My favorite 9 posts from 2023

Year in Review

Laguna Beach, California

As 2023 comes to a close, I reflect on another year writing this newsletter. Like an old shaman looking at animal bones, I poke at posts in search of patterns. One of the benefits of regular writing is that it helps me make up for a poor chronological memory: each post is a mnemonic aid – a thread I can pull on to revisit ideas I thought about obsessively earlier in the year.

My inspiration for writing on the internet is the serendipity of it all – the act of hitting “send” on a post is like putting a messages in a bottle onto a digital ocean. It’s not clear who will find the post, it’s not clear who will read it, and it’s not clear what effect it will have, but the occasional notes telling me that something resonated make it all worth it.

I really want to thank you all for being with me on this journey.

Here are my favorite posts from 2023

---

#1 - Treasure Hunting: OK Go, The Beatles and exploring the adjacent possible in the pursuit of greatness. This post was fun to write and was my most read of the year. Similar to My Summary of Tyler Cowen’s Approach To Leading an Intellectually Fulfilling Life,  it continues my explorations on the value of pursuing interestingness and my continued frustrations with rigid processes and bureaucracies.

#2 - Reflections on The Sea Ranch: And the value of human interconnection: I was finally able to visit Sea Ranch for a long weekend with my family this year and I reflected on how it was built, its philosophy and what it teaches about building communities. I’m really glad I wrote this post to crystallize my feelings - it’s a valuable souvenir of a unique experience.

#3 - How to Recenter: A quick step-by-step guide: I’ve come back to this post many times this year. In fact, I have the main ideas right next to my computer as a reminder. It’s surprising how often I forget the basics, especially in times of heightened stress at work.

#4 - Living in the Supersensorium: Reflections on the Vision Pro and the Amish approach to technology: In 2024 we’ll finally see Apple’s Vision Pro devices in the real world. I’ve yet to try it directly having only read numerous reviews second hand, so I’m both fascinated to try it and dreading its arrival.

#5. What is foreground and what is background?: And how we experience the world: A reader pointed out that this post is really about developing compassion. I am excited use this lens more the coming year especially as a compliment to last year’s post “You Know Nothing - a Conversational Mindset,” which I still think about and try to use often.

#6. 13 small observations from my trip to Europe: Vignettes on differences from Rome, Florence, London and Paris. I really enjoyed writing this piece and it seems others enjoyed reading it too. Following the Sea Ranch post and last year’s post on Brasilia, I want to continue to expand this form of travel writing next year.

#7 - Know all things to be like this: Living in an ever-changing world: Fire-fighting horses, Coal-fired ovens and dreams: This post touches on the recurring theme of impermanence and technology: seeing our current era in the context of history and trying as best as I can to avoid the myopia of the present.

#8 - Recreating the state of "Airplane Flow": Factors to achieve optimal level of discomfort for productivity: I wrote this post on another newsletter I dabbled in this year. This approach to “airplane flow” and “optimal discomfort” has been something I’ve used a bunch for work as a powerful technique to avoid procrastinating.

#9 - Avoiding Cookie Monster mode: Sugar and it's (un)expected impact, a post about how and why I mostly stopped eating sugar. I keep playing around with my diet to find more energy. I have a few other experiments underway and will try to write about them if they are fruitful.

---

I am so grateful for all of your support and I wish you all a wonderful 2024.

Until next year!