There are pivotal times in life, times when you re-examine your priorities, beliefs, and your life-trajectory. August 3rd, 2015, was one of those moments for me, because on that morning, I had a near-death biking accident, in Montauk, New York.
In 2013, I purchased a summer house in Montauk, in the Hither Hills area. We lived in New York at the time, and went to Montauk a lot during the summers, so it made sense. But in late 2014, we moved to Miami. Still, we decided we would keep the Montauk house. We loved everything about the quiet town of Montauk, from our house, to the beach, the restaurants, everything. Flying up to spend the summers there would be great.
In August 2015, after a three-hour flight and five-hour drive, we finally arrived in Montauk: myself, my wife, and my little daughter, who was then about one and a half. After quickly unpacking, we headed out to dinner, making grand plans for all the places we would go and things we would do for the rest of the month. But as the old cliche has it, “Tell God your plans, and watch Him laugh.”
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What I Am Reading
Why the ‘paradox mindset’ is the key to success
Although paradoxes often trip us up, embracing contradictory ideas may actually be the secret to creativity and leadership.
Revealed: British accents are the world’s sexiest
Sorry, France: in our latest global survey, accents from the UK swept the world off their feet
Why Do We See Dead People?
Humans have always sensed the ghosts of loved ones. It’s only in the last century that we convinced ourselves this was a problem
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With wellness rituals and techniques like yoga and meditation in the mainstream, almost everyone is aware to some level that mindful breathing is a healthy practice. But what if a simple, straightforward breathing technique could significantly impact your health and even heal an injury?
Ever heard of Wim Hof? At this point, probably so. He’s risked life and limb multiple times to set records, usually involving ice: longest time swimming in icy waters, longest time in direct, full-body contact with ice (yes, that’s essentially being buried up to your chin in ice), fastest half-marathon running barefoot on, you guessed it, ice. He’s also done a few mountain climbs in nothing but shorts and shoes, and in an unusual break from his more polar pursuits, he once ran a marathon… in the desert… without water… and rehydrated afterwards with beer.
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What I Am Reading
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.
The Science of Wisdom
As it turns out, wisdom doesn’t vary only between people who read about hypothetical scenarios in a laboratory. Even the same person typically shows substantial variability over time. Several years back, researchers asked a group of Berliners to report their most challenging personal issue. Participants also reported how they reasoned about each challenge, including meta-cognitive strategies similar to those described above. When inspecting the results, scholars observed a peculiar pattern: for most characteristics, there was more variability within the same person over time than there was between people. In short, wisdom was highly variable from one situation to the next. The variability also followed systematic rules. It heightened when participants focused on close others and work colleagues, compared with cases when participants focused solely on themselves.
These studies reveal a certain irony: in those situations where we might care the most about behaving wisely, we’re least likely to do so. Is there a way to use evidence-based insights to counter this tendency?
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Whether it’s a daily fitness log, an all-purpose bullet journal, or a traditional “Dear Diary,” there’s no doubt that journaling is a fashionable habit these days.
Personally, I started journaling in 2013, having read about it on a self-help blog that I can’t now recall (maybe Tim Ferris?) and I haven’t missed a day since then.
When I tell my friends and colleagues about my journaling habit, they usually ask what the point is. Did I want to meet some goal, achieve some benefit, hit some benchmark? Ironically, I didn’t start journaling as a means to any kind of end - I just wanted to see where it would take me.
There are a lot of different approaches to journaling, and different things work well for different people. Over time, I’ve found a method that works perfectly for me. Here’s what I do.
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You’re more likely to be struck by lightning. You’re more likely to be eaten by sharks. You’re more likely to score a royal flush in your first hand of poker. And on and on it goes. Basically, it’s scientifically proven that playing the lottery is a waste of money. So... why do it?
Every week, I play the lottery, and I have for years. I don’t plan on breaking this habit, either, even though I know that it’s essentially statistically impossible for me to win, and so the $2 I spend is a loss from the get-go. I’ve gotten some strange looks from friends and others when they find out I play or notice the tickets in my wallet. People are often surprised, and in some cases, disapproving-- playing the lottery has something of a taboo about it!
But for me, it’s not about the odds that I might not win-- it’s about the fact that I definitely can’t win if I don’t play. Let me explain ….
What I Am Reading:
GPT-3 Generates Hype in Closed Beta
Open AI’s language model can do things like write computer code from a simple description given to it by a human or generate a thought leadership essay on a particular topic (no matter how esoteric). This is the most exciting and incredible technology I have seen in decades. Some of the things I have seen people do with it are truly incredible!
What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s - The Coinbase Blog
This article was written in January and we are now 8 months into 2020. It’s interesting to see how much of Brian Armstrog’s predictions actually came true as Bitcoin breaks the $10K barrier.
The Ability to Regulate Your Emotions is Quickly Becoming The Premier Skill of The 21st Century
When I am asked about what traits I am looking for in a founder the most important one for me is emotional fortitude. Excerpt: “When something happens, our brain’s automatic response is to be reactive. When our amygdala, the small part of our brain that regulates fight or flight is set off, we have to avoid taking the bait of our raw emotional reactions that make us want to overreact,” Kris says.
What I Am Reading:
The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
A few months ago I wrote about Donald Hoffman’s Interview on Sam Harris’ PODCast. I had watched his TED Talk and was fascinated by his Interface Theory of Perception. Well now he’s written a book about how Darwinian Natural Selection has actually not selected for us to perceive objective reality as it truly is, but rather has shaped our perceptions as an interface that abstracts away the complexities of whatever the objective reality is. Instead of perceiving the true nature of reality, we perceive everything as icons that give us cues about fitness payoffs in our interface. I’ve drank the kool aid on this one. This book will 🤯.
The Playing Field - Graham Duncan’s Blog
During these uncertain financial times, fear reigns on the markets and investors. This article gave me some great insights on how I should be thinking and acting by breaking down the different levels of investors from the Apprentice to the Expert to the Professional and finally, to the Master. Get to know what it takes to up your investing game and act accordingly.
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I would’ve never imagined that dreaded obligatory rituals and traditions from childhood would become self chosen regular practices in my adulthood. High holiday prayers set me up for meditating and the annual Yom Kippur, or “Day of Atonement,” would be my first introduction into fasting. In Judaism, during the most holy day of the year we ask God for forgiveness and as a way of repenting for our sins, we abstain from food for an entire day. Needless to say, I really did not look forward to the day of “no eating” growing up. I now welcome regular fasting into my life, albeit the reason has nothing to do with soul cleansing or repentance. The day I struggled with for almost four decades of my life has now become something I do regularly with eagerness for the breaks it gives my body and mind from eating or even thinking about food. My fasting practices have evolved over the last couple of years depending on current routines or personal goals and can range from intermittent fasting to water fasts, all for different periods of time. Let me dive into some of their awesome benefits, the drastic ways it has changed my health, and the different types of fasting out there.
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My struggle with intense back pain led me through a variety of different therapies, some that worked better than others, but all worth sharing with the hope that one may help you too.
Back pain is one of those ailments that unless you experience it yourself, you don’t fully understand how debilitating it is and how much it permeates throughout your daily routine. It quite literally affects your entire life not to mention your mood (constantly being in pain can lead to constantly being pissed off). You’ve heard of ‘hangry’ - the mood you get when you haven’t eaten in a long time? Someone needs to come up with a term for those of us with back pain. It makes ‘hangry’ look like a trip to Disney World. Some people have back pain and it goes away over time. Some people have it and it never goes away; it’s a constant part of their life that they just have to cope with and manage. I don’t yet know which category I'll fall into but it's been ever present for several years now.
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From Animal Flow to the GNC InBody Machine - There’s no boundary I won’t cross
Last week I shared with you the diet that helped optimize my body, energy levels and blood work. Much in the same way people ask me what I eat, I get a lot of questions about my fitness routine. And while I post a lot of stories on Instagram about my peculiar “animal flow” workouts, that’s actually only half my formula.
I’ve always generally been what would be considered “in shape.” I was on the track team in high school. I played sports. I exercised (somewhat) regularly. As fitness culture evolved, so had my repertoire with the likes of Barry's Bootcamp, boxing, pilates, yoga (in all its various forms and temperatures) and other types of classes at least once a week. Cardio was a constant thrown into that mix.
Usually when doing cardio I’d go super intense because I was under the impression that I’d get the best results by dedicating an hour to accelerated running or sprinting intervals. I thought that would get me the physique I wanted and burn calories to lose fat quickly. I was wrong. It definitely got me a great sweat but it didn’t transform my body.
Finally after years of trial and error, I completely transformed my body with one pivotally crucial workout: weight training. Compared to cardio alone or cardio with a mix of “body weight only” activities, weight lifting is far more effective. And while pushups, situps, and lunges are great, if you aren’t using actual weights with those movements, your muscles and overall physique simply aren’t pushed into true transformation. Granted a few years ago I was doing lunges with a ‘spare tire’ around my waist but that’s not the kind of extra mass I’m talking about here!
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve likely seen some of my out-of-the-box fitness practices (Animal Flow) and over-the-top nutrition habits (green juicing & tons of carbs?!). I practice a way of life that incorporates and prioritizes healthy living into every aspect of my daily routine. But I wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always feel or look healthy; nor did I pay attention to what went into my body (tons of processed junk) and the havoc it was doing to my body.
Everyone I know commits to 30-minute workouts at least a few times a week. We live in a newly health-obsessed culture, and perhaps besides LA, nowhere is that more obvious than here in Miami. But I don’t know many people who take a daily 30 minutes to plan or prep their meals. In fact, NOT planning your meals after a solid workout is like getting a car wash on a day you know it’s going to rain. You simply aren’t reaping the full benefits of your actions. I’ve learned over and over again, that no matter how rigorous my exercise, without the right diet I wont see good health or fitness results. On any given day, presented with the choice to workout vs stick to my healthy food, hands down I skip the workout and choose to feed my body right. Obviously if you can do both the results and gains are optimal!
What I am reading:
Nicholas Pelham, the Middle East Correspondent for the Economist gives a rare glimpse into the conditions in modern day Iran. His account is particularly fascinating to me because my parents immigrated from Iran in 1977 and I have never been able to go back to visit given safety concerns. Warning this is a long read.
1843 Magazine - Trapped in Iran
Howard Marks is one of the most successful investors around and in my opinion his brilliance exceeds even Warren Buffet's. I look forward to reading his famous Memos that typically come out every quarter. His latest one speaks about the parallels between real life situations and investing with game theory. After reading it I have been actively looking for a poker coach for myself and my daughter.
Oak Tree Capital - You Bet!
I love watching nature and animal shows and am particularly fascinated with exotic animals like Giraffes (although I dont have any pets). If you are too, then have this quick read about some fascinating facts about Giraffes I bet you never knew.
Quartz - A tall drink of water
