What we lack most…

What we lack most in the modern world is a sense of a larger purpose to our lives. In the past, it was organized religion that often supplied this. But most of us now live in a secularized world. We human animals are unique—we must build our own world. We do not simply react to events out of biological scripting. But without a sense of direction provided to us, we tend to flounder. We don’t how to fill up and structure our time. – Robert Greene in Mastery

Mastery was a solid read. Could have been condensed to 50 pages, like most self-help books.

February: Amazing books and articles that I read and recommend

Every month, I’ll post the best stuff I read, watched, listened to, etc. in the prior month. So this is from January.

Books

January was a huge month, in part because I was traveling. When traveling, I read a lot in my down time, and I’d just bought an iPad mini (and then promptly left in the seatback pocket of an international flight).

I finished:

blue-zones-dan-buettner Blue Zones by Dan Buettner [Amazon]. Given my interest in living forever, this was high on my list of longevity/health-related books.

Buettner does a great job combining storytelling, health science, and applicable advice into a fast read. Hara hachi bu!

 

good-without-god-greg-epsteinGood without God by Greg Epstein [Amazon]. I created a Good Life Guide for this book, check it out here.

Well-written, thorough in scope, and with real passion/emotion.

 

 

spark-john-ratey SPARK: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain by John Ratey [Amazon]. This book immediately changed my behavior. Basically a long, well-constructed argument for why we should all be runners.

Since finishing it, I’ve run on average 30 minutes/day, 5 days/week. Trying to up that to 45 minutes; ultimate target: one hour/day, 6 days/week. Aerobic exercise, to slightly adjust a frequent Ratey saying, is like “miracle-gro for the brain”. Better focus, better memory, better mood, better sleep, better sex, better everything. Read it now!

Articles

I mostly consume RSS feeds (using Netvibes), the occasional article from Facebook/Twitter, and what my friends forward. Here’s the best stuff this month. Note that not all of it is “fresh”: I emphasize quality, not topical-ity.

  • That which does not kill me makes me stranger (Daniel Coyle, NYT). The best article I’ve read on ultra-endurance athletes. Snippet: Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably.
  • What is your biggest secret desire that you are ashamed of telling anyone? (Reddit). Amazing, the secrets we hold. Snippet: In the middle of the night, I would pack one bag and drive away from my life. Not look back for one second and drive clear across the country. Find a small, rural town and just rebuild where nobody has an idea of who I am.
  • The distractions of social media, 1673 style (Tom Standage). History repeats itself, which is why its valuable to understand history. Coffeehouses!! Snippet: With the promise of a constant and unpredictable stream of news, messages and gossip, coffeehouses offered an exciting and novel platform for sharing information.
  • A Pickpocket’s Tale (Adam Green, The New Yorker). Read this, and watch the videos too. Will blow your mind. Snippet: Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.
  • late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) (Dave McClure). Another classic from Dave, honest, powerful, irreverent. Snippet: Most folks thought I was a decent fellow, but over the hill with my best days behind me… and I guess I thought so too. I watched as other friends helped make companies like Google and Facebook and Twitter into juggernauts, but mostly I was on the sidelines, only peripherally involved in their big ideas.

For a complete list, check out my Amazing media page. All of these will be added there.

In a followup post, I’ll talk about movies and podcasts.

What did you read/watch in January that blew your mind? Share away! Thanks as always for your time.

The Good Life: Lessons from Greg Epstein’s Good Without God

good-without-god-book-coverTl;dr: download my 5-page PDF guide to Greg Epstein’s Good Without God: What A Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.

This is my 3rd Good Life guide. Here are the other 2:

  • Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life [link]
  • Ben Franklin’s 13 Virtues [link]

I chose Epstein’s book because I’m curious about humanism and other modern-day life philosophies. As a big believer in religion and religious practices for helping us lead more meaningful lives, it only makes sense for me to study atheism, agnosticism, and life philosophies, too.

The Good Life guides share insights, conclusions, and questions from history’s greatest thinkers and doers on finding purpose, meaning, and fulfillment. My goal is to provide answers, and probably more questions, to living what Aristotle calls “eudemonia”, or simply, “the good life”.

It’s a 5-page PDF, free to download and share. Here’s the link to view it as a read-only Google Doc.

I’ve embedded a section below. This is my 3rd Good Life guide – please give me feedback and advice on how to make them better!!

Thanks and enjoy!

EXCERPT

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Warning: this is not a CliffNotes; I look for themes and insights to help us live a Good Life.

  • Americans have generally negative opinions of the nonreligious (in particular, atheists), but the nonreligious/”religious in name only” community is the fastest growing segment
  • Humanism is a leading non-religious philosophy and community. What is humanism? A desire to live with DIGNITY. To be the “superintendent” of your own life, to “lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to the greater good of humanity.”
  • What is the value of organized religion (eg, Christianity)?
    • When today’s biggest religions were created, people lived in a world of suffering – religions helped people alleviate their suffering through things like prayer, a belief in heaven
    • People don’t like randomness – religion helps explain things (like why we die)
    • Provides community and group identity, a key human need
    • Lays out a set of rules for good conduct (for example, the Golden Rule)
  • Non-religious belief has existed since the dawn of mankind, and is prevalent among history’s greatest thinkers (eg, Spinoza, Thomas Jefferson)
  • Epstein believes most people are driven by “striving” – striving for money, status, looks, respect

…for more, download the PDF or view it in Google Docs!

Here’s a list of all 1-page cheatsheets, and a list of all books.

February Quotes: “Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion” (Michael Jordan)

For a full list of my favorite quotes, see here. Send me yours, I’m always looking for more!!

If you want to be seen as courageous by some and hated by others, just say what you really think. – Tucker Max 

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. – Oscar Wilde

/** I particularly like these quotes from Tucker and Oscar, because consistently saying what you think is such a difficult thing to do. And you shouldn’t do it all the time, of course, but as honest as I’d like to think I am, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my real opinions and beliefs. This sort of thing requires tons of courage and tons of practice. **/

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
– T.S. Eliot

/** I’m a huge fan of travel quotes, in particular of Anais Nin. See here for more. **/

Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea.’ And the belief in that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. – Chuck Close

Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion. – Michael Jordan in his HoF acceptance speech

/** Agreed. Work hard, work constantly, and push past your limits. Bruce Lee said this much better than I could :) **/

It’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. – Clay Christensen

/** The older I get, the more this holds true. Exceptions are for the weak. **/

Christoph: Are you sure that’s him?
Django: Yeah
Christoph: Positive?
Django: I don’t know
Christoph: You don’t know if you’re positive?
Django: I don’t know what positive mean

/** A funny scene from Django. **/

Amazing Media – 10 recommended readings

Recently I’ve begun saving and annotating my favorite blog posts, articles, videos, etc. Here’s the page where I’ll add new stuff (and old stuff, re-discovered).

I’ve learned that the value of great media is not the first time you consume it, but re-absorbing and re-experiencing it over time (and doing so mindfully).

98% of what we consume is crap – shouldn’t we treasure the 2%? You don’t see tennis players practice a new forehand once and just walk away. And there’s a reason why organized religions have ONE TEXT that they read, re-read, and re-re-read.

Here are 10 of my favorites:

Disappointed bear (c/o Buzzfeed)
Disappointed bear (c/o Buzzfeed)
  1. It’s Not About You: The Truth About Social Media Marketing by Tim O’Reilly (LinkedIn) – the most effective social media marketing is creating tools and content to help communities achieve their goals. Snippet: Your job, in short, is to uncover and activate latent social networks and interest groups by helping them to reach their own goals.
  2. The Dividing Line (Max Cho) – simple yet profound. If anyone is curious what Jeff Bezos is thinking…
  3. 10 Charts About Sex (OkCupid blog) – people are fascinating. Sex is fascinating. People’s sex habits, man! Snippet: Curvy women pass skinny ones in self-confidence at age 29 and never look back. They also consistently have the highest sex drive among the groups. Curvy, as a word, has the strongest sensual overtones of all our self-descriptions. So we’re getting a little insight into the real-world implications of a label.
  4. Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. “Hacking” by Paul Buchheit (Blogspot) – great and simple explanation of a valuable outlook on life and work. Although as important is WHAT you work on – problem choice is as important as the HOW. Snippet: Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform “miracles” — things which violate the perceived rules.
  5. The Puzzle by Christopher Michel (Explorers.com) – beautiful and profound piece by Chris Michel on travel and by extension, life. Snippet: But the answers can’t be found in accumulating more. You knew that already. Well, so did I, but I’m not sure I really believed it. I do now. Happiness is reality minus expectations. And Americans, in particular, have some pretty high expectations. You do the math.
  6. That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger (NYT.com) – fascinating reporting on Jure Robic, one of the world’s greatest ultra-endurance athletes. Snippet: The craziness is methodical, however, and Robic and his crew know its pattern by heart. Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably. The last days are marked by hallucinations: bears, wolves and aliens prowl the roadside; asphalt cracks rearrange themselves into coded messages. Occasionally, Robic leaps from his bike to square off with shadowy figures that turn out to be mailboxes. In a 2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of black-bearded men on horseback.
  7. 33 Animals Who Are Extremely Disappointed In You (Buzzfeed) – hilarious photos
  8. What Is Your Biggest Secret Desire That You Are Ashamed Of Telling Anyone? Reddit – love reddit for precisely these sorts of half-crazy, half-brutally honest windows into human psychology. The top vote-getter: In the middle of the night, I would pack one bag and drive away from my life. Not look back for one second and drive clear across the country. Find a small, rural town and just rebuild where nobody has an idea of who I am.
  9. Cities and Ambition by Paul Graham (PaulGraham.com) – a personal favorite among PG’s non-startup essays. Snippet: How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. […] Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.
  10. George Orwell: Why I Write (Orwell.ru) – Snippet: And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.