But Einstein wasn’t yet a well-known professor, and didn’t even have a position at a university — that all came later. Instead, he wrote in his spare time from working as an examiner at the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland.

If your job fills your life with meaning, pays well, and is rewarding, then I congratulate you!

You’ve found the holy grail we’re all supposed to be looking for. The advice to “do what you love” is everywhere, combined with the subtle insinuation that if you don’t love your job, you’ve somehow failed.

But that’s not the only way. The Einstein option is to separate your money-making time from your meaning-making time. Find work that’s stable and pays well and leaves you fresh to focus on your true calling in your spare time. It’s an equally valid lifestyle, and many famous people have done exactly this. For instance, Einstein.

Einstein described the patent office as “that worldly cloister where I hatched my most beautiful ideas.” He wrote that “the peace of the secular monastery and the material reassurance for the hard times” were very helpful for him.

Should you pull an Einstein?

This path may be especially underrated for first-time startup founders. On the one hand they all want to be Jobs or Elon or sama — people who have an extremely strong vision of the future and pursue it monomaniacally. However, the financially sustainable path to getting there is not obvious. So they're torn between meaning and money.

To them I say “porque no los dos?” Hell yea to the sense of purpose and ambition. But as long as you're making progress on that front, it doesn't need to be all-consuming. You'll get there, just like Einstein did.

I should acknowledge that there are tradeoffs here. If you let yourself get too comfortable in your normie job, you might not follow through on your vision. The best time to eat is when you're hungry. If you're no longer hungry enough to bring about the glorious future you imagine, you might not put in the effort that's required.

The Einstein vs The Curie

Another consideration is that this strategy works better for some than others. Consider the case of Marie Curie. Unlike Einstein, Curie was totally focused on her chosen area (chemistry), studying like mad and getting multiple degrees while making almost no money.

But this was maybe her best option. Being a woman in the early 1900s, it was incredibly hard to be taken seriously as a scientist. So independent publishing may not have worked for her.

Plus, Einstein did theoretical physics through thought experiments, which did not require any special equipment. Curie, on the other hand, had to have a chemistry lab for her work of isolating radioactive elements. She needed institutional support, both to lend her credibility and provide her with equipment, whereas he was free to ignore it.

So add the Einstein option to your mental quiver of life-strategies. It might give you options you didn’t know you had.

Thank you Priya and Andrew for pushing me to write this.

Update: maybe Einstein’s job wasn’t that boring after all

You can think of your country's innovation as a "commandment" -- something you must do to belong, and that makes you better in some sense when you do it. The Network State includes many examples of what such a commandment might be, such as keto kosher (we don't each carbs), digital sabbath (we don't use tech on Sundays), or medical sovereignty (we let you do whatever crazy thing you want to your own body).

There’s one proposal, however, that I’m surprised didn’t make the book: a mandate towards open finance and the use of decentralized cryptocurrency instead of state-controlled money. The commandment here is to use crypto, not just as a road to getting rich, but as a way to meet your everyday needs. Buy groceries, pay your plumber, give money to a friend (or a stranger), collect a salary, buy some weed, sign into a website, take out a loan, vote on a proposal, and so on.

Why rally around crypto usage? First of all, it's a great fit for the network state paradigm. Crypto plays a central role in Balaji's vision, and crypto natives will grasp it most easily. If you already use crypto, you probably understand the potential for network states and you're comfortable with new modes of interacting. If you don't, it's gonna take a lot more convincing to get you on board ("you want me to install a wallet app?? to record things onchain???").

Second, it's actionable and action-oriented. It tells you exactly what to do. Should I ignore crypto? Complain about crypto? Idly wonder what crypto is? Hodl crypto? NO, *use crypto!* If you bought a bunch of bitcoin in 2015 and are sitting on it till you retire, congrats on your luck or foresight. But you're not a crypto user. On the other hand, you don't have to disavow mainstream currency to fit in. Crypto has religious elements, but its primarily a tool to transact value online.

Focusing on day-to-day use naturally puts you in the inner circle of crypto -- a more potent community than the broad and ill-defined "crypto users". Crypto follows the 1-9-90 rule: 1% build new things, 9% use them, and 90% just sit on their tokens. Here's a recent graph of crypto adoption. Look at 7-day active addresses vs # of owners for each protocol. Almost no one uses crypto on a regular basis, even among people who already own it!

Using crypto is optimistic and pro-tech in general. You’d be recruiting early adopters, comfortable on the frontier of innovation and eager to advance the state of the art. Adjacent fields (cryptography, energy, communication protocols, open source, governance) reap benefits from early crypto users, so

A good commandment is divisive. It makes you put some skin in the game, to stand up for your beliefs. Imagine asking "do you use crypto?" on a first date. The response you get could tell you a lot. It's like being a Goth or an Orthodox Jew -- you fit into crypto subculture in proportion to how much you stand apart from the mainstream fiat culture. The middle ground is erased to make the contrast starker and the commitment more decisive.

In fact, active crypto use is a stance for money that's independent of state government. It's about freedom to transact, rule of law, and pluralism. When you use crypto you declare your moral and political allegiance to non-government currency, and that's a bold and heretical stance in almost every country on earth. Crypto is a threat to legacy institutions. By showing that finance and government can be decoupled, you threaten the governments that rely on that coupling for power.

It is useless to argue with someone whose opinion is based on a personal or financial interest; the only way to deal with them is to out-compete them.

Finally, there's a pragmatic business case for being an active crypto user. It's pretty obvious that UX is a big hurdle to crypto adoption. Assuming you want more of that, and you're not yourself working to build crypto products, the best thing for you is to create deman for such products to be created. That demand will attract entrepreneurs to make things for you and your fellow citizens. This spins the flywheel, pulling in more citizens -- a network state effect.

Caveat: this line of thinking is predicated on the current moment. In 20 years, I hope using crypto will be far more mundane. That's ok. Network states don't have to be universal. They are closer to startups, taking advantage of what works now and evolving to meet future demand.

If you care about crypto, use crypto.

It’s been a minute since my last Unicycle dispatch. I’m back, and I’m gonna try writing shorter emails to see if that work better. Enjoy!

This week I watched part of Lex Fridman interview John Carmack. John is considered one of the best programmers ever. He was the lead programmer of games like Wolfenstein 3D and Quake which I played a ton as a kid and which were revolutionary when they came out. He was also the CTO of Oculus VR for many years, and now he’s working on AI. So there’s a lot to look forward to.

In the interview, which is five hours long and I’be only watched the first hour so far, Lex adopts the frame of programming as an athletic endeavor. He asks John questions about his routine, including little details like

• his work setup and the tools (physical and digital) he uses

• what a typical work day looks like

• what he eats and drinks during coding sessions

• how he reviews past performance to improve

It’s not clear if John thinks of his work explicitly like that, but his answers show that he at least approaches it the same way. Even after several decades at the top of the game, he’s actively trying to get better. He takes the time to experiment with new tools and approaches, he tracks his day-to-day output and thoughts and regularly reflects on them, and he’s very pragmatic. A lot of John’s answers are of the form “I can see where that style/tool/idea is useful but I tend not to use it myself” before talking about why he does what he does.

As a programmer and athlete (in the conventional sense) myself, I’m kind of surprised I never made the connection between the two. Thinking about it now, I do apply similar strategies to getting better at both ultimate and programming. At the same time, there’s a lot more I could do.

For example, lifting is a big part of my sports prep. I lift to stay healthy and to play better. I track every lifting workout, focus on good form and sustainability over big numbers, and believe that steady incremental progress will pay off in the long run.

What’s my lifting for coding? I don’t know. I don’t have any regular practice to “strengthen” my programming skills. Maybe I could do typing exercises (the equivalent of scales or chord progressions on a guitar), or self-contained coding sprints, or programming challenges?

What “lifting” do you do to make you better at your job or hobbies?

~Grin

It’s been a few months since I last wrote to you. Many things happened that I could tell you about, so many that it’s hard for me to find the time to tell you everything. In fact the dread of leaving something important out has kept me from writing anything at all. So I’m declaring update bankruptcy! No news about the past, only about the present.

I think you know by now that I do yearly themes instead of resolutions. 2020 was Year of Writing, 2021 was Year of Health. For this year, I’m doing Year of Attention. It’s a bit different this time around, because I already have a bunch of things I plan to do related to attention: get back into a regular meditation practice, audit how I spend my time and make sure it aligns with my values, understand group attention better, and figure out if attention is a limited resource or not.

Here are two things that have been top-of-mind lately.

1

Enjoyment is the secret ingredient to stable attention.

This is a quote from my friend Tasshin. I think he was mostly talking about meditation when he wrote this (he’s a monk and an expert meditator), but the more I look the more I see it in other contexts.

For example, my kids. Most of the time they are little birds flitting from one game to another: jumping on the couch → what’s happening outside → papa came downstairs → snack time → etc etc. But sometimes when they get into a drawing session or lego building fantasy, they can spend half an hour peacefully playing in one place. There’s no way to make them do it on command. The only way it happens is when they’re engrossed in something fun.

All parenting ideas are also management ideas, so of course its the same at work. The world is full of amazing things happening all the time. With the internet in your pocket, there are a dozen incredible distractions always just a few taps away. How do you stay focused on one thing for long enough (hours, years) to make something truly valuable? The secret ingredient is joy (I wrote about this before).

2

Artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love affair in the 1970’s, living and performing out of a van. When they ended their relationship, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end and meeting in the middle for one last embrace. That was the last time they saw each other. Then in 2010, as part of her MoMA exhibit “The Artist is Present”, Marina shared a minute of silent attention with each stranger who sat in front of her. On opening night, Ulay arrived without her knowing.

Here’s the video of their reunion. I cry every time I watch it.

The whole performance is a beautiful meditation on attention as a precious gift. People waited in long lines just to experience one minute of completely focused attention. That’s how starved they were, how much they wanted to be at the center of someone’s universe, even for just a brief moment. Marina sat eight hours a day, six days a week, for two and a half months, and still didn’t get to see everyone who wanted to sit with her.

(I was linked to that video from this lovely piece on attention)

Attention is so valuable, and we cannot get more of it. How much of our attention do we toss carelessly into the world? If we spent even an hour a week attending as fully as Marina does, what magic would we bring back into our lives?

Cheers,
Grin

It’s been a little while since I wrote to you. I’m out of practice and every week that I don’t send an email makes it less likely that I’ll do so the next week. Thanks to Adam (👋) for pointing this out and prompting me to get back in the game.

Last Thursday and Friday I took a DIY silent retreat. No phone, no talking to others, just time to walk and sit and read and write and think. My goal was to turn down the volume on all the stuff coming into my life so I can listen to my inner voice. I wanted to figure out where my various ideas and desires come from. Are they really mine, things I want long-term, or am I looking at and copying other people’s ideas of what’s attention-worthy.

In that regard, the trip was a success. Plus I got to spend a lot of time outside in maybe the most iconic place to do a silent retreat: Walden Pond. I spent Thursday walking the path around the lake, checked out Thoreau’s tiny house, went for a swim, read on the beach, and then eventually drove over to my campsite. On Friday I lounged in the woods, then went to another park for more walking and reading. Throughout, I took breaks to write and map out my desires.

My first project was to list all the times I’ve felt like I did something truly fulfilling. A ton of them were overcoming physical and mental challenges — my 2019 ultimate season, finals in 2016, summiting Kilimanjaro, certain tournaments where I played well, getting through my 3-day fast. Another theme was around business and craftsmanship — writing quality code, designing systems that work well over a long time, making something (Topscore) that all my friends use, making another something (LBRY) that strangers around the world love and feel empowered by. Finally, I get a lot out of teaching people and seeing them get it and grow. Whether it’s sports, tech, or raising my kids, unlocking someone else’s success is deeply satisfying.

As a next step, I went back to my core values and put them in order. Putting the values down on paper in the first place was hard for me when I did it a year or two ago. Ranking them was twice as hard. How am I supposed to decide whether Kindness or Curiosity is more important to me??? Clearly it’s both! But once I got over the obvious caveats about incompleteness and lack of nuance, I realized that actually there is a hierarchy. It feels very liberating to be able to say with some certainty that my top value is Health. If I had one wish and I couldn’t wish for more wishes or magic powers or exploit other loopholes, I’d wish for everyone in the world to be healthy (in a broad sense of the word). And if I’m not doing my key health habits because I’m out of practice or feeling overwhelmed, then I’m hurting my future self.

I did a few other things with mapping desire loops and so on, but this email’s already getting long and there’s one last thing I wanna get to. So let’s wrap this part up by saying that thinking explicitly about what I want and where that want came from is new to me and feels super helpful. I’ll credit Luke Burgis’s new book Wanting for this lens. Mimetic theory has been a side interest of mine for a while, and Luke does a great job laying it all out in a coherent way and pointing out the implications that are relevant to me (he’s active in the startup and social media world, so lots of overlap)

At the end of the day on Friday, I was sitting in a park watching people come and go. It was maybe 2pm, so these were mostly either parents with little kids, or old people having a late lunch and enjoying the last few warm days before winter hits. Here a silly story I wrote:

What if all these strangers are low-key super accomplished. That old bald slightly overweight guy at the picnic table in the park, the one with the ugly overalls eating Wendy’s and reading the paper, he saved dozens of lives as a field surgeon in WWII. The grandma next to him with wrinkly skin, glasses, legs up on the bench? A classical pianist who sold out concerts in minutes and used to play private shows for JFK. The dude in the car next to mine, putting his dog in the backseat and coughing painfully? He probably wrote the NTP protocol and maintains the servers today with no attention or compensation. If he has a heart attack tomorrow, half the internet will break. The lady sweating in the long black dress in this October sun, lovingly cooing to her dog (“look at you, hot shot! good booooy”) is part of the team that solved a key step towards harnessing nuclear fusion. In 10 years we’ll have infinite energy and widely-available ocean water desalination. The homeless-looking hermit under the tree wrote a famous novel that’s translated into a dozen languages, but got screwed on publishing royalties by his agent.

These are the secret lives of the old people at the park.

Cheers,

Grin

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without eating? This week I did a 72-hour fast, from 1pm Monday to 1pm Thursday. I ate zero calories and only drank water and tea the whole time.

Why?

Many people fast for religious or weight-loss reasons, but that’s not why I did it. My main goal was to stop using eating as a mindless escape. I noticed that when I’m bored or procrastinating on work, my mind goes “hmm, am I hungry?” and I tend to wander over to the kitchen looking for parmesan chips. I wasn’t actually hungry, just trying to get away from a slightly uncomfortable feeling by distracting myself. By taking a break from eating, I wanted to cut that connection for at least a little while. Will it work? I don’t know, but I can tell you that I’ve written this whole piece without getting the urge to snack.

A side benefit of a long fast is the opportunity to practice weirdness. I like to inject bits of weirdness into my life to become more intensely myself. Humans are social animals, and we naturally mimic those around us and conform to the expectations of others. We tell ourselves that each person is unique, but we only show our uniqueness in socially-acceptable ways. Even a minor rebellion like fasting in an unconventional way is a visceral reminder that it’s fine to go outside social conventions. “Most people eat three times a day. I ate zero times for three days and I’m fine.” This habit of small transgressions inoculates you against the stress of bigger norm-breaking. Think of it as weightlifting for your “doing what’s important to me” muscle.

Finally, I wanted to do a hard thing just because it’s hard. A long time ago, when my wife and I were just starting to date, we made a bet. She would give up coffee for as long as I gave up beer. Whoever caved first had to make a fancy dinner for the other. We started on a Monday, so she had to go first. If you’ve ever tried to go cold-turkey with coffee, you know the first few days are tough: headaches, tiredness, irritation. She put up with it like a champ. Then the weekend rolled around and I decided I’d rather make her dinner than skip the party that night. I didn’t even try to avoid drinking. As you can guess, she was furious.

That’s a silly story, but there’s something to it. Perseverance is a skill, and just like the skill of authenticity, it can be trained.

So was fasting hard?

Only at times, though I didn’t expect it to be that tough. When intermittent fasting first became a fad years ago, I had a habit of doing a 24-hour fast every two weeks. The strategy was to skip dinner the first day, then avoid food till a late lunch the next day. Having that experience, I knew the first part of this fast would be easy. I ate a large-ish lunch and mentally settled in for the ride.

The next day started ok but got rough. By evening I was tired and unfocused and even strangely sore in my legs (turns out fasting and standing desks don’t mix). It didn’t help that my daughter and I were both having trouble sleeping, so I only got a few hours of shuteye. But once I woke up on day three, I felt pretty good. My stomach rumbled more than most days, but urge to eat was no stronger than usual. Even being around delicious food at mealtime was fine, not the torture you might expect it to be.

On the morning of the last day, I was still going strong but ready to be done. My stomach muscles felt tight all the time (though not painful or desperate), I was tired, and the messed up sleep was getting annoying. I held out till 72 hours on the dot, then ate a small meal to ease back in slowly. The food was great, but the coolest part was how quickly my energy came back. Like a frog being slowly boiled, I didn’t realize quite how weak I was getting. The injection of calories felt like taking off a weighted backpack after a long hike. After an hour I was bursting with energy, and I used it to vigorously feed myself two dinners that evening.

Would I do this again? I’m not sure. Quality sleep is near the top of things I care about, and if fasting ruins that then I’m less likely to repeat it. On the other hand, maybe I’ll just take the hit instead of fighting and read a book all night. If fasting were easy, what would be the point?

Never give up,

Grin

I’m trying a new trick this week to help me write faster and more naturally: I’m gonna record my first draft instead of writing it out. There’s a cool tool called Otter.ai that will transcribe your recordings for you. Then I’ll edit that down. I’m hoping this leads to writing that sounds more like something I’d actually say. Let me know if I succeed.

“Go touch some grass” has become a minor insult online. It’s the equivalent of shut up, log off, step away from the computer and go away. Which is weird to me because I like going outside and touching the grass. It’s actually a great reminder :-)

I don’t always sleep with my window closed, but when I do, I open it first thing in the morning. First the blackout curtain, then the window itself. It’s a fun little ritual to let the day in. Then I soak in the morning.

The sounds hit me first. Our windows are new and very soundproof, so as soon as it’s open I get a rush of singing birds and lawnmowers. You might find that annoying, but I kinda like it. The baseball field across the street from me gets mowed often, and it’s fun to watch the hovercraft-like lawnmowers float around on the grass. Depending on the time, I might also hear kids or dogs playing in the field — more signs of life.

Shortly after the sounds, the smell hits me. Fresh-cut grass smells like renewal, a new day pregnant with possibility. That’s when I open my eyes and breathe it in and smile. The air has a nice chill to it in the morning and I let that wake me up fully.

This whole thing takes about 30 seconds, demarcating my transition from sleeping body to awake person.

At lunch I’ll try to get some more outsideness into me. When I remember and have the time, I try to eat on the back porch. Even 10 minutes spent sitting outside and soaking in the sun helps me feel like a new man. Working alone in a room staring at my monitor all day can make the time feel like a grey run-on series of tasks. Lunch outdoors punctuates the morning and capitalizes the afternoon, giving me a moment to take a breath. I’m usually barefoot and the added sensation of pebbles and grass accentuates the contrast.

In the evening before bed, I do one last trip into the world. Sometimes it’s to take out the garbage. Other times I just step outside and listen again. No dogs or landscaping equipment this time. Instead it’s often crickets and a faint rustle of leaves. Sometimes you can hear the neighbors talking in the distance. Everything is muted — a great way to end the day.

Until next week,

Grin

I put up the piece about my daughter that I sent out last week. Thank you so much to everyone who responded with praise and encouragement and feedback . Here’s the finished version.

That piece is the result of working with Sasha Chapin over the past few months to improve my writing. I have a few more that I started but haven’t finished yet, and I may publish them later. If you’re interested in improving your writing (or any skill, really), getting a coach is one of the best things you can do, and working with Sasha reaffirmed my conviction on that (def hire him if you’re serious).

The best thing I got out of the experience (besides a finished essay that I’m proud of) is that I’ve expanded my understanding of what writing can be. Part of my struggle with writing in the past was a narrow idea of what I’m trying to achieve and what a good job looks like. Partially this comes from the way I do my own reading — mostly nonfiction that presents neatly-packaged insights with strong supporting arguments. So that’s the experience I tried to create each week in my writing. But that’s a really high bar to clear on a weekly basis when I’m writing in my spare time.

Instead, I can do something smaller. I can write about just a small chunk of an idea without pulling in everything that idea is tied to. Or I can stop trying to teach some minutia and instead convey a feeling or point the spotlight of your attention at some shared human experience. Including emotion can make the whole thing more memorable and fun for me and for you.

So with this new perspective, I’m going to get back to writing weekly. It’s the only way to continue to improve. I won’t promise any money yet (though I may if I fall off the wagon again), but I am committed to getting a Unicycle out every Friday by noon.

The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

Greetings from Buffalo. I’m here with my wife’s family to celebrate the 4th and spend some time away from our usual routines. It’s a beautiful place to relax, enjoy nature, and do some writing.

Speaking of writing, here’s a draft of a story I’m working on. It’s about the phrases I often say to my four-year-old daughter, and the conversations that follow.

I love you no matter what

I hope you're not surprised to see this one at the top of the list. For the past few months, it's been the last thing you hear before going to sleep. After we brush teeth, read Mr. Putter books or look at the world map, turn off the lights, and snuggle up with your favorite Bunny, I repeat this last part of our ritual. You whisper back "I love you no matter what too", though I doubt you know what that really means. Maybe someday.

What I'm really saying is, I accept you as you are. Even when I'm mad at you, even when you're ashamed or sad or being selfish or doing something you shouldn't be. Even when you're ecstatic, or you knocked your brother off the jungle gym again, or you demand to have the peas picked out of your pasta because today you feel allergic to green.

Branding advice says that mottos are important because people only pay attention for a few seconds. Most of what is communicated is lost. Leaders have to repeat everything over and over, so a company can't have 17 values unless they drill the employees daily. But a motto, a single idea, can be transmitted pretty reliably. If I could only tell you one thing, it would be this: I accept you as you are. There's nothing to do, nothing to change. I won't always be happy with you, or proud or even there for you. But that's about me, not you.

Yes, little monkey?

One of the great joys of parenting is pet names. Your favorite is "little monkey".

My dad likes to tell me how creative Russians are with pet names. Any name can be the root of a vast tree of nicknames. Take Alexey, my birth name. Only a teacher or judge would call me that. The shopkeeper lady might call me Alyosha, the first step up the name tree trunk. My parents and friends in the yard would use Lyosha or Lyoshka. Lyoshenka, up in the furthest branches, is my grandma's favorite; Leshunya is reserved solely for my mom (unless I'm late for dinner, then it's Alexey Grigorievich!).

With you, our deal is that you call me Papa. Not Dada or Daddy or any of that. Papa is more unique and softer, more pleasing to the ear. In return, you like when I call you "little monkey". You still respond to the occasional Zaychik ("bunny" in Russian) or other variations. But when you wanna ask to go play outside or how long before Grandma comes to visit, you lead with "Papa?" and I know what you want me to say.

Not now, I'm on a call

Ok I admit it: I'm not Superdad. I like to do other things besides play with you all day. When you sprint upstairs to our guestroom/office and jump on the foam mattress because your brother's going to sleep and there's no one to play with you, I'm probably in the middle of something. Now you're jumping up and down impatiently, silently mouthing "Papa I want to tell you something!" as if I didn't know, as if it's not a daily thing for us. I try to pay attention to my meeting while holding up a finger off-screen asking for patience. It's futile.

Sometimes, you storm in in tears while I'm on a 1-on-1 call with someone I'm hoping to hire. That's the triple whammy. My mic is pretty good at cutting out background noise, but it's no match for your high-pitched wail. I briefly wonder if the person on the other end has kids (mentally violating EEOC guidelines), and whether that makes them more or less likely to judge me. "What a family-friendly workplace," I hope they're thinking, and not "how do they get anything done."

I excuse myself to deliver this line to you. It doesn't help (is anyone surprised?).

Then I scoop up your small sweaty body and hug you. I prop you up against me on the chair next to my standing desk. You hold me and sob quietly while I try to continue the interview, hitting the Mute shortcut after every sentence.

I love you no matter what.

Go wash your face

Thinking back on life can make it seem like a collection of highlights: a first date, a graduation, a baby's first steps. But in the moment, its a thousand typical Tuesdays that fade together in memory. So too with parenting. Not every moment with you stands out as special. Sometimes we just have shit to do. Dress, undress, eat, clean up, go here, go there, go to the bathroom, go to sleep.

You've mastered most of these, but there are gaps. You don't fall over when you walk ... most of the time. I don't have to remind you to go pee ... except before we go out. And you can even pull the wobbly plastic stepstool up to the cabinet to reach the cheddar bunny snacks from the top shelf ... but you refuse to wash your face after eating them.

"Go wash your face."

"I don't want to."

"It's dirty."

"I don't waaaaant tooooo."

"What's going on in your mind?," I scream internally. You know facewashing is coming -- we do it after every meal. And you know resisting won't work because it didn't work the last dozen times you tried it. "The longer you take, the less time for playing," I say. Why do you still threaten to turn a typical Tuesday into Ruby Ridge?

Putting up a fight must meet some need for you. Someday I hope you understand yourself well enough to explain it to me (most people never get there). In the meantime I grit my teeth, let out a long breath, and mentally go through my catalog of options. We don't have all day.

"What book should I read to you after you wash?"

How would you feel if...

You're at once the most grown-up and the most selfish that you've ever been. If I wrote a list of top things you say to me, "I want" would be at the top.

It's incredibly frustrating. You are so articulate and sensitive, yet all you think about is what you want. When you were younger, somehow it was more ok. Now that I can have an hour-long conversation with you about why you should get a cup of water without me, it's not.

The other day you knocked your happily-playing brother off the jungle gym. He screamed, his whole face deep red and tear rolling down his cheeks. I couldn't believe eyes could make so much water. But you acted like nothing was wrong.

I pointed it out and you didn't get it. You couldn't explain in words. But when I asked "how would you feel if he pushed you off the bar", you showed me your angry tiger: face scrunched, eyes narrow, fingers curled into claws, and a growl in your throat. Where was that ten seconds ago?

Worse, you're teaching him that this is how he should play with you. Still, I love you no matter what.

The best is yet to come 🚀,

Grin

These days I find myself thinking a lot about how others see the world. I haven’t written much about it (yet), but that’s been the theme in my recent reading. Here are some things you might find interesting.

How Not To Let Work Explode Your Life. This one’s pretty long (11K words) and worth it. A look at how people used to work in the past, the role work played in their lives and relationships, and how society in general felt about work. Our perspectives on life are often limited by our experience. It’s hard to imagine living in a world very different from ours and being ok with it. So it’s always good to be reminded that there are many ways to live that we haven’t even considered.

Let The Others Find You. Make a deep connection with someone, and you’ll have one friend. Invite others to make deep connections with you, and you’ll never be lonely.

The Hawk. A lovely short story.

Hoist the Colors. I wrote last fall about how pirates were the startups of the 1700s. Here’s a longer, deeper, and more colorful version of that story.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. Oldie but goodie. I’ve been noticing more and more that a big part of decisionmaking is avoiding blame. That leads people to take less initiative and ignore problems they could be fixing.

Weirdo Subcultures Are No Longer Producing Great Art. A back-and-forth discussion about why there hasn’t been much “great” art created in the last twenty years. I’m not sure I buy the premise (look at scenes like improv, standup, graffiti, NFTs) but its provocative. My best theory to support this claim is that “great” means something like “critically acclaimed”, and the critics are old-media elites who’ve become less relevant in recent times (do people still care about the Oscars?). So the art is still good (in fact there’s more of it than ever before) but there’s less consensus on what counts as great.

The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

We’re a third of the way through the year. In the spirit of working with the garage door up, I want to talk about how I’m playing this year of health on Easy Mode and what’s next.

Quick refresher: Year of Health is my theme for 2021. It’s a global intention to guide my choices and efforts. There are no rules to break and no targets to miss. Setting the bar low is my One Weird Trick™️ to long-term success. It works because consistency is more important than intensity when you’re starting out. Doing something regularly, even something simple, builds evidence that you’re the kind of person that does that thing. Over time, you progressively increase the effort, but it never feels like a huge change from what you’re already doing.

Lifting 🏋

I’ve been lifting on and off for over a decade. Since having kids, it’s been hard to lift consistently. Since everything was closed over the winter, I decided it was the perfect time to bring this back. Now I’m happy to report I’ve been lifting 2-3 times a week consistently since February. There’s no specific program. I just alternate a few major lifts I like.

Lifting is a keystone habit. When I lift, everything else gets better too. Besides the primary goal of being healthy and strong, I sleep better, have more energy, feel accomplished, practice doing something hard, get in shape to play at Masters Nationals in July, and stay anchored to physical reality.

Meditating 🧘‍♂️

My friend Misha (a Unicycle reader 👋) introduced me to the Waking Up app a few months ago. The intro is free and I kinda just stuck with it. Now I do 10 minutes most days in the morning before work.

So far I’ve found that practicing meditation helps me feel my attention more clearly. It’s like I’ve developed a new sense. When I’m playing with my kids and my phone rings, I literally feel my attention pulled toward it. That feeling prompts me to ask myself “is this what I want to do right now?”, which helps me get distracted less and spend more time doing what I really want. It’s kind of magical, and for me it’s totally worth the effort.

Food 🍣

I did six weeks of Clockwork Nutrition, a new experimental service that puts your diet on autopilot. They send you two meals a day (skipping breakfast because fasting is good), tailored to your dietary preferences. They handle the calorie counting, macro- and micro-nutrient balance, delivery, etc. This paired nicely with my lifting, as I’ve always had trouble gaining weight and they helped make sure I was getting enough (I’m at 172lb now, my heaviest ever). In the end Clockwork wasn’t right for me because it didn’t fit with the rest of the family, but it was fun to give it a try.

At the same time, my wife has been focusing on her diet too. Since she’s mostly in charge of food in our family (thanks dear ❤️), I’ve adopted her changes — cutting out added sugar and reducing meat and dairy.

Going Outside 🌄

Inspired by Fery (also a Unicyclist 💪) and the warm weather, I’ve been eating lunch outside. So far that’s been sitting on the porch and watching kids run around in the field. But now that local cafes have been opening up their outdoor areas, I’m planning to broaden my dining options. Getting in early, eating slowly, and doing some writing feels like a great once-a-week treat.

To spend even more time outside, the Grin family has upgraded our biking setup. My daughter got too big to sit on the back of my bike, so I sold it and got a cargo bike instead. It’s the minivan of bikes, with room for two in the back. We’ve been biking to school, soccer, and just going for rides on the bike path by our house.

Next: Microdosing 🍄

I’m considering doing a month of microdosing psilocybin or LSD. It should be fun and interesting, and if the stories are true it’ll do all sorts of positive magical things. I’m somewhat skeptical and very curious (and that’s the Unicycle sweet spot).

I have a lot of experience with psychedelics but I’ve never tried microdosing. If you have experience with microdosing or single-subject research, I’d love to talk to you.

The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

Look at this Lego building. There’s the main building (the 3x3x3 cube), then a single pillar support block in the corner, and then a roof over the whole thing. On top of all this, you’re going to place a concrete brick. How would you change this structure so the brick won’t crush the Lego figurine when you put it on the roof? Keep in mind that every block you add costs you $1.

Think about it for a moment before reading on.

.

.

.

Ready? You’ll never again have the chance to do this without knowing what I’ll say next.

.

.

.

OK here we go:

Most people who do this will answer by adding blocks to better support the roof. But a simpler and cheaper solution is to remove the one block in the corner so the roof rests on the big cube 🤯

That’s the takeaway from this article. People tend to solve problems by adding rather than subtracting. And it’s not because we don’t see the value in subtracting. We just don’t think of that option at all.

Why? It could be that we’re used to “creating” things instead of removing them, so that’s what comes to mind first. If you work on a team, removing something that someone else made can feel like a slight to them. There’s also loss aversion — we lose twice as much satisfaction from giving up a thing as we gain from getting that thing in the first place. So we’re not inclined to give things up.

This means there’s opportunity to make things better simply by getting rid of something that already exists. It’s often cheaper and easier (physically, if not psychologically). You just have to remember that it’s an option.

Taking that one level up, we can build systems that encourage us to subtract. Thinking of launching a new initiative at work? Add a sunset clause to wind down that project after some time unless you actively decide to renew it. On a personal level, buy a smaller backpack to keep your back from hurting.

What can you subtract from your life or work that would improve the whole?

The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

Hello dear friends :-)

Last week I asked you to check off the people you know or follow from a list of ~150 influential people. Thanks to everyone who replied. The list came from Arnold Kling’s Fantasy Intellectual Draft. 10 “team owners” each drafted 15 people for their team. The team scores points when the “players” create and spread memes, make testable bets about the future, and argue well for a point of view that they disagree with. Kling’s goal was partially to come up with a scoring system to evaluate public intellectuals on their ideas. Notice that there are very few politicians or news anchors on the list, and the ones that did get drafted tend to only score high on memeing.

This game caught my eye for a few reasons. First, it’s fun to consider who you would pick. Are there people you follow who didn’t get drafted but would score well? What about the ones you follow closest - how would they do in the draft? How about the scoring system — does it do a good job of rewarding good ideas, and how might it be improved (full scoring details here)?

Second, I recognized a lot of the people on the list, including some of my strongest influences (Cowen, Taleb, Callard, Alexander, Haidt, Thiel, Zvi, Balaji). I spend a lot of time reading online (more than I should, perhaps) and many of these people come up time and again (my list, if you’re curious). How common is that, and how much is my taste? So I asked you.

To be fair, the people who’d do well in this draft don’t overlap exactly with the people who’ve affected me the most. The draft is primarily about public intellectuals who are active today, whereas important ideas come from all over. Even within that narrow focus, your particular history comes into play. In one response from last week, a friend wrote:

I don't think the people whose ideas I see the most often are the ones that influence me the most. Nassim Taleb for example has a lot more influence on my thinking than Trump, even though I hear about Trump's ideas more often and I only read Taleb maybe 8 years ago. Those ideas are still more important to me / more influential.

Highlights and lowlights:

• Everyone has at least heard of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Rand Paul, and Condoleezza Rice. However — apropos my earlier point about politicians — only Musk and Rogan got any stars.

• Paul Graham got 5 stars, the most of anyone. Musk and Balaji Srinivasan each got 4. Twelve others got 3 stars.

• Graham and Balaji also got stars from everyone who listed them. I guess that makes them the most compelling thinkers on this list. Once you pop, you can’t stop.

• Three people listed Megyn Kelly, but I had no idea who she was (I don’t watch the news). Back to my hermit cave now…

Thanks for indulging my curiosity. The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

Hello dear friends :-)

This week’s newsletter will be short. My mind is mostly on work. We started the next stage of our legal battle with the SEC on Monday when they filed a formal complaint against us in court. I’m delighted to finally get this out in the open (we’ve been talking to them for over three years but couldn’t discuss publicly). It’s been a frustrating, expensive, and Kafkaesque ordeal. Hopefully we’ll finally get some concrete answers on how blockchain companies can legally do business in the US. Details at https://helplbrysavecrypto.com.

Small Experiment

I have a small favor to ask. It’s simple and will take you 5-10 minutes. Here’s what to do:

• Open this list of names.

• Hit Reply on this email and copy-paste the list of names into the reply.

• Go down the list, deleting every name you don’t recognize. If it sounds vaguely familiar but you’re not sure who the person is or what they do, delete them.

• For everyone who’s left, put an asterisk next to their name if you consume their content regularly. Maybe you read their tweets or blog posts or articles, or listen to their podcast, or pay attention to a business they run and what they say about it, etc. This one is kinda vague, so do your best. Maybe ask yourself “what have I seen/read/heard from this person in the last month or two”. If you can’t think of anything, don’t star them.

I’ll tell you what this is all about next week. I’m very curious how it turns out.

A Story

Here’s a story I heard recently:

A man decides to climb a mountain. To prepare, he asks a friend what it’s like at the top. The friend describes it in detail.

Then he asks another friend what the peak is like. This friend gives her own description.

The man goes on, asking twenty friends and receiving twenty responses.

Finally he says to himself “Now I know so much about what the peak is like. There’s no need for me to climb the mountain at all.”

source

The best is yet to come 🚀

Grin

It’s been a while, hasn’t it. Almost three months now. Here’s what happened: I was burnt out from writing weekly. I must have felt it coming when I took December off, then couldn’t bring myself to get back into it in January. I knew I wanted to keep doing the Unicycle, but wasn’t sure how.

The break from writing gave me a chance to chill and reflect. Why was there so much conflict in me? My answer today is that I had the wrong idea of what it means to write, and who I was writing for. I focused to much on the internal critic who told me my work was not good enough for you, the reader. And while I consciously knew that this is *very common*, I still let myself fall into the trap.

Ira Glass says that everyone goes through this when they first start. He calls it the Taste Gap. When you first start, your skills don’t measure up to your standards and you’re frustrated. The way through it is to keep going until your skills catch up.

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work … because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are going to catch up and close that gap.

So I’m back.

Unicycle Reboot

My plan from now on is to pretend you, dear readers, don’t exist. This video that I shared in December has been on my mind, and it explains the why. If no one is reading and I’m still enjoying the writing, that’s the sweet spot.

This brings me back to the original vision of the Unicycle that I wrote about eight months ago — a kinda silly device that you ride for your own amusement. Imagine feeling pressure to to show something insightful and respectable while rolling around on one wheel and flailing your arms. It’s hilariously absurd.

I’ll apologize in advance. It might be lame for a while. You may be disappointed. Sometimes I’ll even write bad stuff on purpose. I do hope you stick around, but if not, no worries. The fact that you can unsubscribe at any time gives me confidence that you’re inflicting this on yourself by choice 😉

That said, I do enjoy reading your responses. If you’re moved to reply, I’d love to hear from you.

Donation

Since no one claimed the $200 bounty last year (though a few of you came close), I said I’d donate it. In the interest of holding myself accountable, here’s what I did.

Half went to New Incentives, a charity that uses direct cash transfers to incentivize people to vaccinate their kids in rural Nigeria. GiveWell ranks them as one of the most efficient and effective charities in the world. Plus they align with my interest in designing incentive structures.

I donated the other half to Sci-Hub, a free repository of scientific research publications. It’s not what a typical charity looks like, but it is doing a great public service to the world. Virtually all professional scientists use it, and so do curious amateurs like me who don’t have expensive journal subscriptions. Papers on Sci-Hub get twice as many citations as those that aren’t — more proof of how popular it is. If Sci-Hub disappeared today, scientific progress would take a huge hit.

The irony is, while Nature named Sci-Hub's creator as one of the top 10 people who matter in science, her project is regularly under attack by major publishers for ignoring copyright laws. While most research in the US is funded by public money through the NSF and NIH, the results are locked away in journals that charge absurd prices for access. Sci-Hub seeks to free them. I strongly believe in open access and open source, so I felt it could use the support.

Happy Friday

Happy New Year, dear friends :-)

2020

It’s been over a month since I wrote to you. I took December off to reenergize and reflect on 2020. Last year I did’t do new years resolutions. Instead I picked a broad theme of “writing” and let that nudge my decisions throughout the year. Here are some of the concrete things that came out of that:

• started the LBRY tech blog and wrote a dozen posts

• took Write of Passage online writing class

• three blog posts on my blog (two were part of the course)

• started this Unicycle and wrote 19 emails

• got back into Twitter and wrote a bunch of threads (I think of those as mini-posts).

• read a bunch of books and articles, and took notes on what I read. some of these directly fueled my writing here.

All this was a big success in my book. Not big because I hit any major goals or overcame a towering obstacle. The opposite, in fact. It was the right blend of intentional and gentle. I was never in danger of failing something (except missing my 12pm deadline). I tried a few things, discarded the ones that didn't stick, and stuck with a few that felt good. I focused on what "sparks joy" about writing, what's low-friction, what's fun, what I can fully commit to without reservation. Now I have nothing to regret or shame myself over. And looking back, all the small nudges in the direction of writing made a real change in my identity.

That's not to say that it was all effortless. Sitting down to write is still an struggle. I finish fewer things than I'd like because I'm constantly tweaking them. There's always a worry that you'll think "wow that's dumb, what a waste of time" and unsubscribe, even though I've sent a bunch of these now and no one has and the feedback is all positive (but you totally should unsubscribe if you're thinking about it, link's at the bottom).

The hardest part for me, I discovered, is committing to ideas publicly. Saying "I believe this" is almost always followed by "well, most of the time, but not in these cases, and anyway it all depends on the situation because there are no absolutes, and I might be wrong or change my mind later." Logically, I know it's ok to simplify and I don't need to add these caveats. No one will hold my past writing against me. Yet if I don't include the totality of my precise beliefs, I'm not satisfied. Twitter helps remind me not to worry about perfection. So does remembering that if no one ever tells you you're wrong, you're not learning anything. In fact, the lack of unsubscribers should be telling me to be more opinionated.

Another unexpected benefit is that I have a "footprint" of stuff to look back on for this review. If you asked me what I was thinking about four years ago, I'd be hard-pressed to remember any details. All I recall are some facts: started LBRY, became a dad, played some ultimate. This year I read through my newsletters and notes, which brought back a lot of memories and hints of the thoughts I was chewing on.

My favorite part of Unicycle is connecting with people through my writing. I'm not good at staying in touch when I don't regularly interact with people in real life. With Unicycle, I kind of am talking to all of you each week. When it resonates, I love hearing from you and going deeper, or just knowing I struch a chord.

Thanks 😊

2021

This year will be my Year of Health.

Last year was chaotic, and I lost many of the healthy habits I value. I didn’t play much sports or do anything active. My sleep was off. I didn’t spend much time outside or with friends or in solitude (away from computers and people).

In 2021, I’m looking forward to fixing this. I once again don’t have concrete goals. Instead I’ll set my compass for health and let that guide my day-to-day choices. So far I’ve started with meditating daily, eating less sugar and dairy, and working hard with my daughter to help her sleep through the night (last year’s upheaval affected her too, maybe even more than me).

I’ll also be changing the Unicycle a bit. My promise to write weekly was a core driver of my writing success last year. This year, it’s not a good fit for my health effort (which includes spending less time staring at screens). So it’s with a heavy heart that I’m dropping my commitment to writing every Friday, and also the $200 reward. Since no one claimed it, I’ll donate it to a charity instead.

What are your plans for 2021? Write to me! I want to help you make them happen if I can. At the very least, research shows that telling someone else your goals makes you more likely to follow through 😉

Cheers,
Grin

Sorry about that y’all. The challenge of communication is often in the assumptions you make, and I made a bunch in that last email.

To clarify for anyone who was confused, do this:

1. Click this link to open the Twitter thread

2. The first post in the thread is this:

   summary of this paper on the top 10 strongest findings in behavioral genetics
   strap in, its fascinating stuff
   but first, a definition you need to know...

3. Below that text is a picture of a journal. Scroll past that picture. You can click it if you want to read the full paper I’m summarizing.

4. The next tweet in the thread starts with “a crucial word in 🧬 context is heritability”. Keep reading there.

This brings up a more general question about Twitter content: should I continue to link out to Twitter for the threads I write, or copy the text into the newsletter itself?

Some of you don’t use Twitter, and would prefer the threads inlined. Others do, and want to see the threads in their natural habitat (which includes quoted tweets, pics and videos, replies from others, and so on). Of course, I could also do both.

Sounds like its time for a vote! Click your choice below:

A. Only link to Twitter threads (but I don’t mind if you also copy the text into the email)

B. Only link to Twitter threads (and I actively don’t want the text in the email)

C. Don’t link, just copy the thread directly into the email

D. Both! Copy text into email and link to Twitter

E. Neither! Keep your tweeting and your newsletter separate

Cheers and sorry for all the emails,

Grin

This is a short newsletter because I was working on a review of the top findings in behavioral genetics that I hoped to include, but I didn’t quite finish in time. I’ll send it out later today. Sorry 😬😬😬. Enjoy the rest!

What We Behold

The simulacra lens on reality has been an interesting perspective to learn about. One piece I did not understand was how exactly we move from reality to simulation to hyperreality. How does reality disappear from underneath our signs? This week I stumbled on a fun game that neatly shows how this process happens. It only takes ten minutes to play the whole thing, so check it out:

December Break

I’m taking a break from the Unicycle for the rest of the year. The holiday season is a good time to recharge and refocus. My release ratio is low, and the obligation to write has become more annoying than fun.

The next Unicycle will arrive on January 8th.

I leave you with this:

Cheers and happy holidays,
Grin

This newsletter goes out every Friday by 12pm ET. If I’m late, I’ll pay $200 to the first person who emails me about it. Got this after noon? Hit Reply and make me pay! Thanks for keeping me accountable.

Hello dear friends, and happy Thanksgiving :-)

The Monkeysphere

You may have heard of Dunbar’s number. Robert Dunbar theorized that our brains can’t keep track of more than 150 or so stable relationships — relationships where you know roughly what the other person is about and how they relate to everyone else you know. The people in your group are your “monkeysphere”.

Why monkeysphere? The name comes from a story in this article. Pretend you have a pet monkey. Visualize your pet in detail — name it, dress it, take it to the park with you for a game of tag. When the monkey falls down the slide, you empathize with his pain. Now imagine you have five monkeys. Try naming and seeing them all in your mind. Now do it for a hundred monkeys. Starts to get exhausting, doesn’t it? You’re hitting the limit of your monkeysphere.

When someone’s in your monkeysphere, you see them as an individual. You care about them. And since your monkeysphere is limited, there’s only so many people you can actually care about. If a neighbor drop a $20 bill on the ground, we give it back to them. An extra box of paper towels from Amazon? We just keep it. Because Amazon is not in our monkeysphere, and we just don’t care (even if our neighbor works there and is indirectly affected).

I’m still chewing on this idea. It might be mundane and obvious to you, or it might help explain some of our social phenomena. Some implications:

• stereotyping is a way to reduce a group of people to a single generic “relationship” so it fits into your mind

• similarly, we think of “the government” or “the company” as people who have intentions and take actions, even though we know they are really just made of individuals.

• loving-kindness meditation trains you to expand your empathy, or maybe to see each person directly so you can place them into your monkeysphere as you think of them.

• western religion is a different strategy: bulid a relationship with God, place him firmly in your sphere, then see everyone as an extension of him

What do you think?

Song of the Week

Mashups were huge about a decade ago. Xaphoon’s one of the underrated greats.

This newsletter goes out every Friday by 12pm ET. If I’m late, I’ll pay $200 to the first person who emails me about it. Got this after noon? Hit Reply and make me pay! Thanks for keeping me accountable.