It’s that time again and, just like last year, I’ve already been derailed. Some bad seafood knocked me on my ass for three days and made me capable only of moving slowly or sleeping. Which means I’m behind. This was supposed to be done _days_ago. Some people are so far ahead they’re already quitting their goals!
But I’ll tell you a secret. One of the things I like most about this process is looking back on last year’s failures. They tell you a lot more than the successes. Sometimes they say, “you didn’t really mean this.” Other times it’s “buckle down you lazy shit!” But the thing I hear the most often is “you have more work to do before you are capable of this” or “you’re not quite focused on the right measurement.”
A lot of this year’s goals are follow-ons from listening to last year and trying to put in the right ingredients to build transformational change. I think the next ten years could be something really special. So let’s get to work!
Better Daily Schedule
I have poor time management and it manifests in all sorts of ways. A previous wonderful boss once put an identical clock set 5 minutes late next to the existing clock in our conference room with a sign that said “Greg time”. So that’s one way it shows itself. Another way is that I fuss and fiddle too much with my environment prepping to do work rather than just hunkering down.
This year I am building a better schedule for myself. 6 am wakeup calls. 5x a week workouts. Real, actual deep work time set aside near daily. The only way this happens is if the right tools are in place.
A big piece of this is what environment you setup around you. If you build a room that’s empty except for a comfy couch and chairs facing a giant flat-screen TV on one wall, what are you going to do there? You’re going to waste a lot of time. Our environment matters more than we care to think and despite the fuss and fiddling I say I do, mine does need some more work. My wife did an amazing job surprising me by jzushing (yes, that’s the right word dammit, yes that’s how you pronounce it) my home office this past year and it has been fruitful. More of this.
Ditch Youtube
Last year I ditched Instagram on my phone and, after a bit of pain, it was glorious. It was gone long enough that even when I revisited it briefly on a holiday or weekend the desire to endlessly scroll was mostly gone, so I’d simply see what friends were up to and then delete it again.
This year I’ve deleted YouTube off my phone. YouTube is the main source of my entertainment, from podcasts to how-tos. While a lot of this stuff can feel productive, it really isn’t. It’s just consumption.
But the main point is, eliminate my phone as a source of entertainment and retain it as a tool. I rejected the idea of screen time limits when a couple friends were doing their own challenge and asked about them (Matt, Joe - hi), but I’ve turned that back on and limited Twitter/X to 30 minutes too.
Liminal Spaces
I’m going to try to cut back on AirPod use too, but that’s not quite the right goal. AirPods are glorious for getting deep into something at a coffee shop — and that’s one of my favorite things to do.
A better thing to say is that I want to recapture the liminal spaces in my life. The in-between times. You know how shower epiphanies are a trope? That’s because you’re not distracted in the shower and you have time to let your mind wander. Zvi Mowshowitz pointed out that:
I find phones distracting when doing non-internet activities even when there are zero notifications. Merely having the option to look is a tax on my attention.
That’s it exactly. Liminal times are when your subconscious or your basal ganglia or whatever is at work making connections or driving a point through the obtuse part of your cerebrum, trying to get you to see something you’re too distracted to see.
I want these times to fill up with my own thoughts instead of other people’s thoughts.
An Alarm Clock
One of the main reasons a regular early morning work session eludes me is that I stay up late. I’m more naturally a night owl but kids drove that out of me long ago. The main problem now is distractions - aka my phone in bed. I don’t want it there anymore.
My dumb digital battery-backup alarm clock just came, thanks Amazon. The phone stays downstairs at night now.
No Convenience Stores
This again. It was a fail last year, but it’s still the right idea. I’m going to reduce the Diet Coke and simply get it at restaurants and in cans at home. That’s it.
One of the really odd things about going to convenience stores is how “normal” it makes me feel. I just finished Hillbilly Elegy and so it feels perfectly natural to introspect certain impulses that I carry and recognize them as carryovers from childhood, or even from a couple of generations ago. Going to a convenience store is one of them. Call it a habit. Call it a vestige of the midwestern middle class dream. But whatever it is, it’s holding me back. I don’t need it. It’s holding me back. It is amazing to me how sometimes the simplest daily routines are the barriers that prevent us from becoming whatever God’s trying to lead us to.
Find More Conspiracies
This is a bit of a ramble so bear with me.
Awhile ago I read Ryan Holiday’s book Conspiracy and it had a lasting impact. Not the story itself, although that is fascinating and impactful too, but Holiday’s question: would the world be better if there were more conspiracies?
One of the initially more nonobvious things about chess is that most games should end in a draw. This is one of the reasons why chess is such an interesting game. It starts out even and the goal of players is to develop imbalances they can capitalize on. Chess is a perfect information game: everything there is to know is on the board right in front of both players. So the better the players, the more likely a draw becomes because the probability of them missing a future imbalance — or of a blunder — goes down.
The very top players have developed strategies where they intentionally make sub-optimal moves to confuse their opponents and force them to have to calculate on the fly. Or they’ll come out with very nuanced, deeply researched new ideas and use them in key matches. These fascinate me because they are ways to make conspiracies in a perfect information game.
There’s an investing phrase that has been on my mind too: volatility is vitality. (If you haven’t followed the $MSTR saga of the last couple years you should, and I want to hear what you think!) When you venture down untested paths, your potential outcomes branch more wildly than they would on well-worn trails. There will be higher highs and lower lows. Successes and failures. And that’s just fine.
All of these little puzzle pieces might not line up perfectly in your head and that’s fine. They don’t line up perfectly in mine either, but they’re all related somehow and I’m working on figuring it out. The way they relate is a conspiracy itself.
I think all of the best things in my life are a sort of conspiracy. My relationship with my wife is a secret nobody else is in on. My work is a conspiracy of ideas shared by a few. Brains Are Plastic feels like one right now. The best friendships feel the same way. And so do the best investments.
I love this feeling. I want to seek more of it out.
And I’m still long $MSTR too.
Fix Back Pain
I’ve had on and off back pain for years, but this year it’s been particularly bad to the point where it’s constantly there when walking. Oddly enough, lifting heavy doesn’t bother it much but it still might only be muscular.. just not the big muscle groups. I need to figure this out this year. I’m going to get an MRI shortly, a followup, mobility/stretching and PT if needed. But time to get this sorted.
Indoor Skydiving
There are two reasons I dislike flying so much. One is a lack of freedom of movement. I get anxious quickly if I don’t have options. I remember sitting on a rollercoaster at Kings Dominion with the bar over my immobile legs freaking out because I couldn’t move them an inch. But I also get the same feeling in a queue of unmoving cars waiting in a parking garage. It’s not claustrophobia exactly, just a deep mistrust when there’s no options. I have plenty of opportunity to keep working on this.
The other is a fear of falling. I hate the sensation and get anxious thinking about stupid things like going over a high balcony. So dumb. Anyway, the best way to get over this fear is a little exposure therapy. So let’s go indoor skydiving! I wonder if a kid will do it with me.
Visible Abs
Alright, I’ve been kicking this one down the list for awhile already. This is the one that occupies the biggest part of my brain space.
For most of my adult life I’ve flirted with the line between out of shape and not. Most of the time I’m on the right side of that line but during high stress periods or holidays (or both) I am decidedly not. I’m sick of flirting with that line. For years, I’ve proxied some sort of athletic achievement for being in-shape. I could run a decent mile, or 5k, or bench and squat well, or whatever else. But they were proxies. When I’ve felt my best and really carried confidence is when I was at my lightest.
There’s no coincidences there. That’s the thing that really matters. Get lighter and the mile time will plummet. Get lighter and I’ll feel more confident. Get lighter and I’ll sleep better, feel better, have more energy. Just get lighter.
How much lighter? Well I’m 44. I’m sick of flirting with that line. I want to be in a position to run a fast mile when I’m 50 and preferably 60. I want to still be jacked and hold muscle at 60 too. That means getting to a sustainable place. In fact, it’s easy to argue this is the best thing I can do for my entire life. Visible abs is a great barometer now and is achievable. My wife did it last year. For me, that’s probably 15% body fat. I’m starting at about 26%. I probably need to lose 40 lbs. Which would be considerably lighter than I’ve been in 20 years.
I’m building that 5x/week workout plan now. 3 days of lifting, one of kettlebells and mobility, one of HIIT sprints. A long walk at least once or twice a week too. Protein shakes are locked and loaded. New breakfasts. More eggs. Less everything. Oh, and a GLP-1. Yeah, if I want to do this I might as well use every tool available. I plan to maximize protein and strength work to make sure I maintain muscle. I’ve done that before.. the last time I lost 40 lbs (starting from a higher weight) I increased my lifts at the same time. But for now, less of a focus on pure weight and more of a focus on, well, bodybuilding. Let’s go.
Fashion
Look don’t laugh. I’ve always had a sort of I-don’t-give-a-shit chic athleisure look. Part of that comes from my upbringing and then immediately rebelling in college after 4 years of a tie and coat. Another part of it comes from working in a professional environment where all the management suits at the high-powered conference table needed to verify their path forward with the supernerd in a tiedye tshirt by the window. There was a sort of reverse hierarchy I saw for years: the worse you dressed the smarter you were, and thus the higher the status.
That time has past. And this article said a lot to me too. I like the ethos and I like the timelessness. I’ll be striving to learn and find some things that work better for me. You’ll still find me in an old tshirt and athletic shorts.. just not all the time.
Kid Independence
I love our kids and I love spending time with them. They’re (too quickly) getting older and I want to keep focusing on making sure they can build the independence muscle. All of them have a tendency to go straight to Mom or Dad when we’re around and ask us to do it, or complain, or “need help”. But they don’t need the help. And I think they don’t do this when we’re not around. I’d like to put a little more focus in guiding them to feel and demonstrate their own agency and the competence to execute. Team effort.
“Don’t handicap your kids by making their lives easy.” — Robert Heinlein
100 Pushups
100 pushups. Every day. For a year. A good wakeup exercise. Some friends and I did this on and off for a few months last year and it was great. This does not count towards other workouts.
Social Drinking Only
Since Covid, a daily drink or two has become a more regular thing. Not all the time, but often enough. It’s time to move this back to really just being a social thing that happens with friends on the weekends or at dinner. Not on Tuesday just because it’s 5pm.
No Judgement
As a spiritual goal, I’d like to reduce the amount of judgement I give others. Everyone judges others, it’s part of the natural mimesis we humans participate in. I like to think I’m not very judgmental, that I don’t cast too much of it, but of course that isn’t true. I’m going to work on continuing to do this less.
This is a self-directed goal as well as a spiritual one. Something I think about a lot: the impact judgement has on our psyche. I wrote this awhile ago and it’s still true.
The scary part is how judgement changes the way you think. If you are constantly judging others, it means you are constantly worrying about being judged too. You know that everyone is judging everyone else because you assume that what you are doing is normal behavior. Your brain builds a prison for itself with walls and bars built from your fears of what other people might think. And you stop yourself from doing things you want to do or trying things you might not be able to do. You keep your entire Being walking properly on Normal Street in a magical realm of acceptable behavior called Average-world. You stay there and stand just the right way, so that you fit in. In the world of human capability, there is no sadder constraint than the ones we put on ourselves.
More Fires
When I look back over the past few years, some of the best, most memorable times were spent in front of fires. Whether it was ‘inside fires” at home on slow evenings drawing or playing games with the kids, a campfire under pine trees and stars in southern Utah, or cigars and conversation on a Friday night, fires were one of the key ingredients. They build extra magic by helping us slow down and feel warmth. So I resolve to have more of them with more people.