Bite-Sized Philosophy

Welcome back! This is the first of a 24-episode contract beginning in 2022. I've already recorded an interview with Kyle Hagge and have a couple more scheduled. Between those and some solo episodes, there's a lot of content that I'm very excited about that's coming.

This podcast is built around the idea of Live By Design. This is a concept that says you have responsibility and ownership of your life. That your actions have consequences and you can make your own decisions with agency. To go along with that is the idea of this: If you change nothing, nothing will change. It’s January 5th, the beginning of a new year, 2022. Around this time, there’s been lots of talk about resolutions, and if you don’t change anything about your life, nothing about your life will change.

But I want to add to that: If you change everything, nothing will change.

Life isn’t about radical shifts and transitions. It’s not about flipping a switch and being a new person. There’s really something to the new year, and it signifies a new beginning in your life, and in mine. But realistically. If you’re like me, you often try to make sweeping changes to your life in short bursts. You say things like, “This month, I’ll change XYZ and ABC.” You might even write out your new habits and put them in your calendar and schedule them in, so you know you’ll follow through with it.

When we try to make sweeping, broad changes like this, we often cannot make them. We can’t follow through. Life doesn’t work that way.

The right answer for new years’ resolutions and for goal-setting and growth in general is a middle-ground. It’s not about changing nothing, (if you change nothing, nothing will change), but it’s also not about changing everything (if you change everything, nothing will change.) Instead, it’s about taking consistent actions. One day after the another, each step before the next.

Repeated, consistent actions are the big things in our lives. People that are great writers got that way not by taking one course or reading one book. They got that way by writing a lot of words every day for a long time. Repeated, consistent action.

People who are fit didn’t do it on a crash diet and going to the gym in January. They did it by building habits and consistent actions of eating healthier, sleeping better, and exercising consistently for a long time.

Our lives can change. You are capable of change. That’s a core tenet of the Live By Design idea.

But to make a lasting change means you have to change in small ways, consistently. Over long periods of time, these small changes become the big changes.

And I hope today is the day you start with those small changes.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

50 Episodes. Wow. This was my goal when I started this show nearly two years ago, and we're there. We did it. I said at 50 episodes I could re-evaluate if Bite-Sized Philosophy was a project I wanted to continue, and for the moment, it still is. I'm planning to renew the show for 24 more episodes in 2022 and then will check in again at episode 74.

This is the past-year review.

The New Year is upon us, and that means there will be all sorts of resolutions. Promises to ourselves that we don’t keep very well and don’t have a lasting impact beyond January 31st, and sometimes not even that long.

So instead of making new year’s resolutions, what about conducting a past year review?

As we talked about on Monday’s episode, there are many ways to approach the new year. Monday we talked about defining personal values to bring more clarity to hard decisions in 2022, and today is about doing a past year review of 2021 to shed some light on what actually mattered from this past year that we want to bring into 2022 and what we really want to leave in 2021.

To do this exercise, you’ll need your 2021 calendar. However you track your events and schedule, as well as maybe a journal or any other way you keep track of what happens in your life.

For me this means Google Calendar. I also have journals, but my Google Calendar has enough on it that I don’t need them.

Then you need a way to take notes on your year. I used a Google Docs form and a powerpoint this year, but the last two years, I’ve done this by hand in a journal because I set aside more time.

Either way, we’re looking at the hobbies, activities, projects, and events that happened in 2021 that we enjoyed, didn’t enjoy, or had mixed feelings about.

I try to keep this pretty simple, so I use a highlighter for it. Green is enjoy, red is not enjoy, and yellow is some of both. It doesn’t need to be too complicated, the point is to get through your whole year, so the simpler the better.

Then, I turn to January of 2021 and get started.

Start week by week and write down the major things that happened in your life. This could be classes you took, leagues you were in, hobbies you did regularly, and people you saw consistently, as well as projects or other commitments. Go week by week and jot down the major engagements throughout the year, week by week and month by month, until you have a whole list of what you were involved with in 2021, and then take a highlighter and put them into these three categories: Enjoyed, mixed feelings, didn’t enjoy.

And there you have it. Your year in review that informs what you want to be involved in next year. Do more of what you enjoy and less of what you didn’t enjoy as much as you’re able to, and your 2022 will have a good chance of being better than your 2021.

It’s less rigid and defined than new years resolutions, but if you keep this in a place and refer back to it throughout the year, it can provide a template for you to enjoy your life more next year than you did this year, even if this year was great.

For me, this means more of my podcast, more drawing, more journaling, and more classes and leagues like axe throwing, martial arts, and creative exercise like that sort of thing. Less volunteer projects for organizations I’m not invested in, less umpiring for sports, less binging Netflix, and less fantasy football leagues.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

This is going to be part 1 of a two-part series to preparing for 2022. What can you do this week to prepare yourself for the year ahead and set yourself up to have some wins next year that you didn’t get this year? Today we’ll be talking about values and Wednesday will be about a Year in Review.

“The more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no.” - Samin Nosrat

But if everything is a priority, nothing is. Without knowing what’s the most important thing, we can’t really make any progress towards anything at all. It’s just a sea of opportunity, with no lighthouse or compass.

Our goals and values operate as the lighthouse and the compass. I think of personal values as the compass, no matter what our goals are, the values keep us oriented to the world. And our goals are the lighthouse. Using our values as a map, our goals are the specific points we aim to reach within the sea of opportunities.

As most metaphors do, this falls apart as it gets too detailed, but the point is, values operate as the overarching guide, with goals as the specific points within that journey.

I want to take you through an exercise to help determine our values.

Get a pen and paper. If you don't have that, you can do this on your phone.

I’m going to read through a handful of common personal values, and write down the ones that really resonate with you. These are all largely good things, so a ton of them might resonate with you and sound like things you want to value and prioritize, but it’s okay to write down several of them. This list isn’t exhaustive, so your values may not be on this list, either. That’s okay, too. Feel free to add your own values and make this exercise your own.

Now what I want you to do is look at the new list you’ve made. Try to pick less than five of these core values to focus on. If everything’s a value, nothing really is.

Over the next two days before Wednesday, I want you to look at this list again and see if you’d change anything. Maybe you can journal about this or meditate on it. If you could pick 3-5 core personal values, what would they be?

Some questions to consider in this search:

“If ____ went wrong, I would drop anything to make it right.”

“At my eulogy, what do I want people to say about me?”

“When I make big decisions, what factors weigh the most?”

“When I feel the most fulfilled, what am I focusing on?”

“If I could only make decisions based on ONE of these values, what would I choose?”

These questions don't have easy answers. Important questions rarely do.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

For a lot of people, the holiday season is wonderful. But just because it’s the most wonderful time of the year doesn’t make it easy. There are distant relatives in town, traveling to see loved ones, and more this Christmas and New Years. It can be hard to deal with, especially with COVID going on still.

But no matter what’s going on, you have the power to choose how you respond. As Epictetus says:

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…

In other words, you control how you respond and only how you respond.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

We’re going to make mistakes every single day. In everything we try, we won’t be perfect. You won’t, I won’t, no one will. So make mistakes on purpose, with intention.

Just make sure they are your mistakes. Dream big, fly high, shoot for the stars. And then document the mistakes you’ve made, keep track of what works and what doesn’t, and journal, meditate, and grow from your mistakes. Not everything will be a mistake, and the more you try, the more you’ll succeed.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

Negativity doesn’t impress me. When people can pick an argument apart, it’s not impressive to me. The world defaults to chaos and ruin. Being able to drag someone else’s action down is just the default, it’s easy to do.

What’s hard to do is something good. It’s hard to commit to being a positive force and do something positive, knowing how many people are waiting to pick it apart and drag you for it. This episode has 12 small actions you can do in the next month to be a positive force for change and do some good in this world, rather than doing more bad.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

"Desire’s a contract you make to be unhappy until you get what you want. You become disturbed because you want something. Then you work really hard to get it and are miserable in the meantime. Finally, when you get it, you revert to the state you were in before you had it. It’s not like you achieve some peak level of bliss that you stay on forever.

No single thing will make you happy forever" - Naval Ravikant

Appreciate your accomplishments and rest on your laurels for a few minutes. It's okay to acknowledge when you've done something worthwhile before you move on to the next goal.

Guard your desires, be careful what you want. Everything you want has power over you. Don't give that power out on accident.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

Here's the full post from Morning Brew co-founder Alex Lieberman

There is no substitute for sustained, consistent quality. Showing up regularly for 2 years and producing good, relevant, unique content is the best way to grow a podcast. We're just 44 episodes into this thing, are you ready for the next 246 episodes to see where this takes us?

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

Have No Fear of Perfection, You'll never reach it. - Salvador Dali. 

Salvador Dali was perhaps one of the most well-known artists of the 20th century, painting the masterpiece The Persistence of Memory (that's the one with the melting clocks) and other surrealist works. Perfection isn't something that we need to fear, because it's unattainable. Perhaps even more relevant, imperfection isn't something to fear, because it's inevitable. If we can't avoid it, why fear it?

Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!

Text me! 323-609-5262

Tough episode for me today. My Grandma passed away yesterday, and I wanted to talk about that instead of the episode I had planned for today. I'll probably be off of socials for the next few days grieving and processing this with my family. Take care of yourself

For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday!