Active Recall!

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Ramblings: Christmas Eve edition

I’m sitting in a massage chair at my parents’ house. My usual routine when home is to tag along with my dad to the gym, but it’s closed this morning. So I’m just going to mash on the keyboard for a few minutes.

Some spoiler-free thoughts on things we watched in the past week

    Spider-Man: No Way Home: As good as everyone says it is. I’ve listened to a few podcast reviews about the movie and one of the interesting points for the future is that they absolutely nailed this movie. And they happens to still include Sony.
    Venom: Let There be Carnage: I don’t know when 2.5 hours became the standard running time for big movies, but I don’t like it. Can’t stay awake. I liked all 90 minutes of Venom: Let There be Carnage and probably would’ve hated if it were another hour.
    The Matrix: Resurrection: As good as the sequels.

And on what I’ve been reading this week

  • “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman: Wonderful book about time and how skewed our view of time has become. We try to get faster at work tasks but we then fill the freed up time with more work tasks. We measure the effectiveness of leisure by how well it recharges us for work. (When the effectiveness of leisure is like the utility of art.) Even if you’ve bought into the idea of spending money on experiences over material things, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to have the most experiences. A great read heading into the new year and reflecting on how you spend time. A lot of it is probably spent on things that don’t matter.
  • “Hell Yeah or No” by Derek Sivers: A collection of essays from Sivers’s blog. He seems to have figured out how to live a calm, unrushed life. Sometimes, like right now, that feels like exactly what I want. Then the new year kicks in, things start moving, and I’ll switch back over to reading stories about hustle and will get back into deferring happiness for later.
  • “Dune: Messiah” by Frank Herbert: I just started this but I’m still very interested in this world.
  • I also finished Dune recently. Brian Herbert’s afterword in Dune has a paragraph that makes me think, “Oh I never want to be a writer”:

  • “Growing up in Frank Herbert’s household, I did not understand his need for absolute silence so that he could concentrate, the intense desire he had to complete his important writing projects, or the confidence he had that one day his writing would be a success, despite the steady stream of rejections that he received. To my young eyes, the characters he created in Dune and his other stories were the children of his mind, and they competed with me for his affections. In the years it took him to write his magnum opus, he spent more time with Paul Atreides than he did with me.”

    • There might be a limit to how far you go with creating a deep work environment.

    They have a better relationship later and, of course, Dune is a timeless work that has entertained millions and inspired countless other stories that came after it. So that might have been the cost.

    What I don’t want to do is end up in that kind of work-before-family state without having a master work to show for it.

    All these different books about time have been making me think that it’s totally fine to spend time on a solo podcast simply as a fun hobby.

    Captain Sinbad: Planning

    In his video “How to Reinvent Yourself in 2022“, Captain Sinbad talks about a 5-step process to prep for next year. It’s a nice mix of looking back and looking forward:

    1. Wins
    2. Losses
    3. Set goals
    4. Mind storm
    5. Reflect

    A year feels like it goes by fast so it can be helpful to take the time to actually look back at what you did. You did more than you think.

    I’ll jot some things down right now.

    • Wins: Married Amy (and pulled off a safe pandemic wedding), gave Booster a good first year on earth, had some work success, officiated a wedding, and had some sustained consistency with working out
    • Losses: Hit my highest body weight in the middle of the year (which did then lead to some success mentioned above in trying to fix it), really couldn’t get focused in the creator side of things, and could probably just be more present in many aspects of life.
    • Set goals: Buy a house with Amy (and get Booster a yard), get in the best shape of my life (some combo of bodyweight + strength), and keep at it with the creator pursuit.
    • Mindstorm: The house thing is sort of weird as a goal because it’s not entirely something that more effort moves the needle on, for fitness I’ve hired a coach for 3 months, and the creator pursuit might start with changing the domain to active-recall.com and actually participating in the Ship 30 for 30 writing challenge.
    • Reflect: Do these goals matter? Health for sure. A house would be nice but I definitely don’t want to fall into the someday-isle thinking of “Someday I’ll be happy and that someday is when we have a house”. I’ve been happy with far less space.

    The creator pursuit is something I’ll need to do a little more reflecting on. I just re-read Derek Sivers’ essay “How to do what you love and make good money“:

    Do something for love and something for money. Don’t try to make one thing satisfy your entire life.

    I already do something for money. And on many days open up The Five-minute Journal (okay, the app) and write “I have enough” then go on the rest of the day wondering how to get more.

    Maybe some of that is because some of what should be my art pursuit is tied to some future where it replaces the for money side of things. And I don’t actually take the time to improve in the art because the other side of things is more interesting or just a more effective distraction.

    Again, more to reflect on.

    In the meantime, this is probably the day of the year to close this blog editor and get back to watching football with my dad.

    Bruce Lee: A punch is just a punch

    “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.”

    – Bruce Lee

    I heard this in an Artosis video where he relates it to Starcraft and learning a core Terran build order. You go through three phases.

    1. You know the build order (but not really)
    2. You learn and execute the details of that build order
    3. You know the build order

    This is a level progression from novice → intermediate → master and it applies beyond Starcraft and martial arts.

    Applied to writing, you might hear that writing every day helps you improve.

    1. You know that daily writing is important (but can’t see why it might be difficult)
    2. You actually write daily and find out why it’s hard and what types of daily writing are effective for improvement and that you can build systems to maintain focus or to write toward something bigger
    3. You know that daily writing is important

    Another thing is that it can seem possible to skip to step #3. You’ll often see visuals of compounding.

    1. Consistency is the key
    2. You face resistance day after day but stick to it and build systems to do creative work consistently
    3. Consistency is the key (you start to see the hockey stick)

    Sometimes it can feel like just knowing that consistency will lead to some hockey stick of growth means that you’re able to skip past the majority of the flat portion of compounding.

    But it rarely works like that. #2 is the most important step. It’s where resistance lives. It’s where you’ll find growth.

    (The worst situation, of course, is being convinced that you’re at #3 but really still at #1.)

    Reading Recap 2021

    I’d like to write maybe a top 5 list and some thoughts on my approach to reading and what I’ll change in 2022 or something like that. But first, here’s a straightforward post with a list of the books I read this year.

    • Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel: First book that I read this year and probably the book from this year that I’d most recommend in the future. Pair this with Atomic Habits and, while you might not reach enlightenment, you’ll have a great framework for improving in any aspect of your life without ruining yourself financially.
    • How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis: Felix Dennis became mega-rich through publishing. If you ever opened Maxim or ripped a plastic wrapping to grab the demo disc with a magazine, you’ve experienced some of his influence. Main lessons: keep learning, don’t give up, and don’t actually make it a goal to get mega-rich. It requires too much sacrifice.
    • Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich: If you think crypto is crazy now then you should see how crazy it was when it started. If anything, you can learn about people playing the long game.
    • Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen: If you like Naval and his thinking, you’ll like this book. Eric did an excellent job curating Naval’s wisdom and Jack Butcher’s illustrations make timeless concepts even easier to absorb.
    • Doing Content Right by Steph Smith: Learn how to write for the internet and to look at the data to grow something online. It gave me a lot of ideas for how to improve this blog, but then I got distracted by very shiny web3 things. In 2022, I do want to get back to cleaning this blog up as my foundation to point different things to. I’ll be referring back to this book often.
    • Effortless by Greg Mckeown: Similar to Essentialism, everything seems so simple after reading Mckeown’s work. With Effortless, you do start to see things in your life that are harder than they need to be. Often because of your own doing. This is one of those books I need to review every quarter or so to inject some of this mindset into my life.
    • The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole: If you read other books on writing and think they’re too high level, Nicolas Cole is the answer. He knows how to write on the internet. He has years of ghostwriting for business execs, so he knows how others should write on the internet. If you read other books on writing and think they’re too low-level (punctuation guides, etc.), this book is the answer. Creating a specific emotion in your reader matters more than proper grammar. Cole gives sentence by sentence breakdowns of how to do this.
    • Soundtracks by Jon Acuff: Again, similar to Effortless above, this is a book worth reviewing. So much of life happens in our heads now. Yes, it’s good to find ways to get back into your body and be present. But it’ll also be good to make sure that the self-talk in your head is positive.
    • The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo: Another recent history book capturing the beginning of Ethereum without deep dives into the technical aspects. Pair it with Bitcoin Billionaires to see some of the real-world effects of crypto.
    • Year Book by Seth Rogan: Get the audiobook. Instant top-5 audiobook for me. Fun stories with someone who never lost the fascination and oddness of celebrities and fame even as he became an A-list celebrity. (But if you don’t like Seth Rogan, this book will probably change your mind about him.)
    • A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost: Another good audiobook from someone in comedy. There’s an incredible chapter about his mom’s work as FDNY chief medical officer during 9/11.
    • Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa: This is one of those “You’ll learn more from fiction than non-fiction” books. Or, I guess, historical fiction in this case. Musashi is a specialist showing the power of being a generalist. He’s one of history’s greatest swordsman. But if you go on reddit you’ll see history nerds saying he definitely isn’t the greatest swordsman. The fact that he’s in the running at all, centuries later, is because he was an artist and writer. He was able to package his legacy up for future consumption.
    • Wanting: The power of mimetic desire in everday life by Luke Burgis: A quake book for me—shook my current worldview. I don’t anticipate that I’ll be going through René Girard’s library anytime soon, so it’s great to have some of his philosophy distilled for casual readers. For a few weeks after, I was looking at everything through this “everything we want is because we want what others want” lens.
    • Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger: The most fun book I read this year. Arnold has succeeded in so many industries. This was published before he became the biggest star in Hollywood and before politics. It’s a deep look into the mindset he had to become a dominant bodybuilder. The main theme for me: learning. When he loses, he tries to learn why. He learns english because it’s key to learning bodybuilding from Americans in the 70s. And he keeps taking this learning mindset into acting and politics. But he also talks about brutal workouts in the woods with and it’s awesome.
    • Ikigai by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia: Find joy in your work until you have work you enjoy. Otherwise keep trying to find work you enjoy. Having that kind of purpose will be helpful for the rest of your life. Some objection to the book that I’ve seen (and that 4 circle venn diagram you might have seen) is in the inaccuracy of the word “Ikigai”. Whatever phrase you use, joy in work is worth striving for.
    • Hard Drive by James Wallace: Bill Gates was already doing his think weeks at lakeside cabins in the 90s when this book was published. For the other 51 weeks in the year, he was cooking up a brutal mix of programming, product, law, and sales to destroy competition. In a run in the late 80s, he 10X’s his net worth year over year, going from 1M, 10M, 100M, to 1B. I heard Bill Burr re-tell a joke: A German tank was worth 4 American tanks, but the Americans always came with 5. Microsoft’s early days had that kind of brute force to success.
    • iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon by Steve Wozniak: Take the incredible engineering mind of Bill Gates but then invert everything else. Wozniak isn’t searching for insane wealth or power. He finds technology to be really fun. He seems to look at the world through a whimsical lens and it seems like a better path to joy than some others might take.
    • The History of the Future by Blake J. Harris: More recent history. Facebook recently rebranded to Meta—read this book if to learn more about the early moves in the modernAR/VR space.
    • The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg: Shifted my world view and constantly reminded me that I have a very narrow lens: I understand tech but am very naive when it comes to finance, economics, and government. This was published in 1997—which was also the first year I used the internet. The authors predict how wider access to faster internet will change everything. They miss on some things (remote robot surgery in a couple decades) but absolutely nail cryptocurrencies (cybercurrencies based by cryptography) so it gives credibility to how everything else might play out.
    • 21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole by Gigi: Many people’s experience is buying some coins and then checking the charts every week or every day or every hour. I recommend this book if you want to learn about crypto beyond that. What do the true believers believe and why? Written from the perspective of someone talking about what they’ve learned so far.
    • The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul: So much more goes into thinking than what is happening in our skulls. Lots of science-based suggestions for how to improve thinking by using our bodies, environments, and relationships.
    • The Gap and the Gain by Benjamin Hardy: Measure your current self against your past self. Don’t measure against a future ideal. Strive for it and figure out the path toward that. But be grateful for the improvement you’ve already made. It’s a mindset shift I’d like to take into 2022.
    • Winning by Tim Grover: Similar to “How to Get Rich” by Felix Dennis, sacrifice seems to be the main theme here. Tim Grover trained Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade. He helped them win and has seen what it takes to be a winner. Give up some things to gain much more. Pair this with effortless if you want to try to hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time.
    • Pop-Up Pitch by Dan Roam: A very actionable book on how to outline the hero’s journey and create a business presentation around it. Understand the journey, write the outline, make the deck, persuade your audience. In 2022, I want to improve in turning ideas into visuals and all of Dan Roam’s books are great guides I’ll be reviewing.
    • To Pixar and Beyond by Lawrence Levy: Pixar’s first decades seen through the lens of their chief financial officer. It’s interesting to see another perspective after reading a handful of books from their creative side. Pixar made classic films to build their foundation, but there was still a lot of other work to make it the great business that it was. A majority of Steve Jobs’s net worth was from Pixar in the 90s. Understanding some finance and marketing is the key for solo creators to work for themselves. A lot of that will pattern match what big companies did in the past but on a smaller scale with technology to augment different pieces.
    • Dune by Frank Herbert: I wish I read this years ago. Amazing world building. Gain power by controlling the flow of information: create religions, find spies, trick your enemies. Or also with genetic modification and psychedelics.

    That’s that and I’m looking forward to more reading in 2022.

    And a quick note on automation, in case you care. I timed myself grabbing the Amazon links and pasting them in manually. It took 10 minutes. I was tempted to automate this somehow but I’m pretty sure it would have taken longer than 10 minutes.

    Podcast Notes: Hasan Minhaj with Shaan Puri

    • Podcast
      My First Million
    • Episode Title
      Hasan Minhaj – Comedy, Netflix, Haters, and Money
    • Episode links
      Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

    Hasan Minhaj: What resonated with me as an artist is: play big. Why are you playing scared? Cook. You’re on the court. Cook. Let it fly, launch, like be loose. Do the impressions, do characters. That’s what my thing. That’s my goal. I want to be loose. I want to have fun.

    In a different “My First Million” episode, Shaan talks about how the episode will be “all ideas, no frameworks, no mindset stuff”.

    This interview with Hasan is the opposite: All mindset, frameworks, a couple ideas. Close to the end of the year and this might be my favorite episode from any podcast this year. (MAJOR recency bias, but still.)

    • Cook: Hasan uses a few basketball analogies and talks about preparation for shows. If you do the work and you really know you’ve done the work, the practice, the drills, then you can go out there with confidence. You know you can cook, so cook.

    • Reasonable: Hasan talks about the negative feeling in his gut when he read about pseudonyms in Shaan’s thread on web3/metaverse. (It’s one of the reasons they did this interview in the first place.) But they didn’t just say “Hey you’re an idiot” “No you don’t get it, you’re the idiot.” They talked their sides out knowing they don’t know everything and it’s worth hearing another perspective from someone you respect. Always good to see reasonable people disagreeing in today’s world.

    • Psuedonyms: Hasan did the work in comedy clubs, did the years on The Daily Show, rose up through a very difficult ladder. So it sucks to be attacked by anonymous trolls. Especially as those attacks have had more and more real world implications.

    Hasan: “But for the first time in history, there are people that stand on stage that stand on the stage of business or life or comedy or art, and they use their actual government name. And then pseudonymous trolls who don’t use their government name, can launch digital drone strikes attacking you, your character, your family, that can then potentially impose economic sanctions upon your future. And they do it pseudonymously. Philosophically, I don’t rock with that.”

    • Authenticity: Shaan points out that all of that traditional fame is still very valuable in ways that pseudonymous fame can’t approach.

    Shaan: “I think basically the reason you get the rewards you get, are because of all these things as well. So by you going out there under your real name, with real face, with authenticity, telling your real life stories, which is what you do, right? You’re talking about fertility issues. You’re talking about stuff like that. You’re getting like bing, bing, bing. The score… the meter is just running up. Why? Because it’s in such scarcity today.”

    • Awareness: Near the end of the 2-hour episode, they comment on what the feedback for the episode will look like. Shaan mentions that people will say “People are gonna be pissed, by the way, they’re like “Dude you had on Hasan, you just talked about your own philosophy the whole fucking time?” “Shaan… you know you’re not the star of this, right?”. In this episode, there’s ample time for the conversation to breathe. Hasan and Shaan can both go deep.

    • Time: Speaking of time, Shaan does the “I want to be respectful of your time” podcast host thing and Hasan says he can stay on, nothing planned right after. Which makes it more believable when Hasan says he’s fairly independent. He’s not rolling around with an entourage from appointment to appointment.

    • Routines: Hasan always does a workout before a show: pull-ups, cardio, nothing too crazy. Something to get things moving inside. Shaan has been practicing a mindset routine and has it down to 10-minutes. At a certain point, Shaan realized that money is good, business success is good, but if you’re not in control of your own mindset then it doesn’t matter. Given that, mindset work became the most important skill to work on.

    Hasan: On tour, it’s just about body maintenance. So I’ll do running, I’ll do some pull-ups, some core stuff. Just stuff to get my body going and start breaking a sweat. And what I love about like right around minute 30 to 45, I’ll get out of my head and into my body and so much of life right now, getting out of getting out of your head.

    • Seen: Hasan Minhaj is touring again. Shaan Puri went to his show and got the VIP treatment and they recorded this podcast in the days after that. Shaan asks what it’s like at the end of the show when you’re closing out and you’re standing on stage knowing you just killed.

    Hasan: Every artist, and I think every human being… Whether it’s intimate relationships, personal relationships, collaborating and business, family dynamics, and hopefully your career: everybody wants to feel seen.

    Last thing, Shaan with a $100 million mindset that costs $0.

    Shaan: I want to be able to have as much fun, whether I’m in a mansion, having a feast with celebrities as if I’m stuck in an elevator by myself. Which means I don’t want to have to have some nice shit in order to feel good. I don’t want to have to have the circumstances be going my way for me to feel good.

    Info Diet: Backing into the new year edition

    Okay so I have been doing a bunch of reading, listening, watching videos, etc. And even taking notes! But then I don’t end up actually posting anything. Back to basics:

    • Post here first: I can sort of always write. I can’t always record audio. I can’t always edit video. And writing is foundational to those other things. And I can post writing here.
    • Start in the editor: If I write notes then I sort of mix writing for public consumption or private thoughts and then if I want to use them for something I’m posting somewhere then I need to translate it in some way.

    I should probably post to Twitter by default instead so that I can work out crisper writing and have some skin in the game and a chance that people will see it. But for whatever reason that’s gotten into my head as a heavier lift than writing paragraphs here.

    So I’ll write here.

    Onto the actual info diet.

    “Dune” by Frank Herbert (book) — A couple hundred pages left here but I’m enjoying it a lot. I talked to a friend about it who is reading it before watching the movie. I’m realizing watching the movie first really helps with some of the things that might be confusing in the book. The houses and all that. In any case, of course everything you read goes through your current lenses. Currently I’ve been thinking a lot about web3/NFTs etc and read The Sovereign Individual this year as well. How does Dune fit into all that? Information flow, religion, culture.

    “Idleness, no more,” he said. “Don’t try to divert my attention by trying to make a simple matter appear mysterious.”

    It’s December, so there’s definitely some mix of reflection of this year and looking forward to the new year.

    You might be setting health/fitness goals for next year. Oftentimes there are simple changes to make but we can be pulled toward things that appear mysterious. Fad diets have mysterious names. (P.S. I’m not saying all fad diets bad!) “Intermittent fasting” creates the right type of curiosity. If it were called “The skip breakfast diet” then it brings on too many immediate objections for some people to get past. But intermittent sounds scientific enough to make you think it’s not just someone telling you to starve yourself.

    Phrasing matters. Control of information matters. Dune shows how this plays out on a distant planet.

    (Or: ARE SANDWORMS ON KETO???)

    “To Pixar and Beyond” by Lawrence Levy (audiobook) — Levy was Pixar’s CFO for over a decade. Interesting look at a creative company from a financial perspective. Again, I’ve been following some web3 things this year and one of the interesting threads is seeing the mix of finance and digital art. Releasing a web3 art project can also mean you’re creating a mini economy or joining a mini economy. It’s evolving fast in that new world.

    Pixar is an example of this working really well in the traditional world. At a certain point, Pixar was the majority of Steve Jobs’s net worth. Levy fought for Pixar’s creative control when Disney had leverage built over decades.

    “The problem with success, even a little success, is that it changes you. You are no longer walking along the same precipice that drove you to do great work in the first place. Now you have something to defend: a reputation, money in the bank, a brand, real customer expectations. Success can take the edge away.”

    Pixar had an incredible run. Marvel had an incredible run. Star Wars had an incredible run. Disney has an incredible run going.

    I’m writing this the day after UFC 269, when Amanda Nunes’s streak came to an end against Julianna Pena. Nunes had 12 straight wins coming in. 

    1. Toy Story
    2. A Bug’s Life
    3. Toy Story 2
    4. Monsters, Inc.
    5. Finding Nemo
    6. The Incredibles
    7. Cars
    8. Ratatouille
    9. Wall-E
    10. Up
    11. Toy Story 3
    12. Cars 2

    Pixar had 11 straight wins before Cars 2.

    Whether you’re known for hitting or known for hits, that’s a whole lot of success to navigate through.

    “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (audiobook) — I’ve been re-listening to this in a weird way. I just put it on to sleep and put a 30-minute sleep timer. So I’m listening to 30-minute chunks but listening to some range between 3 to 30 minutes (if I can’t fall asleep) at a time.

    This is a terrible way to read a book. But fine for a fiction re-read to experience different scenes again.

    And in Flatland, when you need a tool, you just sit down and write it. So Hiro starts by writing a few simple programs that enable him to manipulate the contents of the scroll without ever seeing it.

    Text is resilient. Similar to Dune, Snow Crash involves language and how languages affect information transfer. Some languages can spread ideas faster than others.

    2021 showed the power of memes on a global scale. Memes are more than text over images—but that specific meme format is one of the most viral forms of information today.

    (And now I’m guessing Mike Shinoda named his NFT project “Ziggurats” with some connection to themes in Snow Crash—Sumerians building ziggurats, The Tower of Babel, etc…)