The Best of 2024

The last reconciliation of 2024, a great way to look back on all the blessings turned lessons from the year.

1. Favorite Questions:
2. Favorite Books:
3. Best Places to Visit:
4. Favorite Quotes:
5. Worth Reading or Watching:
6. Best Value Add to Life:
7. Worth Revisiting Yearly for Inspiration:

Favorite Questions:

1. What would you do more of or less of when reflecting on previous relationships?
2. What’s not working for you that you’d be crazy NOT to change?
3. What’s your biggest hindrance to finding joy?

Favorite Books:

1. Red Rising (6 book series) – Sci-fi/Fantasy sometimes described as Ender’s Game meets Hunger Games (doesn’t do it justice IMO, but favorite book series of all time)
2. Essentialism – Non-fiction self-improvement – if you’re looking for a fresh perspective on how to eliminate excess in your life, this is the one.

Best Places to Visit:

1. Madrid, Spain + Wine Country Spain – you simply can’t go wrong here
2. Othership in NYC – sauna, cold plunge, meditation, movement – the best version of this I have seen

Favorite Quotes:

1. “The path is made of many stones that look all the same. When you tread upon evil, do not rest of look down because goodness is only a step away. The next may bring ruin. The next joy. But these stones are not your destination. They are but the journey to the paths end.” +”…people can overcome anything but the false summit. False summits are where they break.” – Lightbringer
2. “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.” – Roger Ebert
3. There is only one success–to be able to spend your life in your own way.” – Christopher Morley

Worth Reading or Watching:

1. Wild Robot – spectacular animated movie, family & kid friendly, lessons for everyone of all ages to learn in this one. 97% on rotten tomatoes and 8.2 on IMDB.
2. The Most Important Question of Your Life – What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?
3. American Symphony – part of my discovery of Jon Batiste – one of my favorite humans to keep up with. HT to MT.

Best Value Add to Life:

1. Blendtec Blender – I have gifted this to 3 people now and every single one has said it is one of the best & most useful gifts they have ever been given. This makes smoothie making a breeze and the quality of your smoothies 10x.
2. Electric Toothbrush – ok, hear me out. I know everyone already has an electric toothbrush, but upgrading to one with a more power/stronger battery is totally worth it – this has massively improved my experience of brushing my teeth for the better
3. Daylight Blue Light Blockers – probably placebo, but spending hours per day looking at a computer screens, these have had a major reduction on the strain I feel on my eyes at night and had a modest improvement on my sleep quality.

Worth Revisiting Yearly for Inspiration:

1. A different take on what makes us feel so busy, stressed, and anxious. As a rule, the larger your surface area, the more energy you have to expend maintaining it. Of course, when most of us think of surface area, we think of the area of a rectangle or how much grass we have to mow. But there is a surface area of life, and most of us never realize how much it consumes. If you have one house, you have a relatively small surface area to maintain (depending on the age and size of the house, of course). If you buy another one, your surface area expands. But it doesn’t expand linearly – it expands slightly above that. It’s all the same work plus more. Friends are another type of surface area. You have a finite amount of time to spend with friends before you die. The more friends you have, the less time you can spend with each one individually. Money is another form of surface area. The more money you have, the more you have to keep track of different types of assets and investments. When your surface area expands too much, you hire people to help you scale. Assistants, property managers, family offices, etc. They’re scaling you – but they’re also scaling the surface area of responsibility. This, of course, only masks the rapidly expanding surface area by abstracting it. Beliefs are another type of surface area. The thing about surface area is that the more you have, the more you have to defend and maintain. The larger your surface area, the more you are burdened with mentally and physically. If you think in terms of surface area, it’s easy to see why we are so anxious, stressed, and constantly behind. We feel like we need more time, but what we’re craving is more focus. What we need is a smaller surface area. Your surface area becomes part of your identity. She’s the ‘busy person’ with her hand in every project. He’s the guy with four houses. Competition can drive expansion. Most people want a bigger house to compete with someone else who has a nicer house. We are animals, after all. On a group level, this causes great benefits. On an individual level, it can cause unhappiness. Most of the really happy people I know have a relatively small surface area. I know billionaires with two houses. Most of my close friends only have 4-5 close friends – everyone else is a friend in the loose sense of the word. Most of the productive people I know at work are focused on one or two things, not 5. The way to maximize your enjoyment in life is to keep your surface area small. It’s a lot of work but if the happiest people I know are any indication, it’s a lot less work to keep it small than to maintain it when it’s large.
2. Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

3. A Divorce Attorney’s Thoughts on Love and Marriage – James Sexton