​read time 6 minutes

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How to Avoid Catastrophe: The Normalization of Deviance

On January 27, 1986, NASA leaders convened a teleconference to go through the final approvals for a space shuttle launch the following morning.

NASA protocols at the time required each of the shuttle subcontractors to sign off on the launch. This teleconference was intended to be a standard, check-the-box procedure to get that go ahead.

But as soon as the call began, a Morton Thiokol mechanical engineer named Roger Boisjoly began to voice his concerns.

Six months earlier, in July 1985, Boisjoly had written a memo to his superiors laying out a potential catastrophic failure case following his investigation of one of the solid rocket boosters from an earlier space shuttle flight.

His investigation had revealed that a system of two rubber O-rings that formed a seal between two sections of the solid rocket boosters had failed in the prior flight. One ring had failed completely and the other had been damaged.

He believed that if the second O-ring had failed, the results would have been catastrophic.

His analysis suggested that the cold weather at the time of launch made the rubber hard and inflexible, which increased the risk of damage and failure.

The warnings in his original memo were largely ignored, and subsequent attempts to raise the issue for senior management ran into bureaucratic walls.

But on the evening of January 27, just 16 hours before the anticipated launch, and with the temperature due to fall below freezing overnight, Roger Boisjoly got his last chance.

He presented, in vivid detail, his data and an accounting of the mechanical risk, which had become critical in his eyes due to the forecasted low temperatures for the launch.

Initially, Boisjoly’s compelling case seemed to be heard. Thiokol’s Vice President Joe Kilminster said that he was recommending a “no-go” for launch due to the temperature and associated catastrophic O-ring risk.

Unfortunately, the meeting took a sudden turn when NASA leadership pushed back on the recommendation, arguing that the launch had already been delayed five times and that there was no definitive proof of a failure risk.

Under pressure, the Morton Thiokol team reconsidered their recommendation and gave the go ahead.

At 11:38 am the next morning, with the temperature a record low 36 degrees Fahrenheit, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.

Millions of people tuned in live to watch the launch from around the world.

Just 73 seconds into its flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and disintegrated, tragically killing all seven crew aboard.

Roger Boisjoly’s fears had proven warranted. The O-rings had burned to ash, leaving a weak seal in the joint that caused a catastrophic chain reaction.

Historians frequently reference the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as one of the most traumatic events burned into the American psyche. A moment that broke the illusion of untouched American technological dominance.

In a 1996 book, sociologist Diane Vaughn coined the term Normalization of Deviance in reference to the event and its run-up.

Normalization of Deviance is the process by which unacceptable practices, standards, or behaviors become accepted when they’re repeated without immediate negative consequences.

In Vaughn’s analysis, the Challenger disaster was not a simple byproduct of the poor decision-making on the January 27 teleconference, or any individual’s momentary negligence, but of a slow, broad, systemic drift.

It was a normalization of deviance.

When I first came across this concept, I couldn’t help but think that it applies directly to our lives.

The most dangerous habits, behaviors, and beliefs are the ones you slip into slowly, day after day:

• It’s the minor repair you ignore

• It’s the hard conversation you avoid

• It’s the white lie you tell to cover up a mistake

• It’s the missed workout when you don’t feel motivated

Their damage isn’t noticeable in the days. There’s no explosion. No catastrophic failure. Nothing.

So, you convince yourself they’re fine.

But each day, with each tiny slip, you reset your own standard to a new, slightly lower baseline. The next day, a slip that might have felt huge a few days earlier feels decidedly ignorable.

And suddenly, somewhere down the line, an explosion. Maybe not a catastrophic event, but a momentary blast of awareness. Awareness of a life that looks so far removed from what you envisioned that you can’t possibly comprehend how it got there.

You think these outcomes will never happen to you. That you can prevent them by avoiding significant mistakes. In reality, catastrophic outcomes are often just the macro result of thousands of micro mistakes.

The tiny slip in standards that you accepted as normal.

Your own normalization of the deviance.

I’m convinced the ability to hold the line on your standards is what will determine the quality of your future. When you let things slide, you train yourself to accept less than you’re worth.

So, where are you normalizing the deviance in your life?

Fight back. Set your standards and hold the line. Especially when it’s hard.

Schedule “breaks” from those standards to give yourself room to breathe. Cheat meals from your diet. Rest days from your training program. Relaxation days away from the grind. But make them deliberate. Never allow the breaks to become a subconscious, unintentional slide.

For the rocket to function, everything from the massive boosters to the tiny rubber O-rings needs to do its job.

You are no different. The standards you set and hold will decide your future.

Act accordingly.

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A Few Things I’ve Changed My Mind On

I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence.

The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information or evidence. It’s not that they lack conviction in their beliefs, but more so that they’ve developed enough self-awareness to understand what it would take to change them.

The world will pressure you to stubbornly resist such change. To cling to every belief as though it might be your last. But there’s immense power in resisting that pressure.

I like to think of it as a software update. The update is never perfect, but it’s an improvement upon the older version. It’s a reminder that the goal isn’t to be right, but to slowly, consistently get closer to the truth.

When I’m getting to know people, I often ask them what they’ve changed their mind on recently. It’s an interesting way to go deep in a conversation.

A friend recently flipped the question on me.

After a bunch of thought and reflection, here’s my reply:

7 things I’ve changed my mind on recently...

1. You have to squint harder as you get older.

Last week, my mom and I were driving to pick up food when she told me she recently had a profound realization.

As she and my dad have gotten older, a lot of the advice they get about feeling happy is related to the past.

You’ve had such a great life. You had career success. You raised good kids. You made all these great memories.

And so on.

But, she pointed out, it’s not particularly helpful. Because happiness isn’t governed by the past.

Thinking about it, I reasoned that it’s more a function of:

1. Gratitude in the present

2. Excitement for the future

And as you get older, you have to squint harder to get that excitement. A lot of the “givens” you’ve taken for granted are no longer guaranteed. Things like having meaningful work. Your own health. Healthy loved ones. Travel and experiences. All of that is increasingly uncertain with age.

So the excitement becomes more difficult to see. It’s not as obvious as it once was.

My advice (to my parents, myself, and anyone else):

Take action to put excitement on the calendar. Big or small. Take up new hobbies. Read your favorite books. Plan the trips. Do the things.

And then, squint harder. It’s there, you just have to push yourself to see it.

2. The fastest way to improve your life is to sign up for a physical side quest.

I used to think that life change was all about having a clear set of systems, rules, and goals to guide your life. You establish those, track them, and watch your life improve.

But it’s much simpler than that:

Just sign up for a side quest (preferably a physical one).

It could be a race, competition, event. Really anything. Maybe a marathon, Hyrox, long hike, or a weekend rafting trip. Something that scares you just a little bit. Just enough to spark action.

Your day becomes more structured with the training for the side quest. You sleep deeper because you’re tired from the training. You eat cleaner because your body wants the healthy fuel. You look better from the movement. You feel better from the momentum.

Everything falls into alignment around the one small decision to sign up for that event.

So, what’s your side quest going to be?

3. The best conversations happen when you allow silence.

For most of my life, I was deeply uncomfortable with silence in a conversation.

The void would send my insecure brain into overdrive, assuming the other person was thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about me.

So, I’d avoid silence at all costs, filling every natural gap or pause with some leap, misdirection, or non sequitur.

But the older I get, the more I realize that the pause is often where the real depth starts to form.

If you treat conversations like a game of tennis, firing the ball back and forth as quickly and strategically as possible, you never get very far. It’s transactional. It turns every conversation into something of a battle. You’re facing down an opponent. You vs. them.

The best conversations are ventilated. They have space. There’s no rush to hit the ball back. They’re about a journey, not an outcome.

The next time you feel the pressure to fill the silence, resist it. Then watch what the other person does with the space you just gave them.

4. There’s no such thing as the right decision.

I often wonder how many extraordinary people waste their entire lives obsessing over making the right decision.

Caught in an overthinking trap. Second-guessing every single move. Gathering more information. Planning out every step of the path.

I’ve been there.

And I’ve come to believe that it’s driven by a single flawed belief:

That the decision is what matters.

There are good decisions (clear logic, backed by evidence) and bad decisions (made in the heat of emotion, with none), but there are no right decisions.

Ultimately, a decision becomes right through the actions that follow it, not the decision itself.

In my own life, most of my “wrong” decisions were really just inconsistent follow-through. I made the call, then failed to back it with disciplined daily effort. A decision isn’t right or wrong in a vacuum. But it’s always easier to blame the decision than to hold yourself to the work that follows.

Make a decision, then make it the right one with your actions.

5. The most underrated relationships bring peace.

Life is filled with chaos. There’s really no avoiding it. The storms, big and small, are inevitable.

But some people just seem very good at attracting them.

In my 20s, I had a higher tolerance for chaos. I could have a crazy weekend, deal with drama, sleep like crap, lose my voice, and still bounce back and hold it together.

Maybe it’s just getting old, but my tolerance for chaos isn’t what it used to be.

If there’s one thing I value most in my relationships now, it’s that they bring peace. It doesn’t mean there are no storms. Just that they’re never of our own creation.

And honestly, in my 30s, I love having the sun on my face.

6. There are millions of ways to be happy but only one reliable way to be unhappy.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

This beautiful line is the opening of Leo Tolstoy’s famous book, Anna Karenina. It’s considered one of the most iconic opening lines in literature.

And I think it’s incorrect.

People are happy in a lot of ways, but the one common theme among all the unhappy people I know:

They constantly compare themselves to others. Their entire life is measured on the basis of how it stacks up to someone else’s.

The fastest way to kill something beautiful is to compare it to something else.

And with social media algorithms that intentionally thrust the most unfavorable comparisons right in front of your face, it’s very hard to resist.

But if happiness is your goal, resist you must.

7. The happiest people are very difficult to rush.

I recently sat next to a gentleman on a flight who was returning from his 60th high school reunion. We struck up a conversation and ended up chatting for the whole time in the air.

When we landed, as is seemingly customary, everyone leapt up to grab their bags as fast as possible. Except for him. He sat there, sipping the plastic cup that held his glass of wine from the flight.

I asked if I could grab his bag, but he just shook his head. I must have given him a funny look, because he smiled:

“I never understood the rush. We’re all going to the same place, after all.”

I figured he meant baggage claim, but as I walked out of the airport, I realized my mistake. The same place was more meta than I originally understood.

And he was in no rush to beat everyone there.

As I wrote a few weeks ago:

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

The happiest people always strike me as very difficult to rush.

They act slowly and deliberately. When they move with urgency, it’s because they want to, not because of some arbitrary pressure.

It’s small things that give it away:

• They let people go ahead of them in traffic.

• They greet workers at a coffee shop.

• They look up instead of down at their phone.

I’ve started trying to embrace a few tiny acts of slow rebellion per day. And while the rush instinct is still there, every time I resist it, I think of that gentleman.

Smiling, sipping his airplane red wine, in no rush to beat anyone to the place we’re all headed.

So, now I’ll do to you what my friend did to me:

What have you changed your mind on recently?

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How Old Will You Be If You Don’t?

Last week, I wrote a piece about reinvention. Specifically, the myth of too late and how to reinvent your life at any age or life stage.

It clearly struck a chord.

I received thousands of replies in the days following the piece. One reader reply referenced a two-decade-old newspaper advice column segment that had resonated on the subject.

Me being me, I decided to try to find the column. After all, if something was still etched into my reader’s memory 20+ years later, it must have been good.

​I did, and it was even better than advertised:

January 19, 2000

Dear Abby:

I am a 36-year-old college dropout whose lifelong ambition was to be a physician. I have a very good job selling pharmaceutical supplies, but my heart is still in the practice of medicine. I do volunteer work at the local hospital on my time off, and people tell me I would have made a wonderful doctor.

If I go back to college and get my degree, then go to medical school, do my internship and finally get into the actual practice of medicine, it will take me seven years! But, Abby, in seven years I will be 43 years old. What do you think?

- Unfulfilled in Philly

Dear Unfulfilled:

And how old will you be in seven years if you don’t go to medical school?

Let that one sink in for a moment.

When I read it, I flashed back to every single version of “it’s too late” that I’ve ever told myself. Every single story about being off track, behind, or lost.

I flashed back to my late-20s, feeling like a failure when I saw people posting about their startup’s funding round, their most recent promotion, or their Forbes 30 Under 30 accolade.

I flashed back to all of the times I had longed for an external stamp of approval. For someone to come tap me in. Tell me I was impressive. On track. Worthy.

But here’s what it took me years to understand:

The timeline in my head was my own creation. Entirely invented. An abstraction of reality so far removed from the real thing that it no longer bore any resemblance to the original.

That timeline forms from a young age. We look out at the world and use what we observe to sketch out a map of how our life is supposed to go. Social media highlight reels tell us how we stack up. What we should be doing. By when. And what we can’t possibly do now.

It’s a form of inheritance. Not one we choose, but one we all get.

So, we tie ourselves in knots, just like Unfulfilled in Philly. We know what we really want, but we’re too afraid to go all in. Because to go all in is to expose yourself to real failure. To be completely naked.

But the harsh truth that Abby so elegantly highlighted is an important one:

Time is unforgiving. It doesn’t care about you. It’s moving with or without you. Whether you choose to act…or not. Whether you live the way you want…or not. Time is just going to pass.

And over time, it’s the things we don’t do that will haunt us the most.

This is more than just conjecture. In a seminal 1994 study, Cornell University psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec found that there was a clear, systematic time course to the experience of regret.

We regret action in the short-term, but inaction in the long-term—and long-term regrets were significantly more powerful and enduring.

So, consider this a call to action. It might be one for myself just as much as it is for any of you out there reading it today.

How often do we all sit around waiting for someone else to come tap us into our own life? To give us permission to go and do the thing we want to do?

Waiting for our own Dear Abby reply to tell us it’s ok. We’re not too late. We’re right on time.

The real lesson here is recognizing that you don’t need any of that. You don’t need this piece. You don’t need Dear Abby.

You get to tap yourself in. You get to choose.

My dear friend and team member Blake Burge captured this well in a recent viral X post:

You’re not late. You’re not early. You’re exactly where your life has led you to be. And you get to decide where you go from here.

So, that thing you want to do:

How old will you be in ten years if you don’t do it?

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Over the weekend, I stumbled across the following tweet:

The video in the tweet, which has been viewed by 20 million people at the time of this writing, is the stuff of childhood (and adult!) nightmares.

Hundreds of venomous snakes on the loose in a village. You can practically see the cringe-inducing Netflix movie already.

But I have to admit, being the nerd that I am, the video sent me down a very different rabbit hole than most others.

I was reminded of an apocryphal story from colonial India:

The British colonists became concerned about the cobra population in Indian cities.

So, they decided to institute a policy that offered a bounty for cobra heads. Anyone who turned in a cobra head would be rewarded with compensation. They thought the incentive would lead people to catch and kill the venomous creatures, thereby reducing the threat.

But the plan backfired…

A group of enterprising individuals spotted a business opportunity: They could breed cobras, chop off their heads, and turn them in to collect the money.

Quickly, the British realized what was happening and ended the policy.

Realizing they had thousands of now-worthless cobras, the breeders simply released them onto the streets, dramatically increasing the population of cobras in the cities.

A policy designed to reduce the cobra population had done the opposite.

The Cobra Effect is an example of Goodhart’s Law, which says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

In other words, if a measure of performance becomes a stated goal, humans will tend to optimize for it, regardless of any associated consequences.

We often see examples of this in the professional world:

• Performance targets tied to new account openings result in a lot of fake account openings.

• Managers with clear % employee turnover goals are found to be engaged in hire-to-fire practices.

In each case, the well-intended measure became a target, people optimized for it, and unintended consequences followed.

The measure ceased to be a good measure.

While most commonly talked about in business, I think the most interesting (and damning) application is found in your life:

How often do you fall victim to the Cobra Effects of life?

The Measures That Own You

In a recent piece, entitled The Cult of the Enhanced Self, my friend and author Derek Thompson wrote about his experience wearing a sleep-tracking device:

“The ring improved my life. But its form of self-improvement often pulls me away from other people. This left me with a nagging question. At what point is it unhealthy for me—for anyone, for all of us—to be this obsessed with health?”

This, it feels, is an all-too-common phenomenon.

You put on the health tracking device. You experience real benefits from the new set of measurements in your life. Maybe you sleep better. Maybe you move more. Maybe you eat healthier. Maybe all of the above.

But you also find yourself opting out of more social activities. Saying no to spontaneous gatherings. Avoiding things you used to love for fear of the impact on your new measurements.

As I often joke with myself when I experience this:

You’ve got a perfect sleep score, but no friends. Great.

And it’s not just health tracking...

I experienced a similar phenomenon when it came to my morning routine.

I used to be fanatical about executing it. Cold plunge. Shower. Perfect coffee. Stretch. Breathing. I loved it. It felt great, but all told, it would be an hour before I got started on the things that the routine was supposed to prepare me to do.

What’s more, if I had a lat night event, unexpected commitment, or chaotic bedtime with my toddler son, I’d get pre-stressed—a weird anticipatory anxiety about not nailing the next morning’s routine.

The morning routine designed to serve me had started to own me.

The most damning version of this phenomenon occurs with the most common measure in life:

Money.

When money becomes the sole target, unintended consequences abound:

You hit another quarterly target but miss another anniversary dinner. You earn your record bonus but fail to make it to your child’s recital. You say yes to every work call but can’t find time to reconnect with an old friend.

You never leave money on the table but don’t think twice about leaving your peace of mind there.

You optimize for the one thing but lose sight of everything.

How to Become a Snake Charmer

First off, recognize this isn’t some character flaw, lack of discipline, or failure of motivation. It’s a normal, abundantly human cognitive flaw.

Scientists refer to it as surrogation: The process or tendency where a measure, metric, or proxy replaces the actual, more complex concept, goal, or target.

Basically, you lose sight of the real thing the measure was meant to represent and start treating the measure as the thing itself.

Snake heads become safer cities. Sleep scores become life improvement. Routine adherence becomes professional growth. Money becomes life success.

So, what do you do about it?

I’ve found three practices to be helpful:

1. Remind yourself the measure is not the goal.

Whatever you choose to measure in your life, make sure you separate the measure from the goal.

Your sleep score is not the goal. A healthy, thriving life is. Your bank account balance is not the goal. Freedom is.

Create a clear separation of the two. On a blank sheet of paper, write down the measure on the left side with an arrow pointing to the goal on the right side. Place it somewhere so that you’ll be forced to see it regularly.

2. Name the unintended consequences upfront.

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” - Charlie Munger

What are the potential traps hiding in your pursuit of progress against the measure?

What would be the signs or indications that you were starting to experience those unintended consequences in your life?

On the bottom of the same sheet from the first practice, write them down.

3. Course correct early and often.

As the famous saying goes, no plan has ever survived first contact with the enemy.

Adaptability is the key to life. You don’t need to trust in your plan or your intelligence. You need to trust in your ability to adapt on the fly.

Create a simple monthly or quarterly check in.

Are you seeing any of the unintended consequences materializing in your life? If so, how can you gently course correct to avoid them?

The cognitive blindspot is inevitable, but the outcome doesn’t have to be.

1. Separate measure from goal.

2. Name the unintended consequences.

3. Course correct when you start to feel them.

You don’t have to kill the cobras. You just have to learn to charm them.

​read time 7 minutes

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The Life-Changing Magic of Active Optimism

There’s an old children’s fable I recently retold to my son…

A farmer was driving his wagon along a dirt road when it began to rain, transforming the road into a muddy mess.

Suddenly, one wheel sank deep into the mud and became completely stuck.

The farmer got off the wagon and stared at the wheel, cursing his bad luck and complaining about the delay. He turned his head to the sky and called on Hercules to come to his aid.

Hercules appeared, but rather than lifting the wagon, he spoke:

“Do you think you can move the wagon by simply looking at it? Put your shoulder to the wheel.”

The farmer did so, and the wagon lurched forward as the wheel easily came unstuck. He climbed back onto the seat and continued on his way.

The simple read says this is a story about effort. But it’s also a story that frames one of the most important traits in life:

It’s what I call Active Optimism: A belief that things will work out paired with a willingness to do the work to make it true.

In a 2019 study that looked at over 70,000 individuals, researchers at Harvard and Boston University found that optimism, defined as the general expectation that good things will happen, was connected to longevity.

Specifically, the most optimistic men and women had, on average, an 11–15% longer lifespan than the least optimistic.

Importantly, the relationship between optimism and longevity was independent of the most obvious factors, including wealth, existing health conditions, relationships, and basic health behaviors.

In other words, the effect of optimism was not explained by the “usual suspects” when it comes to longevity studies.

There’s something deeper going on…

Real optimism isn’t about passive belief. It’s a foundational lens that impacts what you do.

In a 1986 study, psychologists Martin Seligman and Peter Schulman gave incoming MetLife agents a questionnaire that assessed their views on setbacks on a spectrum from permanent and pervasive (“I’m no good at this”) to temporary and specific (“that call went badly”).

Agents in the top half of optimism (those who viewed rejection as a passing event) outsold the bottom half by over 37%.

MetLife allowed them to take it a step further, hiring a “special force” of 129 applicants who had failed the company’s standard aptitude test but scored optimistic on the researchers’ questionnaire.

The group of “unqualified” optimists outsold the actual hires by 21% in the first year and 57% in the second year.

The pessimists saw mostly closed doors. The optimists saw mostly open doors, but even in the closed ones, they saw an opportunity to kick them open along the way.

The pattern shows up everywhere:

A 2006 meta-analysis by Suzanne Segerstrom and Lise Solberg Nes, which pooled 50 studies and more than 11,000 people, found that optimists consistently confronted stressors. They engaged, rather than avoided, them. They didn’t deny the existence of struggle. They leaned in where pessimists leaned away.

The researchers frame it this way: The action follows the positive belief. Put simply, the belief that things will turn encourages the action to make it true.

I believe that there are really two types of optimism:

1. Passive Optimism

2. Active Optimism

Passive Optimism is exclusively about belief. The belief that things will work out. Blind faith. It’s the farmer, wheel stuck in the mud, calling to the heavens for Hercules to come down and get him unstuck, deeply convinced that he would do just that.

Active Optimism is about belief that begets action. The belief that things will work out, and the action to make sure they do. Earned faith. It’s the same farmer, scolded by Hercules, putting his shoulder to the wheel, and seeing it break free with ease.

Passive Optimism fails for the same reason Pessimism does. Because it doesn’t move. Faced with a stuck wheel, the pessimist does nothing because he thinks it’s hopeless. The passive optimist does nothing because he thinks he doesn’t have to.

And this is something I think we all need to identify in ourselves:

Where are you being a passive optimist in your own life?

Because the reality is that passive optimism can often masquerade as patience, faith, or even wisdom. It’s the career path that will sort itself out. It’s the relationship struggle that will surely disappear with time. It’s the health issue that will eventually go away.

Belief is great. Faith is great. But without appropriate action, they are a recipe for long-term disappointment.

A mentor once told me this:

Always assume things will work out, then do the work to make it true. That combination creates a quiet confidence that allows you to tolerate uncertainty better than anything else.

It’s a mindset of Active Optimism. Belief and action.

Trust that the wheel will budge, as long as you’re willing to make it.

So, put your shoulder to the wheel.

Order My First Book to Unlo

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How to Reinvent Your Life in 30 Days

Last week, I got an email from a reader that I can’t stop thinking about:

Hi Sahil,

I’d like your advice.

Me: 32-years-old. Working in law. Married. No kids (yet).

Something gnawing at me. Parents are lawyers, so it was all I knew. I basically chose the path as a freshman. Majored in the right things, LSATs, law school, clerking, big law. Followed the track. Parents pleased, I make solid money.

I should be happy, but I’m not. Can’t help but feel that I’m living someone else’s life. I want to change, but it feels too late. So much invested in this path. Don’t want to fall behind on a new one.

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Every single week, I invariably get a handful of emails from readers around the world with a similar general message.

Stuck on a path. Living a life they didn’t really choose. Scared it’s too late to make a change.

I started to type a reply, but decided it warranted a deeper, more tactical guide.

Here’s exactly how I would approach reinvention (at any age or life stage):

1. Reframe the problem.

I’ll cut straight to it. Too late is a myth. Timelines are arbitrary. You can reinvent yourself whenever you want. You can wake up and choose to live differently.

Ultimately, what you’re experiencing is a sunk cost problem. By the time you’re feeling this way, you’ve probably invested years into a given path. You’ve gone to school. Studied for exams. Taken a job in the field. Built skills, a network, and an experience set. All of it around a version of a life that no longer aligns with your vision for your future.

When you say it’s “too late” to make a change, what you really mean is:

“I’ve invested too much in this path to make a change.”

That’s classic sunk cost thinking. The tendency to continue with an endeavor simply because of the money, time, or energy already invested in it.

The first step is to reframe that problem:

Would you buy this path today if you didn’t already own it?

In other words, would you choose this version of your life if it wasn’t already yours? If you hadn’t spent the preceding years building it?

Don’t ask this question on a bad day. It’s not about jumping ship because something got hard. Ask it on a good day. If the answer is no, then you’re ready to take action.

2. Identify the two core asymmetries.

Ok, so now let’s assume you’re ready to reinvent yourself. Your life, your job, your relationships, your health, your habits, whatever.

But that reinvention is scary.

I remember when I had reached this point in 2020. I knew I needed a change. I was committed to that change. But I was paralyzed by fear.

It felt like I was standing at the edge of a canyon. Looking out at the life I wanted on the other side. But in between where I stood and where I wanted to stand was an unfathomable drop into nothingness.

It was something like this:

Being the analytical, logical, right-brain thinker that I was, I decided to deconstruct that fear. To try to understand why that leap of faith felt so scary. Why the reinvention I wanted was so daunting.

What I came to understand is that it’s the result of two asymmetries:

1. Information Asymmetry: You have perfect information about what your life looks like on your side of the canyon, but almost no information on what your life could look like on the other side.

2. Evidence Asymmetry: You have clear, robust evidence supporting your ability to live your life on your side of the canyon (pay your bills, etc.), but almost no evidence of your ability to do so on the other side.

Those asymmetries are the root cause of your reinvention fear. They are the primary impediment to clear, decisive action.

The asymmetries are the problem to be solved.

Here’s an exercise that helped me:

Using a blank sheet or document, split a page into four quadrants. The top half of the page is current life, the bottom half is future life. The left side is information and the right side is evidence.

It should look like this:

Fill in the top half of the 2x2 matrix with the information and evidence on your current life. What you do. What your days look like. How you make money. How you pay your bills. The basics.

Now see what information and evidence you’re able to populate into the bottom half. Presumably, not much, hence the fear.

On a second sheet, write down the specific actions you could take that would allow you to fill in that bottom half.

Things like:

• Have 10 casual learning conversations with people who are doing the thing I’m interested in. Or 10 casual learning conversations with people to figure out what I’m potentially interested in.

• Go to an industry event (digital or physical) for the space I’m excited about.

• Reach out to 10 potential clients for new business idea.

• Build landing page for my advisory services offering.

• Identify a perfect potential customer and do upfront work to solve a problem for them that will deliver value in a cold outreach.

All of those are actions, entirely within your control, that will expand your information or evidence set.

They will close the two core asymmetries that block reinvention.

3. Lower the reinvention activation energy.

Reinvention is a verb-created phenomenon. You don’t experience a reinvention. You reinvent. You don’t think your way into a new life. You don’t manifest it into reality. You don’t dream it. You act it into reality.

The prior step sketched out the controllable actions to close the asymmetries. But you’ll never do anything about it if you set the bar for action too high.

Lower the reinvention activation energy to a ridiculously achievable level.

My guidance: Use my 30-for-30 approach to get started.

30 minutes per day for 30 straight days.

Every single day for the next 30 days, block 30 minutes on your calendar when you’ll sit down, get focused, and work on one of the actions from the prior step.

30 minutes per day for 30 straight days is 900 minutes of accumulated focused effort. You will be blown away by what you can achieve in that amount of time.

No single day will feel remotely heroic. And that’s precisely the point.

Because heroic plans are just premeditated failures.

Make it easy and make it obvious. If you do, by the end of the 30 days, you’ll feel reinvented without ever having to take that dramatic, terrifying leap.

4. Cut the line on the boats you’re dragging.

By this point, you’re close. The change is underway. You’re living it. But there’s one final roadblock that gets in the way.

It’s best introduced with an old story:

A man on a long journey comes upon a river that blocks his path. There’s no bridge in sight, so, he gets to work. Chops down a tree, strips the bark, and shapes the wood. After several days of effort, he has a small, sturdy boat.

Confident in his craftsmanship, he pushes out into the river and reaches the other side safely. As he prepares to continue his journey, a thought creeps in:

What if I face more rivers like this ahead?

The boat might be useful again. Instead of leaving it on the riverbank, he ties a rope around it, wraps the other end around his waist, and begins walking, the boat dragging behind him through the dirt and mud.

A few hours later, he’s exhausted. The boat is heavy. The terrain uneven. Every step feels harder than it should. He looks back, the river is no longer in sight, and realizes that holding onto the boat beyond the river was a mistake.

This is, of course, a metaphor. I call it the Boat-Dragging Problem: When you hold on too long, something that helped you can begin to harm you.

When it comes to reinvention, there are a variety of “boats” that most of us are dragging without realizing it. They may have helped us once, but now they harm our ability to change. To become who we want to be.

The most common boats I see others dragging (or have dragged myself):

• People who were conditionally supportive. They were in your corner when it benefitted them. When the way you were living was valuable to their self-interests. But as your path shifts and reshapes, their support dwindles. They tell you to be realistic. They laugh at your ambitions. They subtly belittle your aspirations.

• Self-limiting stories about your capabilities. They may have helped keep you focused on the track in the past. They created a sense of paranoia of losing it all that paradoxically fueled your success. But they create a paralyzing fear when change is the clear desire. You aren’t an entrepreneur. You aren’t good with technology or sales. You aren’t capable of all that.

• External locus of control. The belief that your outcomes are determined by forces outside your control is the ultimate self-protection mechanism. Failures can be explained away without accountability. The successes of those around you who took the leap can be attributed to luck. But that self-protection quickly becomes self-rejection.

To reinvent yourself, you have to cut the line on the boats you’re dragging. You may do so with a clean break, or with a slow reduction in the energy and attention you give to them.

So, what boats are you dragging behind you?

• What are the mindsets, beliefs, or habits that served you in your prior season that threaten to hold you back from your new one?

• Who are the people that cheered you when it benefitted them but have gone silent when it no longer does?

Identify them. Write them down. Then make a conscious decision to methodically cut the line.

The Reinvention Guide

The graveyard is full of people who wished they had taken action on that thing they wanted to do. “It’s too late” has killed more dreams than a lack of talent or intelligence ever will.

It’s never too late.

The older I get, the more I realize you can reinvent yourself as many times as you need. New career. New standards. New habits. New mindsets. New people. It’s never too late. You’re never stuck. There are no fixed timelines for reinvention. No age restrictions. No maximum limit. You can change. Today, tomorrow, and as many times as it takes to create the life you want.

Too late is an internal fantasy, not an external reality.

Every time you think it’s too late, it’s probably still early.

​read time 3 minutes

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The Frog Pond Effect

Have you ever noticed that growth feels like destruction?

That getting better feels like getting worse?

You’re not doing something wrong. You’re just experiencing something nobody told you about.

In 1966, an American sociologist named James Davis published a paper, entitled “The Campus as a Frog Pond“, which examined data from a large national sample of graduating college seniors.

He measured three things about each student:

• Their GPA / local class rank

• The caliber of their school

• Their career aspirations

Davis found that career aspirations tracked to their class rank (a relative metric) far more than the quality of their school (an absolute metric).

In other words, two students of identical ability can perceive themselves and their aspirations very differently on the basis of how they stack up to those around them.

Davis wrote, “[They see themselves as] big frogs in little ponds or little frogs in big ponds.”

He concluded that people judge their ability by comparison to the people immediately around them, not against any absolute standard.

This is the Frog Pond Effect:

The way we feel about ourselves depends on our relative positioning more so than our absolute performance.

Our scoreboard is relative, not absolute.

This is why growth feels like destruction. Why getting better feels like getting worse. Why building up feels like tearing down.

Because growth forces a change in environment.

You can’t reach your true potential in the tiny pond where you started. You have to leave the safety of what you know to explore what you can become. At some point, you outgrow the places, people, mindsets, behaviors, and beliefs that once felt like home. That provided comfort. Stability. Grounding.

In those moments, you have a choice:

• You can stay. Embrace the comfort and safety of your small pond.

• Or, you can leave. Push into new frontiers. Enter a bigger pond.

But if you choose to leave, if you choose the path of growth, do so knowing that it’s going to hurt.

• It’s the discomfort of being the dumbest one in the room.

• It’s the imposter syndrome of feeling like you’ll be exposed.

• It’s the ego hit that comes from being at the back of the pack.

• It’s the embarrassment of being a beginner again.

That identity-shaking pain is the cost of entry. It means you’re on the right track. It means you’re placing yourself into environments where you’ll be pushed. It means you had the courage to walk into the uncertainty instead of hiding from it.

You’re not doing something wrong. The opposite, really.

You asked for the growth, so pay the cost of entry with pride.

​read time 8 minutes

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Why Are You In Such A Rush?

There’s a beautiful Zen parable that goes something like this:

A man is walking across a field when a tiger leaps out from the trees and runs toward him.

Fearing for his life, the man sprints away but quickly halts at a steep cliff. Facing a terrifying drop, with the tiger bearing down on him, he grabs hold of a single vine and lowers himself over the cliff’s edge.

Looking up, he sees the tiger above. Looking down, he notices another tiger pacing on the ground below. And to make matters worse, a small mouse begins gnawing at the vine that holds him in place.

Beginning to feel hopeless, with certain demise above and below, the man sees a single wild strawberry growing on the cliffside in front of him.

He reaches out, plucks the fruit, and eats it. He smiles.

How incredibly sweet it tasted.

I just found myself rereading that parable at 30,000 feet.

Let me explain why...

I’m on a flight home from Mexico City, where I hosted a life design workshop coordinated by a few dear friends for a group of 200+ entrepreneurs and their partners.

My goal for the workshop was simple:

To make every single person in the room think deeply about what they want their life to look like. And then, to arm them with the questions and tools to build that life.

The first exercise I walked through was about seasons.

Your life has seasons. It’s not a singular, static experience. The seasons create a natural flow to your journey. Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.

Quoting from my book:

There’s no predetermined guide for this journey. Everyone’s seasons are unique. Everyone’s definition of balance is unique. There are no fixed timelines on which you change, fail, learn, grow, and adapt. There are no requirements; there is no right or wrong...You may have a season of professional growth, a season of divorce, a season of readjustment after a family tragedy, a season of inner health, or a season of new love.

But one reflection I’ve had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.

To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.

You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You’re here today. You made it. You’re alive. You’re doing fine.

You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You’ll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.

The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.

Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.

I’m doing this now, so that I can have that later.

Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it’s right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.

You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.

In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He’s told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it’s pulled, it can never be put back.

The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he’s faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.

As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.

But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he’s filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.

How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.

I found myself confronted head on with this reality during the workshop.

In an individual reflection, I had asked people to name their current season.

If it was a chapter in the book of your life, what would it be called?

As I reflected on the question myself, I realized that I was falling victim to that exact trap.

I’ve been treating my present as something of a valley, in between two natural peaks. The excitement of my first book launch long gone, the anticipation of the next book launch far in the future. I’ve felt a slower pace coming over my life and I feel myself resisting it. Fighting the feeling of not doing enough professionally. Not pushing. Needing to take on more.

In an intimate group dinner conversation following the event, I opened up about my realization, which was quickly echoed by several of the attendees.

After a long silence, the founder of a multi-billion dollar global spirits brand, a man I deeply admire for his clarity and wisdom, asked a poignant question:

“Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?”

It hit me hard.

And to be honest, I haven’t stopped replaying those words since he said them.

Why are you in such a rush?

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

Be in the season you’re in. Don’t romanticize the past, don’t fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.

Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.

The good old days are happening, right now.

So, grab that strawberry in front of you and enjoy the sweetness.

And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:

Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?

​read time 6 minutes

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The Zipper Test: How to Stop Fooling Yourself

My son just turned four. One of the things I love most about the age is the unbridled curiosity with which he explores the world.

He’s deep in the classic “why” phase, taking me down explanatory rabbit holes that go long past my point of comfort.

But one of the most interesting prompts he asked recently was this one:

“Tell me all about zippers.”

On any given day, zipper is replaced by some basic thing that we interact with. It might be tell me all about our car, or trees, or cooking pans, or the microwave.

I have a rule that I always engage with him on these little curiosity quests, even if they come at a bad time.

In doing so, I’ve realized something:

I know very little about how the most basic things around me actually work.

I start confidently, but my ability to answer “tell me all about [X]” generally ends after a few seconds. I quickly reach the outer bounds of my understanding and am forced, hat in hand, to consult with the internet to go deeper.

As it turns out, there’s real science behind this.

In 2002, Yale researchers Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil conducted a series of studies in which they asked a group of Yale undergraduate students to rate their understanding of how everyday devices work on a scale of 1-7 (with 1 being low and 7 being high).

The items were things like zippers, flush toilets, sewing machines, bicycle locks, and piano keys.

Each participant was then asked to write out their complete understanding of the workings of the device.

After writing out their explanation, they were asked to re-rate their understanding of the items.

The researchers found that confidence consistently dropped after people tried to write out their explanation of the item. A lot of 7s turned into 2s.

In other words, people thought they knew a lot about the workings of these devices, but when confronted with their lack of knowledge by the written explanation, they had to adjust their inflated sense of understanding.

Quoting the authors:

“People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do; they are subject to an illusion—an illusion of explanatory depth.”

Notably, the effect was more pronounced for explanatory knowledge (how and why things work) than simple facts, and it was strongest for things that were visible and ever-present.

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth says that we are overconfident in our understanding of the most common things that exist all around us.

But I think that illusion applies well beyond the confines of household items...

I’ve observed this phenomenon in my own interactions with highly ambitious, successful people.

I’ll often ask what motivates them, why they do the things they do, or how they chose their current pursuits or path.

The first reply is typically a general, surface level one—or a PR-ified version that would sound polished in a news article. Something basic about money, impact, or the like.

So, I’ll dig deeper, asking for more clarity. And that’s where it gets uncomfortable.

This recently happened with a new acquaintance, who told me his motivation was to make $100 million. It went something like this:

• Me: That’s awesome. Big goal! Why?

• Him: What do you mean, why?

• Me: Well, like why $100 million? What does that mean? Why that number? What will that unlock for you? What does that create or signify for you?

I saw him start to shift in his seat. He looked around. Cleared his throat. Glanced at his phone. Took a sip of his coffee.

It was like the visible manifestation of a confidence score adjusting from 7 to 2.

He had certainly never been asked for that level of depth on his own motivations—but perhaps more importantly, he had never asked himself for it.

How much do we really understand about the most basic motivations, structures, and decisions that control our everyday actions, behaviors, and life path?

Without confronting this internal Illusion of Explanatory Depth, you leave yourself exposed to a life by default. A life where all of your motivations and actions are subtly adopted through a sort of cultural and environmental osmosis.

You may climb one mountain for 40 years, only to reach the top and realize you never wanted to be on it in the first place.

The problem is that you’re so close to your own life that it paradoxically becomes the easiest life to misunderstand. To glaze over. To assume.

I often come back to the pithy quote from famed physicist Richard Feynman:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Don’t fool yourself into assuming that you’re on the right path, that you understand the nature of your motivations and goals, simply because of your familiarity with them.

I might call it the Zipper Test:

Do you actually understand how the zipper works? Or are you just fooling yourself into thinking you do?

If my 4-year-old son asked me to tell him all about my motivations and life, would I be able to confidently answer? Or would I find myself squirming at the inevitable “Why?” he would follow it with?

The answers you seek are found in the questions you avoid. Remember that.

​read time 9 minutes

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7 Lies I Stopped Telling Myself

A few years ago, as part of the research for my first book, I asked a group of centenarians for the advice they’d most like to give to their younger selves.

One of them offered this piece of wisdom:

“The most damning lie you can tell is the lie you tell to yourself.”

Those lies dilute your attention, pull you toward distractions, and cut into your confidence. They give you an easy out when the truth requires more painful accountability.

Those lies keep you from running at full power. Self-protection that becomes self-rejection.

In the years since that conversation, I’ve often found myself reflecting on the comment as a thought experiment for my own life:

What are the lies I’m telling myself right now?

Through identifying those lies, I’ve slowly learned to stopped telling them.

Here are 7 lies I finally stopped telling myself...

Stress is a sign that I’m working on the wrong thing.

“When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

You’ve probably seen that quote on a motivational poster at some point. I get it. It’s a nice sentiment.

But it’s a lie. And a damaging one at that, because it convinced me that I was always working on the wrong thing.

I’d start to feel stressed or anxious about my work, that motivational mantra would pop into my head, and I’d realize I needed to make a change.

I shouldn’t be stressed. I should be smiling, loving my work. Every single day.

Right?

Well, not really.

The truth I’ve come to realize is a more nuanced one:

Stress and anxiety are a tax on extreme ambition. Those with extreme ambition are the most prone to feelings of stress and anxiety that accompany the natural non-linearity of progress.

Your pre-wired ambition is a double-edged sword:

A powerful force for good when channeled in a clear direction toward a meaningful pursuit, but a stress amplifier when progress and momentum are unclear.

My new goal isn’t to find stress-free work. It’s to work on things I find so meaningful that I’m happy to stress over them.

I just need to gather more information.

Carl Jung coined the archetype of Puer Aeternus (Latin for the “eternal boy”) as an adult who lives in a constant state of boyhood, with a fear of commitment and an obsession with preparation for action that never comes.

The modern world has made it easier than ever to fall into the Puer Aeturnus trap.

Information gathering has become sport. Research, studying, learning, planning. All of it jammed into neat little dopamine feedback loops that convince you that you’re doing something productive and valuable.

You’re just one piece of information away from the big breakthrough. You’ll start the business when your business plan is perfected. You’ll meet your partner when you’ve scrolled through another round of profiles. You’ll get that dream job when you have one more degree in hand.

I’ve been there. I was Puer Aeternus.

Until I realized that the world wasn’t being run by a bunch of geniuses with 47 PhDs and 170 IQs. The world was being run by a bunch of normal people with abnormal bias for action.

The opportunity you seek is floating around at all times. But you have to take action to seize it.

Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. Get your dopamine from action.

I need to move faster to get ahead.

The bias for action that I learned to embrace had its own potential poison.

The world will pressure you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

I tried, but it didn’t work. Because when you’re moving too fast, you don’t have the ability to identify the things that really matter. You spread your action across a million things, which dilutes your impact.

Slow down to see what matters. Then sprint to act on those things.

In a world obsessed with speed, there is immense value to be unlocked from becoming difficult to rush.

Slow down. Create space to think clearly.

Uncertainty is a bad thing.

I spent most of my life with a deep fear of uncertainty. My life had mostly followed a nice, neat path, so when I’d encounter bits of uncertainty, I’d leap at the chance to avoid it, often committing to a stable, but objectively worse, path.

This, I’ve observed, is an all-too-common theme:

You’re crawling through the mud. You see a comfortable path out of it. So, you take it. But what you don’t realize is that if you had just been willing to sit in the mud a little bit longer, your real breakthrough may have been just ahead.

Not because it’s magically there, but because the mud changes you.

Tolerance for uncertainty is one of the most valuable human traits.

It’s easy to show up when the rewards are certain. When everything makes sense. When the path is entirely clear. But life is filled with challenging detours. Long and winding. Full of doubt and stagnation.

And those detours are actually what shape who you become.

The real rewards in life go to those who show up every single day when the rewards are uncertain. Without a guarantee. Those who take the next step forward when they can’t see where their foot is going to land.

Winners aren’t the smartest or most talented. Winners are the ones who can hold their nerve the longest.

The one who can tolerate the most uncertainty is the one who will eventually win.

It’s too late for me to start.

Here are a few of the most common things I heard from people in my life when I started my writing journey in 2020:

• “Twitter has been around for 10 years. Why would you start now? You can’t build a platform there now. You’re too late.”

• “Newsletters are dead. What would you start now? You’re way too late.”

• “Nobody reads books anymore. Traditional publishing is dead. You’re too late.”

In each case, I delayed starting because I assumed they were right. I trusted the wisdom of the crowd over my own.

The truth:

It’s never too late.

You can wake up and choose to see things differently. To do things differently. You can change. You can completely reinvent your life. Too late is an internal fantasy. A fear-based coping mechanism.

Every single time you think it’s too late, it’s probably still early.

Just start.

I’m not capable of that.

There’s a cognitive distortion called the End of History Illusion, which says that people consistently report changing a lot in the past, but don’t expect to change much in the future.

Basically, you think the current version of you is the final version. Obviously, you’re wrong, but convincing yourself of that fact is a difficult battle.

The word “yet” completely changed my life in this regard:

• “I’m not good enough” becomes “I’m not good enough...yet.”

• “I don’t know how to do it” becomes “I don’t know how to do it...yet.”

• “I’m not capable of that” becomes “I’m not capable of that...yet.”

“Yet” is a one word reminder that you are in a state of continuous change and growth. You are not a fixed entity. You are not done becoming. New experiences reshape your perspectives. New challenges forge new skills. New chapters create new values.

Always embrace the “yet” in your life.

I’ve got it all figured out.

“Do not think there are no crocodiles just because the water is calm.” - African Proverb

Every single time I thought I had it all figured out, I was about to get punched in the face.

(usually metaphorically, but a few times literally)

You learn, you improve, you level up, you grow. But you never figure it all out.

Life is un-figure-out-able. It’s far too complex. There are too many moving parts. Too many variables outside your sphere of awareness and control.

That’s the fun of it. You have to stay on your toes. Everything you have is rented, not owned. You have to work to keep it and grow it.

The water may look calm, but the crocodiles are always lurking.

Once you learn to embrace that, you can start riding them.

There’s no such thing as a harmless lie when you’re telling it to yourself.

So, this week, I’d love for you to reflect on the question:

What are the lies you’re telling yourself right now?

​read time 7 minutes

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The Helsinki Bus Station Theory

In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography.

In the speech, he offered a powerful thought experiment:

Imagine for a moment that you find yourself at the large bus station in the center of Helsinki.

There are two dozen platforms at the station, each with several different bus lines departing from them bound for a wide array of destinations outside the city.

Each of the different bus lines departing from a given platform follows the same route for a few miles to get out of the city.

Minkkinen likened this experience to the early years of a career:

You pick your platform, which sets your general direction, and then select a bus line to hop on from the platform.

He continues, applying the experience directly to the life of a photographer:

“Each bus stop represents one year in the life of a photographer…So you have been working for three years…You take those three years of work to the [museum] and the curator asks if you are familiar with the [very similar work of another artist]…Shocked, you realize that what you have been doing for three years others have already done…So you hop off the bus, grab a cab—because life is short—and head straight back to the bus station looking for another [bus].”

A few years later, the same thing happens again.

You become discouraged that work you’re doing is far from original, so you get off the bus and head back to the station to find a new one.

One that will finally bring you that prized originality you seek.

But this pattern of behavior overlooks an important reality:

The bus lines, which follow identical routes for the first few stops, eventually diverge.

“They begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination. Bus 33 suddenly goes north. Bus 19 southwest. For a time maybe 21 and 71 dovetail one another, but soon they split off as well.”

Minkkinen concludes that there is one answer to all of this:

“Stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus.”

The Helsinki Bus Station Theory says that the only way to achieve true originality in your work and life is to stay on the bus long enough to allow your unique path to unfold.

While originally shared as a mantra for creatives, I find myself applying this concept to every area of life.

Your whole life, you’re told to chase originality. To carve your own path. To be different. In your career, relationships, pursuits, and everything in between. This uniqueness is lauded. It’s what you admire in those that you look up to. It’s what you celebrate in those you read books about.

But the pathway to that originality is not what it seems.

You don’t wake up singular. Originality is earned through long, uncomfortable periods of seemingly unoriginal work.

Consider two identical pots of room temperature water. One is placed on the counter, the other on top of a hot stove. For a few minutes, the water in the two pots looks the same. There’s no visible state change. Then, suddenly, one is boiling over, while the other remains the same.

We know the water on the stove was experiencing a steady change despite the fact that its visible appearance remained the same right up until it reached its boiling point.

But that change was impossible to see. They both look entirely unoriginal. The work and energy were compounding invisibly, simply by existing. Simply by staying the course.

Simply by staying on the bus.

And now that the originality and difference is obvious, it’s hard to imagine the two ever being the same.

You are much the same. The daily work does not manifest in visible originality right away. It may take months, years, or even decades, but somewhere far enough down the line, just like the buses in Helsinki or the two pots of water, the divergence occurs.

Viktor Frankl once wrote, “[Happiness] cannot be pursued, it must ensue.”

Perhaps the same applies to originality.

Originality cannot be pursued, it must ensue.

Maybe originality is merely a byproduct of your willingness to sit with the discomfort of feeling unoriginal.

Maybe your tolerance for unoriginality is precisely what sows the seeds of your eventual originality.

This is an empowering idea, one that has provided me real peace in times of stress when I’ve felt lost or stuck.

Because it’s a reminder that you are on your own timeline. There are no points of comparison when you run your own race. You don’t have to jump ship to start some new blindingly amazing company right now. You don’t have to bet on yourself this instant.

You may find that the opening of your eventual diverging path comes from where you least suspect it. You may find that opening is being revealed in the most boring, unoriginal of ways.

This isn’t a case for blind persistence. Far from it. Staying on the bus isn’t about gritting your teeth down a line that isn’t for you. It’s about recognizing that the feelings of sameness are normal and not to be feared. That the boring, derivative work is where the beautiful, singular work begins.

The thing to check is not how unoriginal the ride feels, but whether the platform you chose is sending your bus somewhere you actually want to arrive.

Focus on direction, not speed. Choose the platform that sends buses in the general direction of the life you want, but worry less about the specific line being the “right” one. Really, there’s no such thing.

The line is yours to shape, but only if you’re still on it.

So, stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus.

​read time 7 minutes

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The 2 Types of Knowledge: Real vs. Surface

In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta.

After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at universities and institutions around the country on his findings.

There’s an apocryphal story from that tour that I first came across while reading the transcript of Charlie Munger’s 2007 commencement speech at USC Law School.

Max Planck’s chauffeur, after having heard Planck practice and deliver the talk so many times, had the entire thing memorized.

He jokingly asked Planck if he could deliver it at the final lecture.

Surprisingly, the physicist agreed.

The chauffeur put on a jacket and tie and proceeded to deliver a perfect lecture, word for word, just as Max Planck would have done. But at the end of the talk, a simple follow-up question from the audience left him completely stumped.

Quick on his feet, the chauffeur replied:

“That question is so easy, I’ll let my chauffeur answer it,” and pointed to a smiling Planck, who was standing in a chauffeur hat in the back of the crowd.

While the story is most certainly dramatized, it brings to life an important lesson with real implications for the current cultural moment.

There are two types of knowledge:

1. Real Knowledge

2. Surface Knowledge

Real Knowledge has depth. It’s flexible and dynamic. It can be leveraged in different ways, because the topic is truly understood, not just memorized. It’s only acquired through hours and hours of working on a specific craft.

Surface Knowledge is the opposite. It’s rigid and fixed. It may look the part to pass muster at a cocktail party or ace an easy exam, but it fails when put under any degree of scrutiny.

There’s a big difference between truly knowing something and just sounding smart talking about it.

And in the current moment, it’s never been easier to do so…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of artificial intelligence and its impact on human intelligence.

In a widely cited (though not peer reviewed) MIT study, researchers found that the use of AI tools for writing tasks negatively impacted cognitive function.

While the sample size and lack of peer review may not offer definitive proof of anything, my suspicion is that this is the first of many that will show something in a similar vein.

In a broad sense, I think most personal AI use cases are about outsourcing something to AI. You previously had to use your brain for that thing, but now you can press a button and have the AI do that thing for you.

It’s important to remember: What you outsource will atrophy.

Hire a personal chef, you’ll probably lose some of your cooking skills. Hire a money manager, you’ll probably be less in tune with your finances. Hire an analyst, you’ll probably become less proficient with analysis.

That’s ok when it’s about outsourcing specific things that are lower leverage. But what about when the outsourcing slowly extends into more generalized thinking?

My concern is that as we outsource more and more of our general thinking to these models, all Real Knowledge will atrophy. We will become defined by Surface Knowledge.

A species of breadth, but no depth.

And the social incentives for breadth are very real:

You’re encouraged to have an opinion on everything. We’ve collectively frowned upon those who say “I don’t know” or “I don’t know enough to have a perspective on that” in any social setting.

A lot of problems in the world are a second-order effect of people with Surface Knowledge masquerading as people with Real Knowledge:

• Policymakers with a flimsy understanding of the underlying issues they build campaigns around.

• Financial pundits who don’t seem to understand historical precedents.

• Executives who can recite the strategy on a quarterly call but can’t explain the mechanics of how it’ll actually work.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for our future.

In a 1990 interview, Steve Jobs offered a poetic description of the computer:

I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet.

The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list…But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.​

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

More recently, Naval Ravikant built upon this analogy:

Steve Jobs famously said that a computer is a bicycle for the mind. It lets you travel much faster than walking, certainly in terms of efficiency.

But it takes the legs to turn the pedals in the first place.

And so now maybe [AI is] a motorcycle for the mind, to stretch the analogy, but you still need someone to ride it, to drive it, to direct it, to hit the accelerator, and to hit the brake.

So, perhaps our “legs” will atrophy with this new motorcycle in our lives. Perhaps there are certain areas where Surface Knowledge will reign supreme.

But with these new technologies, there’s also a corresponding potential:

With less energy needed for the legs, where might we redeploy it to go faster, further, and deeper?

That’s the fundamental question facing each one of us today. And really, it’s a choice:

Sure, you can choose to outsource every element of your life. Become a Surface Knowledge being and slowly resemble something out of a dystopian future like Wall-E. You can become the chauffeur, confidently reciting the lecture but unable to answer a basic question.

Or, you can choose a different way. You can outsource some arenas in order to go deeper in others. You can ride that motorcycle at 100mph into your future. You can become Max Planck, smiling in the back of the room, ready to take on the world.

The choice is yours. Choose wisely.

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Winner’s Game vs. Loser’s Game

“No unforced errors.”

At a recent speaking event, I was asked by an audience member to share one piece of advice I wish I could tell my younger self.

Specifically, they asked for the non-obvious advice I’ve found most difficult to internalize and live by, despite knowing its importance.

My response:

No unforced errors.

Three words. And I’ve spent years learning why they’re so hard to live by.

In his 1970 book, Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player, scientist Simon Ramo broke down the difference between amateur and professional tennis:

• Amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game: 80% of points are lost on unforced errors. You win by avoiding errors and waiting for your opponent to make errors.

• Professional tennis is a Winner’s Game: 80% of points are won on incredible shots. You win by hitting beautiful, elegant shots.

I haven’t played tennis since I was a kid, but this is a mental model that extends well beyond the confines of the court.

The model has two core implications:

1. You have to know what game you’re playing. There’s negative value in attempting to hit magnificent shots if you’re playing a Loser’s Game. You increase your error rate and risk knocking yourself out of the game. You’re better off keeping it simple and avoiding mistakes.

2. The game you’re playing might change as you ascend through its levels. Just like in tennis, what starts out as a Loser’s Game can become a Winner’s Game. You may be rewarded for playing conservatively early on, but aggressively later.

But here’s an important truth it took me too long to learn:

Most games in life are Loser’s Games.

You don’t get rewarded for complex, magnificent shots. You get rewarded for consistently showing up and staying in the game. For being reliable. For figuring it out. For doing what you say you’re going to do.

You get rewarded for avoiding unforced errors.

I’ve wrestled with this reality at every stage of my life.

When I arrived at Stanford on a baseball scholarship in 2009, I was convinced that everything had changed.

During my freshman fall, I strained, pressed, and grunted in an effort to put everything I had into each perfect pitch.

But the results were horrific. The worst I’d experienced in my baseball career to date. I got behind in counts, walked batters, and gave up a whole lot of hits. It was discouraging.

That all changed when an assistant coach pulled me aside and offered one piece of advice:

“You’re playing the wrong game.”

What he meant: I had achieved success in my career by consistently throwing strikes. By making the hitters beat me. Now, I was attempting to throw perfect pitches with maximum intensity. I was trying to beat the hitters.

With his advice, I was back on track. I never blew anyone away, but I had a successful college baseball career.

By simply refusing to beat myself. No unforced errors.

This experience is a common one because there are forces that conspire against you:

Every time you grow to enter a new room, you feel imposter syndrome start to build, and you convince yourself that the game has changed:

What got me here won’t get me there. Now I need to do something dramatic to prove I belong.

So, you press. You strain. You force complexity into something that once felt simple.

But remember, the sum of consistent, boring, ordinary performances adds up to something extraordinary.

The two questions I often ask myself:

1. What type of game are you playing? Most games of life—professional, personal, health, and more—are Loser’s Games. You get rewarded for showing up consistently, not showing up magnificently.

2. Has the game really changed, or just your perception of it? With each new room comes the temptation to change the way you play. But it’s very rare that you need to. You’re in this room for a reason. You earned it. Act like it.

The next time you feel the urge to do something dramatic, to prove you belong, come back to the mantra:

No unforced errors.

​read time 11 minutes

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The 4 Types of Professional Time

A few years ago, I noticed a struggle in my professional life:

I’d end the day drained, but when I looked back, I was unable to point to a single thing that I’d meaningfully moved forward.

I started convincing myself that I wasn’t working enough. I needed to work harder. Do more. Grind.

But that got me nowhere, because it turns out, it was entirely wrong.

The problem wasn’t how much I was working. It was the type of work that filled the day.

To solve that problem, I created a simple model that changed the way I work:

Deconstructing Professional Time

I believe there are four types of professional time:

1. Management

2. Creation

3. Consumption

4. Ideation

I’ll walk through each to explain it more clearly.

1. Management Time

Most people spend the majority of their professional lives here.

Typical activities include:

• Meetings

• Calls

• Presentations

• Email processing

• Team and people management

• General coordination

It looks (and feels) like productivity. And it matters, because things tend to fall apart without it.

But it also has a tendency to expand and consume all of your time. Bleeding into every open space on your calendar.

Management Time can quietly shift from real productivity into performative productivity. A focus on movement over progress.

2. Creation Time

The second most common type of professional time. It’s usually what you scramble to jam into the gaps between Management Time blocks.

Typical activities include:

• Writing

• Coding

• Building

• Designing

• Analyzing

This is where real progress is unlocked, but it’s usually the first thing that gets crowded out, relegated to the thin windows that remain after Management Time.

3. Consumption Time

The first of two forgotten types of professional time. It’s often forgotten because it’s about input, not output, so it’s easy to cut when the calendar gets tight.

Typical activities include:

• Reading

• Listening

• Studying

The things you create are a natural byproduct of the things you consume.

Your consumption “diet” establishes your creation capacity. Garbage in, garbage out. Quality in, quality out.

4. Ideation Time

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

Ideation is the second of two forgotten types of professional time. It’s often forgotten because it has no input and no output. It’s just thinking.

Typical activities include:

• Brainstorming

• Journaling

• Walking

• Reflecting

Most of us have zero room for stillness in our working lives. We’re too busy producing to think.

The hard work may create linear progress, but non-linear outcomes are a result of slowing down. The non-obvious idea, the better question, the a-ha moment. All of the 10x opportunities sit on the other side of the stillness you’re avoiding.

Establishing Your Baseline

Before you can improve your balance of professional time, you need to understand your starting point.

Here’s the simple exercise I built to map my own:

For one week, at the end of each day, color-code every block on your calendar according to its dominant type:

• Management: Red

• Creation: Green

• Consumption: Blue

• Ideation: Yellow

An example illustrative calendar might look like this:

At the end of the week, step back and look at the big picture:

• What color dominates your calendar?

• Are there any real windows for Creation?

• What about for Consumption or Ideation?

• Is there a clear rhythm to the days or is it randomly scattered?

Most people are stunned by how much red they see, and by how little space they have for everything else.

With your baseline in hand, here are a few steps to improve it...

3 Steps for an Optimal Balance

Step 1: Batch Management Time

Parkinson’s Law is an idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

It was first proposed by British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a satirical essay in The Economist in 1955.

While originally intended as a humorous critique of bureaucratic inefficiency, the principle rings true:

• Have all day to process email, you end up emailing for the entire day. Have 30 minutes to process email, you crank through your entire inbox in a flash.

• Have months to complete an assignment, you procrastinate and it takes months. Have two days to complete an assignment, you work efficiently and get it done.

Management Time is a clear Parkinson’s Law risk. It has a tendency to bleed out and dominate your days.

But that same risk can become an opportunity: You can leverage Parkinson’s Law to your advantage.

Work towards a “batched” Management Time schedule:

Create discrete blocks of time each day when you’ll handle major Management Time activities, like email, meetings, and general processing.

• 1-3 email processing blocks per day

• 1-3 call and meeting blocks per day

The goal here is to avoid a schedule where Management Time bleeds into every open space on your calendar. We’re trying to keep the Management Time windows as discrete as possible to create space for the other types of time.

So, an illustrative calendar after adding Management Time blocks might look like this:

Note: Your ability to do this will scale with your career progress. If you’re early, small batching wins count; if you’re senior, you can be more ruthless.

Every hour of Management Time you contain will free you up for impactful work that actually moves you forward.

Which is where the next step comes in.

Step 2: Increase Creation Time

You just freed up space by batching Management Time. This is the primary place where that new space is invested.

To do this most effectively, aim to carve out distinct Creation Time windows on your calendar that are aligned to your energy.

The energy point is significant:

Trying to create at the very end of a long, tiring day may not be particularly conducive to robust, thoughtful output. Conversely, carving out Creation Time blocks in the morning or after a short afternoon walk is more likely to spark meaningful results.

Aim to block 1-2 discrete windows per day for Creation Time, ideally during periods when your energy is likely to be high.

Continuing to build on the same illustrative calendar, the addition of Creation Time in the early and mid-afternoon might look like this:

And once you have the block, protect it. No email, no Slack, no “quick checks” on other things. Creation Time is only as powerful as your ability to protect it from Management Time intrusions.

Step 3: Create Space for Consumption & Ideation Time

Both Consumption and Ideation are non-producing time, which means they’re often the hardest to justify when your days get busy.

That said, they’re both essential for generating the consistent, non-linear outcomes we’re all after, so they need to be blocked and protected.

Aim to block one discrete short window per day for each of consumption and ideation.

Adding in our Consumption and Ideation blocks, the complete illustrative calendar looks like this:

Note: This calendar is an idealized version with one short window per day for each of Consumption and Ideation. If that feels impossible, start small by scheduling one short block per week for each.

Now, each day has a balance across the four types of professional time:

• Batched Management Time

• Protected Creation Time

• Short, discrete windows for Consumption and Ideation Time

This is a calendar designed for real progress, not just movement. The goal is meaningful output, not impressive input.

If you feel stuck in your professional life, this model will help. Work through the calendar baseline exercise and three steps.

Identify your current mix of professional time. Then fix it.

​read time 8 minutes

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The Goal Gradient Hypothesis

105.5.

That’s how many laps you have to run around the first lane of a regulation outdoor track to cover the 26.2 miles of a marathon.

And, when I arrived at my local high school track last Friday at 4:45am, that was exactly what I planned to do.

I wish I had a thoughtful answer to the obvious “um, why?“ this opener no doubt sparks in your mind.

The truth is that every now and then, I like to remind myself that I’ve still got that edge—that “dog” inside me. That I can take on something intimidating and get it done.

Plus, I talk a lot about discipline, grit, and consistency around here. But my rule is that you can’t talk about it if you’re not going to be about it.

If there’s one thing you can always trust with me, it’s this: If I say something, I’ve got receipts to prove that I live by it.

So, there I was, standing alone on the track, in the pre-dawn darkness, with 105.5 laps to go.

I hadn’t told anyone I was doing it, not even my wife. That was by design. It made it more challenging. No one would know if I quit. Just me against me. A mental and physical battle, just the way I drew it up.

I pressed start on my watch and broke into stride for Lap 1.

If you’ve ever taken on a big, scary, ambitious goal, you know how those first few laps felt.

It’s exciting. You’re bubbling with anticipation at the challenge ahead. Motivated. Energized. Enthusiastic. Fresh.

But by Lap 8, that starting high had worn off and the reality of the undertaking set in.

The inner voice started getting louder:

It’s cold. Why is my heart rate already 160? Am I running too fast? My legs don’t feel great. This is stupid. I shouldn’t do this. What if I get hurt?

I had 97 laps to go. I was nowhere close to the finish. I wasn’t even close to being close to being close to the finish. Just a vast oval expanse of monotony and nothingness ahead.

Fortunately, I’ve researched goal-setting and achievement for many years, and as it turns out, there’s real science behind this dark experience.

In 1932, a psychologist named Clark Hull designed an experiment with a group of rats that he placed in a maze with food at the end.

He noticed something interesting:

The closer they got to the end, the faster they ran.

He called it the Goal Gradient Hypothesis. It says that our effort increases as we get closer to achieving a goal. The incentive of the reward grows stronger as we approach it, so we push harder as we near the finish.

You’ve probably experienced this in your own life. You get a burst of energy as the “finish line” comes into view (whether it’s in a marathon, a big project at work, or anything in between).

That’s the Goal Gradient Hypothesis at work.

But the hypothesis also explains why the vast middle “valley” of these endeavors is so challenging to navigate. Without the reward of the finish in sight, there is a notable absence of motivation and willpower.

This is where I’ve found you can leverage the science to your advantage...

If I were to map my likely motivation during the course of my track marathon, it would look something like this:

That’s a serious problem. With that pattern, it would be very difficult to stay engaged, keep the pace I was hoping to hit, and finish the race.

So, as soon as I felt that Lap 8 valley darkness setting in, I changed the narrative:

I’m two miles in. At Mile 5, I’ve got my first gel. I like that mixed berry one I brought. It has 100mg of caffeine too, so that’ll be a nice boost. I’m looking forward to taking that.

Hitting Mile 5 became my goal. Sure, I still had the distant marathon goal in mind, but Mile 5 was now the focus with the reward.

When I hit Mile 9, the same valley darkness was creeping back in, but again, I reset the focus:

I’m nine miles in. At Mile 13, I’m halfway there. That’s going to feel so good, because then every step is taking me home. It’s just a countdown from there.

Hitting the half marathon mark became my goal. It consumed my attention.

For the final 13 miles, I just kept creating (and reeling in) micro-goals:

At Mile 18, I only had two more miles to get to my final gel. At Mile 21, I only had 20 laps to go, so I focused on getting to 10. At 10 laps to go, the real finish line beckoned and I felt the final surge.

The new map of my actual motivation during the course of my track marathon looked like this:

The point here is simple:

When your mind drifts into the darkness of the enormity of the task ahead, change the narrative. Create a new micro-goal. Something to look forward to. A game within a game.

The mantra I repeat in my head:

Stay plugged in.

Not plugged into the finish 90+ laps away. Because no mind is strong enough to do that.

Stay plugged in to the lap ahead of you. Stay plugged in to this straightaway. Stay plugged in to this breath.

I did.

I finished my track marathon in a final time of 2:56:16. My average pace per mile was 6:42. I didn’t stop. I didn’t change directions. I didn’t take any breaks. It was hard. Mental torture. But I was prepared for it.

Every meaningful goal in life follows the same shape as my track marathon.

The start is exciting. The end has momentum. But the long, unglamorous middle is where the failure occurs.

The business that folds after a few months. The fitness goal that fades by February. The book that falls apart in Chapter 6.

The valley of the middle is where goals go to die. The Goal Gradient Hypothesis teaches us why—and gives us the tool to fight back.

So, the next time you’re staring into the abyss, remember:

Stay plugged in.

​read time 7 minutes

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The ABC Goal System

“Just be consistent.”

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard this advice countless times. So much so that it may even induce an eye roll or sigh.

Yes, it’s true, consistency is the difference maker. The common thread behind every major success story.

Everyone tells you to be consistent, but no one ever tells you how to be consistent.

And let’s be honest, it’s (much) easier said than done. Life gets chaotic. Motivation fades. Discipline wavers. Consistency breaks.

I’ve personally spent thousands of hours wrestling with this exact problem—and I’ve developed my own ultra-simple approach that works:

I call it my ABC Goal System…

The Origins of the System

The seed of the idea was planted in my head during a conversation with a legendary American marathoner in 2023.

I had just started running and was a few days away from my first marathon. When I asked him for advice, he inquired about my time goals for the race.

I told him I wanted to run a sub-3 hour marathon (an aggressive target for a brand new runner).

His response:

“For a marathon, you need three goals: A, B, and C.”

What he meant, in the context of the marathon:

• A Goal: Your optimal time goal.

• B Goal: Your baseline time goal.

• C Goal: Your downside time goal (for a first timer, just finish).

The idea was simple, but surprisingly powerful:

From the start, you focus on the baseline (the “B Goal”). Run the race to achieve it. Be conservative in your early approach. If you feel strong as the race wears on, start to push towards the optimal (the “A Goal”). If you feel weak and start to slip, just aim to hit the downside (the “C Goal”).

Runners who only have the singular time goal (like me before the advice) are likely to be completely derailed if they start to slip. Once their only goal is out of sight, they have nothing to drive them forward.

The new approach is designed to keep you in the moment—in the fight—no matter what you’re feeling. You always have something to focus on.

I took the advice and it worked, running a 2:57:31 in that first marathon in September 2023.

But soon after the race, I realized that the core principle behind the system applied well-beyond running.

It was a cheat code for maintaining consistency across my days.

Here’s how to use it…

My Cheat Code For Consistency

For every daily system in your life, create three goals:

• A Goal: Your most ambitious, perfect case.

• B Goal: Your middle ground, baseline case.

• C Goal: Your minimum viable level, downside case.

On days when you feel great, you hit your A Goal. On days when you feel ok, you hit your B Goal. On days when you feel bad, you hit your C Goal.

The reason this is so incredibly effective for building consistency is because it circumvents a common struggle of highly ambitious people:

The tendency to allow the optimal to get in the way of the beneficial.

We constantly say things like:

• I don’t have an hour to work out, so I’m just not going to work out.

• I don’t have two hours for deep work, so I’m just going to send a few emails.

• I don’t have an hour to call my friend, so I’m not even going to send a text.

But here’s the truth:

Anything above zero compounds.

Consistency isn’t about perfect daily performances. It’s about showing up, however imperfectly, and getting it done.

A 15-minute walk is infinitely better than sitting on the couch. 15 minutes of deep work is infinitely better than zero. Sending the text is infinitely better than nothing.

Anything above zero compounds.

To illustrate how this works, let’s use the simple example of daily exercise. Say I want to build consistency around an exercise habit, but I’ve been struggling to make it happen.

So, I create three goals:

• A Goal: 60 minutes in the gym.

• B Goal: 30 minutes of movement (gym, bike, walk, etc.)

• C Goal: 15 minute walk.

Note: The C Goal should feel almost embarrassingly easy to achieve. Trust me, that’s the point.

My baseline is always 30 minutes of movement. But if I slept great and feel ready, I hit that A Goal of 60 minutes in the gym. Alternatively, if my kid kept me up all night, I’m a bit under the weather, or I’m traveling, I hit that C Goal of a 15 minute walk.

No matter what, I have a focus—and whether I hit my A, B, or C Goal for the day, I know I’m making forward progress.

It doesn’t have to be optimal for it to be beneficial.

Anything above zero compounds.

And the best part is that you can apply this idea to any area of your life where you’re trying to build consistency and make progress.

In your work, it could look like this:

• A Goal: Two long deep work blocks. Batched calls/email time.

• B Goal: One long deep work block. Batched calls/email time.

• C Goal: One short deep work sprint.

In your romantic relationship, it could look like this:

• A Goal: Long walk or date.

• B Goal: Short walk or present conversation.

• C Goal: One call or FaceTime chat.

In your mental health, it could look like this:

• A Goal: 30 minute technology-free walk.

• B Goal: 15-minute technology-free walk.

• C Goal: 5-minute breathing break.

The ABC Goal System removes any intimidation or guilt in your pursuit of consistency and progress.

The system prevents optimal (A Goal) from getting in the way of beneficial (C Goal) and gives you the flexibility to make progress while allowing grace for the inevitable vagaries of life to enter.

You can hold yourself to the fire when it comes to the act, but give yourself grace when it comes to the amount.

In other words, make sure you do the thing, but don’t worry about how much of the thing you do.

Creating Your ABC Goals

To get started with your ABC Goal System, choose an area of life where you find yourself struggling with consistency.

Establish your ABC Goals. Write them down. Track which goal you hit on a daily basis.

My ABC Goal System is designed to help you show up every single day and build the momentum that comes from doing so.

Stop allowing optimal to get in the way of beneficial.

Remember: Small things become big things. Anything above zero compounds.

​read time 7 minutes

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The Pratfall Effect

In 1966, a University of Texas psychologist named Elliot Aronson ran an experiment to examine the role of imperfection on human connection.

Aronson recruited 48 college students and had them listen to an audio recording of a candidate supposedly auditioning to be on a “College Quiz Bowl” team (a popular TV format at the time).

The recordings were, in fact, staged. The candidate was just an actor working from a script. But the participants believed they were real and that they would be helping evaluate the candidate.

The participants were played one of four recordings:

1. Superior Candidate, No Blunder: Answers 92% of the difficult questions correctly. Sounds impressive. Modestly mentions an impressive resume.

2. Superior Candidate, Blunder: Similarly brilliant performance, but spills a coffee all over himself during the recording and exclaims, “Oh my goodness, I’ve spilled coffee all over my new suit!”

3. Average Candidate, No Blunder: Answers only 30% correctly, modestly mentions average resume.

4. Average Candidate, Blunder: Similarly mediocre performance, but spills coffee all over himself with similar exclamation.

They were then asked to rate the candidates on their overall likability for the quiz bowl team.

The findings were fascinating:

The superior candidate with the coffee blunder was rated the most likable of the four. The average candidate with the coffee blunder was rated the least likable.

The staged blunder had helped the competent person and hurt the mediocre one.

The researchers coined the term Pratfall Effect—theatrical slang for a sudden fall on the buttocks—to characterize a counterintuitive truth:

Competent people become more likable when they reveal small, harmless flaws.

They offered a simple explanation:

“A superior person may be viewed as superhuman and, therefore, distant; a blunder tends to humanize him and, consequently, increases his attractiveness.”

Now, that line was written in 1966, but it feels particularly relevant for the current cultural moment.

I assume I’m not alone in this experience, but my feed and inbox feels increasingly dominated by AI-generated content.

It’s clean. Technically perfect.

It’s also hollow. Like a sort-of grayscale version of perfection. It lacks depth, texture, and humanity.

The “AI slop” of the present moment isn’t riddled with mistakes. It’s actually the opposite. It’s devoid of the mistakes that make it feel real.

For most of human history, polish was the signal of competence. Polished work was how anyone could indicate they were credible. But now, polish is free. Anyone can produce something that appears flawless in mere seconds, even if they don’t have the earned competency behind it.

Accordingly, polish has, in some sense, lost its value as a signal.

The new signal is texture.

Texture is the mark of a human being who actually showed up, sat down, and did the work. The imperfection is your proof of humanity.

But it’s important to remember something here from the study itself:

The Pratfall Effect didn’t work for everyone. The mediocre candidate who spilled the coffee became the least likable of the entire group. The same blunder that humanized the competent candidate had hampered the average one.

The lesson: Competence first, pratfall later.

The company’s successful “ugly ad” works because the product is genuinely valuable. The leader’s admission of an error builds trust because most of their calls have been correct. The writer’s typo creates connection because their work is so powerful.

Imagine a master carpenter creating a beautiful wooden table. He cuts the enormous block from a beautiful tree. Shapes it through meticulous effort. Sands away the knots. But he doesn’t apply a finish. He doesn’t smooth every edge. The natural grain gives the table character. Proof of life.

Your task ahead is no different.

Work hard to earn your competence. Build an irrefutable base of understanding and credibility. Then resist the temptation to smooth every edge.

I try to stick to three core principles:

1. Earn your competence.

You can’t skip the work. Build competence. Create evidence. Through reps. Stacked days over a long period of time. There are no shortcuts here. Quiet progress creates loud results.

2. Don’t sand all the texture away.

Once you’ve earned the competence, allow your humanity to shine through the cracks. Hit send on the unpolished post if it feels right. Turn your phone on and press record without doing five practice takes. Fire off the quick memo to the team at the end of the week. The texture is the way.

3. Never over-engineer a spill.

Fake, engineered coffee spills are easily spotted. People see through them much more often than you think. The whole point is that the humanity is real.

In a future flooded with faux perfection, the rarest, most beautiful thing you can be is human.

A ruthlessly competent, yet perfectly imperfect, you.

Embrace the Pratfall Effect. Every now and then, it’s good to spill the coffee.

​read time 10 minutes

Welcome to The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter where I provide actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

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5 Life Learnings From 5 Years of The Curiosity Chronicle

A few days ago, I was reminded by a reader that May 14 was the five year anniversary of my first Curiosity Chronicle newsletter.

Sending that first newsletter, which went out to a few thousand people who had been receiving my tweet threads in email format each week, felt like something of a leap of faith at the time.

Fast forward five years and what started with that tiny leap of faith has compounded into something beautiful.

I began reflecting on what I’ve learned through the five years of writing The Curiosity Chronicle and quickly realized that all of it applies well-beyond the bounds of creative pursuits and into any meaningful endeavor in life.

I hope these life learnings help you turn your tiny leap of faith into something beautiful...

1. Start ugly.

My favorite quote is from the ancient poet Rumi:

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

It’s a reminder that you can’t plan your way into clarity. You have to act your way into it.

When I sat down to write my first newsletter, I was lost. I was 30 years old, living far from my family, with no idea what I was doing with my life. It’s easy to look back and wind some impressive narrative on how I got from there to here, but that would do a disservice to the lived reality.

There was no strategy. No path. No vision.

But the good news? You don’t need one.

You just need to start.

Because anything beautiful in this world started out ugly. And the only people who create beautiful things are those willing to do the ugly version first.

You won’t be able to see the beautiful version yet. You won’t even know what it could become. You just need to supply enough faith to get started.

Just start. Ugly.

2. Violent consistency is the only path to quality.

I recently came across a story in Art & Fear that I love:

A ceramics teacher split a class into two groups. One would be graded on the quantity of their output, the other would be graded on the quality of their output. On the final day, the first group would have their total output of pots weighed, while the second group would have one pot judged.

When grading day arrived, something fascinating happened:

“The works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the ‘quantity’ group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Quantity is a necessary precursor to quality. You cannot create once and hope for it to be perfect. You have to create a lot. Every single day.

I think of it as violent consistency.

In the five years since I started this newsletter, I haven’t missed a single issue. Two sends per week, every single week, for five years. I was violently consistent for a long time—and quality followed that consistency.

It’s not going to be pretty. It’s not going to draw oohs and aahs from the crowd. Because it looks messy in the days. It’s getting out of bed when you don’t want to. It’s sitting down at your desk when you’re tired. It’s pounding your head into a wall one more time. It’s ugly. It’s unimpressive.

But it works.

Quality is a byproduct of quantity.

Violent consistency. That’s the real recipe.

3. Think in decades (even while you act in days).

Here’s the trap nobody warns you about: Violent consistency can quietly betray you.

Daily discipline without long-term direction is dangerous. You get so focused on moving that you stop asking what you’re moving toward. You chase good instead of right. You optimize for the days and forget the decades.

And slowly, without realizing it, you drift away from what you were actually trying to build.

There’s a question I started asking myself early on:

How would you approach what you’re doing right now if you knew you’d be doing it for the next ten years?

The question helps you avoid the short-term traps that plague every endeavor. Chasing trends at the expense of authenticity. Chasing value extraction at the expense of value creation. Chasing monetization at the expense of energy and passion.

Every time I felt myself pulled into the short-term game, I reset my focus to the long-term one.

The question can be applied to every area of life:

How would you approach this relationship if you knew you’d be in it for the next ten years? You certainly wouldn’t approach it as a transaction, with your hand out, looking to extract value.

How would you approach this workout if you knew you’d be training for the next ten years? You certainly wouldn’t push yourself to injury chasing a single session.

How would you approach this work if you knew you’d be doing it for the next ten years? You certainly wouldn’t cut corners to hit an arbitrary quarterly result.

Think long. Act now.

4. Trust is the atomic variable of all meaningful pursuits.

The world wants you to focus on the wrong thing.

When I first started writing, I remember being drawn by the vanity metrics that everyone seems to tout on social media. Views, likes, reshares, etc.

The problem with these metrics is that they are often misaligned with the most important thing:

Trust.

Everything is built on top of trust.

Fifty years ago. trust was centralized. Companies like P&G and Sears, Roebuck & Co had an iron grip on the airwaves. They dominated advertising across radio, television, magazines, and newspapers. They built trust—and commerce was layered on top of that trust.

Now, fast forward to today. Trust is rapidly decentralizing. You can build a trust node through the things you put out into the world—and commerce can be layered on top of that.

Trust is the atomic variable. Without it, you have nothing. With it, the rest takes care of itself.

But trust isn’t built through views, likes, and reshares. It’s built through value. Consistently creating value for people. With authenticity. With real connection. With unscalable actions.

It’s harder to build, but you know it when you see it.

5. The world is permissionless.

I often wonder how many extraordinary people waste their entire lives waiting for permission from some invisible arbiter that doesn’t even exist.

Misery loves those who wait. Those who look around waiting for someone to come tap them in. To give them permission to do the things they want to do.

I spent most of my life waiting for permission. Permission to live differently. Permission to pursue my weird interests. Permission to share things with the world.

But the truth is that we live in an increasingly permissionless world.

In the last 15 months, what started with that single newsletter has become the foundation of a New York Times bestselling book that’s sold 400,000 copies and a natural skincare business that’s reached a multi-million dollar run rate.

I don’t say that to brag. I say it because there’s nothing particularly special about me. Nobody told me I could do that. I just wanted to do it. So, I did it.

Technology has cracked the walls of credentialism.

Opportunity is more freely accessible than ever before. You don’t need a stamp of approval. You just need to create things of value. You just need to go do things.

Your entire life will change when you stop waiting for permission to live the life you want. Good things don’t come to those who wait. Good things come to those who tap themselves in.

The life you want is on the other side of the permission you give yourself to live it.

Five years ago, I hit send on a newsletter that I was almost embarrassed to put my name on.

Today, it’s something I’m proud to call my own.

Wherever you are right now, your five years starts today. If it looks ugly, good. Ugly is fine. Ugly is the whole point.

Allow Rumi’s words to echo in your head (as they echo in mine).

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

That’s all for now. I’ll see you on the way.

​read time 7 minutes

Welcome to The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter where I provide actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

Forwarded this email? Join 800,000+ other readers here.

The e-book edition of The 5 Types of Wealth is available for only $2.99 through May 28. Perfect time to grab it for your next flight or vacation.

The Eject Button Mentality

In 2002, Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Jane Ebert designed a series of studies to test the role of optionality on happiness and human satisfaction.

In the first study, the students in a Harvard photography class were asked to make prints of their two favorite photos from the semester.

After creating the two prints, they were told to select one that they would get to keep, while the other would be filed in the department archives.

But at this stage, the students were split into two groups:

• The first group was told that the decision was final. Whichever print they selected was their print and they couldn’t change their mind.

• The second group was told that the decision was reversible. They could change their mind and swap prints in the next few days.

In the days that followed, the two groups of students were asked how satisfied they were with their selection, both during the swap window and after it had passed.

The findings were counterintuitive:

The final decision group had significantly higher satisfaction with their choice than the reversible group—and the gap persisted 11+ days later, long after the swap window had expired.

The researchers concluded that the brain functions differently with final decisions versus reversible ones.

After a final decision, your mind goes to work on supporting your decision, surfacing positives on the chosen path and negatives on the rejected one.

They called this a psychological immune system: A mechanism that silently works to maintain your emotional well-being.

But in the case of reversible decisions, the psychological immune system doesn’t seem to activate. Your mind remains alert to the alternatives, surfacing negatives on the chosen path and positives on the rejected one.

The most damning finding came in a follow-up, when the researchers asked the students which condition—final or reversible—they would prefer to be in.

The overwhelming majority chose the reversible path. They wanted the option to change their mind, even though that option was the very thing making them unhappy.

The insight:

We systematically choose the conditions that make us less happy because we mistake optionality for freedom.

This study isn’t just about photographs. It’s about your life. It’s a small, controlled version of a psychological and cultural moment most of us are living through every single day.

In the pre-social media age, your sphere of awareness was small. The partners, jobs, comparison set, and general information you could see was effectively confined to what was within your immediate vicinity.

Now, the devices and apps that consume every hour of your days have shattered the boundaries of that sphere. It’s grown exponentially, with no real natural limit.

The pool of potential partners is everyone on the dating apps. The pool of potential jobs and careers is every posting on LinkedIn. The pool of potential health protocols is infinite. The pool of potential comparisons is everyone on Instagram.

Optionality is at an all-time high, both in terms of quantity and accessibility.

But here’s the twist:

The reversibility baked into every path was sold to us as a feature. It’s actually a bug.

I’ve started calling it the Eject Button Mentality.

Here’s how it works:

Every meaningful thing you take on in life has a honeymoon period. It’s the early window where everything feels easy. Progress comes quickly. You’re in sync. Flow.

You feel it in new romantic relationships, friendships, projects, jobs, health pursuits, literally everything.

But after a little while, the honeymoon inevitably ends.

In your relationships, it might be when that first hard conversation appears. In your work, it might be when the progress slows and the learning curve flattens. In your health, it might be when the effort that felt exciting suddenly feels boring.

And when that happens, in a world where you’ve been wired to focus on optionality, you already have your finger hovering, ready to press the eject button.

Here’s the thing most people miss: The moment the honeymoon ends isn’t a definitive signal that you chose wrong. It’s a signal that the real work, and the real reward, is just getting started.

A few decades ago, that was well understood. But now, the eject button beckons.

The mistake isn’t leaving. The mistake is in misreading the difficulty. Difficulty isn’t a sign you chose wrong. It’s the cost of entry for the thing you want.

Every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something you don’t want to do.

And the cruel twist: Even if you don’t press the eject button, the awareness that you could is enough to poison the staying.

Remember the Harvard study: The simple knowledge that you could swap was enough to lower satisfaction, regardless of which photo you picked.

The danger of the eject button isn’t really about leaving. It’s about never fully arriving in the first place.

Now, this isn’t about gritting your teeth and blindly staying in every bad situation.

Sometimes the right call is to eject. Sometimes the relationship is wrong, the job is toxic, the program is broken.

The rule isn’t “never eject.” The rule is “never eject on a bad day.” Make the decision on a good day, with a clear head, based on the actual situation in front of you, not in the middle of the inevitable post-honeymoon hard patch with your brain primed by optionality to catastrophize on the future.

Learn to recognize the difficulty for what it may be: The cost of entry for the thing you want.

The eject button is meant to save your life when the plane is going down, not to be pressed the second the ride gets a little bit bumpy.

Sit in the uncertainty. Stick around for just a few more beats.

You may just find bright blue skies ahead.

​read time 11 minutes

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The Most Powerful Decision Making Razors

A razor is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making.

The term comes from philosophy. A principle that let you quickly cut away unlikely explanations or unnecessary steps was called a razor.

Razors aren’t perfect. They’re shortcuts. But used well, they can be the highest-leverage tools you carry through life. In an age of infinite information, razors can help you stop overthinking and start moving.

Here are the most powerful razors I’ve found...

The Newspaper Test

When making a decision, ask yourself whether you’d be comfortable with the decision being published on the front page of your local newspaper.

Would you be happy to have your neighbors, family, friends, and children read about the decision you made?

If not, don’t make it.

The Duck Test

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” - Maya Angelou

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

You can determine a lot about a person by observing their habitual actions.

Trust actions over stated intentions.

The Feynman Razor

If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really understand it.

Complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.

If someone uses a lot of either to explain something to you, they probably don’t understand it.

The Pygmalion Razor

When choosing who to spend time with, default to people who have high expectations for you.

The Pygmalion Effect is a behavioral phenomenon that says we rise to the level of expectations that others have for us.

So, if you surround yourself with people who believe you are capable of more, who encourage you to think bigger, you will rise to the level of those expectations.

It will be uncomfortable. That discomfort is the cost of entry for growth.

The Boredom Razor

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal

If you feel stuck on a hard problem, step away and make yourself bored.

Go for a walk without your phone. Drive in silence. Take a shower.

Your most creative breakthroughs come from periods of intense boredom.

The modern world has trained us out of boredom. The person who can sit alone with their thoughts has a permanent edge over the one who can’t.

The Luck Razor

When choosing between two paths, always choose the path that has the larger luck surface area.

Most of what we call “luck” is the macro result of thousands of micro actions. Your daily habits put you in a position where “luck” is more likely to strike.

It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home. It’s easy to get lucky when you’re creating motion, meeting people, engaging, and learning.

Sahil Note: Luck has been a personal obsession of mine for over a decade. So much so that it’s the topic of my second book with Penguin Random House. Still a ways off, but I’ll have a lot more to say on this one.

Occam’s Razor

When weighing alternative explanations, the one with the fewest necessary assumptions is usually the right one.

Put simply, the simplest explanation is often the best one.

If you have to believe a complex, intertwined series of assumptions in order to reach one specific conclusion, always ask whether there’s a simple alternative that fits.

Simple is beautiful.

The 80-10 Test

Make decisions that both your 80-year-old and 10-year-old self would be proud of.

Your 80-year-old self would have you prioritize the long-term compounding of the actions you take today. Your 10-year-old self would remind you to have a little bit of fun along the way.

The recipe for a productive, joy-filled life.

The Braggers Razor

“The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.” - Denzel Washington, American Gangster

Successful people rarely feel the need to brag about their success.

If someone regularly brags about their income, wealth, or success, it’s fair to assume the reality is a small fraction of what they claim.

Conversely, if someone consistently underplays their success, it’s fair to assume the reality is a multiple of what they claim.

The Thrive Rule

Investor Josh Kushner once wrote, “The goal of life is to be excited to go to work and excited to go home.”

Deceptively simple, but cuts through almost every career and life decision.

Most people optimize one side at the expense of the other. Optimize for both. Refuse the false tradeoff.

The Optimist Razor

Spend more time around optimists.

Pessimists see the closed doors. Optimists see the open doors. And probably kick down a few closed doors along the way.

Pessimists sound smart, optimists get rich.

The Smart Friends Razor

“What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.” - Chris Dixon

If your smartest friends are all interested in something, it’s worth paying attention to.

If that something seems crazy or weird, it’s worth paying a lot of attention to.

Sahil Note: My personal rule is that when three smart friends bring something up independently, I make a small investment in the area. Just enough to make me pay attention. The asymmetric upside of being early is worth the small cost of being wrong.

The Opinion Razor

“I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” - Charlie Munger

Learn to treat opinions as earned, not owed.

It’s perfectly reasonable to have no opinion on something that you haven’t done the work to understand.

Normalize “I don’t know enough to have a view” as a sign of strength, not weakness.

The Regret Minimization Test

“I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘Now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.’” - Jeff Bezos

Your goal is to minimize the number of regrets you have in life.

When faced with a difficult decision, project yourself into the future, look back on the decision, and ask yourself which path minimizes the odds of regret.

Choose accordingly.

Hanlon’s Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

In assessing someone’s actions, do not assume negative intent if there’s a viable alternative explanation, such as different beliefs, lack of intelligence, incompetence, or ignorance.

Applies to politics, relationships, and general online discourse...

Most people aren’t out to get you. They just aren’t thinking about you at all.

The Room Razor

If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the one where you’re more likely to be the dumbest person in the room.

Once you’re in the room, talk less and listen more.

Bad for your ego. Extraordinary for your growth.

Hitchens’ Razor

Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim. You don’t have to disprove something that lacks evidentiary substance to begin with.

Closely related to Sagan’s Standard (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence) and Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword (if something can’t be settled by reasonable experiment or observation, it’s not worth debating).

The New Opportunity Razor

When assessing a new opportunity, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I like the winning version of this thing?

2. Am I willing to do the losing version of this thing for a long time?

The first question asks whether you actually want the view from the summit. The second question asks whether you’re willing to embrace the mud in order to get there.

The best opportunities for your life pass this test. You’ll love the summit and the mud.

The Tonight Test

If you’re invited to something weeks or months in the future, ask yourself whether you’d want to do it tonight.

Humans are notoriously bad at predicting their future bandwidth. We say yes assuming we’ll have more time later. Then later arrives and we kick ourselves.

If you wouldn’t want to do it tonight, you won’t want to do it in a month.

The Time Test

Time is either invested or spent.

Invested time is put toward things that create value in the future. Experiences. Health. Careers. Relationships. Learning. Mindfulness.

Spent time is put toward things that don’t.

Always seek to maximize your ratio of invested to spent time.

The Bloom Rule

Build a life where you’re energized in the morning and exhausted at night.

Energized in the morning means you’re excited about the things you get to work on and the people you get to work on them with.

Exhausted at night means you gave your all to those things and people.

Your best life is built in that collision.

Those are the most powerful razors I’ve found.

None of them will make a decision for you. But used appropriately, they cut through the noise, so you can stop overthinking and start moving.

And ultimately, that’s the key to this whole game we call life.