My personal annual report for 2021 is broken down into the following sections:
1. Year in review
2. Goals results
3. Media diet (Principles, News, Podcasts, and Books I read in 2021)
4. Inspiration (Pick up the extra weight; Keep yourself mystified; Meaning contagion; New connections to mythology mobility; Hiking is not about the views; Only positive empty gestures allowed; and Creativity requires detailed planning)
Year in review
I am very thankful for the year that was. Despite the ongoing pandemic, culture wars, and geopolitical tensions, among others, I landed in a great place at the end of 2021 and am excited about the future – challenging as it might be.
Allow me a brief optimistic rant:
I don’t buy the outrage about how divided and doomed we all are.
Of course we have work to do, battles to fight, rooms to clean and things to build. Yes there are troubling trends toward totalitarianism and authoritarianism, terrifying abuses of human rights, and concerning threats to democracy and individual freedom.
But in the long run I believe truth and the best ideas will win out. This requires the scaffolding of free speech, free markets, and rule of law. Also trust, willingness to fight for principles, and (why not) belief in the sanctity of human life.
As such, I’m proud to be an American, and bullish on both the USA and liberal societies more broadly. [Side note: Timothy B. Lee’s argument for optimism toward the end of this morning’s Common Sense newsletter is music to my ears; confirmation bias acknowledged.]
Furthermore, in my experience people are (centrally and generally) kind, reasonable and eager to work with each other – especially when faced with big obstacles. And it is those daunting challenges that present the most exciting opportunities.
This all brings to mind two of my favorite rules from Jordan B. Peterson’s book Beyond Order, which I read this past summer:
- Rule 4: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility is abdicated.
- Rule 11: Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
–
One of my big challenges in 2021 was to finish grad school strong. I did just that, graduating in December with an MS in Mineral and Energy Economics from Colorado Shool of Mines. It was a tough and invigorating experience that made me stronger in many respects.
While I was in school I worked part-time as a Teaching Assistant (for the undergrad course Principles of Economics); contributed to research on water and electric utility rates; and provided freelance copywriting services on the side (writing case studies on utility initiatives).
I am so grateful for everyone – especially my classmates, professors, and the supportive staff – who made my time at Mines so enjoyable and beneficial.
That new degree is already paying off. At the end of the year I accepted a job offer from the State of Colorado, where I’ll be working as a Senior Economist with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. It’s a great fit, a cool opportunity, and I can’t wait to get to work next week!
This means I’ll be staying in Colorado for the foreseeable future, which is great because I’ve loved living here over the past year and a half. Most of that time was spent grinding through school, but I was also able to hit the trails pretty regularly, especially over the summer months.
I got in a good amount of trail running this past year, and worked in two epic hikes, one up Mt. Langley and the other along the Colorado Trail. I also got fully charged with ice dips in Golden’s Clear Creek, and strengthened my soul with Simple and Sinister Kettlebell workouts throughout the year.
The last item I’ll highlight here from 2021 is my continued work with HandsOn Greater Phoenix (HGP), an nonprofit in Phoenix that “puts volunteers to work where they’re needed most.” I’ve been on the HGP Board of Directors since 2018. This past year was my first year as Board Chair and I truly enjoyed taking on the expanded leadership role. I also served on the Board’s Marketing committee, which (among other efforts) put together a great marketing strategy that will be extremely useful to the organization.
The pandemic has been hard on nonprofits, but – thanks in no small part to the great staff, strong leadership, and engaged board of directors – the organization is in great shape and ready to have a big impact on the community as the Covid scare (hopefully, soon) dies down.
Goals results
This section holds me accountable for the 2021 Goals I laid out at the start of last year. Below I provide the results for each of my eight goals, along with some commentary.
1. Sunrise, Sunset: Morning recharge of breathing exercises and the Five Tibetan Rites; Evening wind-down of breathing exercises and stretching.
Result: half-way done
I was pretty good about the morning routine, which consisted of two parts: 1) recording a quick Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT) score, which I learned about last year from the book “The Oxygen Advantage” by Patrick McKeown; and 2) stretching exercises from the book “The Five Tibetans” by Christopher S. Kilham.
The evening routine was surprisingly much more of a challenge to develop into a habit. I often found myself working or studying late into the night. By the time I wrapped up work I was over winding down before bed with stretching, breathing exercises or meditation. Instead I would read for a bit, floss, brush, my teeth and go straight to bed.
I’m going to continue the morning routine and work on the evening component in 2022. The crucial factor is not staying up so late working. I also need to start thinking of the wind down as something that’s as important as flossing and brushing your teeth.
2. Simple and Sinister kettlebell at 32kg
Result: not done, but I got kinda close
Even though I didn’t get all the way to completing 10 rounds of 10 single-arm swings followed by 10 Turkish Get Ups (TGU) with a 32kg kettlebell, I came pretty close, completing a couple rounds at the 32kg level.
I started the year doing doing a mix of four sets at 16kg and six sets at 24kg. In late January I hurt my back during a workout (my form was off and I was sitting too much during the day) and took a break for about a month to recover.
This setback helped me realize that I was getting lazy with my core on the swings: my head would drop, back would round, and the weight would shift forward onto my toes instead of my heels. I wasn’t hinging back at my hips, keeping my core tight, or engaging my hamstrings and glutes. When I picked the kettlebell back up in March (at a lower level of four sets at 24kg), I learned to keep my head up without overextending my lower back, and focused on concentrating all the tension from the swing weight in my hamstrings, heels and abs. I eventually bumped up the weight back up to six sets at 24kg, and then eight sets at 24kg in May.
In June I took time off from the Simple and Sinister regimen to go hike Mt. Langley. After that I adventure, I got back to it and bumped my kettlebell workouts up to 10 sets at 24kg in July. Then I took a couple months off from kettlebells when I did an eight-day through hike on the Colorado Trail in August, and completed the Imogene Pass Run in September.
I spent most of the remainder of the sporadically doing Simple and Sinister kettlebells at 10 sets with 24kg. I was getting slammed by school, but still feeling great in November and early December, and managed to complete a few workouts with the 32kg kettlebell for two sets.
I was still in the early stages of getting comfortable with 32kg when I put everything on hold over December. Instead of kettlebells I focused on finishing grad school, and then spent most of the holidays lying around and eating.
–
In September I also for the first time had a Strongfirst-certified kettlebell coach give me pointers on my workouts and form. Overall I was in pretty good shape. My main areas of improvement were to:
- Incorporate shoulder warm-ups, banded monster walks and kettlebell deadlifts into my warm-up routine;
- (Swings) “Pack” my right shoulder down and back so that it does not roll forward; drive the balls of my feet into the ground and not let them come up; don’t get lazy or take reps off – they should all be powerful reps with active hips and an engaged core and posterior chain;
- (TGU) Create posterior tension by pressing the working side foot and the heel of the extended leg into the ground and keeping them down; don’t forget to the hip hinge;
–
The Simple and Sinister program also calls for “jolts” once or twice a month where you “take on a physical challenge that will test your spirit without breaking your body.” I wasn’t very good about prioritizing these “Primal Rages” into my workout routines in 2021. Instead I usually took weekly long trail runs and called them my primal rages. But I don’t think that’s the right approach. But in July I did My first Kettlebell Mile in 15 minutes and 44 seconds. It was awesome, and brutal! I’ll look to get stricter with these Primal Rages in 2022, and plan for either a Kettlebell Mile or some kind of intense rucking twice a month.
3. Ice dips twice a month
Result: pretty much done
I did a total of 40 cold plunges in 2021, usually in beautiful Clear Creek that runs through downtown Golden. I typically stayed in the water for about three minutes, submerged all the way up to my neck. Six of the 40 dips were in the winter from January to March. I’m not sure what the water temperature was in those months but pretty close to freezing because much of the creek was frozen over.
As you might imagine, it was much easier to do these dips in the summer, when the warm weather makes the plunge less daunting. I was also free from school in the summer, and that afforded more time for weird habits like this. My typical routine would be to crank out a kettlebell workout in a park nearby, and then walk over walk over to the creek for a quick ice dip. In July I did 16 cold plunges like that and I loved-hated every one of them.
4. Fasting
Result: partially done
I did more fasting this year than I’ve ever done. I completed one 72-hour fast (my longest fast to date), four 48-hour fasts, and 21 24-hour fasts. The 24-hour fasts became hardly noticeable, the 48-hour fasts are a stretch but very doable, and the 72-hour fast was a challenge but also not that rough.
Toward the end of the longer fasts I noticed a nice buzz would wash over me, with a weird sense of calm alertness. Like many other challenges, I found the thought of fasting to be much more daunting than the fast itself. Once I got rolling I felt great, and it was nothing to worry about.
5. Reading
Result: not done
At the start of the year I set out to avoid the urge to plow through as many books as possible by constraining myself to a list of 10 books for the year. The idea was that I would read those books deeply, slowly and over and over again.
I couldn’t control myself and strayed pretty far from that goal and that original list. Nevertheless I still felt a deep connection with many of the books I did read in 2021, and some of them (The Five Tibetans, The Idiot, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, A Question of Freedom, and The Black Swan) were crossed off that original list. Please see the Media Diet: Books section below for the complete list of books I read in 2021.
6. Writing
Result: not done
My original goal was to continue writing on this blog and to launch a side project specifically for creative writing. Neither of those things happened this year and I’m going to throw grad school under the bus as my excuse for why I didn’t write as much as I wanted to this year. As always, I’ll see if I can become more of a writer in 2022.
7. No complaining
Result: pretty much done
Yes I had moments – many even – where I needed to vent, talk trash or whine about something or other. But overall I felt like I maintained a pretty good attitude and kept all that negativity to a minimum. As such, I consider this one a win for the year and I’ll keep working to be less and less of complainer.
8. Epic hike
Result: done, and then some
I took two epic hikes this year: 1) Mt. Langley in June, and 2) Colorado Trail Segments 2-10 in August.
Media Diet
I like to think of media as food. With so much on the table, at our fingertips, and practically shoved down our throats, to be healthy we must develop a strategy for media consumption just like we would design a nutritious diet. As such, every year I revisit my media consumption strategy and take stock of the regulars in my media rotation. For more background please see my Media Diets from 2020 and 2019.
The following sections provide 1) the Principles governing my Media Diet; 2) News sources in my regular rotation; 3) Podcasts in my regular rotation; and 4) Books I read in 2021.
Principles
Here are the guidelines that define my media consumption strategy:
- Less is more: ruthlessly limited to select trusted sources that deliver regular value.
- Brutally honest: prioritize people with strong beliefs who also change their minds.
- Weird and wide: mix up your topics, perspectives and interests.
- Calm and complex: nuanced arguments from deep thinkers who respectfully explore the other side.
- Independent: try to avoid advertisements and ideology.
- Non-perishable: slow news, classic books, stuff that stands the test of time (aka Lindy).
- Read what your mentors and favorite writers read.
News
These are the newspapers, newsletters, blogs, subscriptions and papers I regularly read in 2021, arranged in no particular order.
- The Economist weekly print edition and daily Espresso news briefings.
- Stratechery “provides analysis of the strategy and business side of technology and media, and the impact of technology on society.”
- Sinocism helps me “Get smarter about China.”
- Common Sense: a newsletter from Bari Weiss “for people who want to understand the world as it is, not the world as some wish it to be. It’s for people who seek the truth rather than the comfort of a team or a tribe. It’s for people who prefer to think for themselves.”
- Twitter sprinkles some (semblance of) randomness into my media mix, though I read it pretty sparingly.
- Academic papers and assigned readings as part of my coursework in MS in Mineral and Energy Economics program at Colorado School of Mines. As you might imagine, many of these related to energy, utilities, statistics and microeconomics.
Podcasts
These are the shows I listened to regularly in 2021. They are arranged (very loosely!) in order of preference, priority and topic.
- EconTalk, “conversations for the curious” is a podcast hosted by economist Russ Roberts. I listen to every episode.
- Conversations with Tyler: Economist Tyler Cowen interviews smart people about a wide range of interesting stuff.
- Freakonomics Radio “tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything, plus the true stories of minimum wage, rent control, and the gender pay gap.”
- Hidden Brain: A conversation about life’s unseen patterns. These shows are hit or miss. I don’t listen very often, but every now and then an episode blows my mind.
- Honestly with Bari Weiss: “The most interesting conversations in American life happen behind closed doors. We’re prying them open.” This show is new to my rotation and I’m a big fan.
- Blocked and Reported: A Podcast About Internet Nonsense. This show is another new addition; it’s smart, hilarious and irreverent.
- The Jordan B Peterson Podcast “breaks down the dichotomy of life through interviews and lectures that explain how individuals and cultures are shaped by values, music religion and beyond. It will give you a new perspective and a modern understanding of your creativity, competence, and personality.” These were some of the best and most inspiring episodes I listened to all year.
- The Joe Rogan Experience offers a unique opportunity to hear uncensored, long conversations with fascinating people. I only listen to episode with guests I find interesting.
- The Peter Attia Drive Podcast “is a deep-dive podcast focusing on maximizing longevity, and all that goes into that from physical to cognitive to emotional health.”
- Dithering: “A new podcast from Ben Thompson [of Stratechery fame] and John Gruber. Two episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more.”
- Exponent is a podcast about tech and society, by Ben Thompson and James Allworth.
- The Bill Simmons Podcast: Sports, media and pop culture. I usually only listen to episodes related to the NBA.
- The Ryen Russillo Podcast: A weekly breakdown of “the biggest topics in sports.” Similar to the previous podcast, I just listen to the episodes on the NBA.
- The Little Red Podcast “brings you China from beyond the Beijing beltway”
- China Global: Bonnie Glaser’s China Global podcast on Chinese foreign and security policies decodes Beijing’s ambitions as they unfold.
- The Asia Chessboard “features in-depth conversations with the most prominent strategic thinkers on Asia.”
Books
These are the books I read in 2021, arranged in chronological order of when they were read. My five favorites are highlighted in bold.
If you were to read only one book from this list, I recommend 12 Rules for Life (and the follow-up Beyond Order) by Jordan B. Peterson.
- The Five Tibetans, by Christoper S. Kilham
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, by Dwayne Betts
- Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger
- The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, by Peter Handke
- Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey
- The Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B. Peterson
- Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, by Jordan B. Peterson
- The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, by Douglas Murray
- The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, by Yeonmi Park
- People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, by Dara Horn
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, by Rod Dreher
- The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense, by Gad Saad
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi
- 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir, by Ai Weiwei
- Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
- Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China, by Desmond Shum
Inspiration
Here are some of the notes, quotes and themes that stuck with me in 2021, starting with a handful of general rules and reminders for the kind of life I want to lead:
- Strength and Responsibility
- Get after it in the morning, like you’re on the trail
- Go out of your way for others
- Don’t be a sucker (via Nassim Taleb)
- Dignity, heroic in behavior regardless of the outcome or immediate consequences (via Nassim Taleb)
- Love: the best in me serving the best in you (via Jordan B Peterson Podcast S4 E57)
Pick up the extra weight
One of my favorite sections from the book Beyond Order by Jordan B. Peterson was called “Pick up the extra weight.” The following are some excerpts I particularly loved, and connected with an overarching theme that I call Strength and Responsibility.
— There is a proper way to behave – an ethic – and you are destined to contend with it.
— Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder.
— It is not the call to happiness. It is the call to action and adventure that make up a real life.
— What calls you out into the world, however – to your destiny – is not ease. It is struggle and strife. It is bitter contention and the deadly play of the opposites. It is probable – inevitable – that the adventure of your life will frustrate and disappoint and unsettle you, as you head the call of conscience and shoulder your responsibility and endeavor to set yourself and the world right.
— Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility is abdicated.
Keep yourself mystified
I randomly watched this film with George Saunders on my birthday and especially loved this quote:
As I’ve gotten older, my view of the world has shifted a little bit. I find life so beautiful and also so hard to pin down, you know. And for me the process of sitting down to write a story is to keep your eyes open all the time, to keep yourself mystified. And to say: this thing defies systemization. It really does. Every story is different. You arrive at it with your tools from the last story, and it says: No, no, no, we are all seeing through that. Don’t pull out those old tricks on me. You go out in the world, see what it is. It’s just as fresh now as it was when you were 18. Go out there and experience it. Come back in befuddled, and then try. I don’t care how old you are, do something beautiful.
Meaning contagion
On January 9, 2021 I took my first ice dip in Colorado. It was a cold, grey and snowy Saturday.
I did everything I could beforehand to convince myself not to go. You were up late and didn’t sleep well. You should take advantage of this slow time before school gets stressful. Make some tea, relax and spend the day reading instead. Stay inside and avoid Covid exposure. If you pass out again, you don’t want to go to a hospital and increase your risk of infection. Better to wait until the pandemic has passed. What if someone sees you getting into the icy creek alone, on a Saturday, like a weirdo? You should find a group to go with. You can always go next week. What’s so special about today?
Convinced to pass on the ice dip, I spent the morning wasting time, moping around my apartment, doing chores, feeling weak. Then I figured I could at least do a kettlebell workout. That might partially salvage this failure of a day. It did, and with the blood flowing, feeling strong, I decided I absolutely had to take an ice dip – getting in that cold creek was the most important thing I had to do that day.
So I did a quick round of Wim Hof Method breathing exercises on the floor of my living room to get fully charged! Then I loaded up my pack with warm clothes and a towel, and drove down to Clear Creek, which is only about five minutes away from my apartment.
Most of the creek was frozen over, but I found a spot with a small break in the ice where water was flowing. I got in the shallow stream and lied down so that I was submerged up to my neck in the cold water. I stayed in for two minutes, surrounded by ice, bare trees, and a light snow falling from a grey sky.
I climbed out of the creek feeling frozen and moving slow. I did some warm-up exercises, dried off, got dressed, and walked back to the car, shivering, strong and alive.
If I wouldn’t have taken that dip the day would have been lost.
Instead, I translated the ice dip into taking responsibility for doing the essential thing – the tough, uncomfortable, intimidating challenge – that my reasoning mind was swindling me out of doing.
These are narrative-shifting events. They paint everything that follows in a different light, with a new meaning, and that meaning spreads.
Everything after the ice dip that day was infused with a positive charge. The day I was losing turned into the day I won. Even though I came home and did the same boring crap around my apartment I probably would have done anyways, in my head everything was fired up and positively charged. The benefits of the voluntary suffering – previously obscured by reason – reveal themselves. A responsible man is cleaning, doing the dishes, and finishing his homework. A day-winner is cranking through emails, eating steak and reading slowly in the afternoon. A strong man just clogged the toilet again.
New connections to mythology mobility
Dwayne Betts in A Question of Freedom:
“There’s something about waking up every morning to your life in a box that makes you want to learn to be more than you were when when you went to sleep the night before.”
Mustafa Akyol on the Jordan B Peterson Podcast S4: E56 – Islam, Christ, and Liberty, at 1:15:54:
[There is] a Quranic verse that defines the believers as those people who listen to the word and follow the most beautiful of that. To be able to do that you have to listen first…
From Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Taleb:
— Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. (p. 34)
— No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word. We are left only with dignity as a solution – dignity defined as the execution of a protocol of behavior that does not depend on the immediate circumstance. It may not be the optimal one, but it certainly is the one that makes us feel best. Grace under pressure, for example. Or in deciding not to toady up to someone, whatever the reward. Or in fighting a duel to save face. (p. 246)
— Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune. Exhibit sapere vivere (“know hot to live”) in all circumstances. Dress at your best on your execution day (shave carefully); try to leave a good impression on the death squad by standing erect and proud. Try not to play victim when diagnosed with cancer (hide it from others and only share the information with the doctor – it will avert the platitudes and nobody will treat you like a victim worthy of their pity; in addition, the dignified attitude will make both defeat and victory feel equally heroic). Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money (instead of taking it out on him as many of the traders whom I scorn routinely do). Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity, even if your significant other bolts with the handsome ski instructor or the younger aspiring model. Do not complain. (p. 249)
Hiking is not about the views.
Dan Crenshaw on the Jordan B Peterson podcast S4: E71 – Fortitude: American Resilience, at 1:38:22:
There’s a real value to seeking out challenge and suffering. This is why people do spartan races. This why people come together, they love group suffering too. This is why people go organize themselves at crossfit gyms, and do these crazy things. Why do you go climb a mountain? Is it for the view? Did you climb the mountain for the view? No, you did it – the means were the entire point. The path that you took was the entire point – because it’s hard.
Only positive empty gestures allowed.
EconTalk: Megan McArdle on Belonging, Home, and National Identity, start at 22:45 for context:
And, because of that, I’ve always known that I was American. I’ve always loved the American flag and all of the patriotic stuff. I like singing the national anthem at sporting events. And, I think it’s madness when people suggest that the way to deal with the national anthem protests–which by the way I am in sympathy with–is to not sing the national anthem. In fact, I think America needs more empty displays of patriotism, because those are the things that–we need the things that bind us, we need the things that we can all participate in…
I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting that we should not teach the horrific legacy of slavery and genocide in schools. We should. And, we should teach people that it was horrific. And, we should also teach people that it is tragically bound up in many of the things, certainly that the history of the 1950s would’ve celebrated, right? That we now find hard to celebrate for various reasons…
And, we should acknowledge that. That everything we have–not in a stupid land-acknowledgement way. I think it’s–it’s almost borderline offensive: I’m doing this on the land that I took from Native Americans. I just want everyone to know that…
It’s such a weird, weird, weird way of doing things. And empty. It’s the ultimate empty gesture. Right? And, I think if you’re going to make empty gestures, they should be positive, not negative.
Creativity requires detailed planning.
EconTalk: Lorne Buchman on Creativity, Leadership, and Art, at 36:10:
I think what we learn here is that discovery is not something we can control: We can only make the conditions for its realization. And so, it becomes a question of: Well, what is the planning that you’re talking about? Is it a manifestation of an already-predetermined vision, or are you planning in a way that you’re setting up that scaffolding or you’re creating the frame? I talk a lot about frames for improvisation. They don’t come out of nowhere. There has to be a context…
Improvisation requires a frame. It’s not just something–but that’s the point. And, then what happens within that frame and how does the breeze blow through it and how do you move within it, as opposed to something that is rigidly set or some matrix that controls everything?
So, that’s one really important piece of all this, is that we understand that part of our work is to create the conditions that allow for discovery–or if you prefer the other metaphor, scaffolding that we stand on–that allows us to reach into uncertainty.
But, the other piece of it, too–and this is so important–and I think about artists like Ann Hamilton and Diana Thater and others that I talk about in the book where they plan in incredible detail, but what they’re planning, again, is not the final result. What they’ve planned is the conditions that allow them to be ready.