Another Year Wiser

Every year around my birthday, I like to take some time to pause and reflect on my life. It’s in these still, reflective moments that I find I’m able to see most clearly what’s been working, what’s not, and internalize the all the lessons I’ve learned over the last year. This year, I’ve pulled together a few of these fun ideas to share with you that I hope you’ll enjoy!

A good place to start is to define “wisdom” or what it means to be wise. Wisdom is one of those widely used terms that often gets mixed together with similar words like: smart, knowledgeable, etc., but there’s a fun quote that illustrates the distinction between wisdom and knowledge: “knowing tomatoes are fruit is knowledge, knowing not to put them in a fruit salad is wisdom.” Accumulating wisdom doesn’t happen through memorization of statistics or facts; true wisdom must be earned through life experiences and perspective.

The next idea I wanted to share is from the legendary investor, Charlie Munger. Charlie’s advice shared to audiences in various public forums over the years is to, “take a simple idea and take it seriously.” I’ve heard this quote before, but recently it’s resonated much more intensely with me. For so much of my life, I just assumed to achieve happiness, success, or status, I needed to find and conquer some very complex task. It didn’t occur to me that very basic ideas (working out, eating healthy, sleeping well, connecting with friends, etc.) taken extremely seriously could yield even greater results. Simple actions repeated over a long time horizons transform us, like water carving rock. Consistency, not brute force, is the stronger change agent.

The third idea I’ve been thinking about recently is “turning towards the difficult.” Sadly, I’ve noticed that a lot of human addiction is actually motivated by the desire to escape or distract from some uncomfortable or painful reality. Whether it’s excessive alcohol consumption, endless phone scrolling, or another self-destructive behavior, our human nature is to seek the path of less friction rather than confronting our fears and demons. But it’s precisely these challenging moments that present the biggest opportunity for personal growth and wisdom. Failure can be tolerated, but hiding from failure is actually the greater sin because it shadows the truth of what you’re capable of achieving.

Finally, earlier this year I published a short little post about the importance of making time. We live in (2023) what’s most certainly the noisiest, most distracting, attention-deprived, world at any given point in human history. To get back to doing what’s most meaningful and fulfilling, you must learn to ruthlessly remove your distractions. To find your distractions, reflect on how you like spending your days. Then, compare that answer to what you’re honestly doing. The contrast between those two should point you in the right direction. This practice of subtracting or removing distractions from your life requires you to first decide what’s important enough to keep and then leads to prioritizing what’s left.

And with that, I want to wrap up this post with a big thank you for taking your precious time to read my email or blog. Thank you for being a small or, in some cases, very large part of my life. And as always, if any of these ideas speak to you, I’d love to hear from you. Simply send me an email!

My 2021 Wrapped

Mic check, is this thing on? Hello, friends! 👋

I can now say this is the longest gap between updates since I started this blog over nine years ago in 2012, but as anyone who’s ever blogged knows, sometimes that’s just how things go. I know it’s been a while, but as we wind down 2021, it felt like the perfect moment to pause, check in, say hello, and share a few highlights from the last year. 

Before I get into the good stuff, I want to acknowledge that it’s been another wild year for us all. Heading into 2021, I remember thinking and writing about focusing my energy on what I can control instead of obsessing and stressing about things beyond it. This year brought more lockdowns, protests, new vaccines, an increasing number of climate-related disasters, Delta variant, now Omicron, and despite my best efforts to live in some kind of stoic, zen-minded state, my reality was another emotional roller coaster. I don’t how you feel about it all, but the word that comes to my mind is exhaustion. Mentally and physically, we’ve battled it out, for better or for worse, and now we’re here.

It’d be easy to write off 2021 as another “lost year”, but for me that just wouldn’t be true. In the midst of all the uncertainty and global chaos, there’ve been some incredibly exciting and beautiful moments worth cherishing and sharing here. 

To kick off the highlights, we need to venture into the world of the impossibly small. In April my father’s g-2 experiment released an exciting result after more than ten (yes ten) years of work. To those who work in this field, “This result from the first run of the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment is arguably the most highly anticipated result in particle physics over the last years.” I’m extremely proud of the commitment and work my father and his team have accomplished and it was a special moment witnessing the academic and scientific communities rally in the excitement around new possibilities in the way we understand the Standard Model. 

Switching gears slightly but still on the subject of small and highly anticipated things, my brother, Jake and his wife, Erica welcomed their first baby girl in September! It was such joyful news for my family and I’m happy to report I’m now also known as “Uncle B”. We got to meet our beautiful new niece over the Thanksgiving holiday and it was lovely spending some (overdue) quality time with both familiar and new faces. 

Speaking of growing families, we’ve reached the highlight of my year, I got married! My wife (Diana) and I got married in the beautiful hills of Santa Cruz, California in November, surrounded by our close family and friends. It really did feel like the “best day ever” and I finally understand why everyone says that about their wedding day. We got super lucky with the weather and somehow managed to thread the needle between two highly contagious COVID variants which allowed most guests to attend. Over a year’s worth of planning went into that single weekend and it was just such an overwhelming feeling of joy to be surrounded by that much love and support. 

Looking back on it all, 2021 was a fascinating contrast of emotions. On one hand, it felt like a continuation of 2020 with familiar COVID restrictions, working from home (still), fewer trips and so on; we clearly haven’t turned the page on “2020”. But on the other, there were little glimmers of normalcy and hope for the future sprinkled throughout the year. With vaccines and an increasing amount of treatment options for COVID, my life became less dominated by fear. I was able to resume some of the activities that I enjoyed prior to the pandemic and above all I think we (humans) are collectively learning to adapt to living in a post-COVID world. 

What’s my top goal for 2022?

The subject I’ve been thinking most about in the past year is time, how I use it, how valuable it is, and how best to spend it in the future. Perhaps partly because I feel like I’ve underutilized my time throughout the pandemic or maybe it’s the result of being forced to confront how fragile and mortal we humans truly are. Whatever the case, I’ll be focusing more in 2022 on living “unapologetically more intently”. 

What does that mean? It means just making the time and space for the few things I enjoy the most, e.g. spending time in nature, writing, cooking, walks and coffee with friends, etc. and cutting out the less nurturing time consuming activities. If 2020 and 2021 are proof of anything, it’s that getting to do all the things you enjoy isn’t guaranteed. In fact, it never was. 

As more activities and possibilities open back up next year, I’m not going to try to do it all. Instead, I’m going to think very critically and carefully about which activities offer the most of that soul nourishing feeling and choose to invest my time there. Will it work? No idea, but I’m committed to making an honest effort and will report back here if there are any interesting takeaways. 

Thank you

If you’ve made it this far, I’m both impressed and honored. Thank you for staying in touch with me and following along with my life updates. If you have any feedback or just want to reach out and say hello, you can simply leave a comment on the blog or reply back to this email. 

Wishing you a healthy, joyful, and unapologetically intentional year ahead!