The writer James Clear asks in his 3-2-1 Newsletter:

Which belief once protected you, but now confines you?

Reflection time. I suspect one of these is the belief that status, power, and titles will bring protection and safety. So many people fall for it.

An alternative (albeit riskier) belief would be to focus on lifestyle. The Mediterranean weather breathing through linen. Early morning coffee brewing. The smell of old books. Fresh produce. Speedos and toes buried in sand. Cycling in nature.

One belief is rooted in the East coast, the other in the West. Amazing how where you live shape your beliefs.

Today I was listening to a podcast on the science of sleep and how to optimize the different stages of sleep. The differences between REM sleep and deep sleep and how the first few 90min cycles restore the body while the last cycles the emotional experiences of the day. I wonder how my brain will encode the knowledge of these different stages of sleep while it goes through the different stages of sleep. Is this what a meta-memory is? A memory about how memory works.

I have forgotten the value of metrics in my sports performance. For the last few years, I have been solely focused on improving the baseline systems that make me show up even in the worst of days. Consistency has been achieved. Now the next step is to measure things.

Recently I got a Garmin Instinct 2 watch and have been enjoying the insights in the data that it generates about my performance. It has made visible areas of improvement (sleep quality, stress reduction, recovery time, VO2 max) and informed the decision-making process of my daily routine. I certainly am motivated to improve my sleep score, eat my last meal by 6pm, start meditating, strategize my workouts throughout the week, and focus on nutrition.

What I fear is the obsession with metrics and unnecessary data that gets in the way of just doing things, of just getting things donr. I suppose you need to try things out and see what sticks, what helps your decision-making in the long run.

I have worked both with micro-managers and macro-managers. And I have taken notes on both the strengths and weaknesses. To summarize, my experience working with a micro-manager is tainted with character-building and sharpening of my stoicism. I am grateful for the experience, but will certainly not repeat.

My experience working with a macro-manager is colored by a quest for meaning and purpose. Both extremes are not ideal, but if I had to choose, I would prefer the later, one where trust is given. One where by sharing ownership, a person slowly grows genuine interest and —dare I say— passion. And by claiming ownership, the person becomes invested in it, takes responsibility, and becomes more productive —because they are ultimately enjoying the work. This form of work, where the manager surrenders management, effectively brings about the best of the person, all the while completely delegating the work. It is genius.

I have been sick for the last few days and one thing has become clear: you need to treat good quality rest like a non-negotiable and sacred activity. Any investment that improves your quality of sleep (a quality mattress, a quality pillow, quality sheets, dark curtains, a bedtime routine) will pay dividends to your body, your well-being, and ultimately your life.

A very big problem on the political left is our willingness and readiness to set up our very own with much greater intensity and energy than to the other side.

The all-or-nothing attitude. The excommunication of imperfect allies. The moral certainty required to define an enemy. A new form of puritanism defined by sharp contrasts: either you are with us or against us.

We now live in Carl Schmitt’s world. Schmitt, that Nazi legal thinker who argued that politics begins with the definition of an enemy. Schmitt, the Nazi thinker who despised the pluralism that institutions bring about. Schmitt, the Nazi scholar who made notions of human rights and liberal pluralism suspect.

It feels like 1930 in Weinmar Republic. After the coalition of parties collapsed in 1930, the Social Democratic Party approached the Communist Party (KPD) to form a new coalition, but the more radical KPD turned them down, believing them to be a greater enemy than the Nazis themselves. This internal division between political allies in a larger context of unemployment and the disillusion with markets (the Great Depression in America had just begun), gave rise to a Führer.

Fast forward to a few decades. The pluralism that defined liberal democratic societies after the Second World War in the West is now challenged by a new wave of illiberalism from both the left and the right. On the right, the policing of individuals by macho strongmen. On the left, the policing of thought by intellectual puritans.

No wonder so many of our youth are turned off by this new form of ideological puritanism and finding a more welcoming place with Andrew Tate, Jordan Petterson, Joe Rogan, and similar “gateway drugs” to the far-right manosphere.

Authoritarianism is brought about by the atomization of society. Like the Communists preferring to work with the Nazis before with the Socialists, the political left in America is falling apart. We are all becoming atoms with our own views confirmed in our own little devices.

As the public Agora burns down, public discourse corrodes. The principle of charity, a virtue once championed by the political left, is giving way to a new form of self-righteousness and moral superiority that once defined the religious right.

Without the inclusive pluralism, the left will concede to the death of democracy.

I recently discovered on Spotify the French electronic artist heylucas. His single “life is beautiful” is surprisingly a good summary of what mindfulness brings you:

Focusing on your sense

puts you right into the

present moment

and when you are in the

present moment

what happens is you begin to notice

all the simple things in life

holy sh*t life is f*cking beautiful

There is wisdom here. The great tragedy of human existence is that we spend most of our waking life worried in matters related to our survival, thinking what to do next, perpetually hijacked by the next thought. Boredom —that weird state of contemplating your place in space and time— is now a relic of the past.

All we had—all we will ever have, is this moment. The past is a distant memory. The future has yet to arrive. But the present moment is here. It has always been here. Happiness is available to you at any time, if you decide to pay attention. And most of us will live our lives oblivious to this fact.

Today I stumbled upon a copy of Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy on display at the local bookstore. I was walking back home from grocery shopping. I was very glad to find it –I have been looking for it. I first read Russell’s meta-analysis on the greatest thinkers that shaped western civilization when I was in my gap years after high school. I found Russell’s writing full of wit while being razor-sharp in his insights. The man himself embodied the ideals I aspired as a teenager: a level of intellectual humility that comes from doing a herculean job of understanding the minds that make us who we are as a society. He certainly stands alongside Caro as one of my intellectual heroes.

Sadly, I lost my copy when I moved away from home for college. My family did not take good care of my possessions before college. The lack of care to my personal belongings felt like a betrayal of them not believing in me. There are a few things as meaningful and important to me as the books I have read, alongside scale models I have made and the diaries I wrote, and all these were caught in between moving operations, being scattered in unknown places –effectively lost.

So now I am rebuilding that personal library here, fully independent in Philadelphia. Seeing a second-hand copy of A History of Western Philosophy today meant much more today: I can now pay for the things that bring me genuine joy. It is without contest the most meaningful purchase of the year.

Today is a good reminder that all bodies eventually fall apart. No amount of healthy lifestyle choices (not smoking, not drinking, not eating trash, plenty of aerobic exercise) will make you an eternal ephebe. We all face decay, and eventual death. Perhaps this very quality of decay makes youth so much more precious. Perhaps life needs death to define itself. Perhaps reflections on death are, on balance, the key to live a fulfilling life.

For now, I just need some rest.

The writer James Clear asks his readers in his Thursday 3-2-1 newsletter:

Life is always progressing to the next stage. As you enter a new season, habits that previously served you well may need to be refreshed or adjusted. Which one of your current habits have you outgrown and is in need of a change?

A certain aspect of my life has entered a new season. The relationships within the nodes of this area has changed, and so has the ecosystem of the larger network. In a brief moment of introspection (and a bit of a political eye), the habit of engaging with the usual nodes of my clique will need to be diversified to allied nodes of the larger network. The larger, diffuse network is under threat by the current resident of the White House, and collaboration –an overused word that has diluted its meaning- has never been more urgent.

The Ukrainians offer a very good example of the type of network cooperation I am trying to describe. Last summer I marched with them at a protest in New York and was surprised at how they used social media so differently than the Americans. They were not Instagram influencers. They promoted each other’s stories and shared information in real-time. The nodes were acting from an ego-less point of view. It is as if each node has rescinded their individuality to access the higher-level of networks.

Perhaps it is time to read Nicholas Christakis’ Connected.