Every other Sunday, I write a quick newsletter to share some thoughts, things I’ve learned, and a few of my favorite things from the week. Enjoy!

Hey friends,

Hope everyone’s been having a great February. I recently came across an interesting concept by Shawn Achor called the “happiness advantage”, a notion that I wholeheartedly agree with and think is very much real. In essence, the concept indicates that happiness leads to greater success (happiness → success), whereas the conventional wisdom suggests that success leads to greater happiness (success → happiness). The premise is the fact that one often performs better when they are happy and enjoying the process. For example, people have noted that Tom Brady is always happy and smiley, and also turns out to be incredibly successful in his craft, and I think Brady is someone who intuitively understands and capitalizes on the “happiness advantage.”

I think it’s also tied to the notion that there is a real practical advantage to gratitude, not only as an amorphous notion, but as a regimented daily practice that you do regularly. Regularly listing out things you’re grateful for (such as three things every morning, which I do in the morning portion of my daily entry in Notion) trains a sort of “positive tetris mindset”, i.e. the ability to identify avenues of potential and possibilities, no matter how the “bricks” fall. The “tetris effect” is a concept often discussed in psychology literature. And this context of the game of tetris is indeed how the world sort of operates - with entropy and in accordance to the second law of thermodynamics. That’s kind of how the world behaves, with intrinsic volatility, and the ability to identify avenues of growth, no matter how the bricks fall, is pretty crucial and invaluable. Listing out things you’re grateful for trains that “positive tetris mindset”, as the process is intrinsically that - you’re identifying things that you hold genuine gratitude for, amidst all the things in your life and worldview and no matter how messy things can get.

Have a great week!
Dan


Things that resonated with me this week

  1. In Jeff Bezos’ email to employees about his transition to Executive Chair from CEO, he focused on the topic of inventiveness, which I loved - imagining what could be, what’s possible, not what already is, and inventing new things, that are then taken as normal down the line.
  2. This was a fascinating piece about the geological record in the New Yorker.
  3. Mentality is so important is practically every area of life, and nobody embodies it better than Tom Brady. I love his attitude here. He touches on a Patriots philosophy that I’m terming as the “On to Cincinnati” framework. I’ll write a dedicated blog post on it, but it essentially is to focus on what’s immediately in front of you, and nothing else, which I think is a useful mental model.

Things I’m trying out

  • Implementing the above “On to Cincinnati” framework on every scale, which is something that you can see Brady and his football teams do and use to guide their approach during games - it’s not only solely focusing on the next game, it’s also solely focusing on the next drive, the next play, and so on. The concept applies to every timescale, and can probably be boiled down to a kind of “T+1 framework” as a mental model. Brady also touches on it here, rephrased another way. It’s journey before destination. The focus is on the pursuit, the journey, “the next one”. There is no “attaining” the final destination - rather, there is only the relentless pursuit of it. It also just ties to achieving one’s highest potential, being the best you that you can be, and holding yourself to your own highest standards - something that Brady also mentions here in this interview. All in all, I love the mental aspects and philosophies of sports and the way Brady approaches the game.

Stuff that’s on my mind

  • Food insecurity is a persisting issue in the United States. It was great to volunteer with the Food Bank of NY and Meals on Wheels during my time in New York City, and I got to see some of the elements of the large-scale issue and do my part to tackle it firsthand in some NYC neighborhoods, but the problem still exists, particularly for individuals that are homebound with diminished mobility. In a developed nation, no one should ever go hungry with the resources and food availability that the country has, full stop. In advanced economies, hunger doesn’t come from a dearth of food available - there is enough food for everyone. The overwhelming cause of hunger in developed countries is poverty. The resources are there in the United States, but the infrastructure needs to be more comprehensive to make sure food insecurity and hunger doesn’t happen. There simply needs to be more done on this. The aforementioned organizations are a few players tackling this issue, but there needs to be more comprehensive infrastructure to resolve this issue completely.

Quote of the week

“When faced with challenges, just say ‘Yes’.” - Eric Schmidt