My 10 Favorite Ideas of the Year

Hello and welcome to the Curiosity Chronicle, a weekly podcast where I provide actionable ideas to help you build a high performing, healthy, wealthy life. Today's podcast is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens I get asked about my morning routine all the time. It changes from time to time, but AG1 has been the one constant since 2011. I drink it with a big glass of water every single morning to start my day on a positive tone. Today, Athletic Greens is offering Curiosity Chronicle subscribers an exclusive a free one year supply of liquid vitamin D, plus five travel packs with your subscription purchase. To take advantage of it, go to drinkag1.com Sahil now now onto today's piece my 10 favorite ideas of the Year I'd like to officially welcome you to the second half of 2023. I started the year with a piece on ways to make 2023 your greatest year to date. Your own annus mirabilis, a name given for the miracle year of prolific discoveries made by a young Isaac Newton during his escape from a plague ridden London in 1666. If you've kept up with your New Year's resolutions and feel on track, great. If not, that's okay. Because even if the best time to start was six months ago, the second best time is today. So far this year, I've written two newsletters per week, every single week for a total of 52 newsletters. During that time, we've seen the subscriber base grow from 170,000 to over 450,000. Today I'd like to share a distillation of my 10 favorite ideas from those pieces. I will cover each idea in concise, simple terms, but you should feel welcome to go deeper with the original piece on any that pique your interest. Here are my 10 favorite ideas from the first half of 2023. Overcome your fear. The Spotlight Effect There are two big mistakes in life. 1 worrying about what other people think about you, and 2 believing that other people think about you in the first place. The spotlight effect is a common psychological phenomenon where we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or observing our actions, behaviors, appearance, or results. We think everyone is staring and noticing us, but they aren't. Even if they are, they quickly forget about it. To dim the spotlight awareness, understand that others are never as tuned into your actions, behaviors, or appearance as you are. Even if they do notice you, they quickly forget about it as they're mostly just focused on themselves. Be interested in any public situation. Ask questions, listen intently, and engage. This eases your own tensions, gets others talking and builds up your confidence in a new social situation. And three the so what approach Confront your worst fears about what could go wrong. Ask so what about that worst fear becoming reality. Usually the so what isn't nearly as bad as we think. As Seneca famously wrote, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. How to start the 1:1:1 method journaling is an extremely powerful tool for improving mental health and clarity. Unfortunately, it's a positive habit that eludes many people because it feels intimidating to start. To solve this, I developed a dead simple solution. I call it the one one one Method. Every single evening at the end of your workday, open up your journal or favorite digital tool or application and and write down three simple one win from the day, one point of tension, anxiety or stress, and one point of gratitude. With a simple structure and a low time burden, the 1:1:1 method is an easy way to start building a journaling practice that will improve your mental health in the second half of 2020. 3 the productivity tool the Eisenhower Matrix Dwight Eisenhower was known for his prolific productivity. His secret what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. An urgent task is one that requires immediate intention to complete. An important task is one that contributes to your long term mission or goals. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to categorize your current tasks. The goal Spend more time on the important tasks that contribute to your long term values and goals. In simple terms, manage the top right of the Matrix. Spend more time in the top left of the matrix and waste less time in the bottom half. For a visual cue on this, go to the newsletter. How to Ride the Waves the Surfer Mentality When a surfer gets up on a wave, they enjoy the present moment even though they know with certainty that the wave will eventually end. They fully enjoy this wave which with the wisdom and awareness that there are always more waves coming. The surfer knows that they don't have to ride every single wave that comes their way. The surfer knows that 90% of the time they won't be riding any wave but just paddling and waiting. They are aware that patience and proper positioning is all that matters for when the next wave inevitably comes. Finally, the surfer knows that the only way to live is by putting themself out there in the water. You can't catch any waves sitting on the shore. How to Learn Anything the Feynman Technique the Feynman Technique is a learning model that leverages teaching and prioritizes simplicity to help you develop a deep understanding of any topic. It involves four key steps. 1. Set the stage what's the topic you want to learn. Starting with a blank page, write the topic at the top and jot down everything you know about it. Read and research the topic. Add any new learnings or insights as you develop them. 2. Explain it to me like I'm 5. Attempt to explain the topic to someone without a base understanding of it, that is A child. On a blank page, write down everything you know about your topic, but pretend you are explaining it to a child. Use simple language. 3. Assess and study. Reflect on your performance. Form an honest assessment. How well were you able to explain the topic to a child? Where did you get frustrated? Where did you turn to jargon? These are the gaps in your understanding. Read and study more to fill them and 4. Organize, convey and review. Organize your elegant, simple language into a clear, compelling story or narrative. Convey it to a few others. Then iterate and refine accordingly. Review your new, deep understanding of the topic. It's easy to overcomplicate and intimidate. We all know people who try to do this, but don't be fooled. Complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding. Use the Feynman Find beauty in simplicity how to get the four types of luck in 1978, a neurologist named Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance and Creativity the the Lucky Art of novelty. In it, Dr. Austin proposed that there are four types of 1. Blind luck completely out of your control. It includes where you were born, who you're born to, base circumstances of your life, acts of God, and more. Blind luck covers the truly random occurrences of the universe 2. Luck from motion. You're creating motion and collision through hustle and energy that you are inserting into an ecosystem. The increase in collisions opens you up to more lucky events 3. Luck from awareness the result of your awareness and depth of understanding of a specific domain. This depth of understanding within a given arena allows you to become very good at positioning yourself for lucky breaks to benefit you and four Luck from uniqueness occurs when your unique set of attributes attracts a specific luck to you. It actually seeks you out as a useful rule of thumb for your journey. Always consider my luck raiser when choosing between two paths, always choose the path that has a larger luck surface area. Ask yourself which of the two paths is more likely to lead to me getting lucky? Act accordingly. Embrace ordinary the Trap of the Extraordinary the trap of the extraordinary is that we conflate success with the achievement of the extraordinary. Winners are those who achieve the extraordinary. Losers are those who do not. The two mindset shifts to escape the trap. It's not about achieving the extraordinary. It's about finding purpose, joy and fulfillment in the ordinary along the way. The prize is not the achievement you strive for, but the striving itself. This is about dislocating your happiness from any ends you're trying to reach. It's about avoiding the when then psychology that says when I get X then I'll be happy. Make the ordinary come alive and the extraordinary will take care of itself. Be the Main Character Character Invention Create a character in your mind who can show up in the way you want to and teach yourself to flip the switch to become this character when necessary. Here are a few steps to incorporate it into your life. 1. Identify the situations where you'd like to show up as the best version of yourself. This can be as big as performing in front of millions or as small as having dinner with your family after a long day. Any situation where you want to be your best. 2. Envision the character you would like to embody in each situation. What traits do they possess? How do they appear and interact? What is their mentality and energy level? And three get in character. Nothing works without practice. Get yourself some reps by turning on this character in those situations. See how it feels to show up as your best self in these moments. Remember your daily actions shape your identity. When you embrace this, your whole world can start to change. How to Unlock New Growth the Think Day Free Time to Think is a call option on future interesting opportunities. When you have free time built into your schedule, you have the headspace and bandwidth to dream up and pursue high upside ideas. Pick one day each month or quarter to step back from all of your day to day professional demands. Seclude yourself mentally or physically. Shut off all of your notifications on your devices and put up an out of office response. Six Question Prompts to Guide the Day what are your strongest beliefs? What would it take for you to change your mind on them? What are a few things that you know now that you wish you knew five years ago? How can you do less but better? Are you hunting antelope or field mice? What actions were you engaged in five years ago that you cringe at today? What actions are you engaged in today that you will cringe at in 5 years? What would your 80 year old self say about your decisions today? Depending on your professional and life constraints, you can scale the Think Day up or down. The point is to force this air and space into your life and experience the unlock it provides. And finally, your ultimate the Time Billionaire. A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years. I feel like in our culture we are so obsessed as a culture with money and we deify dollar billionaires in a way. And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see sometimes 20 year olds the thought I had was they probably have 2 billion seconds left but but they aren't relating to themselves as time billionaires. Graham Duncan on the Tim Ferriss Show Time is our most precious asset. When you're young, you are literally rich with time. At age 20 you probably have about 2 billion seconds left. Assuming you live to 80 by 50, just 1 billion seconds remain. Most of us fail to realize the value of this asset until it is gone finishing 2023 strong those were my 10 favorite ideas shared in my newsletter and podcast in the first half of 2023. Pick one and set your intention to incorporate it into your life in the days and weeks ahead. If you do, I guarantee you'll be on the right track for a terrific second half of the year. Reply to my email and let me know which idea resonated most with you and how you plan to action on it. I'll do my best to get back to everyone. Onward and upward friends. Until next time, stay curious.