I turn 35 this week.
Always something about birthdays that end in “5” or “0” that has you reflecting even more. With this one, it was recognizing that 35 is halfway to 70 and the knowledge that that’s the decade of life most commonly associated with mortality.
Good news is I’m still a few years away from when I’m expected to have a midlife crisis, so I’ll take that W.
Anyway, I know you’re used to thoughts on B2B and marketing, but I’m changing it up this week and writing this in true “meditations” style. 35 notes, thoughts, and reflections to myself on things learned, things remembered, and things I need to be better about as I enter this 35th year of my life.
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In no particular order…
Find your stress outlet + don’t compromise on it
Any time that I find myself burning out or carrying stress more than normal, it’s often because I’ve neglected my stress outlets. Whether it be the gym, running, quality time with family + friends, winding down with a tv show/movie, etc., always prioritize this outlet as part of your routine.
Motivations change, and that’s ok
Some periods in life, making + saving up money is more important. Other periods in life, being able to wrap the workday early to spend time with family + friends is more important. There’s no one “right” answer here.
Rules > decisions
Stealing this from Clear Thinking, by Shane Parrish, as I encounter this frequently when people ask why I’m not drinking alcohol on certain occasions:
“People don’t argue with your personal rules. They just accept them as features of who you are. People question decisions, but they respect rules.”The older you get, the fewer people you have telling you what you should do + the more you need to listen to your inner voice that tells you what you know you should do
The default decisions we make aren’t in our best interests as often as we’d like to think they are. The decisions we make every day form the habits we’ll keep. When making a decision, imagine it’s a friend/family member asking you what they should do. Don’t be surprised when the advice you give to “them” is much different than what you let yourself get away with.
Early morning weekend walks are a magical time
There’s something peaceful about getting outside early in the morning before most of the world is up, as the sun is slowly coming out. This has become a ritual for our family as we stroll these mornings. The day starts much more peacefully in a good mental space + the volume of ideas/solutions I come back with is unbelievable.
Complaining is a huge energy drain
Be careful of how much you complain + allow others to complain around you. There are few things more mentally draining than surrounding yourself with these thoughts + mindset.
Evaluate your daily energy peaks + valleys to structure the day
I do my best thinking in the morning, so I block the first handful of hours for this type of work. In the afternoon, my focus wanes, but I get energized by engaging with others, so this is when I have most meetings, collaborations, and podcasts.
Need a quick stress reliever? Double inhale breathing
Stressed about the request that just came in from your boss? Feel anxiety building as you worry about the health of a family member? Take one long inhale, then before you exhale take yet another long inhale to really fill your diaphragm up, and then let it all out in one long exhale. Science tells you it reduces your CO2 levels + slows your heart rate, and your body leaves you feeling calmer and less tense.
Invest in a good pair of headphones
Blocks out external noise while in deep work mode. But also, it made me appreciate music so much more when I could hear the clarity + detail that artists put into their work that doesn’t come through in low-quality headphones.
There’s a big difference on social media between arguing + discourse
Avoid the first at all costs, seek out the second.
Get your feet in the grass daily. And go look up at the stars every night.
It may sound woo-woo, but there’s something to it that recenters you and puts life in perspective.
Put exercise on your calendar + treat it like any other business meeting
I found myself skipping the gym more than I have in previous years as I’d let work carry late and sacrifice exercise time to support it. So back to #3 above, I made exercise a “rule” and I schedule it on my calendar.
Have a few gym/running playlists ready to go
On that note, having the right playlist can make or break a workout. The workouts that I can never quite land on the right song/genre tend to be poorer than when I have the perfect playlist going, so I have a handful of different workout playlists I can go to control for this.
Go for a walk
The times I’m most stressed at work or struggling to solve a problem are the times I most need to go for a walk/take a shower/etc. More answers come to me during those times than while staring at my laptop trying to force it.
Get comfortable with being bored
Waiting in line at the grocery store? Sitting at a table waiting for a friend to join? Instead of pulling out your phone, be content to sit back, observe, and let your thoughts wander. Give your brain a break from the dopamine hits.
You never regret doing hard things afterward
It’s usually the easy things we did in place of those that we end up regretting. Plus the sense of accomplishment after doing the “hard” thing becomes one hell of a momentum builder for you.
The best ideas come from other places
Whether it’s reading fiction, learning from other industries, etc., some of the best ideas + plans I’ve been a part of came from drawing parallels from those. Not everything has to be “brand new” - find those parallels and put your spin on it.
It’s ok to say no or not reply
This one has taken me the longest to come to terms with as a chronic people pleaser. But I’m at the point where I didn’t have the time to field every question or request that comes my way. And you know what’s happened since then? The world goes on.
Slow down
Being able to move fast is a superpower for startups. But it can become a curse if there aren’t good decision models baked into that speed. Map out all of the paths. Understand the opportunity costs of what’s not being done if we do this. Second- + third-order consequences. Taking a little bit longer to go through these are worth it.
Speed up
On the flipside of this, there’s a certain kind of energy, excitement, and momentum that can be built by strategically adding in sprints or seasons of urgency. These should be used sparingly, but when teed up well, they become 10x multipliers for yourself/your team.
The unsexy work is what gets the sexy results
No one wants to hear that the fundamentals or “basics” are what drives the results, but it’s the truth. Embrace the unsexy work, strive for 1% improvements, and let those stack on top of each other over time.
Iterate > seeking perfection
There are too many variables in life + work that we’ll ever be able to land on “perfect”. Instead of waiting until you have the perfect workout program, the perfect ad campaign, etc., get started with something that you’re proud of.
Know that the aim will be to continuously iterate off of it to get it as close to perfect as possible as time goes on + variables arise.
The cost of inaction
We’re creatures of comfort and habit. We think that what we do now “works well enough” and will continue to. But things change and rarely will what works now continue to work at the same exact rate moving forward. It typically begins to decline. Understand the cost of staying current path and be open to seeing what other paths exist.
We’re more creative when we have fewer resources
I’ve worked with companies that had $1M+ in monthly marketing budget, and we produced some of the most generic, least-inspiring efforts in the space. I’ve worked with companies that had $5k in monthly marketing budget, and was blown away by the creativity + efficiency that that $5k drove.
You can walk back out of most doors you enter
Most decisions don’t have to be final. We just hate to be “wrong,” so our ego has us push things through until we can convince ourselves we were right about something. If you make a decision that isn’t panning out how you wanted it to, going back to #19, understand what other paths are available and what you mapped out to handle this second-order consequence.
First principles > theory
The best way to learn is to do something yourself. Throw yourself into the deep end. Scrape your knees.
We don’t always have that luxury or access. In those instances, find biographies, podcasts, videos, etc. of others who have done what you want to learn in those instances.
Swap “Can I pick your brain” with “Would you join me on my podcast?”
Building off #26, most people we want to learn from don’t have a ton of free time and get “coffee requests” regularly. So instead of making an ask that only benefits you, this gives them more as they’ll have something they can share afterward (make sure you do the lift here in producing the audio + creating shareable clips). Plus, you have this conversation saved in perpetuity now instead of whatever you remembered to jot down in your notebook.
Define exit criteria for experiments
I’ve seen “beta” features last for years. I’ve ran ad experiments for quarters. When something is inconclusive, we feel compelled to not accept that gray area, but to push until we can say if it was a success or failure. Define exit criteria before beginning and the appropriate timeline to avoid this.
Zoom out to avoid knee-jerk reactions
We just had our best quarter ever. But it literally took until the final day of the quarter for that to happen. As much as we’d like for everything to be perfectly linear over time, it never is. If we overreacted to a slow July or a bad week during that quarter + shifted our strategy, we’d be in a worse place than had we stuck to the course. Know when to be confident in a strategy and when to revisit if it does need to change.
There’s no single path to success
At one point in time, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafa Nadal would rotate between the world #1 in tennis. A reporter wanted to uncover what made for the best, and here’s what he found while watching them warm-up:
Federer, laughing and taking trick shots
Djokovic, robotic + precise, no wasted movements
Nadal, intense focus and a raw, athletic energy
The point the reporter was making is that many of us think that in order to be a champion, I must be X, but as you can see above, each of them was #1 and each had an entirely different path + skillset to achieve that
Talent attracts talent
Want to bring top talent to your organization? Make sure that’s the bar you set with the team you already have. Top talent attracts top talent. A culture of mediocrity attracts mediocrity.
AI is a much more efficient way to get the first 80% of the work done
For many of us, AI won’t replace our work. And the early adopters recognize this and is why they’ve embraced it. AI is great for getting first drafts written, outlines made, taking notes, organizing unstructured data, etc. So let it. Then do what you do best once those are in place. Add your personal touch. Insert your knowledge on top of the data to draw a conclusion. AI is a tool in your kit, not an enemy.
Work can wait, don’t miss the important (and little) moments with family + friends
Remember that super-important task you stayed up late working on the other week? What was it? Remember that message you just had to send out at dinner the other day? Could it have waited?
The things we remember, and the things we regret, are almost always centered around family + friends. It snowed a significant amount here in Charleston this past winter and our little one couldn’t contain her excitement about it. She was outside playing, and I could hear her screams of joy from my office. So I cleared my calendar for the next hour and went outside to play with her. It’s been a vivid + special memory ever since.
We only get so many opportunities like these to take advantage of. I don’t even remember which meetings I pushed out to make the time for that, but we didn’t miss any goals and the business is still open, so that tells me I made the right decision here.Manifesting works
I see you giving me that side eye as you read that. But here’s the deal: manifestation may sound woo-woo if it’s approached with the mindset of expecting things to simply happen to you. Yeah that doesn’t work.
But you know what does work? Having clarity on your goals + what you want to have happen. When you have very specific items in mind (i.e. I want to make $xxxx this year, I want to run a 7-minute mile, I want to buy a house, I want to speak Spanish fluently, etc.), something interesting happens - we accomplish a lot of these.
Want to know why? Because we’re consciously seeking ways to make them happen.I don’t know what I don’t know
But I’m excited for another year ahead full of curiosity, learning, and improving
Podcast episode to listen to
For the past few years, Founders has been my most listened to podcast. Over the past few months, the host (David) has taken an interesting approach with some of the individuals he covers by going beyond one biography about them to aggregating multiple biographies, interviews, etc. and breaking down how they work.
In last week’s newsletter, I shared the episode he released where he covered How Elon Works that I loved. So I followed up that episode with another he recently released - How Bill Gates Works. And I’ll tell you what, it didn’t disappoint. Another 10/10 recommendation here.
See you next Saturday,
Sam
P.S. Any lessons, learnings, rules, etc. that you’ve adopted this past year? Reply back with yours - always love hearing what’s working for you all :)
Loved it Sam,
Happy birthday
Happy birthday buddy. Those morning walks are powerful.
Remind your daughter "honor thy mother and thy father" and emphasize 'today is my day and daddy wants you to stop eating his Trader Joe's secret stash cookies..".
😂.
Enjoy your day.
At 35 you pause, at 57 you stare into the abyss and keep your balance!