The Largest Red

 “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” ― Otto von Bismarck Originally heard in my life from Charlie Munger, but upon a quick Goog, turns out Otto gets the credit. The abundance of misattributed quotes aside, you get the gist. This has largely inspired my learning journey over the past 5 years as I have tried to learn different philosophies for how to structure my life and see where others fail. You hear stories of people who get to the end of their life and think "I wish I spent more time on X or Y." Countless tales of people neglecting their health, families, friends, mental well-being, faith, etc. Jack Harlow song came on shuffle recently: Time's tickin', my mom's 50 Told me that she been thinkin' 'bout spending time different It's more precious, what if I took the same method at 21 and adopted it? Great question, Jack. What if? Is this possible? To a degree, certainly. But what lessons can't...

There is a debate in cryptocurrency surrounding the merits of proof of work vs. proof of stake. Personally, I better understand the reasons surrounding proof of work's superiority when it comes to creating sound money. The concept of proof of work is an interesting mental model to impose in different spheres of life. On the one hand, I think of this as you have to expend a certain amount of energy to get an outcome. I believe (as do many religions and philosophies) that there is some sort of karmic balance within the universe, such that you must provide value in order to extract value. People who lie, cheat, and steal ultimately will be worse off than those who operate with integrity. Whether or not that manifests itself during our finite lifetimes on earth, and what that manifestation looks like is another set of debates. Marcus Aurelius and the stoics for example will say that being a "bad person" is its own form of punishment, with quotes like "the best revenge is...

Thoughts towards the end of 2024 It is difficult when there is nobody to blame but yourself. There are a few areas of my life where I find myself consistently failing and struggling to make progress. First and foremost is my diet. I am very streaky in that I will string together a few good days or weeks, and then fall back into old habits of overeating. I will eat very clean during the week, get good sleep, exercise consistently, and then get to the weekend and eat a bunch of junk, not exercise as much, and sleep in. It has gotten so bad at points that I have had a running “days since last binge” tracker on my phone home screen where I would see how long I would go. The saddest part is that I seldom made it past a week or two. Telling nobody but the man in the mirror, I struggled to be accountable to myself. In the new year, what will I change? I have had in mind a contract to sign with myself, but never actually did it since it seems a bit performative. Banging my head against the wal...

Thoughts as of December 2024. “The provisional life might be defined as a vague malaise: current relationships, work, and lifestyle feel like placeholders until the ‘real thing’ arrives—someday.” I have meant to write about this concept for several months - ironic, right? I feel as though I am finally settling in after being in limbo for some time. It is easy in the chaos of day-to-day life where constant stimuli are coming at you from every direction, and you need only to open your phone or computer to be exposed to a ceaseless barrage of information. I have become aware more recently of myself and others saying “I am too busy for X” or “I want to do Y I just have not gotten around to it.” I am just as guilty as the next person. It seems like we are waiting and waiting and waiting until the day where we finally have time to tackle all of these to-do’s and get down to zero. The problem for me is that when I do get a moment of respite at night or on a weekend, I often squander it on soc...

Thoughts as of November 2024 - subject to change as I learn more - feel free to poke holes, always happy to be corrected. Many people over the past few years have asked me for tips and tricks about diet and nutrition. I have gone into detail with people on an individual basis over text/dm, on phone calls, or in person, but I felt it would be helpful for me and others to spell out some of my thoughts in greater detail. This serves a dual benefit of forcing me to list out my thoughts and having something to point to for others to look into at their convenience. Also, over time it will be interesting with new studies and experiences to see how I revise my own beliefs My advice to you People often get annoyed with me when they ask a simple question about nutrition. “Is this good?” “Is this bad?” The answer is, it depends. Some will ask what brands of products that I use, and sure, I could tell someone to eat xyz food or use this supplement, but if you do not understand the reasoning behind...

The Adventure of Truth I have heard from several disparate sources in the past few weeks the notion that following the truth is the most adventurous way to live one’s life. Initially, this sounds like some trite saying you would see on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt that someone wears to the gym, but the more I have thought about it, the more it has resonated. The best thing about reading books and articles and listening to podcasts and audiobooks across different fields has been the connection of ideas and principles that start to take shape. The core attestation in the truth equals adventure claim is that by using truth as a guide, we cede control to the powers that be outside of our rational mind and operate by some “feeling” instead. This sounds a bit woo-woo, but then again, the esoteric is what I find to be the most interesting when it comes to thought experiments. I heard from another source - the creator of Veggie Tale’s autobiography to be exact - that there is almost assuredly...

Nobody Cares Not to sound too pessimistic, but I think it is true at the end of the day. This is more from a principles perspective than anything else. I think it is probably beneficial to live your life thinking that nobody cares about what you are doing. A chip on your shoulder attitude is part of this mindset, in that it may be helpful to live life as if you have something to prove and that you should make people care about you. However, I feel like the more important interpretation of this quote that is likely fundamentally true, is that people think about you a heck of a lot less than you think they do. In my life, if I take the portion of my waking thoughts that are about my own thoughts, feelings, biases, actions, past, present, and future, and put that over the portion of externally focused thoughts, it would probably round to zero. Not that I am overtly selfish or have a huge ego, but it is just impractical for 99% of people to genuinely think about others more than them...

“How do you do life without a coach?” Thoughts as of 6/12/24 This question comes from a recent conversation with a friend contemplating life post athletics. For people not involved in athletics past a certain level, this may not resonate. However, I think that the longer one stays within a sport, and the more of one’s time that sport takes up (highly correlated I’d imagine), this will likely strike a chord.  Further, I think it is more of a commentary on the schooling system writ large rather than something narrowly confined to athletics. The lesson should ring true to anyone finding themselves in the midst of uncertainty, but an example will be helpful in illustrating the point. Speaking from my own experience, I had always been involved in competitive sports. I started at probably 5 years old and continued until I was 22. The myriad benefits of athletics have been widely touted my whole life, such as increased discipline, teamwork, leadership, etc. but I think that there is a som...

The Battle Against Biology and Evolution Thoughts as of 6/6/24 Something that has come up again and again in my quest for physical fitness and happiness is the unavoidable fact that we are products of evolution and at the mercy of our biology. The problem is, we have escaped the food chain and these systems no longer serve us. The more you learn about the processes of the body whether it be chemical balances, circadian rhythms, impacts of light, exercise, and food, etc. etc. there are evolutionary reasons why things are the way that they are. We are beings that are optimized to survive and reproduce and things that serve that purpose give us good feelings and things that do not, do not. This does not lead to optimum behavior in today’s world. One example of circadian rhythms and our biological clocks is in the impact of light on biological processes. If it were up to us, we would probably want to divorce these clock signals from light exposure so as to be able to stay up late using art...

You Are What You Eat - Literally! Thoughts as of 5/30/2024 These thoughts have been percolating for a few months now since I first heard the concept mentioned on a podcast. It seems so incredibly simple and obvious, and yet, after 25 years of living, I was and am blown away. We have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” It sounds trite and meaningless, and until I heard it expressed in this specific way, I dismissed it as nothingness. In fact, I imagine most people do the same, and I am not sure the originator of the quote intended the meaning in the way I now interpret it. As an athlete, I would always hear analogies along the lines of treating your body like a racecar. You need to take care of the racecar to make sure it is operating at peak efficiency. When it came to food, this was more so fuel for the racecar, or gasoline. You would not just put any old thing into a racecar and expect it to perform at its best. Similarly, as an athlete who wants to perform at a high level,...

Ego - Lifting and Otherwise Thoughts as of 4/15/2024 These thoughts have been percolating for some time, and there are many more illustrative examples outside of lifting, but I feel that the point is easier made with lifting. In terms of religious or philosophical concepts, I have a lot of work to do to understand what exactly the ego is, and what exactly pride is, but I know they are both very dangerous. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity made me think about pride more seriously for the first time. All of the quotes about pride being the worst sin, or compared to the devil himself I was able to brush past as hyperbole, but upon reflection, it makes sense. Similarly, ego I have never taken all that seriously; however, books like Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy, and other schools of thought that warn of the dangers of ego have been a part of my knowledge consumption over the past few years. One of the catalysts for taking these concepts more seriously was an instance in the weight room and...

Craving Thoughts as of 3/31/24 One of my biggest challenges lately in my fitness journey has been on the diet side. It is not so much that I am eating unhealthy foods, it is more so resisting the urge to splurge and eat too much. “All things in moderation.” This has gone as far as me putting a live “days since binge” day counter on my phone. Today I am up to 7 days, a record since inception. Listening to an episode of the Huberman Lab podcast recently, he mentioned a lesson he learned related to overcoming addiction. It went something like “If you can tolerate craving for a second, you can do it for another second, and then another.” In designing the architecture of my days, I have taken that principle seriously. Chunking the days into different parts so that the stress or boredom of work is less likely to get the best of me. In deciding the topic for this post earlier in the week, I did not intend to write about eating at all. Rather, I was thinking about the Buddhist view of craving,...

My Favorite Form of Procrastination Thoughts as of 3/26/2024 It is hard to sit down and do the work. The book The War of Art lays out this difficulty quite well, labeling it “the resistance.” I have been able to use the concept of resistance as a perfect signal as to whether or not something is worth doing, in that the more I dance around and avoid sitting down and moving towards a solution or putting in the work, the more important it is. Unfortunately, my favorite methods of procrastination are considered colloquially to be productive. Reading books, listening to podcasts/audiobooks, conversations with old friends. These are all great in their own right, but when they are used to avoid other more important tasks or thinking, then their utility diminishes. I struggle with action. It is much easier for me to read a million and one self-help books, learn about psychological principles, or the latest discoveries in health and wellness than it is to take those very same lessons and apply ...

Language Thoughts as of 3/21/2024 A recurrent thought as of late has been the limitations of language in communication and in understanding more broadly. People often speak of certain words or expressions in other languages that do not have an equivalent in English. Just this morning in an audiobook the author mentioned how “casa” in Spanish is different from the word “home” in English. While true, I believe that the problem lies a bit deeper, and is more prevalent than we might realize. I would argue that it is unlikely that the word “home” in English even means the same thing to two different native English speakers. There is an unnavigable gap between the thoughts in my mind, the words on this page, the words you read, and the thoughts that come from them in your mind. I have found so often that arguments on the news, online, or in the media generally stem around differences in the definitions of terms rather than the substance of arguments. There are a plethora of videos online lam...

Consistency Thoughts as of 3/19/2024  The irony of missing two weeks of so-called “weekly” posting and then coming back with a post of this title and theme is not lost on me. One of the first books in my recent reading journey which was revitalized during the pandemic after lying dormant for almost a decade was Principles by Ray Dalio. This was my first foray into Dalio and his systems at Bridgewater, and as I entered the workforce for the first time in any serious fashion, it struck me as profound and yet an incredibly sensible set of guidelines in theory - whether or not they worked in practice was to be seen - but inspired hope nonetheless. A guest speaker during summer football camp in college recommended that we list out our values explicitly and commit to them. This was a shortcut way to make decisions in life in that you could simply look to your values and see if a choice aligns with those values or not. These two core themes have been percolating in the back of my mind sin...

Simple vs. Easy Thoughts as of 3/3/2024 Funnily enough, the first time I heard the distinction between simple and easy was in a film shown in a theology class in high school. The movie had religious implications and the lesson taught by this particular scene has been lost on me, but it has been, and will continue to be quite profound. In order to discuss the distinction in more detail, I think that it would be helpful to define both terms and the distinction at the outset. In this context, simple can be defined as a synonym for uncomplicated, whereas easy can be defined as a synonym for unchallenging. Something that is simple is not difficult to grasp intellectually, while something that is easy is not difficult to execute. Once this difference is made apparent, it starts to reveal itself across many different areas in life. The difference between words and deeds, thoughts and actions, “do as I say, not as I do.” One such instance is investing. When I first got my job at a hedge fund, ...

Limbo A short reflection this weekend as I have had a mentally chaotic week. Thoughts as of 2/25/24. Unfortunately, more aspects of my life have been in limbo over the past few months than I would like. I suppose in an ideal world, everything would be more clear-cut and well-defined, but perhaps that would not be an ideal world after all. We live in a world of uncertainty where the only constant is change; however, I feel like the primary buckets of my life experience across living, working, and relationships, have been far more uncertain than they should be at a steady state. This uncertainty is particularly debilitating because it makes things difficult to enjoy in the present moment, and also brings with it an immense resistance to confronting the problems and formulating concrete solutions or paths out. For the former point, I have likened it to a sword of Damocles in that at any given moment from week to week, the rug could be pulled out from under me. At least in the relationship...

Put on Trial A powerful idea I have started to incorporate to my decisions. Thoughts as of February 17th, 2024. Within the past year, I heard on a podcast a quote from Jimmy Carter: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” My first reaction to the quote was to think along religious lines and what I would say my religious beliefs are at this moment in time. Raised Catholic and going to Catholic school for K-12, would I still call myself a Catholic? Would a jury convict me? On what evidence? After the initial reaction, it quickly expanded to other parts of my life. I say I want to lose weight. Oh yeah? Then why are you eating a full bag of tortilla chips before bed? Why aren’t you getting your steps in every day? These are good questions, and I think a great point. Fortunately for me, I have been able to lose a bunch of weight after my football career. Peak to trough was approaching 100 lbs without being horrendously out of shape at the...

Big Fish Small Pond Thoughts as of 10/12/23 Someone made an offhanded comment about how I thrive being a big fish in a small pond, and after some more reflection, I realized this to be more of an accurate assessment than this individual could have realized. This post will be relatively short given there were a few examples that came to mind, but I felt the rabbit hole of thought warranted sharing and reflecting on a bit more deliberately. As I have attempted to be more thoughtful about language, how I present myself in the world, and, perhaps to a fault, how I am perceived by others, there have been more and more moments like this where I can find something profound in simplicity. Perhaps the term profound is a bit of a stretch and self-aggrandizing, but nonetheless, there are these little turns of phrase that I think about a bit more deeply than I would have historically, and sometimes a small tweak in language or emphasis will cause me to rethink some of my default mind states. My li...

9000 Days Reflecting on mortality as of 10/3/2023  Sunday 9/24/2023, was my 9000th day outside the womb. You can see that it is now a week and a half later, so I would take all of the below with a grain of salt. As a function of a number of events in my life, the past few years have led me to stoic philosophy where I first encountered the concept of Memento Mori, or “remember you must die.” At face value, this seems quite morbid and almost too extreme. Preaching that it is actually beneficial to keep death at the top of mind is unorthodox, I would argue increasingly so in an era where death is pretty far removed from day-to-day life. As advances in medicine and travels from the farms to the cities have continued to compound over the years, it seems that death itself is almost a thing of the past. I would say that this is a topic for another post - namely the fact that as we have had scientific advances and ways of explaining the natural world without invoking the supernatural we ha...