Month: June 2022

The phrase “carpe diem” has two interpretations. The Stoic one, “seize the day,” urges us to make the most of the present moment. Don’t wait for the future to arrive, shape it! Use today, for today is the only day you have.

The originator of the phrase, however, a poet named Horace, was a proponent of Epicurean philosophy, a worldview that is often considered Stoicism’s main “opponent.” Entertaining a more literal translation, one might say we should “pluck the day” (for it is ripe) and enjoy the moment like one might enjoy a tasty grape.

Epicureans are often treated as the hedonistic counterpart to the Stoics’ more ascetic, discipline-focused approach, but actually, the “pleasure” Epicureans chased was mostly the absence of fear and pain. Therefore, Epicurean teachers argued for a life equally simple to that of a Stoic, making the two philosophies much less different in practice than they might sound in theory.

For anyone curious enough to look at the poem surrounding the soundbite, the common thread running through the two ancient philosophies becomes clear: “Strain your wine. Prove your wisdom. No more talking. Don’t trust the future. Seize today.”

In his Moral Letters, Stoic Seneca adds his own twist to the adage: “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession.”

What would it take to make today “the very best day of all?” Regardless of which of the two philosophical lenses you apply to the question, one thing is clear: Whatever the catalyst, it must come from your own actions. Hoping to win the lottery doesn’t count – because that’s not a reliable way to make each day the very best.

The very best day is a day you do not wish to be different. That takes some training, the belief that you can own the day – that it was always yours to begin with – and perhaps a well-designed morning ritual, but it is an attitude that’s trainable nonetheless.

The only way to have a good day is to do good things. The only way to have the very best day is to realize that a good day is good enough. Carpe diem. Seize today.

“It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.” Thus goes the saying. But how much worse? Tell me! How much more is the stock gonna sink? How many more rejections will I collect? How long will I wake up feeling sick? If only we’d know! Can’t the gods of reassurance have some mercy?

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. When things are trending down, life is giving you a test. The test is not whether you can predict where the bottom will be – for what good does it do to know what rock bottom looks like when you’re guaranteed to hit it either way?

What life wants to know is: Can you turn off your inner alarm? Can you look at the saying – “it’ll get worse before it gets better” – and dedicate your full attention to the “getting better” part? That is your half. That is the job. The only job. The true business of living.

I’m sorry that the slope is so slippery. I wish we wouldn’t have to keep sliding. Then again, most of us used to go on slides for fun, and once we saw the end around the corner, we used every last bit of the incline to garner all the momentum we could – so that, once we did reach the bottom, we might achieve lift-off.

Keep your head down, and your eyes pinned on better. Before you know it, you’ll come off the tail end soaring – because rock bottom may be rough ground, but it always comes with a catapult, ready to send you to new heights.

That’s what it needs to be. Regular. Consistent. Just like the other half of the equation.

We know we have to keep working. Delivering. Creating output. We don’t afford recovery the same status. Recovery is to be minimized. Only as much as you need to keep working! Well, you’ve probably experienced where that gets you: Right into the next McBurnout along the highway.

“Do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow.” That’s Greg McKeown’s idea of rest in Effortless. It is akin to Hemingway’s trick of “leaving something in the well.” Hemingway would end his writing sessions wherever he knew how he wanted to continue, sometimes mid-sentence. That way, he’d know what to write next and be excited to start again the following day.

I can sit down to send out 30 pitch emails at 8 PM after a long workday, and sometimes, I do – but it almost inevitably means the next day’s a goner. I spent all my energy in one day, so I’ll have to spend another full one to recover it. The pendulum of productivity always gets its due.

Since we know the feeling of the pendulum being stuck on the procrastination side all too well, we tend to keep pushing it all the way to “productive” whenever we can. It is much harder – but usually more sustainable – to let the pendulum come back a little when you’re going strong. “Okay. Enough for today. Let’s go into recovery.” It’ll often be a tough choice to make, but likely the one you’ll thank yourself more for the following morning.

You can extend Greg’s recipe for balance, by the way, to weeks, months, years, and even decades. It is okay to feel spent after twenty years of raising two children. A month-long sprint to ship a project last-minute should probably be followed by two weeks of vacation. And a week of too little sleep will probably end in excessive napping on the weekend. All of this is balance.

If work is your right hand, recovery is your left. You’ll need to use both as habitually as you use your real ones. Treat them like the pair of efficient, nature-given tools that they are. Work continuously, and recover consistently. As long as you’re in balance, there won’t be a wave you can’t surf.

Never underestimate it. If “best” and “worst” were two endpoints on the spectrum of human potential, the gap between them would make Marianas Trench look like a crack in the pavement.

My friend Brian lost nearly 20 years to heroin and other drugs. One day, he went cold turkey. The road since has been a long, winding one, but eventually, it took him to Trinity College – both as a lecturer and a PhD in Neuroscience. Today, Brian is a speaker, lecturer, researcher, and coach to some of Ireland’s top CEOs. He writes, podcasts, and creates courses. What a comeback!

You know what strikes me most about Brian’s transformation? That it has taken him less than ten years. He’ll never get back those two decades, but man, if anyone was keeping score, they’d say he made up for them and then some since 2013.

Your potential for change is near-infinite. It’s never too late to turn around, walk the other way, and see how far you can push your lifetime range.

This morning, I had four arguments before leaving my bed. All of them happened in my head, and none of them ever became reality.

The points I came up with? Useless. The anger I felt in imaginarily presenting them? Unnecessary. Even if my discussions would have happened eventually, they’d have taken paths much different from the ones I envisioned. Therefore, the worry and stress I felt about their potential unfolding were also pointless.

So, what did I have to show for? Nothing but a rush of hormones upon getting up. Too much energy in the morning makes the mind fuzzy when, especially early in the day, the mind needs to be still. Clear. Focused. We function best when we start from stillness. We formulate a sharp plan of action, then set out to see it through – but if our brain is already overloaded before our day begins, we won’t stand a chance.

In The Matrix, the heroes use phones to enter and leave the simulated reality their minds are held captive in. Sound familiar? In the movie, when it’s time to escape from the machine’s algorithms hunting down the rebels, there’s always a phone ringing somewhere – and someone better pick up before it’s too late. You’ll see Trinity sprinting towards a telephone cell, Neo diving for a land line, or someone scrambling for a cell phone.

Our version of the world is the Matrix’ mirror image: We must put our phones down to escape. The human brain is easily overloaded as is. Walk through a big city, and feel your senses crumble. That rarely happens in nature, so most of our overwhelm must be man-made – and it is.

Once you fall down the digital rabbit hole, you’ll find infinite conspiracy theories vying for your attention. “Veganism is bad! Capitalism is bad! The earth is flat! Covid doesn’t exist!” What they all share is a sense of urgency: “Don’t believe their lies! Wake up! Escape from the Matrix!” Ironically, they are the epitome of the countless kinds of magnets pulling you in.

The real Matrix is the endlessly winding labyrinth of biases and circuitry in our mind. It is our brains we struggle to escape from, for our brains are the filter through which our very existence happens. Every perception, every impulse, every experience runs through this three-pound computer, and it is only when we are the ones hitting “Enter” on the command lines that we are truly in control.

Can you still choose to not click on clickbait? Can you still choose to be kind? Can you still choose to stop arguing in your head? These are the true break-free questions, and not even the smartest phone can answer them. The answers will only reveal themselves in how you live.

Will you choose to work on your brain? Will you choose to fight your biases? Will you choose to try resisting impulse after impulse, picking calm over chaos whenever you can? All of these choices are optional, and yet, this is the sole way to find peace and happiness in this ever-changing world: Your life must be your escape from the Matrix.

Chances are, that life won’t be littered with stunts, explosions, and slow-motion special effects. You can only actualize it day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year – but if you manage to do this, if you become the slow, never perfect but always seasoned master of your mind, it will be your greatest breakout yet.

A few weeks ago, I deleted my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. “FITT,” their initials spell, and fitter I feel indeed.

The main idea behind minimalism isn’t to save money or time. It is to save mental energy, which physical items take up, even if they’re sitting quietly in your attic. Somewhere in your subconscious, you know the broken volleyball net is up there. Even if it only makes it to the top of your mind on occasion, you’ll feel a burden being lifted once you chuck it in the trash.

Digital minimalism works the same: You can stop using your social media, but the accounts will still be there. So will all the connections. All the posts you’ve created will still harbor the energy you put into them. The weight of sunk costs will be palpable.

“I wonder what Marcus from my year abroad is doing.” That thought hits different when you can check up on Marcus vs. when you can’t – and the latter is not necessarily a bad thing.

We tend to be kinder to people when we keep them only in our memory. Plus, when you can’t see Marcus’ new house, you won’t feel bad about yourself from the inevitable comparison that follows. When Marcus only visits your attention once a leap year, your natural reaction is to wish him well, then be on your way. For many relationships in our lives, this is the way they’re supposed to go. We’re not wired to maintain distant yet infinite contact with thousands of people.

When it comes to Facebook, I had logged in to the platform less than five times a year for the last four years or so. I kept it like an address book of people I used to know but never talked to. But you know what? Those people won’t disappear if my Facebook account does. They’ll still be there. I’m sure I can find them should I need to. I told one high school friend to keep me posted about any potential reunions, then pulled the plug.

Instagram was more of the same, except shinier, which only meant more reasons to feel bad about one’s life. I tried using it “for business” for a while, but I could never get my writing-related posts there to take off. Clearly, my time was better spent elsewhere.

Twitter I tried twice with the same intentions: Improve, prune, and spread my writing. In reality, the time I spent crafting lines for Twitter only moved energy from one output to another. I need all my writing juice in the books and articles that matter, not some algorithm-dictated like-olympics. So down the waste chute it went.

TikTok was just…fun. It really was. What a great outlet for pandemic frustration. I see why so many people hit their stride there and found success. On TikTok, I actually enjoyed being “a consumer.” For once, I wasn’t thinking about how to win on a platform. I was just browsing – but the mind grows weak faced with extended temptation, and so I kept pulling the slot machine lever more and more. Maybe I should have combined my tokking with a new hobby, like cooking or gardening. After all, input should go somewhere eventually. Still, I had only been on TikTok for a bit, and so it was the easiest to let go.

I kept my LinkedIn in lieu of updating my actual resumé, and for the one time I log in there each month or so, I’ve been getting one or two great business opportunities every year. I “80/20-ed” it well enough to not worry about it. More like “95/5-ed” it, actually.

My use of LinkedIn is laissez-faire, but it serves a purpose. That’s the part the others were missing. Casual user or not? That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you feel good not just about the time you spend on social media but also the consequences that arise from that habit. If it makes you feel bad and yields little to show for, then what are you doing? You’re living for instead of living. That’s the scenario to avoid.

My life hasn’t changed much since deleting my social media. It’s not always the grand transformation some make it out to be. I do feel lighter, however. There are fewer items “on my mind.” I feel great about picking up a book. Less guilty. The pull of all the social media actions I could be taking used to seem like enough of a justification to take them. With that pull gone, I can do what I want more so than what I think I should, and that’s worth a lot.

I won’t tell you to delete all social media or which platforms should go for what reasons. The truth is that for each service you choose to be on, it depends on why you signed up.

Is Instagram part of your master plan to become a fashion icon? I’ll be the last one to get in the way. Do you enjoy TikTok painters’ crazy ways of spreading color on a canvas? If you can keep that pocket of joy from swallowing you whole by reining in its addictive prompts, by all means, splash away!

What I don’t want for you is to feel at the mercy of the tools meant to serve you. You are the agent, but the mind is a tricky cockpit. Sometimes, we must lock certain levers in place, put bright red signs next to the emergency buttons, or break a knob off on purpose.

“Where people saw, there will be sawdust,” we say in Germany. Your social media workarounds may sometimes feel like crutches, but that’s part of living! It is only practical to be practical, and with limited time, we better do the best we can with what we have. And when those crutches break? You make new ones! You delete your account again, try a new screen time schedule, or change the notification settings.

Manage your social media in a way that prevents them from managing you. As long as you do that, regardless of what platforms you’re using and for which reasons, you’ll always be social media fit.

When Peter Parker first meets brilliant scientist Otto Octavius in Spider-Man 2, a movie from 2004, Octavius is already familiar with the young whiz kid catching every college professor’s attention:

“You’re Dr. Connor’s student. He tells me you’re brilliant. He also tells me you’re lazy.”

Peter’s response is as simple as it is necessary: “Trying to do better.”

Octavius reminds Peter that “being brilliant is not enough.” That he must work hard. “Intelligence is not a privilege. It is a gift,” Octavius says – a gift we’re supposed to use for the good of mankind.

Ultimately, it is Octavius’s intelligence run amok that will need (and eat) a slice of humble pie in the movie, but the exchange is memorable nonetheless. Case in point? Nearly 20 years later, the two meet again, this time in Spider-Man: No Way Home. “You’re all grown up,” Octavius notes. “How are you?”

“Trying to do better,” Peter says.

Separated by an entire baby-to-young-adult life, by almost two decades of mistakes, regrets, and still not quite saving the world, the motive that unites these two scientists-turned-heroes remains the same: Still trying to do better.

For the audience witnessing both encounters in the theater, the line hits home for much more than just nostalgia: They too have grown up. They too have spent 17 years, no matter where their time went. The scene offers a chance to reflect. Am I happy? What have I done with my time? Can I still try to do better?

The scene is powerful because it happens on more than just the character-level. It is Octavius talking to Parker, actor Alfred Molina talking to Tobey Maguire, and both of them talking to us. Are you still a kid? What did you use your intelligence for? Have you gotten lazy? Then try to do better.

More so than a moral check-in, however, the iconic big screen moment provides an important reminder: “Trying to do better” is a theme that’ll be with us for the entirety of our lives. It’s the golden thread running beneath our every day, and that ball of wool will never run out.

You don’t need to have all the answers today. You don’t need to be perfect. But you have to make a sincere attempt at better. That’s all this line begs us to do – and even superheroes don’t ask more of themselves.

Robert Greene once told Ryan Holiday that there are two kinds of time: Alive time and dead time.

Dead time is when you wait for life to happen to you instead of for you. It’s when nothing seems to change for the better, yet when you take an honest look at the last six months, you realize all you’ve done is complain.

Alive time is when you’re making it count. It is when you do your best every day, no matter how hopeless or unfortunate your current situation may seem. You focus on what you control and try your best to learn and get better.

The idea behind this distinction, of course, is that whether you spend your time being “alive” or “dead” is up to you – and this is where the other kind of dead time comes in: Sometimes, you just have to wait. At the hairdresser. At the doctor’s. On an airplane. On a bus.

We all spend many hours waiting for our turn, but even those hours needn’t be wasted. The classic example is listening to a podcast or audiobook on a long solo drive. You can sort your photos on your phone while waiting for your haircut. Check your emails until the bus gets here. And so on.

What’s trickier, however, is to correctly identify the dead time that’s not obviously dead. How tired are you really after lunch? Too tired to write? Can you still do simpler tasks? Or do you actually need a 20-minute nap? Time that’s dead energy-wise can be deceiving, and the deception goes both ways: One day we’ll afford ourselves too little rest, the next a 30-minute gaming break turns into a 3-hour session.

It helps to approach recovery in increments: When the brain fog feels strong, you set a timer and relax for a full 20 minutes. No work thoughts invited! Once it rings, you check in with yourself: Do you feel better? Alive again? Ready to tackle a bigger challenge? If not, try another 20-minute interval, and so on.

Sometimes this’ll spiral into a lot of truly dead time, but on those days you probably need it. In a normal week, however, it’ll help you convert more of your day into alive time, and at the end of it all, when every kind of time – alive, dead, years, moments – is tallied and all accounts will be settled, that’s the metric that counts.

Identify your dead time, and bring it back to life. That’s how challenges become changes, and how slumps turn into straights.

Ambition is the great divider of human relationships. Millions of people feel driven to accomplish something big, be it getting rich, becoming a professional athlete, or solving world hunger. Billions more, however, enjoy their lives precisely because they lack such an overarching yet also overbearing goal.

Most people don’t want to change the world, and they don’t want to feel like a failure if they don’t. That’s perfectly fine. Others hope to squeeze every inch of potential from their short time here, and that’s fine too. It does create, however, a big rift between the two groups.

If you happen to be in the “potential maximizer” camp, you might label those groups your “good friends” and your “better friends” – not because that’s how you judge and value them but because those are their default attitudes towards life: One thinks life is good and good enough; the other knows “better” always exists and therefore always chases better.

Good friends are the people you can enjoy a good time with, no strings attached. Your movie night needn’t be “about” something. It can just be movie night. You rewatch the same three movies you all loved when you were nine, you have a good laugh, and you go home. There is so much value in this.

Better friends are the people who share, encourage, and push you towards your vision of better. They love talking about their careers. They say “Go for it!” whenever you’re considering a bold move. You can brainstorm a million ideas with them, and no matter how often you fail, they’ll be there to pick you back up. There is also immeasurable value in this.

It is irrelevant which of your friends fall into which group, because your job is to simply enjoy each kind as they are. Don’t wish one friend would switch from this group to the other. Don’t try to figure out who “adds more value.” They both do.

What you should pay attention to, however, are the people who’ll sign up for both: A long discussion of where your marriage is headed and a Simpsons marathon. Making a five-year plan to become an entrepreneur and a Warcraft III LAN party. Those are your “best” friends. Not because they’re the best, but because they’re willing to join in whatever is best for you at any given time – and you’ll do the same for them.

The only true divider in human relationships is how much we’ll let ourselves be divided by our differences. If you refuse to do so, even the great chasm of ambition becomes nothing more than a little puddle to jump over so you can catch up with your friends.

When you have a good memory, you have an arsenal of arguments at your disposal at any given time. That’s a good thing for enabling quick decisions, winning important negotiations, and furthering discussions at work.

In your personal relationships, however, it’s a go-to Pandora’s box: Easy to open but very hard to close. If you throw an old mistake at your partner every time they do or say something that upsets you, you’ll quickly poison the well. Often, there’s no coming back from that.

The worst arguments in your quiver, however, are the nukes. The big, psychological nukes you know will hit them where it hurts. “Yeah…but you cheated on me five years ago!” Those nukes might destroy the other person, but they’ll definitely destroy you. Throwing those kinds of knives will win you a battle, but they’ll inadvertently change you as a person – and not for the better.

When I was younger, I dropped nukes on occasion. Now, even when I know I have “the ace” up my sleeve, I try to forget it. Give up my nukes. End the Cold War before it begins.

I used to think nukes mean power, and they do – but it’s not the kind of power that’ll get you or anyone you love anywhere. So the best thing you can do? Retire them altogether, and realize that some battles can only be fought with empathy, no matter how high their stakes.