What I’m Watching

A cooking video from one of the most controversial people on the internet right now, Bryan Johnson. He’s the billionaire who is spending $2 million a year and his whole existence solely dedicated to reverse his ageing, the guy who takes, literally over 100 pills a day.

I had a similar reaction to what you’re probably having, I rolled my eyes when I first heard about him. While I take his stuff with a huge grain of salt I also try to keep an open mind. Surely if he is spending all that money on research there must be something useful? 

I quite like some of the recipes on his website, I use them as inspiration to add some variety to what I eat. For example, I didn’t know black lentils were a thing and that hemp seeds were good for you, I also starting cooking shiitake mushrooms for the first time.

Resource of the week

The property market is a confusing time at the moment so for those of you on the fence about investing I’m giving a free Google Meets Webinar on 2nd Jan at 7 pm. Some of you might remember that I gave a talk at Kings College London last year which received great feedback. The webinar will be based on that but updated for today’s market. I’ll try to pack as much value as I can, so make sure you don’t miss it! Just sign up here.

Quote

Progress beats perfection

News and trends

• Octopus Energy moves into the private rented sector. This is a continuation of the trend where we see smaller landlords exiting the market while bigger players continue to acquire for the long term. 
• Market sentiment improving with new sales increasing 17% year on year and we’re seeing house price falls start to moderate.
• Landlords expect higher loan payments and rents in 2024 - NRLA.
• Share of US adults supporting a TikTok ban declined from 50% in March to 38% now. I’m a bit surprised at how high these figures are. This comes amid fresh calls from some in Congress to call for a ban to the app.

Thoughts

Like many others at this time of year, I am in a reflective mood. So I thought I’d share my process and some of the things I’ve tried over the years, hopefully you’ll find something helpful.

Storyworthy moments

The first one comes courtesy of the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. The long and short is that he is a champion storyteller and every good story boils down to a 5 second moment. Everything before is just a buildup to it. We all have stories every day. The best stories aren’t the most outlandish ones that we can think of but relatable everyday things, like a little moment when having breakfast with family for instance. One exercise he prescribes and one I do to this day is to just write down one sentence about something that happened to you that day, you can do it on a spreadsheet, I do it in my Notion planner.

Dreamline

I used a sample Dreamline at the very start of my property journey which is something I came across on the Tim Ferriss blog. It’s basically a process of laying out specifically your ideal lifestyle by breaking it down into:

1. Things you want to have
2. What you want to be
3. Things you want to be doing day-to-day

Then it’s a case of figuring out the cost and action points to get there. A lot of people surprise themselves when they do this exercise in that they don’t need millions and millions to be living their dream life. Even if you do, it’s good to have that clarity!

Weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews

I have a process where at the end of each week, I’ll have a quick review of the things I did that week, for example my habit tracker, tasks I did, how I felt, what went well, and what didn’t. Then it’ll help inform me and give me some pointers to plan out my next week. 

I do a similar thing for months, quarters etc. My Notion system pulls the data and aggregates the data so I can see it on the relevant reviews.

It can be a bit tedious but personally. I love playing around with data and stuff like this. It’s helped me have more clarity in my life in general. Before adopting this I used to get pulled all over the place, in the short term everything seemed so urgent and I found it difficult to stick to something. In my younger days, I’d start something and another shiny object would attract my attention. 

By zooming out, I found that it’s much easier to cut a lot of things out of my life that weren’t important, looking at what the end game was, what resonates with my core values and beliefs. It just made it a lot easier to say no to things without FOMO.

I was amazed at how much time I wasted on things I didn’t enjoy and didn’t progress my life. 

Journaling

Everybody journals a bit differently, I’m still quite fluid in terms of what I write in my journal. Sometimes it can be a stream of consciousness, so I’ll sit and just let thoughts flow. Sometimes I’ll have a really cool insight that I just have to write down.

Also, this might sound strange, but sometimes I could be procrastinating, there’s a task I don’t want to do. But I’ll write about doing it, and break it down into smaller sub-tasks and specifically what those small sub-tasks involve doing, so for example preparing documents for my accountant to do my company tax returns. I’ll break it down into bullet points it could be spending 2 minutes downloading bank statements, then categorise expenses etc, etc. For me this has two advantages, it makes it seem much less daunting. Secondly, there’s just something about writing something down and the process where it transfers a thought from your head to tangible ink of paper makes it ‘real’ and I’m more likely to do it.

I also inherently like fountain pens and writing so anything that makes work more enjoyable is a good thing.

Another thing I learnt from Ray Dalio which I really love, is going through all of the experiences from my life and coming up with a personal set of principles. So he observes that the events that happen to us in our lives aren’t unique, they can be categorised. They repeat again and again over time so we don’t have to make a fresh decision every single time. It could be relationships, your career etc. So every time something happens to us, especially if it’s painful or a failure we can learn something from it, create a principle according to our values so we can more effectively deal with it in future and we don’t have to make a decision. The key thing here is ‘according to my values’. So often in my life, I’ve found that the right thing to do by what’s generally accepted by societal standards does not align with my values. It’s a case of thinking independently.

These are very personal to me, but an example I’ll share is I learnt that when dealing with people, it's best to focus on their actions, how they behaved in the past, their track record, and where their interests lie and not take what they say at face value. 

I’ve got pages of these little principles which I make a point to review regularly. I feel a lot more confident when life throws these tricky situations at me, I’ll go back to my principles folder for how to deal with it. Also, I found that generally, the best principles come from the most painful experiences or biggest failures so it’s a win-win, either you achieve a lofty goal or you learn a valuable lesson from it. Reading through my principle list now is very sobering because each one corresponds and reminds me of a significant moment in my life. It almost documents my growth as a person in the way I deal with things, so I highly recommend it.

Hope that was helpful. Do you have an end-of-year review process? Very curious to know what it is. Just hit the reply button. Otherwise, have a great Christmas! And catch you at the next one.

Hans