to their complaints. After a few minutes, one of the men asked the Captain, "you don't gripe at all?" 

The Captain replied, "I don't gripe to you. I'm a Captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me. I gripe to my superior officers. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You're a Ranger. You should know that." 

What a powerful reminder about leadership. Never complain to the people you're leading. Once you have a mission, lead your people to execute that mission, even if you don't agree with it. Complaining to the people you're leading undermines the success of the mission and the morale of your team.

Leaders lead. They get things done. They don't bitch - especially to the people they're leading. 

10 Days of Pure Solitude - Great article from Will Mannon about the 10 days he spent alone in the wilderness of Idaho and Wyoming. In the age of constant inputs, escaping to the solitude of nature is refreshing and necessary.

Golden Age Thinking - This is a great piece on nostalgia from Ben Carlson. The big takeaway is that we tend to remember the good parts of our lives less than the bad, so the past always seems better than the present. I feel nostalgia occasionally, but I'm generally very happy with the present. I think Stoicism has helped with that.

100 Tips for a Better Life - Great life advice article from Ideopunk. A few of my favorites:

- “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out. 
- If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it. 
- Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. 
- In relationships look for somebody you can enjoy just hanging out near. Long-term relationships are mostly spent just chilling.
- You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk. 

Ten Significant Lies You're Told About the World - I enjoyed this thread of life lessons from Julian Shapiro. This one was my favorite:

The world is not run by exceptional people.

This is the hidden reason for imposter syndrome.

We mistakenly think imposter syndrome is due to low confidence/anxiety. 

No, it’s caused by not accepting that your new, world-class peers aren’t that special. It’s mostly discipline.

The One Decision that Removes 100 Decisions - This is an excellent piece from Tim Ferriss about decision making. In 2020, he decided to not read any books published in 2020. By making this simple rule, it eliminated potentially hundreds of decisions throughout the year. If someone asked him to read their new book, he didn't have to make a decision, he just followed his rule.

I love this approach to simplifying your life. By reducing decision fatigue, you preserve your self control, and you're more likely to achieve the goals you're working towards. 

How Will You Measure Your Life - A fantastic read about living deliberately.

A Gift for Your Children - Great idea of a meaningful gift for your children.

On Arriving - A piece about spending your life waiting to arrive. This feeling is a curse of ambitious people. We know our next success is just out of reach, just around the bend, just a few more hours in the saddle. We're often too restless to enjoy a triumph before pushing on to the next pursuit. 

Shaking hands with your ex's boyfriend - This short reflection from Cole Schafer is one of the best pieces of writing I've read recently. He does two things really well:

First, he distills a common experience into words. Anyone who has suffered through a breakup will immediately nod their head while reading this one.

Second, his descriptions leap off the page and appear before your eyes in vivid detail. 

The Reader's Journey with Blas Moros - I enjoyed this conversation between my friend Alex Wieckowski and Blas Moros. 

Blas has read over 600 books in the last seven years. He runs the The Rabbit Hole, where he summarizes books, writes essays, and creates teacher's guides on various topics - including Paul Graham. 

I particularly enjoyed their discussion on re-reading books. Blas likened it to the Hereclitus quote, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

Tyler Cowen's Absurd Ritual - I loved this five minute video of David Perell explaining why world renowned economist, Tyler Cowen, only eats three bites of ice cream for dessert.

Books of Titans Podcast - The Path to Power - In this episode, BoT host Erik Rostad covered the first book in Robert Caro's series on President Lyndon Johnson. The series includes four volumes and nearly 3,000 pages. It's one I've been wanting to read for years but haven't found the determination to tackle.

Factual vs. Emotional Truth - This is an incredible reading of a short passage from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's the clearest explanation of the difference between factual and emotional truth.

Always Perform Like You're in an Arena - I enjoyed this short piece from Lucas Ballasy about the importance of doing your best for yourself, not for others. 

Who Do You Want to Be? - My friend Clayton just published a letter he wrote to a recent college grad. It captures so many great pieces of advice, and I think it should be required reading for college students in their last semester. 

After spending 8 years working a career I didn't like, this feels like the advice I wish I'd heard when I graduated. That said, I know I wouldn't have listened to it. Life is funny like that. We don't always get the advice we need, and we rarely listen when we do. 

If I hadn't been working the career I didn't like for the last 8 years, I probably wouldn't be in a financial position to take a chance on my new career. Also, if I hadn't been creating something regularly - like Clayton suggests - I never would've had the opportunity for my new career. 

How to Make Better Decisions - This is a great short video from Tim Ferriss with three tactics for making better decisions. They are:

1. Make reversible decisions as quickly as possible.
2. Using a risk/benefit list is better than a pro/con list.
3. Use intuition to make "no" decisions, not "yes" decisions.

The Infinite Game - This is an excellent piece written as a letter to a recent college grad and tennis player. The advice is based around making the transition from being a college athlete to just a normal person living life. But I think it's pertinent to anyone making a transition from having something from which they derive meaning/spend a lot of time on to not having that thing anymore. It could be for a parent when their kids move out. It could be for a person retiring. It could be for someone who recently lost a spouse. 

The general message is that it's important to spend time in self reflection to identify the things in life that are important to you. Only after this reflection can you live a deliberate life in pursuit of the things you care about. 

How to Take Notes like Kendrick Lamar - In this video, David Perell makes a compelling case for why you should take notes, using Kendrick Lamar as an example. Lamar is a prolific note taker. He was also the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize for an album.

Entropy - Understanding entropy is crucial for living a successful life. James Clear explains it well in this article. 

At a high level, entropy is the idea that everything moves toward disorder if left unchecked. Your body gets fat. Your house gets messy. Your car breaks down.

You'll always be fighting entropy in every area of your life. The fight gets easier when you use systems, schedules and routines. Automate your bill payments, exercise at the same time every day, make your bed as soon as you get out of it. 

The more you actively fight entropy, the less chaotic your life will be. The less chaos in your life, the more room you'll have for working on the productive projects you enjoy.

Ten Uncomfortable Truths About Life - This is a great Twitter thread for everyone to read, but the advice is most valuable for recent college grads.

Number four was my favorite. It's a piece of advice I've used basically my whole life, and it's served me well:

"You don't have much REAL competition. It's not hard to look good. If you smile, show up every day, and do your job, you're already well ahead of 95% of your peers."

What we get wrong about the Mexican Fishing Parable - If you've never heard of the Mexican Fishing Parable, you need to read this article. It will reshape your perspective on the American approach to work.

If you have heard of the Mexican Fishing Parable, you'll enjoy Nathan Barry's commentary on it. He suggests we shouldn't strive for a goal simply to reach a goal but for the transformation we undergo in the process. I love his perspective. It forces us to focus only on the goals which will send us on the right journeys—what a valuable way to view the decisions we make. 

The World's Most Innovative Athlete - In this video, David Perell dissects Bryson DeChambeau, the most interesting man on the PGA tour.  David's videos keep getting better, and Bryson is a fascinating subject for anyone interested in peak human performance.

The puzzle of motivation - A fascinating TED talk from Daniel Pink about how motivation works and how we can apply the information to our companies.

Basically, once you get past a baseline fair compensation, incentive based rewards don't work. What people want are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. They want to choose what they work on, improve at their job, and work in the service of something that matters. When people can work from a place of intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation, they will be more productive.

The idea I liked the most is the ROWE—the results only work environment. You work when you want, where you want, and how you want. The only thing that matters is getting your work done. I hope more companies transition to this model. 

Building and Breaking Habits - This is a great video from Tim Ferriss about getting back on track after slipping up. It's also useful if you want to start building habits. His advice:

- Start with less than you think you can do
- Work with a friend for accountability
- Put money on the line for accountability

I've found putting money on the line also works for breaking habits. I wanted to stop browsing Twitter on my phone, so I deleted the app. Then I found myself going on Twitter in Safari. Enough was enough, I told my fiance that any time I went on Twitter on my phone, I had to Venmo her $50. It's been months, and I haven't had to Venmo her once.

By imposing a monetary consequence, I was easily able to break an annoying habit.

Help This Person - How would your life be different if before every interaction, you asked yourself, "How can I help this person?" The answer in this short article might surprise you.

Neil Gaiman on Impostor Syndrome - Impostor syndrome afflicts everyone who has ever created anything. If you're a writer, a podcaster, a musician, or a poet, you know what I mean. It's the little voice in the back of your mind, whispering, "your work is garbage," seconds before you push the publish button. 

This short story from Neil Gaiman, and brief commentary from Cole Schafer, will help anyone who has ever felt like an impostor. We can take solace in this line from Schafer:

"Imposter syndrome haunts the talented because it forces the talented to take a closer look at their work and in turn (if they have the guts) put out better, stronger work because of it." 

Sal Di Stefano on the Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Sal is the host of the MindPump podcast, the #1 fitness podcast in the world. In this convo, Sal and Mikhaila covered everything from fitness, to diet, to discipline, to the down sides of social media. 

Two points from the episode stood out to me. 

The first was on discipline. Many people think motivation is the path to fitness. The true path to fitness, however, is discipline. Discipline is a skill you can build just like playing the piano or learning a language. The key is to start small—with less than you think is reasonable—and add on a little bit at a time. Eventually, you build your discipline to the point that you can rely on it when motivation is lacking. This is exactly what I wrote about in my most recent article.

The second point I loved was in regards to resistance training. When it comes to losing weight and improving overall health, resistance training is more effective than cardio. Basically, your body is an efficient machine. The more cardio you do, the more conditioned it becomes to perform the same amount of work by burning fewer calories. Resistance training, on the other hand, results in increased muscle mass, which burns more calories. So the more resistance training you do, the more calories your burn—even when you're not training. But the more cardio you do, the fewer calories you burn. 

Kobe Bryant: How to Prove Everyone Wrong - This is another killer video from David Perell. He explores Kobe's greatness and the single minded obsession required to be the best.

I love learning about top athletes because they all have a common thread—whether it's Kobe, or Tiger, or Maria Sharapova—they were all willing to work harder than the competition, every day, for years.

If you've ever done something relatively difficult, like train for a marathon or study for a professional exam, you understand what it means to work really hard for a short period of time. It consumes your life and can become miserable. Take that feeling, multiply it by two or three or four, and extend it over years or decades. That's what it takes to be the greatest. When you think about it in terms of something you can relate to, you appreciate just how extraordinary it is.

How Philosophers Think - We could all stand to become better thinkers. David Perell's thread on philosophers offers us 11 examples of how to improve. 

My favorite was #10 - intellectual patience:

"People leap to conclusions because they feel pressure to have an opinion on every topic. They jump on the intellectual bandwagons of those they want to be affiliated with. But favoring group loyalty over independent reasoning is the epitome of tribalism."

Often, not having an opinion is a sign of higher intelligence and lower ego than weighing in on every topic.

How to build a great life (17 things I've learned) - Any regular readers know I love life advice. This is a great thread to add to the collection. My favorite advice was number 14:

"Show up on time, be enthusiastic, & keep your promises. These 3 things alone will elevate you above 95% of people."

Those actions are responsible for most of the success I've had in my life.

Another Life Advice Thread - This one is a little wacky, but there were some good suggestions. A few of my favorites:

#36 - Every week at the grocery store buy one ingredient you're not sure what to do with.

#37 - Not a single Rwandan child was helped by you finishing a meal you didn't enjoy.

#49 - Interview people you know... Just write down 10 questions and hit record. You'll learn a lot and deepen the relationship.

#77 - In any giant museum, your goal should be to spend 5+ minutes with 10 amazing works, not 5 seconds with 1,000. If it's the Louvre, one of those should be Guérin's "The Return of Marcus Sextus".

#110. If it's a single-stall restroom, and in 95% of cafes and small restaurants it is, just walk in regardless of the gender painted on the door. You're not doing anyone favors by suffering outside a vacant bathroom.

Minimizing Regrets - The story from Jeff Bezos about imagining himself at 80 is so often repeated it's almost become cliche. But just because something is cliche doesn't mean it's worthless. 

In another article from my friend Peter, he shares how he uses Bezos' regret minimization framework to make decisions in his life.

This mindset is especially useful for 20-somethings. Nearing the end of my third decade, I can safely say I've done a lot of things I'll look back on at 80 and say, "that was stupid." The earlier you realize this, the fewer of those things you do, and, ultimately, the better life you'll live.

These were my favorite sentences from Peter's piece:

"I know that in a blink of an eye, my sons will be older, going to school, and a lot less available. Before long, they’ll become adults out in the world and pursuing their own lives independently. This is why my 80-year-old self will thank me for maximizing the time I spend with my family."

Little Stories - The best way to remember a lesson is with an anecdote. Stories tickle our emotions. They cling to our brains like ivy adorning an old brick building.

In this recent article from Morgan Housel, he shares a handful of lessons through a handful of stories. Like everything he writes, they're a joy to read.

The 20-5-3 Rule - In this article, Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis, outlines a simple rule for the amount of time we should spend outside. If we follow the formula, we'll be happier, healthier, and less encumbered by stress. It goes like this:

20 - Spend 20 minutes outside in a neighborhood park three times per week. 

5 - Spend five hours per month in a slightly more wild setting—something like a forested state park.

3 - Spend three days per year off the grid in nature. This could be a backcountry backpacking trip or time at a remote cabin sans cell service.

You should spend this outdoor time without your phone. The alerts and distractions remove almost all benefit of the time in nature. 

The Art of Failing Well - Sometimes you see a video so beautiful it makes you want to cry. This is one of those videos. The combination of stunning scenery, powerful music, and elegant narration combine to form a five minute masterpiece.

It's the story of how one father taught his kids to appreciate risk and embrace failure by sharing his passion for rock climbing. These were my favorite lines:

"The mental fortitude required to rock climb is not trivial. Life is tough, and failure is a part of life. I'm seeing that I need to teach my children the art of failing well. At times, they were on seemingly impossible routes, unable to gain upward movement, and had to be lowered down, defeated—no participation trophy. And feeling the weight of failure manifested itself in tears, posture, frustration, and sadness. We would remind them that they are refined, not defined, by their defeat. And we'd give the route another go with this renewed vision."

Enduring Hardship - The ability to endure hardship is a better predictor of success than raw talent.

In this thread, world class climber Kevin Jorgeson tells the story of a new climbing partner testing his ability to endure hardship. He passed the test and went on to complete one of the hardest routes ever climbed with the same partner.

The more hard things we do, the more comfortable we become with doing hard things. The more we run into roadblocks, the faster we realize how to navigate them. The more "adversity" we can create for ourselves, the more likely we will be to accomplish our biggest goals.

Get Unstuck by Focusing on Details - This piece discusses the daunting number of details involved in almost every task. When we're good at tasks, we no longer see the details. 

When we're stuck on a task, it's usually because we're missing a detail.

The essay itself has a lot of details—most of which I'm still processing—but the author offers a smart suggestion.

He says to pay attention to the details you wouldn't normally look for. I'll just let him tell you:

"When you go for a walk, notice the unexpected detail in a flower or what the seams in the road imply about how the road was built. When you talk to someone who is smart but just seems so wrong, figure out what details seem important to them and why. In your work, notice how that meeting actually wouldn’t have accomplished much if Sarah hadn’t pointed out that one thing. As you learn, notice which details actually change how you think.

If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived."

Managing Your Ego - "When you focus on the past, that's your ego.

When you focus on the future, that's your pride.

When you focus on the present, that's humility."

This was a wonderful message from Giannis Antetokounmpo after game four of the NBA Finals. Giannis and the Bucks went on to win the series in six games. 

It's a reminder we could all use, and it's coming from a 26 year old world champion—a man whose age and accomplishments would position him perfectly to have an ego. Instead, he's teaching us about the importance of humility.

18 Things I Stole From Some of History’s Greatest Leaders - As Ryan Holiday says in this article, we're all leaders. Whether we're leading our families, our friends, our rec league teams, our employees, or our companies, we all need to lead in one way or another. 

He offers advice from some of the best leaders in history. These were a few that stood out to me:

Have certain rules you will never break. Then don't break them. 

Set and insist upon high standards. When you do, the right outcomes will fall into place.

"A leader knows that genius often really is just persistence in disguise."

Leaders always maintain their composure. "The worst that can happen is not the event itself but the event and you losing your cool."

This is possibly the most important advice for a leader to remember: "Your standards are for you. You only control your behavior. You have to meet everyone else where they are. Get as much as you can from them and of them. See the good in them. Lean into their strengths rather than disdain their weaknesses. Focus on what is special and unique about them instead of zeroing in on the ways they are not as good as you. That’s not only the kind way to lead, it’s the only effective way."

Behind the Scenes of Greenlights - Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey's memoir, is one of the more interesting books I've read this year. Looking back at my reading tracker, I gave it a 4.5 out of 5 and wrote this short description:

Great book on the philosophy of living. If nothing else, this book will get you thinking about how to live your life. It’s also filled with a lot of cool MM stories—some of which seem embellished.

If you've been reading the LSJ for a while, you know I love the philosophy of living. I'm also a pretty big note taker. It's no surprise I enjoyed the book—life advice based on 36 years of note taking.

In this video, David Perell explains how McConaughey used his thousands of pages of journals to write an awesome book on living life. 

How to be an Effective Executive - This is an excellent article on being a great leader at work. I read it last weekend and have already applied one of the concepts at my job. 

The author breaks the article into two parts: running yourself, and running your team. Everything in the article is actionable advice, but I'll share the things that stood out to me:

Running Yourself:
- Focus on inputs, not outputs. This is the second time I've seen this advice in the last month.
- Audit your calendar to ensure you're spending 80% of your time on your top priorities and high leverage activities. 

Running Your Team:
- Only add people to your team if they increase the output to people ratio. This becomes harder with each addition.
- Simplify your team's focus to a single goal. Be able to clearly and simply articulate why that goal will have a large impact on the business.
- Give junior people more responsibility, especially on low risk assignments. It's your job to find their limits, dial back their responsibility, then help them expand their limits.

Letter to a friend who just made a lot of money - This piece is exactly what it sounds like. It's a letter from Graham Duncan, a well known investment manager, to his friend who just sold a company.

The advice Duncan shares falls into three broad categories: humility, judgement, and patience. Not only are the lessons valuable, but the examples he uses are fun to read.

I love when lessons from one industry are applicable elsewhere. This investing advice will serve you well in your career, your investments, and your relationships. 

These were my two favorite quotes:

"Having relatives invest your capital without earning the credibility in the markets or private business arena first will only make for tense Thanksgiving meals and lousy returns."

"To allocate decision space they used a basic formula: credibility = proven competence plus relationships plus integrity."

Finding a good coach - Another article from Graham Duncan about the value of having a coach. Duncan observed that you can measure a coach on two dimensions: support and challenge. Most coaches, he says, rank high in the support column and low in the challenge column. The key to finding a good coach is identifying somebody who ranks high in both columns. Support is crucial, but without challenge, you won't grow.

Personal Best - Duncan's article led me to Atul Gawande's excellent piece. The article is broadly about the practice of coaching and specifically about Gawande's experience working with a coach.

He explains that expertise develops over a common path:

- Unconscious incompetence
- Conscious incompetence
- Conscious competence
- Unconscious competence

Using a coach is like hiring a sherpa on a climbing expedition. You might make it to the summit without one, but the process will be a lot harder and take a lot longer.

How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught - Too few people—myself included—spend extended periods of time in deep thought. We have too many distractions. Too many alternatives. Too little tolerance for the challenge of thinking through a problem.

So what happens? We make poor decisions and have to spend time dealing with the consequences.

You know those people who always have something going wrong in their lives? They might think it's bad luck, but it's mostly a result of poor decision making.

One of the lessons I took from The Comfort Crisisis that we should become more comfortable with silence. We should spend more time in nature without our devices. And we should spend more time walking. Each of these things have their benefits, but they're all conducive to deep thought as well. 

I'm able to do my best thinking on long walks by myself, without my phone, without a podcast, without distraction. These walks give me the time and space I need to let my mind settle in to a topic, think about it, and reach conclusions. 

Fastest Path to CEO - According to a Harvard Business Review study, the average CEO has 24 years of work experience before they land in the top seat. Of the CEOs who get there faster, nearly all of them took one of the following paths:

- Lateral or backwards career move
- Leapfrogged levels to a position beyond their current capabilities
- Turned around a failing business or unit

The article explains each of these "career catapults" in more detail. It's pretty cool how the above experiences are all more accessible—and more highly indicative—of an accelerated path to leadership than an elite MBA.

I'm a big believer in performance over pedigree.

40 Things I Don't Know By Age 40 - As you probably know, I love "life lesson" articles. This one had a unique, humble spin. My favorite reflection in the list was about career advice:

"It feels like if you ran the simulation of my life 1,000 times I would end up doing what I’m doing now maybe 100 times.

Your career path is made up of some combination of intelligence, your ability to sell, hard work, luck, connections and timing. And it’s impossible to know which of those factors play the largest role in where you end up."

Here's my takeaway: It's easy to look back on your career and create a logical, coherent narrative. In practice, careers aren't always linear. Sometimes the more you plan, the less that goes according to plan.

It seems like the best thing to do is build the qualities mentioned above—intelligence, sales ability, hard work, connections—and let the fate of luck and timing do the rest.

Other People's Mistakes - This is an excellent article that might help us give more grace to the people around us.

At its core, the article has three main points:

- With strong enough incentives, you might do the same things you judge others for doing
- The path to an extraordinary outcome and a disastrous outcome begin in almost the same place
- When you know the whole story, the ending makes more sense

They're all healthy reminders I could use on a daily basis.

The Playing Field - An interesting analysis of how investors progress over their careers. The author, Graham Duncan, explains the following levels:

- Apprentice - learning the game.
- Expert - mastering the game you were taught.
- Professional - making the game you were taught fit your own strengths and weaknesses.
- Master - changing the game you play as part of your own self-expression and operating at scale.
- Steward - becoming part of the playing field itself and mentoring the next generation.

Two things stand out to me:

1️⃣ The people who make it to the top are exceptionally open minded with low ego and a small identity.
2️⃣ Every field has a similar version of this progression, so it's a useful paradigm for any professional. If you can identify where you are, you can more easily figure out how to reach the next level.

Great Advice - What is the single greatest piece of advice you ever received?

This thread has over 1,000 answers from different people. These were a few of my favorites:

- Experience is like a pyramid. The broader the base, the higher you can build. So, diversify your experience early in your career.
- If you don't ask, you don't get.
- Make decisions today that you'll be proud of tomorrow.
- Participate to learn, not to earn. The latter will come with practice.

8 Skill Sets Everyone Needs to Master - I found this video in my recent internet travels. It's branded as skill sets every man should master, but none of the skills are exclusively masculine.

I'm using the suggestions as a checklist to become a more effective human. I listed the eight skills below, and you can watch the video for more detail on each skill.

- Physical strength - train your body, build muscle, be strong
- Assertive communication - get things done and get what you want without being a jerk or a pushover
- Self defense - protect yourself and those around you
- Emotional regulation - feel your emotions and know when it is appropriate to express them
- Financial acumen - understand how money works and how you can make it work for you
- Effective networking - connect with other people and help them win
- Physical presence - present yourself positively through posture, appearance, and confidence
- Continual education - grow, learn, be open to new ideas and new opportunities

Building Blocks of Success - Nick Huber owns nearly 5,000 self storage units. He's building a successful real estate business and sharing his insights along the way.

Nick recently shared this thread on what successful people understood before they were successful. A couple of my favorites:

- You get ahead by saying yes to everything. When you get momentum it’s much more about saying no.
- Consistency is way more important than efficiency. Anything worth doing gets really tedious 2 years in. Year 2-5 is the critical period.

40 Concepts You Should Know - Interesting thread of 40 concepts that often touch your daily life. 

A few of my favorites:

- Brandolini's Law (aka the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): It takes a lot more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it. Hence, the world is full of unrefuted bullshit.
- Paradox of Abundance: Easy availability of food led to obesity for the masses but good health for the few who used the increased choice to avoid the mass-produced junk. Equally, you can avoid intellectual diabetes by ignoring junk info like gossip & clickbait. (This is exactly what I wrote about in Ailments of Abundance).
- Luxury Beliefs: Cultural elites often adopt views that signal status for them but hurt the less fortunate. E.g. Those who claim that concern about Islamism is Islamophobic appear open-minded but in fact dismiss the (usually Muslim) victims of such extremism.

This Little Decision Changed the Course of My Career - When Ryan Holiday was on a hike with his family, he got the idea to write a book about courage. Two years later, he's releasing the book.

It's the first in a four part series of what Holiday calls a "career securing project."

"Our biggest breakthroughs often come when we are working on them the least," writes Holiday. I tend to agree with him. I often have big ideas while reading a book, going for a run, sitting by the pool—doing almost anything other than trying to come up with big ideas.

As somebody who feels antsy if I'm not being "productive," I think I have a new productivity arrow to add to my quiver.

Puppies and Con Artists - This is a great piece from Tom Morgan about the value of authenticity. Authenticity, he explains, is generated by following your interests and being vulnerable. 

Runnin' Down a Dream - An excellent talk from Bill Gurley on how to pick your profession. He weaves stories from five successful people in different fields and distills them into five lessons we can use to find a career we love. In short, his lessons are:

- Pick a profession where you have a deep personal interest. If you don't love it, somebody else will outwork you.
- Hone your craft by learning everything about your field. Work to know more than everyone else.
- Develop mentors in your field.
- Embrace peer relationships in your field. Share best practices and celebrate accomplishments.
- Always be gracious and humble. Give the credit to those who helped you along the way.

If you're early in your career or considering a career change, watching this talk is one of the best ways to spend an hour.

Derek Jeter's Hall of Fame Speech - Greatness is often accompanied by arrogance, pride, ego, and other poor qualities. When we study the greats, we must separate the good from the bad and strive to only model the positive. But occasionally, we find a great we can copy completely. A person whose accomplishments are illuminated, not overshadowed, by his character.

Derek Jeter is one of those greats. I sat in the stands at Fenway watching him play the last game of his career. As he walked off the field for the final time, the stadium erupted in applause. As bitter as the rivalry was between the two teams, every seat was empty and every hand was clapping. They were honoring the Captain—the captain of their arch rival. It was a scene to behold and one that spoke volumes to Jeter, his accomplishments, and his character.

I really enjoyed his hall of fame induction speech.

He talked about family, the value of going to work every single day, and the brotherhood he shared with his teammates. It's one for the ages—the perfect cap to a remarkable career.

Exploring Personal Dreams - I loved this article from Peter Kang about envisioning your personal dreams. He details five of his dreams, and I think I liked them so much because they're almost perfectly aligned with my dreams. I appreciate the simplicity and sincerity of Peter's writing in this piece.

You Are Not Special - This is an excellent high school graduation speech from David McCullough Jr., son of famous historian and author David McCullough.

He argues against the "everyone is special" nonsense narrative that seems to have overtaken high schools and little league fields across the country. He replaces this narrative with a refreshing rendition of reality. Here are a few of my favorite lines:

"If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone receives a trophy, trophies become meaningless....We've come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We've come to see them as the point, and we're happy to compromise standards or ignore reality if we suspect that's the quickest way, or the only way, to have something to put on the mantlepiece...

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you."

Work, Family, Scene - One of the keys to happiness, as Ryan Holiday explains in this article, is to find the things that make you happy and focus only on them to the exclusion of everything else.

I once had a professor who said, "If you chase too many geese, you'll catch none." 

He was a weird dude, but I agree with his point.

The more successful you become, the more opportunities you'll have. The trick to remaining successful is only saying yes to the perfect opportunities—the ones that align with the vision of the life you want. 

As always, I really appreciated Holiday's perspective in this piece.

The Relativity of Wrong - Isaac Asimov wrote this essay in 1986. It's a fun read to get your brain working on a Friday morning.

His basic argument is that right and wrong are not binary—they exist in varying degrees. For example, if you spell sugar as "s-h-u-g-e-r" you are technically wrong, but you are less wrong than somebody who spells it as "p-f-g-z-z."

Similarly, people from centuries ago who thought the earth was flat were wrong. But it turns out the curvature of the earth is only about 8 inches per mile, so they weren't that wrong given their technology.

What's important to remember is that much of the science we base our lives on today will be proven "wrong" at some point in the future. But the degree to which it's wrong will likely be so slight that it won't matter. 

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this information, but it's an interesting concept that feels worthwhile to have floating around in my brain.

Do Real Things - I spend a ton of time online—in the metaverse as the kids are calling it these days—but I like to do real things now and then too.

This is an excellent piece from Brad Stulberg about the importance of doing real things. In it he writes:

When the barbell drops, it drops. When you want to run under three hours for the marathon but go 3:04, the result is right in your face. It is hard to get out of touch with the world—or to become full of yourself—when you are working hard on something that is concrete, and when your successes are earned and your failures cannot be rationalized by corporate mumbo jumbo or social media hot takes. Doing real things in the world provides gravity, both literally and figuratively.

I've been trying to step away from the keyboard as much as possible to do things in the real world.

Looking Stupid - This was an interesting post on the value of looking stupid. 

If you aren't scared of looking stupid, you'll ask more questions that others are unwilling to ask. Through this process, you'll develop a much deeper understanding of everything. Similarly, if you're willing to look stupid through experimentation, you'll better understand what works and what doesn't, but more importantly, you'll know the exact line between the two.

My favorite example from the post is when the author was learning to drive. He wanted to set up cones and drive so he barely hit them. Doing this allowed him to learn exactly where the edge of the car was.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - Steve Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech. You've probably heard it, but it wouldn't hurt you to hear it again. Jobs shares three main points:

- The events in your life often only make sense when you look back on them. In his words, you can only connect the dots looking backward.
- Work will consume a huge portion of your life. You should love what you do. Don't settle.
- Death will be upon us all sooner than we'd like. Don't waste any time. Get to living the life you want to live.

A Mile With May - I love the videos Beau Miles makes. In this one, he walks a mile with his daughter. He pushes her in the wheelbarrow and stops often to tend his trees, pick up trash, fix mailboxes, and look at cows. My article this week was about stillness, and this video is one of the best examples of stillness I've seen in a while—getting outside with a child, soaking in nature, and doing a little hard work.

Beau talks about not being a great teacher because he isn't much of a preacher. He does strive, however, to be positive and productive. And through his actions, he sets an example for his daughter. Seems to me that living a positively productive life is a much better way to teach than lecturing. 

Beyond Smart - Being smart and being able to come up with new ideas are not the same thing. As Paul Graham argues in this essay, discovering new ideas is more important than being smart. 

Society is still in the process of realizing this, so we haven't totally figured out the qualities that leads a person to discovering new ideas.

If we can identify the qualities and work to build them in ourselves, we will be able to come up with more ideas of our own, which, I agree is far superior to raw intelligence.

The days are long but the decades are short - You guessed it. Another life advice article. This one is from Sam Altman, an entrepreneur and investor. He wrote it seven years ago when he turned 30. I'll be turning 30 in a few months, and I found it interesting that I've recently come to a few of the same realizations. 

Here are some of my favorites:

- Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal.
- Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade.
- Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get that excited and happy now.
- One of the benefits of working hard is that good opportunities will come along, but it’s still up to you to jump on them when they do.

Principles to Teach Your Children - I enjoyed this thread from father to be, Sahil Bloom, on the principles he hopes to teach his son. The whole thread is worth a read, but these were a few of my favorites:

- Be interested. Talent is overrated—interest is not.
- Change your mind. It's great to have a strong view, but always open your mind to counterarguments.
- Listen more and argue less. The most persuasive people don’t argue—they observe, listen, and ask questions.
- Stand up to bullies—for yourself and for others.

Mental Errors Derailing Your Decision Making - These are excellent reminders of the mental traps we find ourselves in. 

Here's an interesting paradox. The more I learn about mental fallacies and decision making errors, the better I should be at making decisions. It actually has the opposite effect. The more I learn, the more I realize my decision making is probably altered in some way by each of these biases.

That's not to say we should bury our heads in the sand. The more we know, the better decisions we will make—even if it doesn't feel that way.

If you want to learn more about the concepts mentioned in this thread, I highly recommend reading Thinking, Fast and Slow.

You Should Probably Be More Extroverted - I came across this article thanks to my friend Andrew Lynch (highly underrated Twitter follow).

Basically the idea is that you should talk to more people without any expectation. When you do this, interesting doors begin to open. You'll experience new ideas, you'll be presented with new opportunities, and you'll probably be happier too. 

Here are a couple of my favorite ideas from the piece:

"People are a lot more surprising (and they tend to like you more) when you’re not after their utility."

"When I thought someone was interesting, I talked to them more. It didn’t matter whether they were a litigator, drug dealer, video store clerk, homeless person, or professor...And it turns out that people present you with opportunities even when that’s not what you’re looking for."

Lessons in Leadership - We may not all want to be leaders, but it never hurts to have some qualities of a leader. 

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a book on leadership based on lessons from four presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Clayton Dorge wrote an awesome article highlighting all the lessons from the book. These are a few of my favorites:

- Gather firsthand information, ask questions
- Maintain perspective in the face of both accolades and abuse
- Use history to provide perspective
- Leave a record behind for the future
- Infuse a sense of shared purpose and direction
- Tell people what they can expect and what is expected of them
- Lead with your strengths

People Don't Actually Read - Reading books gives you a huge advantage, both in terms of understanding old ideas and coming up with new ones. David Perell explains why in this short essay.

Society

Joe Rogan Experience - #1576 Mariana Van Zeller - Mariana Van Zeller is the journalist behind the National Geographic series, Trafficked. She tells the stories of the people working in the world's illicit trades - things like drugs, guns, and exotic animals. 

Rogan asked Van Zeller why these people talk to her. Of course, because of journalistic standards, she guards their identity. But more importantly, they know they are viewed as the "bad people," and they want the chance to tell their story.

One quote from the show that stuck with me: 

"No matter how far we travel into the fringes of our society, we can still find people who are redeemable and relatable."

Two Worlds - Great piece from Morgan Housel about two realistic - but seemingly opposite - truths that apply to the United States right now. 

First, in aggregate, Americans have more income, more savings, and less debt than almost any time in history. 

Second, inequality increased drastically in the last year, and some Americans are in the worst financial shape of their lives. 

Morgan explains it far better than I can, so I suggest you read the article. But I think this one is especially important in a time when the country is so divided. It helps us understand that our experience isn't everyone else's experience, and keeping that fact in mind is a good first step in easing some tension. 

Why the US President Needs a Council of Historians - This article from The Atlantic makes a case for why the President should establish a council of historical advisors. From the article:

"Applied historians would take a current predicament and try to identify analogues in the past. Their ultimate goal would be to find clues about what is likely to happen, then suggest possible policy interventions and assess probable consequences."

I love this idea. I wish I could have a council of historical advisors to help me make the important decisions in my life.

The Crazy Election of 1800 - Our second president, John Adams, didn't attend the inauguration of his successor, Thomas Jefferson. This is an excellent short article explaining what happened.

While this doesn't excuse or justify the actions of President Trump, it's a great reminder that a much younger version of our democracy faced similar problems and survived. We're going to be fine.

Much like the president should appoint a council of applied historians to help make difficult decisions, we as individuals should look to history when we need perspective around current events. Quite often, a different version of the same events has played out before, and we can use those events to guide our decisions, or at least to comfort our racing minds. 

This was my favorite paragraph from the article:

"Technology has changed but human nature has not. If you wanted to attack your opponent with disinformation in 1800, you would pen an article under a pseudonym and have it published in various friendly newspapers without any “fact checking” or attribution. In 2020, you would leverage social media to do the same thing, except instantly, and on a much broader scale."

The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class - This is an interesting look at several social hierarchies through the lens of my favorite show, The Office. The author points out some patterns I've observed in the workplace. He also has me worriedly thinking, "Am I Michael Scott?"

Learning to Listen in Polarized Times - This is a great article from the president of the University of Richmond. He explains how colleges should be teaching students to work through different perspectives and opinions. This was my favorite paragraph (emphasis added is my own):


"One conversation among our mentees is emblematic of how such techniques work in practice. A young man made a statement that offended the group’s students of color, filling the air with tension. No one seemed to know what to say until a woman of color cut through the silence by practicing a skill that my wife and I had sought to hone in the group: not responding immediately to troubling comments and remembering that they sometimes come across in unintended ways. Rather than react out of emotion, this young woman took a deep breath and respectfully shared her perspective. Other students in the room followed suit, asking the young man questions, not to corner him or make him feel bad but to better understand his thinking. Through the exchange of viewpoints, not silencing or shaming, the young man understood why he caused offense. And the other students saw firsthand how listening actively and speaking with humility can make other people more receptive to rethinking their position."

JRE #1599 - Tulsi Gabbard - I loved this convo between Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard. It was wide ranging, but I liked their discussions of cancel culture and freedom of speech. I also found it fascinating and disappointing to hear Tulsi compare the dynamics of Congress to the petty nature of high school.

Gina Carano and Crowd Sourced McCarthyism - This was a thoughtful piece from Bari Weiss, former NYT editor and WSJ writer, about Gina Carano being fired for an insensitive - and historically inaccurate - tweet. 

You don't have to agree with Carano's politics to agree she was the victim of a double standard. 

Weiss does an excellent job explaining this frightening trend. She provides an astute analysis of a phenomenon I find dangerous and abhorrent - cancel culture. If we don't come to our collective senses, cancel culture will destroy our society. From the piece: 

"There is a difference between saying something false and lying. There is a difference between hurling the n-word and quoting 'Huckleberry Finn.' There is a 'difference between murder and manslaughter.'...Cancel culture necessarily erases intent. It relies on taking someone’s worst moment out of context, on elevating a moment of ignorance, on exaggerating a misstep and using that error to destroy someone’s life." 

The Most American Religion - This feature piece from The Atlantic was a fascinating look into the Mormon Religion, which turned 200 years old in 2020. 

I knew nothing about the religion, but the author provides a high level history of the faith and a look into how it has evolved over two centuries as Mormons attempted to assimilate into American culture. 

Two interesting facts from the article: 
- At one point, BYU was the third-largest source of Army officers in the country.
- The current Mormon prophet is 95 year old Russell Nelson, a former cardiothoracic surgeon. 

Waking Up From the American Dream - A glance through the window of a neighbor's home. It's a portrait of the world painted by someone whose experiences differ from mine - and maybe yours too. It's another golden coin we can add to our perspective treasure chest in hopes of becoming a little bit mentally richer. 

The Power and the Silence - It's unnerving how behaving rationally can make us feel crazy in the face of power. This is an excellent article about power told through three stories.

Best Story Wins - Morgan Housel is one of my favorite writers. He's an excellent storyteller. In this piece, he discusses the importance of being a good storyteller. 

The more I read about history and politics, the more I know this to be true. To be victorious and powerful, it's less important to be effective than it is to be convincing. 

The people who understand this reality and strive to be both effective and convincing will be unstoppable. 

My two favorite lines from the piece:

"In a perfect world the importance of information wouldn’t rely on its author’s eloquence. But we live in a world where people are bored, impatient, emotional, and need complicated things distilled into easy-to-grasp scenes."

"Morgan Freeman can narrate a grocery list and bring people to tears, while an inarticulate scientist might cure disease and go unnoticed."

Why Going to the Doctor Sucks - This article speaks to my biggest frustration about the U.S. medical system—lack of transparency in pricing. Any time I buy something, I know what it costs before I make the purchase. When it comes to healthcare, I have no idea. The doctor can't tell me the cost. The receptionist can't tell me the cost. Not a single person knows the cost. This lack of transparency results in making decisions with incomplete information.

In the piece, Tim Urban covers many other healthcare frustrations in his typical witty fashion. He also highlights a potential solution in his wife's new company. I'm not sure her company is the answer, but it's interesting to re-think something as big as the medical industry. It's an enlightening exercise in understanding that we don't have to accept society as it is. We can make society what we want it to be.

Tim Ferriss Episode #513 - Sebastian Junger - Sebastian Junger is one of my favorite story tellers. Junger can communicate like Jordan could play basketball. 

I've re-listened to Junger's conversations with Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss numerous times. His most recent appearance on the Tim Ferriss show was a treat. 

I could list 15 things I enjoyed about the episode, but I'll leave you with one. 

Last year, Junger suffered an aneurysm in his pancreatic artery. In an instant, he began bleeding out into his abdomen. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, and, after losing 90% of his blood, he miraculously lived. 

Junger is 59 years old, but he's always been an incredible athlete. Earlier in his life, he ran a 4:12 mile and a 2:21 marathon. He continues to exercise vigorously. The doctor told Junger that if he hadn't been in such incredible shape, he certainly would've died.

One quote from the episode stuck with me. Of his near death experience, Junger said, "That was the race I'd been training for my whole life."

This was a powerful realization for me. Of course we exercise because we want to look good on the beach. We want to lift heavy objects with ease. We want to win the local 5k. But the real benefit of fitness is having the ability to survive unpredictable, catastrophic events. Beyond any other reason, the primary motive of exercise is to fight death.

Yet another example of my favorite saying—discipline equals freedom.

You Can Only Maintain So Many Close Friendships - I enjoyed this article/interview with Robin Dunbar, the social scientist known for "Dunbar's Number," or the idea that a person can only have about 150 meaningful and stable relationships at one time.

In the interview, Dunbar discusses the different layers of friendship, from romantic partners, to "shoulder to cry on" friends, to core social partners, big-weekend-barbeque friends, and finally the people who would come to your wedding or your funeral.

"The layers come about primarily because the time we have for social interaction is not infinite. You have to decide how to invest that time, bearing in mind that the strength of relationships is directly correlated with how much time and effort we give them," said Dunbar.

As I was reading the interview, I thought to myself, "How can I implement what I'm learning here?" The interviewer basically asked the same question, and Dunbar's response surprised me.

"You should not try and over-rationalize what you do in the light of this. If you do that, you will get it wrong, for sure," said Dunbar. "If you try and apply rules consciously, everything in all these natural sequences just falls apart. So it’s best not to overthink."

I've been spending a lot of time at work building processes, but as it turns out, you can't build a process for making friends. 

The Pseudonymous Economy - This was an interesting lecture from Balaji Srinivasan about the pseudonymous economy. He argues how, in the future, people will earn under one name, speak under another, and neither of those identities will be tied to their given name. 

The concept seems like a stretch for most of us, but in an increasingly digital world, the pseudonymous economy could become a reality within a generation. One of its major benefits is you can't be cancelled. If you can speak under one name and earn under another, people can't take away your earning power simply because they disagree with your opinions.

Balaji is an interesting person to follow because he has so many big ideas. Even if he's wrong—which he usually isn't—entertaining his ideas and challenging your world view is a productive practice. 

One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps - This five part series from The Atlantic is one of the most powerful and frightening things I've read in recent memory. It's a firsthand account of a Uyghur Muslim living in and escaping from China's oppressive regime. 

Reading this series reminded me of the Japanese internment camps, the Holocaust, and the Hunger Games all rolled into one. It's the perfect storm of history repeating itself and a dystopian, oppressive, and appalling future, enable partially by technology.

The University of California is Lying to Us - This is a great article explaining the "thought process" behind the University of California ending the use of standardized testing for admissions and scholarship decisions.

It's a perfect example of using feelings to make decisions rather than facts. These were my three favorite quotes:

"People in power today would much rather do something that seems to promote 'equity' than make an evidence-based choice that could lead to accusations of racism." 

"What will dropping the tests really accomplish? It will give cover to the many forces invested in not improving the state’s K–12 education, especially in the poorest districts."

"'California is America, only sooner.' Californians are proud of that expression, and it still holds up. What’s happening out here—a homelessness crisis that turns deadly when the summer heat climbs; soaring crime in the cities; fires and coastal erosion spurred by climate change; strong students denied college admission because of the color of their skin and the 'foreign' sound of their names; and a great research university obscuring, rather than revealing, the truth—all of that will happen where you live, too. We just got here first."

Never Forget - A great perspective piece from Nick Maggiulli. 9/11 woke us up. It opened our eyes to the dangers of the world and the gravity of real problems.

In the 20 years since, the immediacy of meaningful issues slowly faded from our brains. In their place, we've manufactured make-believe problems. 

"We built the most convenient and inoffensive society in human history," writes Maggiulli.

"We built a world where Amazon can bring you anything in two days flat. A world where Dominos can deliver you a pizza in 30 minutes (but still provides a pizza tracker in case you get too impatient). We built a world where you can block out any opinion you don’t agree with. Where you can follow and unfollow anything that you choose. We built a world where you can build your own little world."

The trouble with this reality is that the chickens always come home to roost. If we forget the possibility of the bad things that can happen, we won't be prepared when those things do happen.

Intellectual Loneliness - Why are people so interested in talking about the news? Man, this guy gets it.

Obama Father's Day Speech - I thoroughly enjoyed this 23 minute speech delivered by President Obama in 2008. He talked about the importance of fatherhood not only for individual children but for society as a whole.

He defined fatherhood not as fathering a child but as raising one. Not as doing the bare minimum but as exceeding expectations and setting a standard of excellence for your children. 

I believe that all our problems as a society stem from poor parenting. This speech reinforced my belief that being an exceptional parent is one of the most important things anyone can do with their life. 

Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus - In the early industrial revolution, society had gin to occupy everyone's new found free time. Today, we have television.

If we diverted even a fraction of the time we spend watching TV into something productive, society would progress at an astounding rate. As an example, every single part of Wikipedia—from the code that built the site to the entries about Pokemon—comprises 100 million hour of human thought. Every year in the US, we watch about 200 billion hours of TV. That's 2,000 Wikipedia size projects every year that we trade to sit hypnotized and drooling in front of the television.

Fighting Against Chinese Repression - Imagine hearing a knock on your door and opening it to find the police standing there. Without explanation, they detain your father or mother or brother or sister or wife. They take your loved one to a "re-education camp." There's no trial. There's no sentence. You don't know how long they'll be there. 

And while your family member is in this camp, they're abused. They're forced to work without pay. They are deprived of sleep, deprived of food, beaten, raped, maybe even sterilized. 

For the Uyghur population in China, they don't have to imagine this terrible scenario. It's a reality. It's happening every single day.

This podcast with Ryan Holiday features Ferkat Jawdat, a Uyghur activist bringing light to the dire situation in China. It's worth a listen.

Odds & Ends

Cinematix - While writing this week, I had this album from Audiomachine playing in the background. It's intense, has no lyrics, and is excellent for focusing.

Right Up Our Alley - This is some of the coolest drone footage I've ever seen. The staging and audio are also perfect, making this an awesome all around video.

Meru - I'm a sucker for climbing documentaries. I'm enticed by the idea of the dirtbag climber - living out of his van, chasing adventure when it calls, no worries except which wall to climb tomorrow. 

I'm also drawn to the dedication it takes to reach the highest levels. I'm fascinated with the obsession. I'm amazed by the courage. I'm intrigued by the disregard for danger. 

Last weekend, I watched Meru. It was amazing. I saw Free Solo in theaters - twice - and I thought this was better. The story draws in you and turns your stomach in knots. It's filled with excitement, amazement, and despair throughout. If you like adventure, the outdoors, or a good story, you'll love this documentary.

Wait But Why Mailbag - Tim Urban is one of the best writers on the internet. He just published a super long "ask me anything" post where he answers reader questions. I haven't made it through the whole thing yet, but it's filled with treasure. It's a fun alternative to a regular article, and it's filled with information that is useful, thoughtful, and silly.

The transformative power of classical music - This is a marvelous TED talk from nearly 13 years ago. It's about life outlook and leadership. It's about deriving power from making other people powerful—from awakening their potential. It's about self examination and success. And it's a tale told through the lens of classical music. 

The story the speaker concludes with is touching, and meaningful, and sad all at once. This is a talk you won't soon forget. 

James Clear's Guide to Travel Gear - I'm neither a big traveler nor a gear junkie, but this guide from James Clear is the perfect companion for anyone planning a big trip. I imagine it'll be especially useful as the world gears back up for travel post-COVID.

Clear is one of my favorite writers, and in this piece he shares his three rules for packing light, as well as all of his travel recommendations from gear to clothing to toiletries and apps.

I can't speak to the quality of what he recommends. I'm currently on my honeymoon carrying my clothes in the duffel bag I got during my 10th grade basketball season. But I can speak to the quality and comprehensiveness of the suggestions. James Clear doesn't do anything halfway. If you need recommendations on how/what to pack, this is your guide.

Infographics of the 1800s - A collection of artistic diagrams comparing mountains, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and buildings from around the world. They're part reference diagram and part artwork, and they were all created in the 1800s. I'd love to hang a couple of these prints in my office.

Untethered - Have you ever seen legit slack-liners? 

I'm not talking about the guys in the park with the rope between two trees. I'm talking cliff to cliff, hundreds of feet, no harness maniacs.

This is an awesome 30 minute documentary about Spencer Seabrook breaking the slack line free solo world record. If you liked Free Solo, Meru, or any of Jimmy Chin's work, you'll love this. 

I felt my stomach dropping with fear and my eyes awed by the beauty of the scenery. It made me want to head to the woods, but it didn't make me want to step on a slack line.

Donnie Vincent's Winds of Adak - I loved this 50 minute documentary about a caribou hunt in Adak, Alaska. 

It was a great combination of hunting, adventure, military history, and beautiful scenery. If you enjoy the show Meateater, you'll love this too.

14 Peaks - Our world has 14 mountains pressing into the clouds beyond 8,000 meters. One man held the record for climbing all of them in the shortest amount of time—7 years.

Then in 2019, a Nepali man name Nims Purja decided to break that record. Not only did Purja break the record, he shattered it, doing what so many people told him was impossible. Purja summited all 14 peaks in less than seven months!

This was an incredible documentary about his journey. It's a beautiful testament to the power of human potential and a gentle reminder that we're capable of much more than we think.

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Photo by Claudia Chiavazza on Unsplash