Strategic Altruism: Finally, A Self-Audit Blueprint

Design.

If your old strategy hasn't been working, what's the risk in trying something totally different? I dare you. This year: go small.

Instead, try a simpler approach this year. No big promises. No dramatic shifts. Instead try something much, much harder: Small, incremental, happiness inducing, fun generating, creativity sparking, easy-to-want-to-do-again acts that give you energy.

Understand that your goal is not your goal. Your goal is a vector: magnitude and direction. That’s it. Your job is to find simple, replicable habits that serve you and to practice them. So, no more "new year, new you" stuff. The desire for perfection is just vanity, anyway.

We take in the world with our senses first. We feel and then we think. Then, immediately after that, what we feel has a direct impact on what we think. The spiral continues and this shapes how we see the world. All of this to say: your goal is not your goal . . .

Perfectionism is the delusion that we should be whatever imagined ideal our brain envisions. This leads to inevitable self-loathing, guilt, shame, and a bunch of other fun emotions. If you’re not a brain scientist, let me explain why this is really bad . . .

Obligatory, prescriptive advice about New Year's Resolutions: We all want to improve ourselves, that’s normal and healthy. What’s unhealthy is expecting perfect, linear growth. What's healthy is understanding that your goal is not your goal. Let me explain . . .

The letter X will be holding a press conference later today. #TwitterX

If Fox News was Donald Trump, I think the WSJ has become Ron DeSantis.

Controversial opinion: Just because I bought something from you doesn't mean you can start emailing me your newsletter.

Hot take: #SubstackNotes is the healthy social media alternative. https://t.co/jwke8JQpTv

With a straight face . . . . . . can someone explain to me why there isn’t a single, non-crummy automatic faucet in any public restroom anywhere?

Strategic Altruism: So, there's a chat feature in Substack . . .

Strategic Altruism: The Word "Leadership" Is Too Fluffy

Somewhere between the people who only use “reply-all” and the people who don’t know how to use “reply-all” lie the rest of us.

Speaking broadly: Ice cream is not salty enough.

Sometimes I think all I need to be happy is just a ton of distortion and a wah pedal. 🤘

Look how creative this #spam is. It's sent via a @googledocs share so it won't be flagged by @gmail. I'm honestly it hasn't happened to me sooner. So, just in case you needed a reminder, the world is full of creative assholes.

Anyone else starting to feel like they're getting tendonitis in the pinky they use to hold up their phone one-handed?