Life Tools + Systems + Mental Models

Tangible insights and actionable strategies to build a better frame for living

G+D Newsletter | Weekly on Thursday Morning

Focused around 1 thing: helping you live a better life, however you define it. 

To live a life you choose.

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I’ll never send anything I’d hate to receive myself. 

Rewiring Grey Matter

Change is a tricky thing. The erratic relationship we share with change is best showcased by the fanaticism surrounding the new year. It’s seen as a clean break, a fresh start. As the new year gets closer, it becomes a beacon for the beginning of our transformation into our final

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How Can We Improve The Trajectory Of Our Lives?

Sometimes the days just bleed together. Each cycle of sunrise to moonlight carrying the energy of a disheveled middle-aged man sitting poolside in his underwear, carelessly ripping matches into ignition and tossing them into the candy blue water. One after the other, after the other1. It all just sort of

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Learning From Others Without Trying To Be Them

Everyone loves a fantastic story with a compelling figure we can examine and judge. We also, to varying degrees, anxiously try to figure out who we are and what we’re doing. These two things often coincide. External inputs are critical for effective growth. Taking information from the world around us

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On Rethinking and Challenging Convictions

Convictions are the steel I-beams of our identities. The operating system for how we perceive the world and make decisions. I don’t know enough about cars to give a vehicular example – convictions are the Johnson rods1 for people? They’re incredibly important is what I’m driving at – convictions, not

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Managing Expectations

How the skill of managing expectations is one of the most critical to living a good life, and is currently one of your biggest obstacles ** Expectations have a powerful impact on our emotional and mental headspace. The gap between expectations and reality is an overwhelmingly common source of all

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It’s So Often Boring…Oh And That Doesn’t Bend That Way

At my first job out of school, me and all the other consultants in my practice were issued our standard Lenovo’s. Model T450 if I remember correctly. Your laptop was a good signifier of your status and/or specialization at the company. The professional elites – Director level types – were

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A Way We Can All Be Like Mike

Image Source: The Last Dance   Michael Jordan is synonymous with greatness. I don’t need to give any background because everyone knows who he is. And The Last Dance only reinforced and detailed his achievements. He is the benchmark of hard work, discipline, and talent in a single entity. Everyone

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Living Above The Line

I would have never guessed that a single horizontal line would be one of the most interesting models I learned about. Shane Parrish’s blog Farnam Street (and Podcast Initiative “The Knowledge Project”) is one of the most unique and informative resources I have ever come across. If you have never

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Take The Blame, Take Control

So much of what happens is not our choice or in our control. It makes it exceedingly easy to carry pieces of a passive mindset or victim mindset with us, which in turn only release control further. Things that happen in life, while difficult, are typically completely normal and common,

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Starting New Habits

There are 24 hours in a day, and you are currently occupying all of them. Even without trying, one way or another the hours get allocated because they must. There is no saving time. There is no redistributing it once the day is gone. And the cycle repeats every 24

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They Lied About The Grass

By most metrics, I have a good job. I am compensated competitively, I have an uncommon amount of autonomy and schedule flexibility, and I have very few people I report to and have to interact with. I work at a small business that is technically a start-up, which increases my

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Optimizing Into Fragility

For years my underlying obsession was finding a way to optimize my life and break away from needing to hold down a normal job. To live outside the rigid parameters that corporate culture defines for us. Looking to people I had envied, I identified skills and accolades they carried and

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A Great and Sustained Change

I recently had the realization that I derive the most value from changing and growing as a person. New hobbies, that first bite of a well-executed recipe, realizing how foolish my perspective and actions had been the previous year, and particularly the journey started here with Grit + Dynamite –

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