Carbon Cravings + Brain Hardware + Really Deep Space + The White Duke

Vacations are beautiful things. I know a lot of people who highly anticipate them, roil in their presence, then mourn going. For me they roll in with an amazing amount of anxiety around the disruption of my regular rhythm, then settle in to a calm comfort of disconnection, and finally fade away with the glow of a sunset and a book of memories. This year Liz and I sent our kids to sleep away camp for the first time ever, and stacked two weeks with a succession of experiences. We sprinted off to Europe for a week, came back stateside to spend a week on our own, brought the kids back in for a solo parenting stretch, then reunited everyone to kick off our annual summer month in rural Virginia. 

Having these four phases -- family time, couple's retreat, individual adventure, solo parenting, then back to full family time -- gave me a great way to experience each piece of who I am in my personal life in immediate succession. It was an enlightening way to step back and see the whole puzzle in each of its pieces. Each week was a way to reflect on how I come together, and to reimagine the parts of my life that I can blend together. 

Here's what else I spent the vacation:

Reading - Bill Gates released his summer reading recommendations and of the five books mentioned I picked up How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil. The book is a narrative walk through a numerical argument around how deep our carbon addiction really is. Smil makes compelling arguments that simply focusing on EVs and solar power for our homes isn't enough to significantly dent, much less erase our environmental impact. He shows how almost every part of modern life, from food production and worldwide distribution, to modern building and civilization development are more deeply rooted in carbon consumption that most people imagine. If you've read and enjoyed Yuval Noah Harari's books, especially Sapiens, you may dig Smil as well. 

(I also nabbed Why We're Polarized by journalist Ezra Klein on Audible -- it's fascinating if you're curious about our the roots and reasons for our current political divide.)

Listening to - One of my favorite podcasts just years came to an end. Kara Swisher's Sway had an incredible two year run of asking tough questions to powerful people. Since exiting the booth in June Sway has been re-airing some of Swisher's favorite episodes including a 2020 interview with Elon Musk. They discuss Tesla and SpaceX of course, but I found the snippet of conversation around Neuralink especially interesting. It's one of Musk's lessor known ventures that's aimed at understanding brain science and creating an integration between technology and human hardware. The initial goals of tackling challenges such as seizures and paralysis are interesting, but the ideas Musk floats around AI's progress and humanity's limitation around speed of communication are especially fascinating. It's worth the listen. 

Admiring - This week NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Launched at Christmas 2021, the JWST is powerful enough to see the earliest moments of the universe's existence. The photos shared this week show clusters of galaxies four billion light years away. The images are simply breathtaking. 

Weekly gig - I've been listened to a lot of David Bowie the last few weeks. He was a musical genius who was able to reinvent, express himself, and remain relevant over five decades. It's not a greatest hit's show, but here's a show from Montreaux in July of 2002. It's a stellar setlist and it's crazy to think that this happened twenty years ago this week. 

Have a clear eyed, forward thinking, awe inspiring week.

Potatoes or Eggs + Ozark Lessons + Inherent Value + Phish + Sentient AI bonus

It's said that having children decreases overall happiness but increases joy; that's a pretty deflating statement at first glance. But when we think about what life truly is - a series of moments and emotions to be fully experienced - would leading a happy life really give us all of what we want? Without the challenges overcome, the disappointments weathered, can the results achieved or the dreams fulfilled really be appreciated? Should our aim just be to increase happiness? Or should we aim to joyously experience it all?

It's also said that happiness is experienced on the way to fulfillment. My experience is that there's no bigger, more fulfilling role than being a parent. So maybe the frequency of happiness decreases with kids, (heck...having kids means we generally sacrifice doing exactly what we want to do so that we can do what they need to be done) but I'd wager a bet that the amplitude of our experience increases. Maybe getting to see each of those peaks is what delivers a fulfilling life, and if we pay attention along the way we get happiness as a byproduct.

Here's what else the last week had me:

Reading - Atomic Habits by James Clear is a highly lauded book about building small positive changes to reach one's full potential. The simplicity of the idea and the models offered are very worthy of the book's near unanimous praise. Along the read I found some unexpected ideas beyond just habit building. One in particular is that input, environment, and outcome are all interrelated; they must be considered together in achieving what we want. Clear uses a great analogy to express this. He writes, "Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can't control whether you’re a potato or egg, but you can decide to play a game where it’s better to be hard or soft." By knowing who you are and what you want, you can decide if the environment you're in will help you progress.

Watching - The Netflix show Ozark has been my chosen stream of late. I'm only about half way through Season One, but the complexity of the plot lines, fragile depth of relationships, and dark underbelly content is engrossing. It's yet another prime example of how modern entertainment has perfected the protagonist who is a deeply flawed character. The thing that keeps me coming back is my admiration for how Jason Bateman’s character, Marty Byrd, seems unflappable in the most dire of all situations. When most any other character would freeze, he is able to escape by deftly thinking on his feet. By no means is Marty a role model, but he’s an inspiration for creative problem solving.

Thinking - my friend Mike posed a great question to a group of colleagues last week. He asked, “what’s the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem?” I think the two are linked, but they are fundamentally different. Self-confidence is rooted in the belief that one can do something. It’s saying, “challenge me, I have the skill to..”. It’s built through experience and practice. Self-esteem is an inner belief about our worth. It’s a reflection on what we feel we deserve. Self-esteem is saying “I am worthy...of respect, or success, or a great marriage, or...simply because I am.” Self confidence and self esteem are both are incredibly important to maximizing who we become, but only one is fundamental to our human existence. Every person is worthy of whatever they want, simply by the beating of their heart. Our mission is to act in accordance with the values required to fulfill our dreams.

Weekly gig - a heartwarming tweet that lead to this clip inspires this week’s gig. I saw scores of Phish shows in my twenties, but haven’t had them in my musical rotation in quite some time. Here’s a show from their 1997 winter European tour that many still rank among the best of all time.

Have a joyful, creative week. You deserve it.


P.S. - since I missed posting last week, I can't sign off with out mentioning sentient AI. The debate around Google's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) was enthralling. If you missed it, check out The Washington Post's blockbuster story about a Google programmer's belief that a sentient computer has been created, as well as the responding Opinion piece by two leading AI ethicists who say that this is simply human personification of a very advanced program.

Toxic People + Tough Topics + Imposters + Everyday People

Short work weeks -- or extended weekends, however you want to look at them -- always throw me for a loop, so I'm glad to be back on the typical M-F/S/S cadence. This week's return to a standard rhythm of life got me thinking a lot about the simple privileges that can easily be taken for granted, maybe even go unrealized if we don't intentionally reflect upon them. 

The word privilege always reminds me of a story song by Utah Phillips and Annie DiFranco. There's a great line that talks about how pacifism isn't just giving up "guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of privilege and going into the world completely disarmed." I'm trying to disarm myself from a lot of late -- of impatience and expectations in particular -- and to replace those privileges with understanding and empathy. A few of the things that rally triggered reflection for me this week were:

Reading - a piece by John Pavlovitz that I stumbled on a few weeks ago. It's called How Do You Love Toxic People? and is an except from his book If God Is Love, Don't Be A Jerk. There's a powerful idea here that we don't have to give proximity, power, and influence to people we love. In some cases, we don't even have to give them attention. Pavlovitz proposes that we can love people, and if the differences between us become too much to bare, then moving on or stepping away is actually an act of love in and of itself. 

Watching - the Apple+ series The Problem with Jon Stewart. I was turned onto this by some work my friend has been doing to pass some very cool legislation around Veterans and burn pits called the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act. Stewart made this issue the first topic he tackled on his new talk show. In the series' eighth episode, Jon Stewart tackles the issue of racism in America and the ongoing reverberations of historical structure our country built. Humor sure has a great way of disarming us in order to expose a deeper truth. 

Listening - to a relatively new Podcast called Imposters. No matter who you talk to or what they've accomplished, almost everyone seems to suffer from imposter syndrome at some point. This pod is intended to wade through those stories of self-doubt and success with some pretty incredible people. I've only been through a few portions of a few episodes, but I find the honesty of these interviews very refreshing in a world full of Instaworthy posturing. It's a great reminder that everyday people go on to do amazing things, and all of us are everyday people. 

Weekly gig - while you may have been expecting a Sly & the Family Stone or an Arrested Development (take your "Everyday People" pick) show from this section, I'm going to bounce all the way back to the top and link to the full Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips collaboration The Past Didn't Go Anywhere. It's not a concert, but I hope you enjoy streaming the music and stories all the same. 

Have a nontoxic week, in all the ways possible.

Partial Bolding + Recordation vs Recollection + Pay Phones + 50 Years of Exile

This week I made a trip to Austin, TX, sneaking midweek vacation in with my wife beside two mastermind sessions with Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, Jason Abrams, and a few hundred of my favorite KW associates. The most important part of that trip though, was a gun safety protest that Liz and I attended at the Texas State Capitol on Wednesday. In the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre I can’t help but fixate on how broken our society and political system are, especially around the issue of guns. Whatever your beliefs are, the facts are simple: fewer guns means fewer gun deaths. 

If you have a desire to see fewer mass shootings, suicides, accidental deaths, less crime overall, and even decreased police shootings…please take one simple action to voice your will. Here’s a link to find something that can be done, no matter where you live or what your outlook. 

This blog is usually a lot lighter, so getting back to that, here’s what else this week had me:

Thinking - A tweet I saw pointed to the benefits of bionic reading. It’s a simple typeface that bolds the first few letters of each word and improves cognition and speed while reading. I recall hearing that the brain really only uses the first few letters in a word to identify it, and this research seems to support that, especially among neurodivergent readers. If I had used it here, you'd probably already be reading about pay phones. ;-)

Watching - My kids are really into a show called Brian Child. On one episode we watched this week, the show featured an experiment highlighting the idea of cognitive offloading. The idea is simple: when we commit something to record, it has an effect on our memory. For example taking notes while reading helps improve comprehension and memory. The example the crew of Brain Science used was taking a photo of something. This cognitive offloading seems to work in reverse. When we snap a photo of a place or person or an event, our brain is conditioned to spend less energy on that memory, because there’s a record of it somewhere else. It raises a good question, next time you’re on vacation how can you take a few less photos and commit a little more to memory? 

Remembering - The days when we used pay phones are long gone, but this week the last public pay phone was removed from the streets of New York City. Check out the video here. Now where are we going to find an extra quarter when we need one? 

Weekly Gig - Earlier this month, I missed the chance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of rock & roll’s most epic albums  On May 12th Exile On Main Street turned 50 years old. To celebrate, here’s a show from the Stone’s 1972 Deuces Still Wild Tour. Get your rocks off! 

Happy Memorial Day weekend, y'all. 

Willie and Trigger + An 84 Year Tenure + My First Bat Mitzvah

You know those weeks where Tuesday seems like Wednesday, and Wednesday seems like it should be Friday? That’s where I was this week, though I’m not sure why. Nothing seemed to drag on. Everything moved at a good pace. I just couldn’t catch the calendar. Sometimes the days blow by so fast you miss them. Other times one day’s passing seems like it took two or three days’ time. A few things caught my attention around longevity this week. Here’s how they showed up:

Listening - Last week’s news of Naomi Judd got me wandering down the dusty trails of country music I was exposed to as a kid. The most prominent among those troubadours is Willie Nelson, so it was neat to see this InsideHook article pop up this week detailing the best of the 88 (yes…eighty-eight!) albums he’s released - just one shy of how many years he’s been on this planet! Among my favorites in his massive canon are Shotgun Willie, Red Headed Stranger, Stardust, and Half Nelson. On all of those records, and for more than 10,000 shows Willie has played a modified Martin N-20 guitar that he’s named Trigger. It’s a battered and bruised beauty that Willie still trots out for every gig. It proves that music is function over form and that new doesn't always beat old. Trigger is such an iconic instrument, it even has its own Wikipedia page. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check it out. And if you've never seen Willie play Whiskey River live, he's still on tour. In the mean time, stream a few numbers from the red headed stranger this week. 

Reading - This very short Morning Brew article about one man’s 84 year tenure working for the same company was refreshing. In a world where so many of us ponder our careers, strive to achieve massive goals, and measure our worth against our accomplishments, Walter Orthmann offers an alternative. He is 100 years old, and when asked why he’s been in the same position for so many decades, her replied “All I care about is that tomorrow will be another day in which I will wake up, get up, exercise, and go to work; you need to get busy with the present, not the past or the future.” That’s incredible! Simple, practical wisdom from a man who’s been around to see so much!

Reflecting on - I attended my first bat mitzvah this weekend. I’m 43 years old so it’s kind of surprising that it took this long. I love seeing different traditions, and being part of this one was very special. The ceremony was held for my neighbor Lorelei as she became an adult member of her synagogue’s community. As part of the ceremony Lorelei offered a lesson for the congregation. She quoted John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, telling us that we must stand up for one another and ourselves. She drew from their speeches and teachings to remind us that believing something is not enough; belief must be enacted to make a difference. She was eloquent and thoughtful in her delivery. And she was nervous too, as most teenagers rightfully are when they deliver a big speech in a high pressure moment of their life. Watching Lorelei smile through those nerves and speak deep truth learned from inspirational leaders made me so grateful that she is part of my community, and it brought me mountains of hope for my children’s generation. 

Weekly Gig - One of the best, and longest running, music shows on television is Austin City Limits. Willie Nelson performed on the pilot back in 1976 and has been on something like two dozen times. Rather than pick a single show, here are 32 tracks from across those appearances collected in one place. 

Have a long running, connected week.

Defining a Second + Overvalued Early Picks + Remembering Naomi Judd

I have an old 1975 Ford F-100 that I love to drive. It needs a bath right now, and it can be persnickety, but it runs like a top. It's older than me and in some ways it's probably easier to get along with too. Hopefully we all improve with age. This week I got to drive it out to rural Virginia and back twice. Getting time on the road, windows down and music up in an old truck, is a pretty easy way for me to escape and find nostalgia and to reflect. Here's a bit of what this week, and those drives had me:

Thinking - This week scientists announced the new definition of a second. It doesn't really change how long a second is, but it does improve the accuracy of how a second is counted. Knowing what time it is, at least beyond the season, is a relatively new idea in human history. Measurement of time -- be it in days, hours, minutes, seconds, or nanoseconds -- allows us to do some pretty amazing things. We can coordinate school schedules, perform heart surgery, even calculate space travel. All of these are undoubtedly great abilities, and the micro-measurement of time will allow us to make amazing scientific advancements that improve our quality of life. The thing though, is that time can begin to take over our lives. And I'd argue that it's not all that important to our fundamental happiness. Heck, it may actually be counter to our happiness. When we are doing what we truly enjoy, time doesn't really factor in. Time actually evaporates in flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that flow is the secret to happiness. It's very possible that our ancestors lived much happier, albeit less well, than we do because of their inability to track time and live in the flow. When we remove the pressure of being somewhere, or delivering something, or doing an action by a specific date and time, we can reduce stress. This isn't always possible, but it's become pretty natural for most of us to place artificial deadlines on just about everything. How much pressure could you release by removing some of that time constraint from your schedule? Could it be enough to redefine how you measure -- or at least use -- time?

Reading - Every year the National Football League puts on a huge spectacle. It's not the Super Bowl; it's the NFL Draft. And it's possible that there's more wagering going on among teams at the Draft than there is among fans around the Super Bowl. This annual event is where billions of dollars are wagered on which college football players will have the biggest impact on the NFL's 32 teams. It's fun to see who reaches for a surprise pick (which usually fails) but almost all of these selections are more hope and hype than help. History shows that teams grossly overvalue high picks and disproportionately devalue late round selections. Recently though we've seen a few teams buck this trend, trading away multiple first round picks for proven league veterans. The LA Rams did that last year, and ended up winning the Super Bowl with Matthew Stafford. This reminds me of the old parable about a pottery class: 

There was once a teacher who decided to split his month long pottery class into two groups. Group A had to make a pot every day for 30 days (30 pots in total). Group B had to work on a single pot for the whole 30 days. At the end of the month, the teacher judged the quality of the pots. Without exception, every one of the top 10 pots came from Group A, the group that made one pot per day. None came from the group that focused on perfecting their single pot. 

It's not a direct parallel, but it does show the lesson that the quality (or in the NFL's case, the certainty) is in the quantity. Raw talent is great, but it's not enough to place a massive wager on. Experience in the arena is what we should evaluate, and value the most. This is also why, as a Broncos fan, I was so pleased to see them trade for Russell Wilson instead of reaching for a QB in the first round this year. 

Remembering - The 80s and 90s were a heyday for Country music. Many would argue that they were its pinnacle. From my view, it's certainly been pretty downhill since then. (Sorry, Luke Bryan.) Throughout these two decades there were many amazing women who raised the bar of music performance: Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, Shania Twain, and more. This week we lost one of those icons in Naomi Judd. She and her daughter Wynona formed The Judds in 1983 and went on to release a string of chart toppers and take home a slew of music awards. If you're unfamiliar with their work, you can find them at #6 on this list of The Top 40 Female Country Singers of All Time.  I'm also linking to their 1991 Farewell Concert below. 

Weekly Gig - As just mentioned, this week's show is from 1991 in Murfreesboro, TN. Enjoy The Judds' Farewell Concert. Farewell, Naomi. 

Happy a newly defined, appropriately valued, angelic week.

Wired for Love + Action Under Stress + Colin Kaepernick's Children's Book + Alone Together Tuesdays

It was a crazy stressful week. As the weekend wraps up, I'm grateful for the clarity that's arisen around the situations that created such stress. There's a lot of relief in knowing what is, versus wondering what will be. So much of what troubles us comes from the unknown and our expectations. Sometimes I find bits of peace in simple presence; other times I find it in distraction. Here's what I've been diving into this week to move my mind out of future-world:

Reading - How Love Changes Your Brain is a piece about neuroscientist Stephanie Ortigue’s new book, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection. The article walks us through the a few ways that human interconnectedness have physical impacts and cause chemical reactions in our bodies. As someone who is an only child and spent a lot of time living alone, I long discounted the need for intimate connections. Part of that distance is likely due to an introverted nature, but there's also part of that aloofness that's rooted in feeling bad about not being "naturally wired" for instant and easy connection. Dr. Ortique touched on this a bit with a brilliant comparison of loneliness to thirst. She questions why we feel guilty for being lonely, when it's simply an emotion that's telling us we crave connection. (To quote one of my favorite songwriters, Jerry Joseph: love is like water...though the song is titled Light Is Like Water, which is also a short story in a book called Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I digress...) When we find someone who's thirsty, we give them a drink. Ortique suggests though that the best way to combat loneliness is not to connect the lonely with another person, but to also ask for their help. We have an innate desire to be interconnected and contribute to the well being of others. By activating this deep rooted desire, we can build up others and drive away loneliness, by showing them their importance and how they improve the world around them.

Listening - I tuned into an old Radiolab episode on stress this week. It ventured into many interesting areas, but the one that jumped out at me most was what physiologically happens to us when we are under duress. Our body shuts down its unnecessary functions and does only what required and most useful to keep us safe. When we are challenged to stay alive, we turn off our minds and just rely on instinct to perform the most critical functions of survival. Oddly though this is not what we do when challenged in other ares of our life, especially our businesses. When our businesses begin to falter, many times our minds go to amazing lengths to think of what we can do to keep it afloat; what are we not doing that we should be doing, and what are all the ways that we can do that? In real estate (and pretty much in every other business too) we should follow the model of our bodies and only do the critical things that are critical to survival. Foremost among those is to lead generate. Just like your body during fight or flight, increasing client contact and upping your prospecting activities is your business's way of raising its oxygenation, blood flow and neuro-responsiveness. Our bodies are such amazing creations and provide such clarity for how to operate. It's funny that our minds trick us into not following the physical lead.

Thinking - Colin Kaepernick recently released a children’s book titled I Color Myself Different. I haven't yet read it, but I'm excited to do so. Kaepernick has turned his exclusion from the NFL into an amazingly powerful story. When disallowed to play the game he loves, earn a living through his craft, and removed from the stage that allowed him to spread a message, he found a way to keep his voice heard. I so greatly admire his courage to stand up for what he believes in. I applaud his incredible commitment to a just cause. And I respect his ability to take a shameful blackballing by the NFL and turn it into a larger message and opportunity. So many people with physical gifts, incredible skill, and high levels of privilege or achievement stop at simply enjoying the fruits of their effort. It takes a level of awareness and responsibility to use fame and fortune to further a cause, but that's the best use of celebrity and success. It takes even more creativity and grit to continue that crusade when the platform for your message gets removed. 

Weekly Gig - Another one of my favorite songwriters is Hayes Carll. During the pandemic he did a series of streams called Alone Together Tuesdays. Here's a show from July of 2020. I hope you enjoy.

Have a connected, essential, and meaningful week.