Question: What am I certain of today that I'll laugh at in 10 years?

Framework: The Bike Shed Effect.

I recently re-read an old Paul Graham essay that got me thinking about the composition of professional time—what "types" of time exist in our workdays and how we can find a more optimal balance across those types.

I identified four types of professional time: Management, Creation, Consumption, and Ideation. Most of us have a lot of Management, a little bit of Creation, and almost no Consumption and Ideation.

Use a color coding calendar exercise to deconstruct your current mix of time. Three tips to improve your balance: (1) Batch Management Time, (2) Increase Creation Time, and (3) Create space for Consumption and Ideation Time.

Question: What would you invest in today assuming you had to hold the investment forever?

Framework: Survivorship Bias.

I just completed my first marathon in 2:57:31 just 6 months after I started running. By achieving the sub 3-hour marathon time, I had hit my Big Goal. It felt great, at first. But then came the rut, one which led to a fundamental change in how I'm going to think about goal setting and achievement in the future.

Big Goals create a perfect storm for unhappiness. If we miss them, we feel like a failure. If we hit them, we feel a temporary satisfaction, followed by an odd darkness brought about by the Arrival Fallacy, purpose dissipation, and their extrinsic focus.

Focus on Micro Goals is my new, favored approach. Micro Goals are intrinsic, avoid the Arrival Fallacy, and create daily purpose. I will continue to have Big Goals, but I will focus my daily energy around these Micro Goals to create a healthier balance.

Question: The 1-Second Decision.

Framework: Maximizers vs. Satisficers.

Dr. Peter Attia uses a framework with his patients called the Centenarian Decathlon to organize physical aspirations for life’s later years. The idea is to choose 10 physical tasks the person wants to be able to do at 100 and then reverse engineer the necessary actions in the present to achieve that future.

Using a similar exercise to look at the broader scope of your life can be very helpful. What does your ideal life look like at age 80? Who are you with? What are you doing? How do you feel? Where are you?

To create that future, what are the necessary actions in the present? What actions, habits, and behaviors do you need to adopt today to create that end?

Question: What does your perfect workday look like?

Framework: The 3-3-3 Method.

A Stanford business professor split her class into groups and gave each group $5 and 2 hours to generate as high of a return as possible. The losing groups bartered with the $5 or used the time to generate income. The winning group sold the ad space of the presentation time at the end of the challenge and generated a 12,000% return.

When faced with a challenge with the potential for outsized rewards, we need to think differently. Three steps to think differently: (1) Avoid the distraction, (2) Ask foundational questions, and (3) Select the leveraged approach.

Remember: Creative, non-linear, asymmetric thinking generates creative, non-linear, asymmetric outcomes.

Question: If everything stays the same, what is the one change that would have the greatest impact?

Framework: The Locksmith Paradox.

Last week, I spent three days with a group of successful entrepreneurs on a retreat in Big Sky, Montana. I left the event with a new energy to grow and a lot of interesting, non-obvious learnings. This piece shares my 10 key learnings from the event.

The learnings: (1) Freedom is the real goal, (2) Environment is everything, (3) Insecurity is natural, (4) Always know the game you're playing, (5) Create value with no expectation, (6) Owned distribution is a cheat code, (7) Success isn't always loud, (8) No one has it all figured out, (9) Entrepreneurial loneliness is a real problem, and (10) Solve the problem by seeing it differently.

My Rule for Life: Find the room where it happens. Get in that room. Once you're in it, help others get there.