Sup friends 👋🏼,

The past couple of weeks have whizzed by - work has been going at a 100mph, and I’ve had a side project in the works (more about that here).

A lot of things in flight, excited to share more when things are less fuzzy.

Let’s get to it 🙂 

💎

1/ How To Change Your Life in 5 Seconds

It’s estimated that we take approximately 35,000 decisions per day.

A lot of those decisions lead to actions that we don’t feel like doing. 95% of the decisions we make are based on the way we feel in the moment.

The article shares a story about how the author was paralysed by decision fatigue after attempting to turnaround a failing family restaurant business. It wasn’t going well, and the lack of progress was leading to a lack of action.

This led to: The Five-Second Rule.

The quote sums it up well:

2/ Dr Goobie’s Midlife Crisis

Dr Goobie is a neurosurgeon - the thing about neurosurgeons, is a decade of exams before you start cashing in your chips.

After a year or so of conducting surgeries, he realised that many patients were back to square one with their pain levels in less than a year.

This is because they had bad habits. They didn’t sleep much, and barely exercised.

Even if he were to recommend a way to solve their situation holistically (through sleeping more, exercise, not smoking etc), the medical industry in the US deeply disincentivizes behaviour that doesn’t lead to a new form of medication.

So he quit, with no plan.

Dr Goobie' talks a lot about the ‘Messy Middle’ of trying to figure out what to do next, but had some sage advice:

You can watch the full video here (its 48min long, but has racked up 10m views in one month, so you know it’s a good one).

3/ 14 pieces of non-obvious advice

Lots of good ideas in this one (plus I’ve regularly featured Noah’s content in this newsletter) - three that I liked:

1. Own your distribution - build your own email list, don’t build your castle in someone else’s sand

2. Don’t just sell, educate & entertain - A good Q to ask: “Even if people don’t buy, will they learn something or enjoy reading?”. Nobody likes feeling sold to. Everybody likes learning new things and feeling entertained.

3. Look outside your own industry - Read luxury wine blogs, sign up for a children’s toy newsletter. To think differently, we must consume differently.

/4 It’s Supposed to be Hard

Life isn’t supposed to be easy. Life is designed to develop our character, and deal with discomfort by becoming more resilient.

All great things must be earned.

/5 Things I know at 44 that I wish I knew at 24:

Pretty sure I’ve featured this before, but always found new things in this thread that resonate. The ones I liked this time:

1. If you want new circumstances you need to think new thoughts. You can’t change your situation without a new set of beliefs.

2. The only regrets you’ll have in life will neglecting health, family & purpose. Optimise your life for regret minimisation.

3. Develop an identity outside of what you do or your job status.

4. Don’t trust what people say. Trust what people do. Their actions will be a better reflection of who they are as people.

That’s a wrap - let me know your favourite link 🙂 

Till next week,

Fahim ✌️