There are plenty of practical reasons not to procrastinate. Leaving room for error, advancing projects faster, etc. But there’s also a major yet undervalued mental reason: the time after your obligations are done is simply more enjoyable than the time before.

Maximizing the amount of time you spend in your life without a deadline hanging over your head is a worthy goal. The earlier you accomplish each task, the more of that time you have. Even if you spend it the same as you would, it’s simply more joyous.

You might even decide to take a nap!

If you saw a chart that showed that the rate of left-handedness had significantly increased around a certain time, you might reach very different conclusions based on whether or not you understood the mechanism behind it.

First: “the map is not the territory.” When you’re looking at any kind of chart, data, etc., always remember that you’re looking at what was recorded, not what necessarily was. If you need a clearer example: Imagine a survey where the question was: “Have you ever committed a felony and gotten away with it?” 2% of respondents answer “yes.” Would you conclude that only 2% of people had gotten away with felonies? There’s always bias in the way people answer.

Which brings us back to left-handedness. Did people suddenly start being left-handed? Or did being a southpaw stop being stigmatized so people were more comfortable reporting that they were?

Don’t assume the mechanism is what it appears to be. People’s incentives to tell the truth are always a factor.

You absolutely need to celebrate yourself. It’s not about humility; you can do this when no one’s looking. But if you don’t give your brain a reward when you accomplish something, several bad things happen.

First, you start to lose motivation to accomplish things! Your brain seeks that sweet sweet dopamine, and if you condition your brain that you get it when you achieve something, your natural motivation levels will increase. But if you work yourself to the bone and then don’t stop to give yourself an associated reward, your brain associates toil with… nothing. Just toil.

Second, you need to imprint on yourself that you did accomplish something, or your brain thinks you didn’t! You’ll undervalue yourself and your skills, hurting your ability to negotiate with them. I’ve seen so many “hard workers” chronically accept less than they’re worth simply because they don’t think they have that much to offer. All they’ve done is “work hard,” so their brain fixates on that as their only value-add, instead of the actual results of all that effort!

So when you hit those milestones, have a treat! Dance a little! Do whatever it takes to imprint on your subconscious that you achieved a valuable goal. Your brain deserves it, and so do you!

I am overcome with joy, as only a father of a boy this good can be.

Someone explaining to you why your idea wouldn’t work is vastly different than them explaining why it didn’t work.

The former is skepticism. It might be correct, but it’s theory. Even if it turns out to be true, running the experiment can still be worthwhile, to iterate towards success.

Giving you the benefit of prior experience, on the other hand, is a valuable gift. If someone tells you that they also tried the same idea and it failed, and why it failed, then you should listen. You’re basically getting the benefit of (at least) one experiment already run! You’re a step closer to success just by listening.

Importantly, the second person is also a more trustworthy source, simply because they actually tried the idea. That alone puts them on a different intellectual level than someone who simply decided from the armchair why they wouldn’t give it a shot.

Experiement, always!

All of the following things are true:

1. If your caloric intake is higher than your caloric expenditure, you will gain weight. If your caloric intake is less, you will lose weight. This simple formula, “Calories In < Calories Out = Weight Loss” is entirely and universally true.
2. Your body responds to a variety of conditions by adjusting its caloric expenditures. There are various things that make your body adjust its caloric expenditures downward as a survival mechanism. If your body thinks it’s starving, it’s an evolutionary advantage to adjust its energy expenditures downward.
3. The above means that sometimes you can start dieting but then stop losing weight, or even gaining weight.
4. That statement does not mean that the first statement was incorrect!

Here’s why I bring this up: This particular argument has really obnoxious people on both sides. Smug gym bros like to say “Calories in, calories out” as a slogan, telling anyone who hasn’t lost weight that they’re simply eating too much. And then equally obnoxious fat positivity crusaders say things like “The body doesn’t do math!”

I happened to overhear someone arguing against the “calories in/calories out” position by citing the various ways the body will respond to diets or lowered caloric intake with things like metabolic adaptation (i.e. using less of the body’s resources in response to a perceived scarcity in the environment). And like… yeah, the body does that. But that just means you have to consider both halves of the calorie equation!

In other words: it really, really is always “calories in/calories out,” and that’s sometimes hard to do because the body will respond with lower “calories in” by lowering “calories out,” and that’s really a contest between your own willpower and every evolutionary signal your body sends. So it’s simple, but not easy.

That’s the nuance. But I’ve never heard either side of this argument acknowledge the other. (For the record, I have zero dog in this fight. Unless you’re me or my children, I don’t care how much you weigh, and I never will.) But that’s because both sides are using this as a culture war fought with slogans, not a nuanced search for understanding.

And that’s the real lesson today. Virtually every argument you hear isn’t about the thing. It’s about the culture of the two sides. It’s points for your tribe. Don’t get lost in it.

My oldest daughter is 14. This evening, after all of the kids were supposed to be in bed, I had just started working on a household chore that was relatively involved. All the tools were out, the panel was off, I was on the floor… and that eldest daughter, who should have been asleep, asked me if I wanted to snuggle.

If they lay me to my final rest tomorrow, let it be known that I snuggled. Chores can always wait, but they grow up too fast to miss those moments when they come.

Once a year, the dead should all get to come back to visit. They can’t bring any knowledge of any afterlife with them, but their pain and injuries are gone. Once a year, they just get to come back and gab. You can catch them up on all the things that have been happening with the family. You can play them new music or watch a new movie. You can introduce them to their new grandchild. You can just smoke a cigar with them.

I miss my dad.

It’s fascinating how much of our sense of self is tied up in where (and when) we exist. Move even a few towns over, and it’s not just your environment that changes – you do.

If you, with your exact same genetic code, had been born 500 years in the past, you’d be a completely different person now. You couldn’t just map your experiences one-to-one onto that distant time; if you’re a florist now, you can’t assume you’d be a different variety of florist then. A million things happened in your life to get you to that spot, and those things wouldn’t have happened if you’d lived 500 years in the past. Or even 50 years in the past, or 50 miles up the road.

When someone new comes to your town, they’re a changeling. They’re experiencing a new world, not just new street names. You’re a part of that new experience, one piece of the new identity forming around them. So be kind!

Lacking a plan can turn a five-minute task into a thirty-minute one. And making a plan takes all of 2 minutes. You don’t even need to do it far in advance!