Well, we made it through another year. Congratulations!

For the second year in a row, I sent out over 100 newsletters to my subscribers—two per week, every single week. In fact, I haven't missed a single issue since I started sending this newsletter out in May 2021.

In 2023, I saw this labor of love expand its reach from 174,000 subscribers on January 1 to 650,000 subscribers as of today.

While I find that number utterly mind-blowing, I'm just getting started. The energy I get from seeing all of you implement ideas from this newsletter into your lives is indescribable.

As you know, this newsletter is all about ideas—actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

I shared thousands of ideas here this year. These were my 10 favorites (the top 1% of ideas from 2023):

The Surfer Mentality

When a surfer gets up on a wave, they enjoy the present moment, even though they know with certainty that the wave will eventually end. They fully enjoy THIS wave, with the wisdom and awareness that there are always more waves coming.

The surfer knows that they don't have to ride every single wave that comes their way.

The surfer knows that 90% of the time they won't be riding any wave, but just paddling and waiting. They are aware that patience and proper positioning is all that matters for when the next wave inevitably comes.

Finally, the surfer knows that the only way to live is by putting themself out there in the water. You can't catch any waves sitting on the shore.

(For more, read the full piece here)

The 4 Types of Luck

In 1978, a neurologist named Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty.

In it, Dr. Austin proposed that there are four types of luck:

1. Blind Luck: Completely out of your control. It includes where you are born, who you are born to, base circumstances of your life, "acts of God", and more. Blind Luck covers the truly random occurrences of the universe.
2. Luck from Motion: You’re creating motion and collisions through hustle and energy that you are inserting into an ecosystem. The increase in collisions opens you up to more lucky events.
3. Luck from Awareness: The result of your awareness and depth of understanding of a specific domain. This depth of understanding within a given arena allows you to become very good at positioning yourself for lucky breaks to benefit you.
4. Luck from Uniqueness: Occurs when your unique set of attributes attracts specific luck to you. It actually seeks you out.

As a useful rule of thumb for your journey, always consider my Luck Razor:

When choosing between two paths, always choose the path that has a larger luck surface area. Ask yourself: Which of the two paths is more likely to lead to me getting lucky? Act accordingly.

(For more, read the full piece here)

The Parable of the Two Arrows

The Buddha once asked his student, "If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?"

The student nodded, yes.

The Buddha then asked, "If a person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?"

The student again nodded, yes.

The Buddha then explained, "In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional."

The first arrow is the negative event that hits our lives. The first arrow is impossible to avoid. It hits and it hurts.

The second arrow is governed by our response to the first. Our reaction and response controls the direction and force of the second arrow:

• If we attach ourselves to the pain of the first arrow, continue to think all of the negative thoughts it brought about, repeat the patterns of our past, dwell in the pain, and bemoan our bad luck, we send the second arrow hurtling straight into our open wound.
• If we pause, breathe, give ourselves a moment to reset, and choose a balanced response, we send the second arrow falling feebly to the ground.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor renowned for his contributions to existential psychology, has a brilliant framing for this:

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."

Our power is in the space that we can create between stimulus and response. Creating that space is the key to avoiding the second arrow.

Next time you encounter an uncontrollable negative event in your life, consider the parable of the two arrows. The first arrow may have hurt, but the second arrow is always optional.

(For more, read the full piece here)

The 4 Types of Professional Time

There are four types of professional time:

1. Management: Meetings, calls, presentations, email, etc. Most of us spend the majority of our professional lives here.
2. Creation: Writing, coding, building, preparing, etc. It drives growth, but most of us try to squeeze this in between Management Time blocks.
3. Consumption: Reading, listening, studying. This is where new ideas are planted, but we rarely schedule windows for this.
4. Ideation: Brainstorming, journaling, walking, self-reflection. This is where non-linear opportunities arise, but we rarely find time for it.

Before you can make improvements to your balance of time, you need to understand your starting point.

Starting on a Monday, at the end of each weekday, color code the events from that day according to this key: Management (Red), Creation (Green), Consumption (Blue), Ideation (Yellow).

Focus on identifying the trends:

• What color dominates the calendar?
• Are there distinct windows for Creation?
• Are the colors organized or randomly scattered?

This simple exercise should give you a clear picture of what your current baseline mix of professional time looks like.

Three tips for an optimal balance:

1. Batch Management Time: Create discrete blocks of time to handle major management activities.
2. Increase Creation Time: Block time for creation. Don't multitask.
3. Create Space for Consumption & Ideation: Schedule windows for consumption and ideation into your week.

(For more, read the full piece here)

Mental Time Travel

Mental Time Travel is the vivid imagination of both the past and the future. You use your mind to figuratively "travel" to the experienced past and the envisioned future.

Two exercises to try:

• Travel to the past and consider yourself in the present.
• Travel to the future and consider yourself in the present.

To help guide your time traveling journey, here are some of the question prompts I use:

• What was my definition of enough 5 years ago and how does it compare to my definition today?
• What would my 5 year younger self be proud of me for?
• If you woke up in 10 years and were in flow, what actions did you take that got you there?
• If you woke up in 10 years and everything were broken, what went wrong?
• If everything else stayed the same, what one variable would create the biggest positive change?
• Imagine you're living your ideal day in the future, what are you doing? How does it differ from your current day?

Mental Time Travel is a neat tool for your professional or personal life. Use it regularly to appreciate the present and clarify the actions to build your ideal future.

(For more, read the full piece here)

ABC Goals

For any daily goal, you set three levels:

• A: Most ambitious, perfect case.
• B: Middle ground, base case.
• C: Minimum viable level, downside case.

On days when you feel great, you hit your A Goal. On days when you feel ok (most days!), you hit your B Goal. On days when you feel bad, you hit your C Goal.

The ABC Goal System removes any intimidation or guilt: As long as you hit your C Goal, you're making forward progress.

The system prevents optimal (A Goal) from getting in the way of beneficial (C Goal) and gives you the flexibility to make progress while allowing the inevitable vagaries of life to enter.

Remember: Small things become big things. Anything above zero compounds.

(For more, read the full piece here)

The Spotlight Effect

There are two big mistakes in life:

1. Worrying about what other people think about you
2. Believing that other people think about you in the first place

The Spotlight Effect is a common psychological phenomenon where we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or observing our actions, behaviors, appearance, or results.

We think everyone is staring and noticing us, but they aren't. Even if they are, they quickly forget about it.

To "dim" the spotlight:

• Awareness: Understand that others are never as tuned into your actions, behaviors, or appearance as you are.
• Be Interested: In any public situation, ask questions, listen intently, and engage. This eases your own tension, gets others talking, and builds up your confidence in a new social situation.
• "So What?" Approach: Ask "So what?" about that worst fear becoming reality. Usually the "So what?" isn't nearly as bad as we think.

(For more, read the full piece here)

The Think Day

Free time to think is a "call option" on future interesting opportunities. When you have free time built into your schedule, you have the headspace and bandwidth to pursue high upside ideas.

Pick one day each month to step back from all of your day-to-day professional demands. Seclude yourself (mentally or physically), shut off all of your notifications on your devices, and put up an out-of-office response.

Six question prompts to guide the day:

1. What are your strongest beliefs? What would it take for you to change your mind on them?
2. What are a few things that you know now that you wish you knew 5 years ago?
3. How can you do less, but better?
4. Are you hunting antelope or field mice? (Reader's Note: Are you focusing on the big, weighty, important tasks that will provide sufficient reward for your energy? Or are you burning calories chasing the tiny wins that won't move the needle?)
5. What actions were you engaged in 5 years ago that you cringe at today? What actions are you engaged in today that you will cringe at in 5 years?
6. What would your 80-year-old self say about your decisions today?

Depending on your professional and life constraints, you can scale the Think Day up or down. The point is to force this air and space into your life and experience the unlock it provides.

(For more, read the full piece here)

Grayscale Mode

We all need to fight back against the phone addiction that is destroying our attention and focus. Grayscale Mode removes the colors to make your phone immediately less appealing and addicting.

If you have an iPhone, follow these steps:

1. Settings
2. Accessibility
3. Display & Text Size
4. Color Filters -> On
5. Grayscale

If you want to be able to toggle it on and off easily, you can create a simple shortcut: Settings, Accessibility, Accessibility Shortcut, Color Filters. If you triple-click the side button, you'll be able to toggle Grayscale on and off.

Grayscale Mode on Google Pixel: Settings, Accessibility, Color & Motion, Color Correction, Grayscale.

Grayscale Mode on Samsung Galaxy: Settings, Accessibility, Visibility Enhancements, Color Correction, Grayscale.

Since starting to use Grayscale Mode in January, I've seen my screen time drop and my focus rise.

A side benefit for parents: Your phone is immediately less interesting and addicting for your kids. I was shocked by how my son was naturally drawn to our screens from just a few months old. When I turn on Grayscale Mode, he loses interest.

Try it for a day. It's a massive life hack.

The Time Billionaire

"A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years...I feel like in our culture, we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. And we deify dollar billionaires in a way...And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see, sometimes, 20-year-olds—the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires." - Graham Duncan on The Tim Ferriss Show

Time is our most precious asset.

When you're young, you are literally rich with time. At age 20, you probably have about two billion seconds left (assuming you live to 80). By 50, just one billion seconds remain.

Most of us fail to realize the value of this asset until it is gone.

(For more, read the full piece here)

Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024!

2023 was a transformative year in my life. I am so thankful to each and every one of you for gifting me with your precious time and attention. I hope that I have been able to bring value to your life in return.

In the year ahead, you can expect more of the same from me—actionable ideas to help you build a high-performing, healthy, wealthy life.

I have ambitious goals for 2024—but I'll never forget the real ones who have been there from the start.

THANK YOU!

With love and best wishes for a healthy, joyful 2024,

Sahil