Curiosity Chronicle

Confession: I'm a routine guy.

I thrive on structure. I think of routines as a way to ensure execution against the daily action that contributes to long-term, compounding progress.

But there's a dark side to routines that nobody talks about.

When your routines become too rigid and complicated, they become a source of stress rather than strength. The routines meant to serve you can start to own you.

This is where my 90-10 Rule comes in:

90% disciplined compliance.
10% open flexibility.

90% of the time, I'm locked in with my structure, but 10% of the time, I give myself the space to let life happen freely.

In this piece, I talk about the Paradox of Routine: The best routine is the one you can break.
The 10% is what enables the 90% to be so effective.

Your routine should serve your life, not own it.

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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 the 3rd century BCE, King Pyrrhus was preparing for an aggressive military campaign in Italy when a trusted advisor named Cineas asked him a simple question:
After conquering Italy, what would they do next? Then Sicily. Then Libya and Carthage. And then?
King Pyrrhus replied, "Then we will live a life of ease. Drink all day and have pleasant conversation with our friends."
Cineas paused and spoke: "But what's stopping us from doing that today?"
The story is one of the oldest documented cases of the Arrival Fallacy: the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create durable feelings of satisfaction and contentment in our lives.
But life is rarely so black and white. Ambition isn't the mortal enemy. And presence isn't the perfect hero.
In this piece, I wrote about choosing the middle path. Rejecting the or and embracing the and.
Remember: You can conquer your Carthage if you want to. Just don't make the wine wait for it.
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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.

AI is quite clearly the biggest buzzword of the year.

But one thing I don't see anyone talking about is just how much AI is shifting how rewards are earned.

Things are changing so rapidly that the frontier of accurate prediction has been pulled closer and closer to the present.

In this new world, the rewards will be earned by those who are willing to be beginners over and over again. The value seems likely to accrue to those who can combine curiosity and a beginner's mindset with bias for action.

This means that learning has become a core meta-skill. Perhaps even THE core meta-skill.

On Friday, I wrote about the Protégé Effect: the psychological phenomenon where teaching, preparing to teach, or pretending to teach information to someone else helps you learn and retain that information better yourself.

The new world will place an emphasis on adaptation. Rapid iteration. Learning and unlearning.

It sounds scary. It shouldn't.

If you're willing to be a beginner again, the future is brighter than ever...
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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 week I wrote about failing a marathon.
Six days later, at 5am, I drove back to the course alone and ran 26.25 miles in 2:48:47. Not because I needed the official result. Because when I say I'm going to do something, I do it.
In this piece, I talk about seven lessons from that solo marathon that have nothing to do with running — how to stack slow progress, how to stay in the long game, and why showing up through the valley is the whole game...
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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 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons studied the impact of the increased efficiency of coal use.
The common economic intuition said that as efficiency improved, people would use less coal. Jevons argued that the economic reality was different: As technology improved the efficiency of coal use, demand for coal would increase as people created and justified new uses.
It became known as Jevons Paradox: technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a given resource lead to a rise in the consumption of that resource.
I think the most interesting application of Jevons Paradox is in your life. 
When you optimize for efficiency, you may find yourself doing more, not less, of the thing you tried to become more efficient at.
In this piece, I share a simple reminder:
Efficiency is great. But only when it gets you more of what you actually want...
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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.