Category: Daily Blog

Six years ago, I changed the wallpaper on my phone, and I haven’t changed it since. It’s a greyscale picture of a desert, in the hot air of which floats a single question: “Why am I in your hand?” The idea was to become more mindful of when and why I use my phone. The effect is not as strong as it once was — phone wallpapers aren’t immune to the visual blindness we develop for all things we see on a regular basis — but every now and then, it still catches me off guard and helps me find clarity.

When I pick up my phone to text my girlfriend good morning, check the weather, or scan a letter, that’s a deliberate action requiring a screen as a tool. About 20% of the time, though, I grab my phone only to immediately do something other than I intended. I’ve already neutered notifications, vibrations, and the like more than most people, but at this point, I don’t think my phone’s interruptions are any longer required: My mind has been conditioned to get distracted all on its own, and the phone itself is just the trigger for this habit.

But who am I telling this? Wasting time on our phones is a disease more widespread than coronavirus, and though it hurts to add up the hours, it is still one of the more innocuous byproducts of the technology-infused times we live in. Where it gets dicey is when screens manage to unhook us from reality altogether, if ever so briefly.

Every day, millions of people use words on Twitter they would never speak in real life. It’s easy to type “You dumbass” with your thumbs, and if you get a bunch of likes for it, it might even appear like it was a smart, commendable thing to say — but 99% of the time, it’s not.

Never mind the hurt feelings, however, if we can do real damage in numbers — literally, in CryptoKaleo’s case. Kaleo is one of the more rational and ever-positive voices on Crypto Twitter. He’s also a good trader, but in 2021, even he lost touch, and not just his own. In the span of five weeks, Kaleo grew his trading account from $30,000 to $12 million — and back down to zero. Round trip to obscurity. In a thread sharing his wins and losses as well as some reflections, he admits: “It happened so fast, I don’t think it ever felt real. I didn’t spend on much physical [items] like I should have, so I treated it more like a video game than I did real balances.”

Video game sounds about right. What Kaleo has done with millions, I have done with a few zeros less, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the notorious founder of went-down-in-flames crypto exchange FTX, has done with billions. “We sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life,” SBF once joked with his team. When it’s all numbers on a screen, it’s hard to imagine let alone feel real-life consequences, but that doesn’t mean those consequences won’t happen eventually. What’s the difference between having a million rupees in Zelda or a million dollars in your crypto portfolio? Nothing — until you cash out the latter and pile it up on your living room floor in singles or buy a house with it.

How does what happens on our screens connect to the real world? That’s the question we must always have an answer to. There’s that saying that you should “love people and use things, not the other way around.” Unlike in an addiction to materialism, we don’t find our displays themselves gratifying to look at, but when we get so hooked on what flickers across them that we sink ever more hours into staring at them — far more hours than we spend staring at human eyes, the real world, or simply out the window — they are no different from excessive drinking, gambling, or drug use — an affliction separating us from the people we care about.

Love people, use screens — not the other way around.

When I do my sit-ups in the morning, I lose count all the time. I’ll start thinking about what I dreamed of at night, what I want to write about later, or what’s on my to-do list for the day. “Am I on 44 or 54? Dang it!”

Last week, I made one simple change, and it is already making a difference: Instead of counting solely in my head, I yell out every tenth number. “10!” “20!” “30!” “40!” Yell is an overstatement. In the little air that’s left between reps, it’s more of a whisper — but it’s enough. I haven’t lost count once since implementing this tweak.

People wonder why Tesla is so highly valued, why Harry Potter succeeded after being rejected by 12 publishers, and how Trump ever became president. Things like this happen because, as a species, we meme our dreams into existence.

The same dynamic applies on the individual level and for much smaller goals and milestones. “I will run before breakfast tomorrow. I will run before breakfast tomorrow. I will run before breakfast tomorrow.” Repeat anything out loud three times in front of your mirror at night, and watch what happens. It’s a silly little quirk, this whole affirmation thing — almost a loophole in our brain circuitry — but it works.

Just like you can use words to change reality, you can use them to cement it once it’s there. “50!” “60!” “70!” Fitness is an obvious example, but it works in other domains too. The more frequently I tell people I’m an author, the more inclined I am to work on my next book. It’s manufactured accountability when you reaffirm things to others, but a lot of the time, it works even if the only party listening is yourself.

“80!” “90!” “100!” Try it. Speak your achievements. It’ll feel good, keep you accountable, and, most importantly, it’ll help you not lose count of the many steps you’ll have to take until you reach the real top of a mountain that was once nothing more than a meme.

150 years ago, focus was easy because it wasn’t optional. Everyone was a farmer, and if you weren’t busy tending to your crop and livestock as the seasons demanded, you spent your downtime with family and the leisure activities of the time. Work itself was hard, physical, and sometimes grueling, but focus? That was a given. You either farmed or you starved.

Today, at least in my and probably all subsequent generations, focus has become the hardest task in the world. I’m not talking about the everyday focus of sitting down and working on something, although that, too, is being increasingly bombarded by ever more technological interruptions at an ever faster pace. In the long run, whether you work for three, five, or eight hours on any given day doesn’t matter.

What matters is which “long” you are running to, and this big-picture destination of yours is under attack from everyone you know, including your spouse, your boss, your mentor, and your best friends. It is under attack from every source of information you come in touch with, and it is an attack the size of which we have never witnessed in history — because it’s not an “attack” in the conventional sense but a combination of side effects of “that’s where we are” as a society.

If you’re an entrepreneur of any kind, you’ll feel the opposed gravitational pulls on an everyday basis, and if you let your guard down for so much as a second, they’ll tear your focus apart. The creator’s bane is hopping from side project to side project, never arriving, never finding meaning, never making it financially. And yet, your partner only wants the best for you when he tells you to try a new direction with your Etsy shop.

If you’re an employee, I feel for you, because while it’s not your fault, you have even less control over your long-term goals. You’re at the whim of your boss’s boss’s whims, and so if anyone higher up in the chain loses focus, so will you. I can’t blame you for resigning — not on paper but in your mind — and resorting to business as usual with nothing unusual ever crossing your schedule. Your boss, too, tries her best when she reads Twitter and the 138th clever “how we did it” thread finally gets her to capitulate and change course. So does her boss and every Fortune 500 CEO. “The market wants this. The market wants that.” And so your company scrambles from quarter to quarter, each one’s finish-line-flag hoisted on a different mountain, covering all four sides of the compass, and round and round the strategic planning process goes each year.

The attack on your biggest dreams and long-term focus has been underway for a few decades, and it will neither slow down nor stop any time soon. Every year, there are more fads than the last. More trends one “should capitalize on now.” It has always been hopeless to try and keep up with them, but at their current, somehow-still-growing breakneck speed, you might spend hours each day half-assing the latest TikTok hashtag only to wonder what’s left of your soul at the end of the year — and with little to show for it in the follower-department to boot.

Perhaps it’s just my age, or maybe I was always old-fashioned, but the faster the world seems to spin, the more I want to slow down. There are always exceptions to confirm any rule, but by and large, everything I’ve jumped into on a whim has turned to ashes sooner or later, while the most rewarding projects and relationships are the ones I’ve worked on the longest — and almost perfectly in order of how much time I’ve spent on them too.

There is so much more pride to be found in not giving up on something than in nailing the latest viral craze or making your company look good on the earnings call, and every day you continue to not give up on it will only make those feelings of meaning and contentment grow stronger. The problem is that you need to run through this positive, self-reinforcing feedback loop a good number of times before the effect kicks in, and with so many opportunities to go do something else instead, it’s probably a conservative guess that 90% of the people in my generation and younger have never had this particular sense of fulfillment, and most of them won’t ever attain it in their lifetime.

If you’re waiting for the world to give you permission to focus, to direct your mind to a singular, difficult but meaningful end, you’ll never go to bed at night knowing you made a sacrifice that was worth the cost even if it doesn’t pay off tomorrow — or ever. Your boss won’t allow you to build a crazy prototype race car in the company garage. You’ll have to do that in your back yard. Your Instagram feed won’t remind you to make breakfast for your kids every morning. It’s something you’ll just have to get up early for and do. And the countless partnership requests in your inbox won’t add up to a product your customers will love. You’ll have to build that step by step, day by day, complaint by complaint.

If you’re tired of riding the fad carousel, you can get off any time. For me, everything changed when I dedicated myself to one project for a year. One year, one mission, one focus. Since then, I’ve done it again and again — not always on the same theme or project, but I’m still learning too, and the more I do, the more I come back to things I already own — own as in “feel a sense of ownership in,” a stake, a responsibility worth trying to live up to. Whether it’s a daily blog, a moonshot annual goal, or a promise to myself to meditate every day, it is the targeted, steady, soon-but-not-too-soon milestones from which most of my happiness springs, but only if I make the effort to show up for them every single day.

It’s ironic that, beyond the tried and true perseverance arenas like marriage, parenting, and relationships, the internet, the hype machine responsible for our being pulled in an endless number of directions, responds to commitment the same way a farm did 150 years ago. When you contribute consistently in a specific direction, the wave of connection we’re all swimming on will carry you there. At least in the ten years I’ve been in business, in the third-ish decade of widespread internet availability, that seems to have been the case. You water your crops, you tend to your flock, and slowly but surely, your farm will grow and expand. Unlike a real pasture, it’ll never leave you with the sense that there’s nothing left to do but go to the movies, but it still offers the kind of happiness we can only attain from knowing we’ve done an honest day’s work — if only we can ward off the shimmering mental torpedoes and focus.

There is no universal remedy to help us find this big-picture focus. It is a relentless battle we must fight every day, just like the staring contest with our screens that determines our daily output. It is, however, the sturdiest path to meaning, job satisfaction, and overall contentment I have discovered in 32 years of life, and once we tread on it, each next step will fall a little lighter than the last.

There’s a subway stop in Munich where two lines share the same platform. They always arrive at the same time so people can switch from one to the other, depending on where they’re trying to go. It’s always fascinating to watch the people in your car as it pulls into the station. Who’s going to switch? Who’s going to stay? Why are they making those choices? Where are they hoping to go?

The real magic, however, happens when everyone has made their bet. “Rien ne va plus! This is the seat you have chosen,” an invisible announcer might say. And then, as the parallel trains leave the station in perfect sync, for a few seconds, your eyes survey all the people in the other car, but before you get to wonder about any of them, they find the eyes of a stranger, and in that moment, you know: The game has ended, and destiny has arrived. Rien ne va plus indeed.

“You’ve made your choice, and I have made mine,” you telepathically communicate to one another. “May this train bring you safely to your destination, and perhaps, in another life, I’ll see you again.” And then, with the slightest tilt, one train moves up, the other down, and both vanish behind concrete walls.

You’re still sitting in a sea of other people, but in that instant, you know you’re alone. Not in a depressing, “it’s me against the universe” kind of way. Just in an, “I’m on my own path, and I know where I must go” sort of way. Back in life’s single-player game.

The world is a maze, and your path is determined by your decisions. It’s a unique path no one else will ever take, and though you and I might meet in the maze, even run in parallel behind concrete walls, the center we each long to reach will never be the same.

Enjoy the magic of singular connections, but don’t veer off course. Remember your journey is yours alone, and take whichever train you need to take to see it through.

Beth is nine when the car crashes. The wreckage lies on a bridge — at the end of it lies the orphanage.

The janitor, Mr. Shaibel, will teach her how to play chess. A few rounds in, she’ll start teaching him, and one “simultaneous” against 12 high schoolers later, Beth will know her destiny: The chess board never lies. It’s a battlefield, and she was born to control it. But not all her battles will be fought there.

Years later, the first female US chess champion loses her adoptive mother at a tournament in Mexico. She drinks. She cries. When the pharmacist puts the narcotics on the counter, she says “más” — more. More of everything. More wins; more fame; more money. More loneliness; more alcohol; more anger.

Back in the dimly lit basement, Mr. Shaibel prophesies what no nine-year-old could understand: “People like you have a hard time.” He holds up a quarter. “Two sides of the same coin. You’ve got your gift, and you’ve got what it costs. Hard to say for you what that will be.” Balance, he warns her. Delicate balance required. “You’ll have your time in the sun, but for how long? You’ve got so much anger in you. You’ll have to be careful.”

Whatever caution Beth may once have exercised, all too soon, she’ll throw it to the wind. Then, all that’s left will be more — more of everything — and with each episode of The Queen’s Gambit, one thing will grow clearer: Beth Harmon is a black hole of “more,” and we can only guess where it ends.

“Don’t burn too bright too fast,” Mr. Shaibel seemed to say. “Watch out. Keep your balance.” Chess prodigy or high school dropout, US champion or second-draft reject — we’re all two sides of the same coin. We’ve got our gifts, and we’ve got what they cost. Competitiveness brings both wins and frustration. Gentleness invites honesty but also abuse. 

A coin is tallest when it stands on its edge, but the balance that requires is fickle. Be careful. No one knows which side they’ll fall on today. Not even the genius child, sitting across the board with unblinking eyes. All she — and we — can do is make our next move with poise and humility, but before that, we must invite the unknown with those darned two words: “Let’s play.”

In Glass Onion, the once famed but now fading model Birdie Jay constantly gets herself in trouble — mostly by simply opening her mouth. Perhaps, her assistant suggests, if you think “sweatshops” are where sweatpants are made, that “jewy” is a word describing cheap people, and that, as a white lady, going to Halloween as Beyoncé is a great idea, you’re better off not tweeting for the rest of your big media campaign.

Still, her billionaire friend Miles stands by her. “A disruptor,” he calls her. “Some people think Birdie is disruptive every time she opens her mouth, just because she is saying what everyone is thinking but no one has the nerve to say.” “It’s true,” Birdie confirms. “I say it like I see it.” But if what got her on the cover of magazines and into the idea of “sweetie pants” — designer sweatpants for every occasion — also gets her cancelled on Oprah, is “disruption at all costs” really the right attitude? What’s more, is Birdie even deliberate in her actions?

“It’s a dangerous thing,” master detective Benoit Blanc tells her, “to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.” Just because your gut tells you something feels right does not make it right. We’ve all been led astray by our intuition at one point or another. Your true opinions are not the ones that first bubble to the surface, and your best ideas are rarely the ones you blurt out halfway through even thinking of them.

Some people, like Birdie, take pride in being “unfiltered,” but if your filter is not something you apply and remove on purpose, there is no distinction between honesty and stupidity. “I’m a truth teller,” Birdie claims. She comforts herself that “some people just can’t handle it.” In reality, Birdie simply has no control over herself and, by extension, no read on which statements will get her an award vs. kicked out of the studio.

Whenever I witness someone blubbering along without reflection, I’m reminded of a Louis C.K. bit from one of his stand-up comedy routines: “You know when you say to a friend of yours ‘You’re being an asshole,’ and they’re like, ‘No, I’m not.’ Well, it’s not up to you! That’s up to everybody else. You don’t get to say no to that.” Similarly, the truth is rarely straightforward and often subjective. What might seem 100% clear and obvious to you may sound shocking, even asinine, to others.

Think before you speak and don’t auto-pardon yourself after. Living unfiltered is only a virtue when it’s done deliberately, and the truth, like water, often must pass many layers of stones before it becomes crystal-clear.

“The best way to destroy your enemies,” the saying goes, “is to make them your friends.” Hoping to send some good wishes their way, I wondered this morning: “Who’s the person who hurt me the most?” Was it the childhood bully who, because he was jealous of my good grades, had to get verbal stabs in non-stop? Was it one of the many girls who rejected me?

The first thing I realized was that even the most painful emotional punches made me cringe a lot less in retrospect than the memories of me hurting others. Be it some mentor I offended, a breakup I had to initiate, or the times I let my family down — my own failures make me shudder far more than whatever suffering the world doled out to me.

This led to my next and ultimate, I guess perfectly logical conclusion: The person who hurt me the most is, by far, me. My so-called enemies sure deserve all the forgiveness I can muster, but so do I, and, given how long my laundry list of regrets, perhaps I need it more than they do.

For every time someone was mean to me, there were 100 times I was mean to myself. For every time someone was unwilling to accept my apology, there were 100 times I beat myself up over some shortcoming. And for every time someone struck an emotional blow that left a lasting mark, there were 100 times I twisted the knife in my own wound.

Make no mistake: We all have skeletons in our closets, and the one we’ve buried deepest carries the very alive face we look at every morning in the mirror. Forgive your enemies, sure. Pray for them. Send good wishes into the universe for everyone whose path you’ve ever crossed. But before you do any of that, remember to show yourself compassion. Forgive your past selves, and make them your friends.

If it’s true that we most yearn for forgiveness from the people we hurt the most, in the long run, there is only one person in the world who can give us what we need. Luckily, they’re with us wherever we go and oh so willing to move on, if only we ask them to. “You are your own worst enemy,” another saying goes, but you could just as well be your own best friend — and the only thing it takes to turn one into the other is a smile every morning for the fan in the mirror.

“Most people struggle to be present,” Mark Vancil comments on The Last Dance, a documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ “repeat three-peat.” “People go and sit in ashrams for 20 years in India trying to be present. Do yoga, meditate, trying to get here, now.”

MJ, on the other hand? “Michael’s a mystic. He was never anywhere else.”

If you pay close attention while watching the show, you’ll see it. “Will this be your last game ever? The world wants to know.” “Well, the world is gonna have to wait and see what happens.” Jordan refuses to go to the future to give reporters an answer he doesn’t have yet.

“Can I walk in peace?” “We still have to play the game.” “It’s the moment, man. Y’all get in the moment and stay here.” Time and time again, Jordan has to remind everyone else to not jump ahead or get lost in the past. Yesterday’s victories don’t matter. Tomorrow’s failures haven’t happened. All that counts is today. This is the moment. This is the job. This is the practice, the trip to the stadium, the game.

Can he make the shot? Will he make the shot? The only one who never asked that question was the person taking all the shots.

Don’t let the world bully you out of the moment. Greatness only ever happens here.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and you know why? Not because the delay will make it sweeter, but because by the time you’ll get to taste it, you’ll have lost your appetite entirely.

When Ray finally sees his vengeance on his former partner fulfilled, 25 years, unimaginable pain, and plenty of bad decisions have floated down the river of time — and for what? A chat between two broke and broken men, each rotting away in their own way, one in a literal prison, the other in a metaphorical one.

Like a dart piercing all the lies over the years, Ray’s not-at-all-innocent victim throws a good point: “I’m the guy you can blame for doing exactly what you wanted to do.” It’s true. A quarter century of obsession allowed Ray to do what he does best: Scheme, deceive, and steal. He didn’t have to think about his daughter, his only friend, or the lives of his targets. He didn’t have to try hard, change his approach, or attempt to make an honest living. Pretending that his crimes all served a higher purpose allowed him to blank out every slight hint and every giant warning sign that he was on the wrong path. For Ray, it was just marching, marching, marching.

It’s easy to make up a mission that allows us to feel like crusaders when we’re blinded by emotions. But remember what the crusaders did: They killed, lied, and stole — all in the name of God, all for “a higher purpose.” The ends don’t justify the means just because we’re eager to use them, and the most convenient explanation is rarely the right, let alone a justified one. We don’t have to dish out payback, fight some imaginary dragon, or prove anyone wrong.

The next time you feel a craving for retribution, imagine not eating for 25 years, then getting a meal that could never ever live up to your slow-cooked expectations. “So, was it worth it?” your target will ask. Of course, the real target was you all along — so perhaps revenge is a dish we should best let go cold without ever dipping in our spoon.

There’s very little 24 hours of time can’t fix. When he became Elvis’s promoter, Jerry Weintraub only had 24 hours to raise a million dollars — but it was enough. Most of the time, however, it takes something less drastic than calling hundreds of people and flying to Las Vegas on a hunch.

When you fall down at basketball practice and hurt your legs, 24 hours later, you’ll know more and feel better. When you have the worst hangover of your life, one day in bed and a Big Mac menu later, you’ll be okay to work again. And when you’ve had a terrible setback in your job, a day of downtime and reflection will do wonders.

The only universal remedy is time, and the only way to apply it is to let it pass. It’s called “endurance” because it’s not always fun, but, sooner or later, it does always work — if only for the distance it puts between you and your latest failure.

Take your time. Really take it. Spend it. Deliberately let a full sun-and-moon-cycle pass, and whatever weighs heaviest on your mind right now will feel a lot lighter — if it even remains on your mind at all.