Contrarian Lifestyles and Contrarian Outcomes
Managing Infinity and Digital Illusions
☀️ Happy Monday from Tuscaloosa, AL ☀️
Welcome to the eleventh Louis’ Learnings email!
This week’s newsletter shares my five favorite mini-essays I wrote last week.
In many ways, our society celebrates mediocrity. The world encourages terrible habits. Junk food. Binge consumption. Digital addiction. 24/7 news (aka 24/7 anxiety).
This week, my essays revolve around my attempts to break those harmful patterns within myself and inspire other's to engage in similar reflection. From what I’ve observed, a few contrarian lifestyles changes can lead to dramatically better outcomes.
Last, I have some new subscribers this week. Welcome! Thank you to whoever has been sharing this email newsletter with their friends!
Best Essays From Last Week
Managing Infinity
Things used to be finite.
Cigarettes burned out.
Piles of mail only grew so high.
TV shows aired one episode at a time.
It used to be dramatically harder to satisfy your cravings for more.
Smoking inside was frowned upon. You had to wait for more.
The mail only arrived once a day. You had to wait for more.
TV shows only came on at a set time. You had to wait for more.
But things aren't like that anymore. There's no limit to how often you can hit a vape, refresh email, or binge watch an entire TV show.
We consume far beyond what's recommended or healthy.
There were benefits to the simplicity of finite things. But things aren't so simple.
Vaping is probably better than smoking, email has advantages over snail mail, and Netflix is fun. As all do, these innovations came with good and bad.
The problem lies in the unrestrained nature of these new inventions.
Effortless abundance. Low friction access to infinity.
Endless potential... for things to go wrong.
To retain sanity, balance, and health in an age of easy excess, the habit of self-imposing arbitrary constraints is an absolute must.
Fence in your vices. Set rules. Fix limits. Follow them.
Delete Digital Illusions
"We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clearer path to a lesser goal" - Robert Brault
Tinder and Duolingo have a lot in common: they suck and should be deleted immediately. We tried these apps for good reasons. We wanted to learn languages. We wanted to improve our dating lives.
We've been deceived.
As cleverly as these apps are marketed, they are awful for realizing our goals. Reality has an inconceivable amount of detail, and swiping, texting, and multiple choice quizzes are shallow and incomplete models of the real world.
These bright and colorful apps have mastered a very dark art. After months we feel like we've made progress, but we've barely passed start.
Badges, matches, awards, and levels make it feel like we are going somewhere, but it's all an illusion. It's an extremely clear path that leads nowhere.
We overcomplicate our goals to avoid discomfort. Dating and language learning are simple goals with simple answers. The highest leverage actions are obvious. Socialize with a lot of people. Fumble through conversations with native speakers.
There are no substitutes for these approaches. The shortcut is to stop taking shortcuts. Unappealing or scary, our opinion of the facts doesn't change them.
Don't put more value in the illusion of progress than actual progress.
The best way to do something is to do it. Increase your bench press by bench pressing. Not by reading about it. Not by playing mobile games.
Only by lifting the weight.
Ditch the apps. Get out of your comfort zone. Talk to people. Do the work.
Zombies Are Everywhere
When you are out and about, keep your head up. Look around.
Try it everywhere you go. You'll notice the same thing.
Everyone else is a zombie.
Their faces are smothered by screens. Their ears are plugged, covered, or closed. The sounds of nature are overpowered by numbing entertainment of their choosing.
They are held hostage by their custom virtual universes.
They are all zombies. All of them.
All of them, except you. Keep your head up. Look around. Choose to see the world. Remember how to experience it. Allow thoughts to wander.
Observe as the zombies passively go about their days. Watch the measures they'll take to avoid even a glimpse of solitude.
Solitude is a superpower: sustained concentration, bouncing creative insights, and time for the thinking brain to recharge.
When you are out and about, keep your head up. Look around. You'll find friends. A group of others that have warded off the pandemic of the mind. A secret fraternity of people aware of awareness.
Others that look up. Others that plug into the world not the machine.
They are at peace with themselves, at peace with their thoughts, and at peace with the moment.
They've cured themselves of the pandemic of the mind.
The cure requires a mild dose of boredom and a mild dose of solitude.
A small price to pay to not be a zombie.
Quit Daily News
The daily "news" is outrage porn.
It's engineered to scare you, piss you off, and induce panic.
People consume the daily news for noble reasons. To stay informed. To be the first to know new information. To understand what's going on in the world.
The daily news is the worst way to achieve these goals.
Even without intentional bias, the daily news gets a lot wrong. Reporting on stories as they happen is nearly guaranteed to have errors. There isn't enough time to verify details. There isn't enough time to let the dust settle.
I propose checking on a fixed interval: once per week—at most.
Why? Time is the ultimate filter for relevancy.
Most stories won't make it to the end of the week. If it's irrelevant within a few days, it's not worth knowing at all.
For the new stories that do last a full week, the end-of-week summary will be orders of magnitude more accurate than what is first reported.
Whether you consume daily, weekly, or monthly, the same stuff happened. The facts are unchanged by how often you are glued to your screen.
Anytime I can achieve the same result will less time, effort, and emotional investment, I take the opportunity with enthusiasm.
I'm always tuned for making small changes that lead to outsized results. Quitting the daily news is one of them.
Standing Out Is Easy
Standing out in 2021 is surprisingly easy.
Terrible habits are the rule & healthy habits are the exception.
People are out of shape, constantly tired, addicted to distraction (cheap dopamine from social media, texts, emails), and stressed.
I'm not celebrating this bleak depiction of society, but I don't feel any guilt capitalizing on the opportunity it presents for individuals.
Neither should you.
How do you stand out? Adopt four habits in service of two goals. Improve your energy levels. Improve your ability to concentrate.
Energy is a force multiplier for everything that you do. Everything is easier when you have high energy. It feels good to feel good.
Concentration is the key ingredient to success in knowledge work. Knowledge work has two parts: learning complicated information and producing valuable assets. Both require concentration.
These four habits improve your energy and concentration capacity.
Sleep with your phone off in another room. Buy an alarm clock.
Exercise at a moderate difficulty outside every day.
Only eat whole foods. Beans. Eggs. Broccoli. Natural Salsa.
Batch Distractions. Check email once per day then close it until the next day. Do the same on social media.
Try all four habits for a week.
Don't celebrate mediocrity.
Don't laugh about your bad habits. Break them.
Content Updates
LK Podcast #51 with John Sherwin: John Sherwin joins us to discuss Co-Founding Hydrant, a high-growth vc backed startup at "the intersection of water and wellness." John discusses the science of hydration and the business of delivering it to the world from raising money, marketing, and getting investors.
LK Podcast #50 with Danny Miranda: Our friend Danny joins us for a reflective and fun episode. Each of us share our three biggest personal lessons from conducting 50 podcast interviews in 2020.
LK Podcast #49 with David Oakley: David Oakley is Alabama's most productive multifamily real estate broker of the last decade, having transacted over 6 billion dollars in deals. He shares his wisdom he's acquired from that experience.
Coming Soon!
Podcast interview with Dickie Bush, creator of the 🚢Ship30for30🚢 challenge
Podcast interview with Geoff Woods, host of The ONE Thing Podcast
Quick Clicks
(1) Listening to 🎧 : Andy Sachs on Sweet'N Up with Jeff Spencer
My cousin Andy did an awesome interview about trends in the Northeast and how he’s grown the Around Town Real Estate Team over the past few years.
(2) Reading 🗞: Dickie’s Reflection Questions
Our interview with Dickie is dropping Tuesday. I’d highly working through this short piece he wrote about the best questions he regularly asks himself.
(3) Tinkering With 💰: Covey.io
Covey.io is like fantasy football for investing. It’s a community based platform for competitive investing.
That’s All For This Week!
I expressed some strong opinions this week! Do you agree? Disagree violently?
Either way, I’d love to hear from you.
Let me know what you think and what you’ve been up to!
Cheers,
Louis Shulman
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Photo of the Week
I got a new mic and lights for recording podcasts (and looking fancy in Zoom class).
Things should be both sounding and looking better soon :)
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