Today is my 40th birthday and I thought I’d take the chance to share a collection of small thoughts I’ve had this year. As you can see in the history of this blog, I used to post much more of my thoughts online. However, as I got older, I realized people rarely change their minds. So I spent less time putting my thoughts on the internet.
But if you know me, then you know I still have a lot of thoughts and love to put them out there. So over the years, I’ve gotten in the habit of texting myself what I might otherwise posted online. It’s become a kind of miniature private blog to myself. So, for my 40th birthday, I got myself a present. The chance to share about 40 of the things I’ve texted myself over the last year (organized by date texted, not topic):
True greatness requires longevity.
Investment in institutions (government, school, business, communities) is the key to human thriving. Institutions attempt to systematize beyond the influence of individual human choices. In that way, they are also inherently dehumanizing.
The bias of the news is that there is always something newsworthy. You’ll never see the headline “Things are mostly the same as they were yesterday”. Daily news needs to talk less about the present. More about the past. And a lot less about what the future might hold.
Just because a habit was once adaptive, doesn’t mean it’s working for you now.
Religion can offer us an ancient sense of humility: Our free will is constrained by our weaknesses. I’m grateful it’s also constrained by a loving God.
Parent as if you knew your kids were going to be okay. You’ll push them less and enjoy them more. Then they’ll probably turn out okay.
Capitalism is said to have an invisible hand that guides markets. Democracy needs to have a visible hand that voters can see, appreciate, and want to support.
Move away from “is what I’m saying the most correct” to “is what I’m saying the most effective”.
It seems like Adam and Eve were never meant to die. Never meant to go to heaven. Maybe this is the purpose of the human story. To end up better than where we started.
The American empire will eventually fade. Instead of putting energy towards holding on to as much power for as long as possible. Maybe it’s more productive to put that energy towards supporting growing nations that might share our values (maybe like India, Brazil, Ethiopia, etc).
One of the best ways to make America more resistant to radicalism and more open to gradual change is to help us realize just how successful they we've already been.
Every piece of criticism needs to be couched in the context of predetermined acceptance.
If someone is primarily describes the “good news” of Christianity as just delayed gratification (wait for heaven), that is truly some very bad news.
Your emotions are true, but they might not be telling you the truth.
Avoid financial advice that sounds like easy money or a complicated workaround.
Unlikely benefits of having a lot of children younger: Every year early you have a child, is an extra year you are in their life. Every extra child you have is an extra family member for them after you are gone.
The tradeoff to the many benefits of the 18th-century Enlightenment was an over-reliance of what we can see and understand. Apparently there is a lot about the world we will never understand. Thinking otherwise turns us into skeptics and conspiracy theorists.
We should replace the phrase “I can’t do that” with “I don’t want to do that” (because the benefits of success aren’t worth the costs to try)
“Don’t worry what other people think. No one is keeping your score. They are only keeping their own score” -Jeff Probst
Maybe everyone everywhere is struggling and needs to be treated with kid gloves. If so, I’ve got a lot of more apologies to give.
When you compare men and women, remove the top 1% (which is mostly old white men). Then by almost all measures, women are doing just as well if not better than most men over the last 30 years. This is both a celebration of the progress made and a model for how we can help moving forward. This is a big idea I’ve gotten from listening to Scott Galloway
Immigrants are an incredible piece of positive social engineering. There’s something about the immigrant experience that even makes them perform better than other marginalized groups. Are Kamala Harris and Barack Obama successful people of color, or are they products of a family with an immigrant work ethic and talent?
I’m less afraid of AI taking over society like Terminator. I’m more afraid of AI negatively affecting the way humans actually live their lives in the real world. This is already happening with social media algorithms.
The average age of inaugurated Presidents when I was a kid (Clinton, Bush, Obama) was 49. The average of the next 3 presidents (Trump, Biden, Trump) is 75.
Cynicism is a type of cowardice.
“Identical twins, raised apart are more similar than fraternal twins raised together. The most important thing you give your children is genetics. The second is zip code” -Daniel Pink
I feel like this justifies my laissez-faire parenting and the fact that I’m so picky about houses. Note: I’ve been technically homeless for over 6 months.
When things are bad, just keep pushing. When things are good, slow down.
Too much advice, even too much good advice, can create anxiety in the receiver and actually end up being taken incorrectly and become bad advice. If you feel that now, just stop reading this blog post ;)
People only get better when it’s easier to improve than to stay the way they are.
One of my greatest personal flaws is I love the simplicity of Checkers and I am easily tired from the complexity of Chess.
A good summary of the U.S. economy of my adult life: The price of non-essentials have gone down (TV’s, computers, air travel, etc) largely thanks to automation, but the price of essentials has gone up (housing, groceries, college, etc), largely due to fixed human labor costs. Curious how AI will affect this,.
There is never a more fickle mistress than the approval of others.
The bad times will come and go. So will the good times. It’s all about enduring and enjoying the now. If life is a gift, we’ve got to accept it all with gratefulness. Somehow.
Expectations are what drive us. They are also what drive us crazy.
My pitch for a new cult: “25 year Amish”. There are costs to living in the modern world. So instead of tying your culture to an arbitrary century like the Amish do, just delay all technology you use by 25 years. So go out and get a Blackberry and start ordering books from Amazon.
If you find yourself serving someone, something, or some group more than they serve you… great! That’s the purpose of life. To become a net positive on the world.
Negative emotions are key factor in human survival. Ignore them at your own peril.
That said, see above about the news high jacking your emotions.
People are not drawn to you. People are drawn to how they feel about themselves around you.
Earnestness is not a measure of whether what you are hearing is in fact correct. Earnestness is saying confidently what you think is correct. This is what makes Trump so believable, yet so incorrect.
It’s weird that as you get older your parents have less impact on your daily life. But it’s not until you’re older that you realize just how much they impact who you are.
I have found that my own lack of empathy is a lack of willingness to endure the feeling someone else in having right in front of me. It is brave to embrace the joy and sorrow of the world around you.
This NYT article is about how one of the most powerful things you can give children to increase their resiliency is an intergenerational self. An idea of how they fit into the larger narrative of their family history. A way to test this, is to see how much of the stories about their parents and grandparents they know. My wife and I played a trivia game asking our children these questions. They scored an average of 84%!
Career advice for my children: cast a wide net of hobbies and interests and then follow the ones that offer the lifestyle (money, hours, satisfaction) you desire.
You don’t get to choose who you are. That is largely a function of who you spend your time with. But you do get to choose who you spend your time with. I’d suggest regularly participating in more than just one group to ensure a healthy competition of ideas.
I’d like to increase not only my transparency, but also my vulnerability. One challenge for myself is to use more “I feel” statements. People will commonly respond incorrectly to vulnerability, but worst case scenario I’m just giving us all practice.
I’ve gotten very good at communicating with large groups. My challenge for the next decade of my life: give more individual attention.
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