Tag: Mindset

In one of my (many) posts about optimizing, someone made a comment to the effect of, “What’s the point of optimizing everything? Eventually you’ll optimize your entire life away and have nothing left to do.” That reminded me of what people say when they hear that I’m being cryogenically frozen when I die. Very often…

It cost me about $100 to go to my friend’s Christmas party. I had to buy a cheap flight from Vegas to San Francisco, and then a couple uber rides to and from the party. On the surface, that doesn’t make all that much sense to do. But I made a deal with myself—any time…

I remember hearing about the Teforia a long time ago. The story around it was that it was this comically overpriced tea brewer, often compared with the Juicero, that symbolized what was wrong with Silicon Valley. So, of course, I took very little interest in it. I like brewing tea and, having brewed it at…

Out of the corner of my eye, just past the cars lined up in the turning lane, I could see that something was coming towards me quickly. Way too quickly. I tried to swerve, but knew that the inevitable was coming. I heard crunching metal, the screeching of tires sliding sideways against the pavement, and…

I’m not sure how to even begin talking about 2017, except to say that it was a really exceptional year for me. As I’ve said in previous years, every year of my life has so far been better than the previous. The primary driver is that I work for permanent, not fleeting, progress. The net…

Eleven years ago I switched to a Dvorak keyboard. I was worried that I would get carpal tunnel syndrome if I stuck to Qwerty, so I made the switch. The first few days were pure agony, but then after a week or two it felt as natural as anything else. And, of course, it’s still…

I wanted to write a post about making the Biggest Decisions. Before doing so, I thought I’d jot down some of mine and look for commonalities. What surprised me most was how few decisions of this magnitude there were. Depending on where I set the bar, I’ve probably only made 10 huge decisions in my…

Have you ever noticed that amongst people who seem to be doing “the right thing”, results vary wildly? Throughout my life I’ve met a ton of hard workers with great habits. You’d expect that they would all do similarly well, but they don’t. Some are very happy, fulfilled, and successful, while others seem to always…

I like writing my annual gratitude post, mostly because it’s an easy one. I have a ton of things to be grateful for, and I like talking about those things. Fairly frequently, often at night before I go to sleep, I make a mental account of the things for which I’m grateful. I never make…

As I help more people work through their sticking points through coaching, I’ve noticed that a surprisingly large factor in many peoples’ lives is how others perceive them. This is largely a foreign experience to me, and I think that it’s been a great advantage to me to not really care what other people think.…