Curiosity Chronicle

In 2021, I left my traditional career track in finance to go all in on writing and creative work.
I assumed that more time inputs would mean more, and better, outputs.
I was wrong.
The writing, once a highlight of my day, had taken on the feel of a job. The passion had become work.
As it turns out, there's real science that helps explain why. It's called the Overjustification Effect: When an expected external incentive decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to engage in an activity they already enjoy.
In this piece, I wrote about how I learned to protect the things I love from the weight of expectations and why I think you need to become a beginner again.
It's a small rebellion in a world that wants you to do everything with some purpose in mind.
You don't have to get good at every single thing you do. You don't need to attach metrics to every pursuit. Not everything has to become something.
Some things can just be.
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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

I'm often asked for advice from people just starting out in life.
When I respond, I imagine I'm speaking to my 22-year-old self. Young. Energetic. Highly ambitious. But with little direction. Feeling lost.
There are a handful of things I find myself consistently repeating in these responses, so I thought it would be worthwhile to collect them into a single piece.
But to be clear, in writing (and re-reading it), it's obvious to me that this advice applies to all of us. At any age. On any life path.
So, strap in and buckle up.
Here's my brutally honest advice to my 22-year-old self...
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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

In an apocryphal story, legendary painter Pablo Picasso was walking through the market when a woman approached him and asked for a drawing.
Picasso quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art and handed it back to her.
"That'll be one million dollars," he smiled.
"But Mr. Picasso, it only took you thirty seconds!"
"On the contrary," he replied. "It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds."
This story is a perfect example of a modern crisis I'm starting to see in the AI era.
It's called the Locksmith Paradox: We have a tendency to undervalue something because of the low visible input required to create it, despite the output being exactly what we requested.
In this piece, I talk about the science behind this phenomenon, why it penalizes efficiency and rewards general incompetence, and how to fight back as individuals, leaders, and organizations...
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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

A six week stretch of travel had already reduced my output. Then, I got caught in an earthquake in Panama. And finally, upon returning home on little sleep, I was laid out by a bug my son brought home from school.
This weekend, as I started to think about the week ahead, I noticed a familiar, building sensation. A clenching tension in my jaw and neck. A heavy drop in my shoulders. An elevated heart rate.
It got me thinking about how to find your way out of the land of overwhelm when the pile of work and life debt feels too heavy to even start on.
The body and the mind are intimately connected. Every random object is effectively an open loop. I build momentum on the small and then leverage that momentum to knock out the big.
In this piece, I talk about my five-step Overwhelm Protocol: move the body, clean your room, make a Weekly Win Card, create a snowball, and knock down a wall...
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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

Last Wednesday, I flew to Panama to deliver two keynotes. I was excited for the trip. I’d been once before as a kid and remembered the beautiful country.

I completed the first talk on Thursday evening and the second on Friday morning. I left feeling energized and headed back to the hotel to take a few calls before heading to the airport.
At 12:56pm local time, I was on the top floor of my hotel when I started to feel a light rumbling sensation in my chair.

But then, chaos. The floor started to shake. The entire building started to sway. Things started falling off the counters and onto the floor.

I would shortly find out that a 7.7 magnitude earthquake was underway. Over the next 30 hours as I tried to find my way home, there were 161 aftershocks, including several 6.0+ magnitude tremors.

In this piece, I share my stream-of-consciousness perspectives from going through a massive earthquake.
How everything got smaller. How I was reminded that shared struggle builds bonds. Why awareness is so very perishable.
And why bad luck may not be so bad...

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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.