MNTS #33
MNTS #33
[Week 52/ Year 2023] 2024 Theme - Time Intentionality, Poor Charlie, How to look rich, ATG references, History of Christmas, Jeff Bezos, EDC additions
Mainly, Notes To Self - my weekly attempt to compress everything noteworthy I read, watched, listened to, and discovered during the past week.
Hey y’all! Happy New Year’s Eve!
I’m not a big New Year's resolution guy, but I do take the opportunity to reflect and set a theme for the year ahead. In 2023, my theme was consistency, and I’m pretty happy with how I improved at being consistent over the last 365 days. Across the board: work, lifting, running, sleeping, flossing, reading, parenting, and even writing this newsletter, I put very few zeros on the board this year, and as a result, the habits I formed have been gradually building a body of work I’m increasingly proud of. In the words of Peter Kaufman, “The most powerful force that could potentially be harnessed is dogged incremental progress over a very long time frame.” So here’s to being constant in 2023 and beyond.
For 2024, my theme is going to be intentionality, specifically intentionality with time. I’m in a season of life where there are significant demands on my time, and I’ve been increasingly feeling the need to work on letting less of my time be carelessly bled.
I’ve been thinking about time and different ways to break up the day. I heard or read that Elon schedules his day in 5-minute increments (whether this is true or not isn’t really important, but it was the genesis for this idea). The problem I run into with that level of scheduling is the task-switching component. I suspect there is an order to work that would allow for ease of switching, things that gracefully transition into each other, or perhaps even the less related, the easier it would be to switch. Also, mechanisms like changing clothes or moving to a new space/environment I suspect would be helpful. I wrote out a day in 15-minute increments; I suspect most people (myself included) underestimate how much can be accomplished in 15 minutes and overestimate what can be done in a day.
So, in this example, 24 hours in a day, 7 hours for sleep leaves 17 waking hours or 68 15-minute time blocks, 102 10-minute blocks, or 204 5-minute time blocks. If I were to say, write for 15min each day, that would be 105min of writing per week. Which is significantly more than I would do week to week consistently. The compounding effects could be substantial, and if I were to get used to, say, writing for 15 minutes from 7:00-7:15 each morning, I could reduce the mental load of carving out time to write. Not giving myself the option has worked well with lifting and running, so I’m thinking the same method could be applied to other aspects of life I’d like to improve. And before you tell me this is ludicrous, I agree this isn’t for most people. However, my reasoning is that we already live a highly regimented/structured lifestyle; this is just the next turn of the crank to get more out of a time-limited / full season of life.
My next step would be to list out all the practices and habits I already do on a regular basis and then add in extracurriculars. Once I have a comprehensive list arrange them strategically throughout the day according to energy levels and energy consumption. As an example, doing anything physically or cognitively demanding or requiring willpower after putting the kids to bed is likely a poor choice.
Yes, ultimately, this is just time blocking; however, knowing that I have, say, 68 credits to allocate every day is an interesting way to view time. Leveraging the theory of constraints and challenging myself to complete or progress tasks in 15-minute increments could be turned into an interesting game/challenge. More to come on this, but I’ll be implementing something along these lines in 2024.
Reading
Stripe Press Poor Charlie’s Almanack - Once again revisiting the grandfatherly wisdom of Charlie Munger. What was once a pricey tome of a book is now available gratis on the web from Stripe Press. SKIM IT, READ IT, LISTEN TO IT. You are guaranteed to find something valuable to apply to your life. While I disagree with some of the typographical choices, having this wisdom freely available is as close to a modern-day miracle as I’ve ever experienced. What a gift.
How to look rich by Financial Times - substitute “rich” for whatever look you are after, and I’d argue these same principles apply. h/t
“Quiet luxury” is a kabuki performance of moneyed ease and indifference.
What the quiet luxury idea gets right is the importance of signals that only some people can read, little nods to people like you or, more likely, to people you would like to be like. To do their job, the signals have to be just subtle enough, and change when they become too widely legible.
List of 50 ATG Articles from 2023 by Ben Patrick - an incredible free reference source for joint rehab, strength, and mobility.
The Ghost of Christmas Past: A Look At the History of Christmas by Farnam Street - a far darker and stranger pagan history than I would have imagined.
Reveling could easily become rowdiness; lubricated by alcohol, making merry could edge into making trouble. Christmas was a season of “misrule,” a time when ordinary behavioral restraints could be violated with impunity. It was part of what one historian has called “the world of carnival. ” (The term carnival is rooted in the Latin words carne and vale—“farewell to flesh.” And “flesh” refers here not only to meat but also to sex— carnal as well as carnivorous.) Christmas “misrule” meant that not only hunger but also anger and lust could be expressed in public.
What Benjamin Franklin and Nathanael Ames were calling for was a Christmas that combined mirth and moderation. Both of these men were shopkeepers— versatile, thrifty, and self-made. What they were trying to do was actually similar to what the Puritans had done a century earlier: to restructure people’s work habits by having them do away with periodic binges. But unlike the Puritans, their strategy did not entail the elimination of Christmas. Instead, they were spreading the idea— a new idea—that Christmas could be a time of cheer without also being a time of excess.
Listening
Jeff Bezos is my kind of maniac. 100% worth listening to the full conversation, but below are a couple of my favorite snippets from the interview.
Bezos on his morning routine:
Bezos: Well, I, first of all, I get up in the morning and I putter. I like, I like have a coffee.
Lex: can you define putter.
Bezos: Just like I slowly move around. I'm not as productive as you might think I am. I mean, I because I do believe in wandering. And I sort of, you know, I read my phone for a while. I read newspapers for a while. I chat with Lauren. I drink my first coffee. So I kind of, I move pretty slowly in the first couple of hours, I get up early, just naturally.
I’m a big proponent of “slow mornings,” and knowing that Jeff Amazon putters away his mornings just makes me giggle.
Bezos on crisp documents and messy meetings:
Bezos: I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. And so, the meeting is about like asking questions that nobody knows the answer to and trying to like wander your way to a solution. And that is, when that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile. It feels to me.
It has a kind of beauty to it. It has an aesthetic beauty to it. And you get real breakthroughs and meetings like that.
Random
Two new additions to my EDC for 2024. First is the Thermoworks TimeStick. If I’m going to get serious about time blocking, I 1000% needed to buy an over-engineered pocket timer to keep me accountable. The second is a fresh A5 Leuchtturm Dot Grid notebook. I have been using these for the past several years, and this new version with 120g paper is absolutely gangster.
Happy New Year! And as always…
Stay spirited, stay resilient.
Andrew