Good morning, friends!

My birthday was yesterday, and I want to thank all of you who took the time to send me a birthday wish. It feels great going into my 33rd year with such an incredible community of amazing people.

As many of you know, I've been doing annual reflections for the last five years (check out 32, 31, 30, 29, and 28), and my life today looks dramatically different from the first time I did a birthday review in 2019.

In the last five years, I’ve quit my job, started a business, gotten married, published a book, had two kids, and moved out of (and back to) New York City.

And just like that, I turned 33 yesterday.

In the last year, I’ve put a premium on learning by reading more books, diving deeper into interesting subjects, and putting together comprehensive guides on skills I wanted to sharpen.

They include:

• How to Become More Likable Using 9 Techniques From the World’s Most Charismatic People

• 11 Public Speaking Techniques from the World’s Greatest Speakers

• How to Become a Master Negotiator Using These 7 Practical Negotiation Techniques

• 10 Interview Techniques From the World’s Best Interviewers

As I reflect on the last year, I’m so thankful to have a family that loves me and work that fulfills me. No one is luckier than me.

I hope you find my insights useful, and I look forward to hearing from you.

(Below is an excerpt, but you can read the full article here).

Before you can radiate, you need to absorb

Legendary director James Cameron has coined something he calls the “creativity law of thermodynamics.” He says: “Before you can radiate, you need to absorb.”

It’s a good reminder that before you undertake any creative act, you need to have undergone a number of challenges, have had interesting relationships, and have found people endlessly fascinating.

Only then can you turn your unique life experiences into meaningful art for others.

Similarly, author Stephen King says the requirement to be a great writer is "the ability to remember the story of every scar."

He adds, “Writers remember everything — especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones, you get novels."

The best storytellers are unafraid to look at their scars, to examine them, to confront them, and most importantly, to discover meaning in them.

Before you can radiate, you need to absorb.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

You know the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It highlights the delta between what someone intends to do and the actual outcome of their actions.

In the last year, I’ve been learning to apply this to communication. It’s not enough to have good intent and look at your actions in isolation. You need to constantly be zooming back and forth and understanding how the other person perceives your words.

As James Clear wrote in a recent newsletter: “Communication is about what is received, not what is intended. If there is a gap between what you are saying and what they are hearing, you have to find a new way to say it.”

The perfect conditions don’t exist

Many people ask me how on earth I was able to write a book while having a newborn. It’s “inconvenient,” “hard,” and “not a great time.” I’ve heard it all. Truthfully, I never know how to respond except for: “I know it wasn’t the right time to write a book, but when is the right time?”

For many of us, the answer is “never.”

There’s always something going on that has the power to dissuade us from taking on a long-term project. In turn, we settle for waiting for the “perfect conditions” to start a company, write a book, or move to another city. Waiting around for the perfect conditions makes us psychologically reliant on external events.

I’d love to offer you another interesting framework I learned from Josh Waitzkin to combat this sort of thinking.

Waitzkin says it all starts in childhood. He noticed that parents would often tell their kids they couldn’t go play outside because it was raining. It was “bad weather.” "We're externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time,” Waitzkin says.

So to show his son that he controls whether he has fun or excels in something, Waitzkin takes him out to play during every rain or snowstorm. “I wanted [my son] to have this internal locus of control,” he says. “To not be reliant on external conditions being just so.”

I loved this idea, and I wanted to share it. Maybe it’s not “bad weather.” Maybe it’s not “a bad time.” Maybe it’s not “bad luck.”

Maybe it’s perfect.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

PROFILES.

— The billionaire man of mystery [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The investor trying to reboot the music industry
— Hollywood’s BFFs
— The 2000s star who’s all grown up
— The artist living a fairy tale

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The billionaire man of mystery: Alex Karp is the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, the mysterious and powerful data analytics firm. He is also at the white-hot center of ethical issues about whether firms like Palantir are too Big Brother, with access to so much of our personal data as we sign away our privacy. And he is in the middle of the debate about whether artificial intelligence is friend or foe, whether killer robots and disembodied A.I. will one day turn on us. Karp’s position is that we’re hurtling toward this new world whether we like it or not. Do we want to dominate it, or do we want to be dominated by China? (The New York Times; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“The only solution to stop A.I. abuse is to use A.I.”

The investor trying to reboot the music industry: In recent years, some of the biggest names in the investment industry have sought to transform music catalogs into money-making assets. Most have pinned their hopes on streaming revenue and licensing songs for ads. But billionaire Conni Jonsson, founder of the world’s third-largest private equity firm, EQT AB, is making a bolder bet: that fans will fork over hundreds of dollars to engage with artists’ likenesses and stories. Here’s how he plans to reboot the music industry. (Bloomberg; if you can’t access the article, try this link.)

Hollywood’s BFFs: Brad Pitt and George Clooney have spent three decades living intertwined lives at the inconceivably glamorous height of Hollywood. Now, having crossed the threshold of 60, they’re more comfortable than ever throwing bombs, dispensing hard-won wisdom, and, yes, arguing about who had the better mullet in the ’80s. (GQ)

“That’s another thing about getting older. It’s too much work to control things. It’s better to just slot in some way to the current.”

The 2000s star who’s all grown up: It’s been 25 years (!) since the world first heard Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.” A lot has happened in the quarter century since, and Aguilera is opening up about it all: fame, the ruthless ’00s tabloids, bucking convention, the power of saying no, and—her proudest accomplishment—motherhood. (Glamour)

“I think to sustain anything for a lengthy amount of time takes a lot of work and dedication and passion.”

The artist living a fairy tale: Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason DeFord, is 39 years old, burly, with a face covered in tattoos. In a sign of the breadth of his audience, he has been able to score on the country, rock and pop charts. His southern-rock and hip-hop-inflected country songs are almost all about clawing toward some semblance of stability, which is an experience that informs a lot of his music, because it’s one he knows well. Jelly was in and out of prison starting as a teenager and into his mid-20s. He has dealt with personal loss and substance-abuse issues — both his own and that of his teenage daughter’s mother. He has also dealt with the professional despair of a long run to nowhere as an aspiring rapper. But that’s before he switched to singing and, beginning in 2021, started to hit it big. Here’s how Jelly Roll became a full-fledged star. (The New York Times)

“I want to be useful. I used to want to be happy. Now I just want to be useful.”

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