Borough-ing Deep

When I moved to NYC twenty-some years back, I landed in Manhattan, and I’ve been here (across a half-dozen apartments) ever since.

When I met Jess, however, she lived in Brooklyn. And though she soon thereafter moved in with me (due to a confluence of commute time reduction, increased square footage, and the addition of a Hudson River balcony view), she’s been at least partly rueing that borough swap ever since.

In my early NYC days—and even, though to a lesser degree, in my early days living with Jess—I could always dismiss Brooklyn as “Manhattan’s waiting room.” Sure, people started out there to capitalize on early-career-friendly rent prices, but the real center of gravity of the city was the island of Manhattan itself.

But, in the years since, that’s shifted. Now, for example, it’s the best new restaurants—not just the quirky hipster-coolest ones—that open in Brooklyn.

So, in the last few months, as we’ve been contemplating a move, we’ve been looking both here on the Upper West Side, and in several Prospect Park-adjacent stretches of Brooklyn. By now, the days of lower rents in those neighborhoods have long since passed. But, for the same (ridiculous) amount of money, you still do get at least a little more space.

And, honestly, sometimes it’s nice to start fresh, and to take on a new adventure. Which is why, in the past few weeks, I’ve started to think Brooklyn might actually—to the shock and dismay of my younger self—be my next stop.

Perhaps inevitably, that kicked off a counter from Jess. After lobbying for a Brooklyn move for the better part of a decade, things have suddenly inverted, and now she’s the one suggesting all of the great things about living on tree-lined streets wedged between Central and Riverside Parks.

Where this ends (and where we end up) is still totally unclear. But as we’re hoping to get out the door to new digs within the next month, it seems I’ll soon be finding out either way.

And, if nothing else, I’m glad all of the contenders still count as peak-Gotham NYC. The borough may be up in the air. But I’m as sure as ever that the Big Apple is where I’m supposed to be, and where I’ll be keeping at least one foot planted for the balance of my never dull life.

January 18, 2023

Here, There, Everywhere

The public launch of A3 is picking up steam, and with it (as previously promised) I’ve been posting more on both LinkedIn and Twitter, writing about evidence-backed approaches to fitness and health that work in the context of already over-packed professional lives.

Initially, I had planned to also write about that stuff here, in longer-form posts. And, intermittently, I still might. But, honestly, that mostly just feels redundant. So, instead, I’m leaning back towards writing about the inane and varied stories and musings that fill the rest of my brain and life.

As I puzzle through how best to approach this blog—and, really, how to approach pretty much everything else— I can’t help but think of Samuel Butler’s (two centuries old, but apt as ever) observation: “life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” Per usual, lots still to figure out. Though, if nothing else, I’m still oddly glad to be recording that learning process here, on this now rather ridiculously long-standing site.

Untethering

In Buddhist thought, the difficulties of life all boil down to four Noble Truths. The second of which, “samudaya,” basically posits that the the source of our suffering is craving or attachment; wanting things we don’t have, or not wanting to lose things that we do.

That may indeed be part of the path to enlightenment. But it also explains why new year’s resolutions make us so miserable. We set out with a clear sense of how we want to be different in the year ahead. And then, because real change often feels glacially slow, we slog ahead for a month or so, realize things aren’t yet different, and give up entirely.

Which is why, research suggest, only about 9% of people each year feel like they successfully keep their resolutions. (Indeed, more than 40% expect to fail even before they hit February.)

So, rather than implore you to cling even harder to those earnestly-desired but rarely-reached outcome goals, let me suggest that, this year, you take an entirely different approach. Instead of resolving to reach new outcomes in the year ahead, resolve to follow new routines instead.

Put another way, untether from the outcome, and put all of your focus on the process. Figure out the things you want to do every day and every week over the next year. Then stop paying attention to progress, and stop keeping an eye on the prize. The only wins you need to celebrate are process wins: “I made a weekly grocery run to stock up on vegetables!” “I stuck to my pre-bedtime wind-down alarm last night!” “I made it to the gym the three times I was gunning for this week!”

One of my own process resolutions is to start posting regularly on both Twitter and LinkedIn. Over the course of January, I’ll be aiming to post actionable ideas related to this same concept. Stuff like:

Why we should ditch SMART goals and focus on DUMB habits.
The value of never missing twice.
How to create consistency by shifting your identity.
And ways to become addicted to the process, so that the outcomes take care of themselves.

Until then, let me share a similar thought recently tweeted by entrepreneur Ankur Warikoo. I think it’s so good that I’ve actually printed it out, tacked it over my desk, and will be looking at it all day long over the year ahead:

“Remind yourself that it is the boring that makes shit happen.
When people ask me, ‘What’s next?’
I do not have an answer.
There is no next.
There is just repeat.
Repeat what works.
And give it time.
It is the biggest thing I have learnt in life.”

Happy new year. May it be an incredibly repetitive one!

December 25, 2022

It’s Aliiiiiivvveeeee!!!

For the last couple of years, we’ve been quietly beta-testing A3 Health, a science-based and technology-driven fitness and health coaching program targeting entrepreneurs, business owners, and senior execs.

And, honestly, it’s been a ton of fun, in large part because our beta clients have gotten more amazing results than we could have hoped. Nonetheless, along the way, we’ve had a ton of ups and downs; it’s been equal parts wildly frustrating and incredibly gratifying, a nonstop source of joy and despair and pessimism and optimism and ecstatic afternoons and sleepless nights.

Anyway, by now, we think we’ve honed this thing down to the point that we’re actually ready to share it with the world—and to do so at scale. So, after a long stretch of living head-down in internal focus mode, it appears it’s time for me to pop my head out of the deep work groundhog hole, try not to be too terrified of my own shadow, and start living the public-facing half of my CEO job as we roll A3 out to the world at large. It’s exciting and terrifying and I can’t wait to get going.

All of which is to say: as of today, anybody who wants to (though, actually, not really anybody, because we still have a pretty rigorous application process, and only work with people we know we can help crush their goals) can sign up as a client of A3.

If you want to get a sense of what we’re about, check out the free cheat sheet for our PB6 diet, a stupidly simple, science-backed, empirically-tested, heuristic-driven approach to dropping body fat and improving overall health.

Then, if you have too much free time and want to hear an hour of me diving deep on what optimizing health and fitness entails—both at the theoretical level, as well as with actionable tools you can put to use today—check out our free webinar.

And, finally, if you (or your friends, or their friends! we’re in launch mode, so we’re post-shame!) want to really jump in and make change, check out our Reboot on-ramp program. It’s a 10-week personalized jump-start to dial in every aspect of your fitness and health.

With part of my brain (and to-do list) once again rededicated to work outside the confines of our own gym space walls, it seems plausible I might even be back to writing here again more frequently! Though, as past blogging false restarts make clear: I wouldn’t entirely hold my breath.

November 1, 2022

Point Break

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been getting ready to shift A3 from private beta to public release. Part of that process has been figuring out a marketing plan, potentially including creating some blog-esque content. Which, inevitably, has made me think of this largely-ignored personal blog in turn.

Across my two decades of posting here, a handful of recurrent themes have emerged. One is, I’m apparently great at totally forgetting, and then coming up with again, ‘new’ ideas and discoveries. Enough so that, on more than one occasion, I’ve thought of something clever, Googled it to see what anyone else had written on the topic, and discovered that the first search result was actually an extended post from me, on this very site, written a few years prior.

So perhaps it’s not a surprise that, while I was puzzling through ways I might get back to writing here more regularly, I started thinking that I would be most likely to do so by making this blog a repository for all the random stuff that didn’t fit into a more professional, structured, authority-building, niche-targeted approach to content creation—a collection of random storytelling, catalogued misadventures, and loose musings—only to discover that I had also decided the exact same thing about 18 months (and, embarrassingly, only six or seven posts) back.

At least it’s nice to know I’m consistent?

Anyway, one other thing I’ve learned, which I’m also sure I’ve written about repeatedly here before, is how much productivity and creativity and forward progress in life is sort of like surfing. It feels like, if you want to get going, you should just start paddling as hard as you can. But if you’re doing that on flat water, you’re not going to have much luck. Instead, you have to wait for a wave of clarity and inspiration to come, to pick you up, to give you a boost of momentum. And then you start paddling. The two together—momentum plus effort—are the only way you can actually get up and surf.

As someone who always wants to be in control of the situation, that’s a hard equation to accept. Because, if you can’t summon the waves, you just have to learn to watch, and wait, and be grateful when they arrive.

I suppose I end up repeating things on this site because it takes a few passes for even the most clear and important and obvious lessons to sink in. Which is also, I think, one of the reasons I blog in the first place: the hope of memorializing those big lessons outside the confines of my feeble brain. Sort of a memo to myself.

And though that obviously hasn’t worked great, that also shouldn’t be surprising, given my ability to forget notes I’ve left to myself in even far more permanent and visible ways. In fact, my prior self was clearly so taken by the importance of patience and acceptance and surfing the waves of life as they unfold that I got a reminder of it (“amor fati,” Nietzche’s admonition to love your fate) literally tattooed on the inside of my left forearm.

So, it seems, I’m a bit of a slow learner. But, as I said, at least I’m consistent.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

September 21, 2022

I Wish I Knew How to Quit You, WordPress

When I posted six months back to say I was powering down this blog, and moving on to some fresh, new format, it seemed like absolutely the right idea. But, to be honest, during that intervening time, no fresh, new format ideas have really sprung to mind. What has, instead, are inspirations for posts—stories and insights and funny tidbits and crazy theories.

In that prior post about winding things down, I tried to share a broader point: these days, I’m working on living as my most authentic self, and trying to be patient in a way that I haven’t always in the past. But an equally big lesson I’ve learned over the years is that the perfect is often the enemy of the good. So, frequently, you just need jump in with your best attempt, getting down to work even if that means looking dumb and making mistakes and figuring things out along the way.

All of which is to say, I guess: I’m back, blogging again with this site more or less exactly the way it was before. In my own words from twenty years ago, when I similarly rebooted this blog despite my prior intentions: sorry mom, but it’s cheaper than therapy.

June 8, 2022