Hey everyone 👋🏻,


Happy Sunday and welcome back to another edition of The Gunn Show. As always, I hope you had a fantastic week.

It’s been a busy last couple of weeks with the Thanksgiving holiday, house projects, baby prep, and more on the docket - as well as MLB Winter Meetings in Dallas this upcoming week.


As such, there are a number of things worth updating. First and foremost, I would like to wish a belated Happy Birthday to one of the biggest supporters of this program - Mom! I know I speak for many others when I say thank you for the endless grace and love you show us all. Each of us is better off for having you as a light in our lives and here’s to hoping you feel that love returned ten-fold on your special day.


The past two weeks have been both full and fulfilling for the Gunns. It was a great Thanksgiving as it was our first time hosting for the holidays at our new house. We were full of projects from start to finish: from patio furniture to bedroom sets, Christmas decorations to a nursery setup - if you can name it, we probably took care of it. In the event that you are in need of any assistance with a hand wrench for your home improvement needs, I can confidently say that I can be of some assistance (assuming I don’t develop Carpel Tunnel syndrome over the coming days…).

And considering the sports centric nature of this family, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a particularly special occurrence: the Tennessee Volunteers are College Football Playoff bound for the first time in program history following a 36-23 win over Vanderbilt last week. After a nerve-wracking start that saw the Vols down 14-0 in just 5 minutes of play, they re-grouped and found a way to come out on the right side of the scoreboard in a “win and in” situation for what was arguably the program’s biggest football victory in 3 decades. The bleak aftermath of the Georgia loss three weeks ago seems like a distant memory at this point, as college football’s never ending penchant for chaos has set the Vols up in prime position to be one of the 12 teams left to compete for a National Championship. As of noon Eastern today, we will know who awaits the Big Orange in the first round of the playoff. Here’s to hoping the committee does the right thing and sets them up for a Round 1 home game in Neyland two weeks from now….


But enough on the update front - let’s get on to the topic for this week. It’s one I’ve been thinking on for a while especially as it relates to sports and athletic accomplishment - expectations.


Let’s dive in.

- CG

Expectations

There was an innocuous yet powerful comment tucked away at the back end of Josh Heupel’s post-game press conference last Saturday that caught my attention.


When asked for his breakdown of the post-game message he shared with his Volunteer team in the aftermath of their victory - specifically as it relates to the College Football Playoff spot they had just clinched - he offered the following:

"There was an expectation from our staff and our players… it was a goal… but it was [also] an expectation to be in this," Heupel said.

It was a small quote, but one that struck a chord with me considering I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the concept of ‘goals’. It’s an idea I find myself coming back to on a routine cadence this time of year with the MLB playoffs in the rear-view mirror and CFB soon to follow suit - specifically as it relates to the ‘goal’ many have but few realize: the opportunity to be crowned a champion.


What I found most interesting about Heupel’s comment was the way in which he drew a line between two words we often use in conjunction with one another - expectations and goals. Rather than treating them as one and the same, he instead juxtaposed each against the other, saying that the Vols had both. Like many, they had a goal to be in the College Football Playoff; but like few, they also had an expectation that they would be. And in that contrast, I believe, is a very powerful lesson.


From my perspective, that lesson is this: expectations and goals exist in very different realms, such that a cavernous gap marks the distance between them both. And while many like to think there is a bridge that joins them together, it may not be nearly as sturdy as we might initially believe.

The Difference Between Goals & Expectations

Let’s talk about why, starting with goals.


I think of them in the following way: goals are the things you “hope for”, the end points you “aspire to”. They are something out in the distance that you want but do not have, a vision that offers the promise to be captured yet comes with no guarantee that it will.


From my perspective, goals are about “nice to have” outcomes - blurry pictures we hope to one day turn from dream to reality, accomplishments for us to work towards. When goals are realized a sense of pride accompanies them; when they are not, disappointment reigns. But while falling short of them is painful, it is not crippling - there will always be other goals to take their place, opportunities to reset and reload. A chance to dust ourselves off and try again. Life will go on.


But expectations are something entirely different. Because while goals are concerned with outcomes, expectations revolve around what drives those outcomes in the first place. They are the things that you believe you are, rather than the things that you aspire to be. They are the bars you hold yourself to, the standards that align your vision and clarify your behaviors. Expectations compress your actions to a narrow band of possibilities because at the end of the day they simply say that you see no other option.

Expectations are similar to goals in that a sense of pride follows when we meet them. Prizes and praise, too. But unlike goals, the riches of accomplishment are often muted in the context of our expectations - not because they ‘don’t matter’, but rather because there is no accompanying sense of surprise when you wind up at the place you expected to be at all along. With expectations, the surprise does not come when you meet them - instead, it comes when you do not. So while failing to reach our goals leads to a softened disappointment, falling short of our expectations leads to something much more powerful: an excruciating cascade of emotion, a brutal awakening of dealing with the reality of not living to the standards that you have set for yourself.


And so, the contrast between the two - between goals and expectations - could not be more stark. Because where goals say “I want to be”, expectations say “I am”; where goals are a “nice to have”, expectations are instead a “must have”. And while goals deal with dreams and life as we wish it would be, expectations deal with reality as we believe it is meant to be.


The implications of this delineation is important, because while goals give us something to strive for we still must walk a pathway in order to reach them. This is where expectations come in - with the right standards in our lives to hold ourselves to, we add a wind to our back along the journey; a laminate on the surface to provide us the traction we need to keep moving forward when the going gets tough - if only because we expect nothing less of ourselves.


Expectations drive the realization of goals, and to think otherwise is to put the cart before the horse. By shifting our perspective on endpoints, we can turn our aspirations from a foggy dream into an inevitable outcome in a story that has yet to reach its conclusion, but one that we know will ultimately run its course. So much so that I believe there is a blunt truth to be learned about the delineation between goals and expectations:


The fastest way to bigger and better outcomes is bigger and better expectations - not bigger and better goals.

Expectations and Outcomes, Through the Lens of Sport

The above statement is a fundamental concept to consider when it comes to human behavior - whether we are talking about understanding it or changing it.


Why? Because expectations are inextricably linked with identity - who you are as a person; the things you believe you are about; the guiding principles that provide the foundation from which you operate. What you expect of yourself tells you what you believe about yourself, and when you believe something your actions will naturally follow suit.


This is a concept that is well documented in the domain of habit change, and one that is captured well in one of my favorite quotes from the author James Clear:

“ The most effective way to change your habits is not to focus on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become” (Atomic Habits)

Said differently, expectations shape behavior. And there is a logical conclusion that follows: if you want better results, spend time realigning your expectations of yourself first and your goals second.


When I think about this conversation in the context of sports, I can’t help but think of it as a principle I’ve seen play out time and time again watching elite players, elite coaches, and elite teams.


First, in regards to players. As I’ve stepped back to think about what makes an elite performer beyond just their physical abilities, there is one recognition that stands out above the others: many of the best have goals, but virtually all of them have expectations.


Some are certainly motivated by awards and accomplishments, wanting to bring home Silver Sluggers, MVPs, and the like. But the best are driven by something much more powerful than accolades - they possess a foundational expectation of what they are capable of, a bar they hold themselves to on a daily basis.


From my lens, it is the existence of a standard - rather than goals - that guides the actions of the best athletes at every moment of the day. It is something that they hold themselves to rather than something they chase, which in turn leads to a powerful inner confidence and conviction that allows their natural talents to be on full display when the lights are the brightest. So much so that we joke in professional baseball that there is actually a sixth tool on top of the traditional five: delusion.


What this means is that the quickest path to being good is often believing that you are in the first place - regardless of whether that may or may not be true in the moment. In the case of athletes, expectations are the Schelling point around which all else orient. They are a pre-requisite to high performance in front of 40,000+ every night. Because at the end of the day, you only get what you expect.


And I think the same can be said when it comes to coaches, perhaps even more so than with players. Think about it - how many times have you heard a head coach mention the words “standard” or “expectations”? Whether in an introductory press-conference (ie “this is going to be the standard here”) or in media responsibilities after a tough loss (ie “we didn’t play up to our expectations tonight”), you will hear them talk about the two concepts ad nauseam for a simple reason: as figureheads of their respective programs, coaches are the ones setting the expectations for everyone - not just themselves.


Take it from one of the greats in Nick Saban, who when asked recently about his time at Alabama said the following:

“It wasn’t about winning championships…..There were no signs in the building that said win the SEC. There were no signs up in the building that said win the national championship. There was a sign that said be a champion in everything you do. Then there was a definition of what that took.”

For Saban and the Tide, the championships sitting in the trophy case in Tuscaloosa are the direct result of living up to a standard instead of chasing a goal. Rather than pushing his staff and players towards something, he instead held them to something. Expectations of championship behavior meant championships followed suit. Funny how that works.


Another example can be found far to the northwest in Eugene, Oregon - Dan Lanning, head coach of the newly minted Big 10 Champion Oregon Ducks. A disciple of the Saban-Smart tree himself, he had the following to say last year:

“[It’s] 1A and 1B. 1A win, 1B playing to the standard. If you do either one without the other you’re going to feel unfulfilled. And that’s really what it’s about for us is making sure we hit one 1A and 1B. We want to play to the standard, and we want to win the game.”

It’s a perspective I love: when it comes to the best, goals alone are not what makes the journey of achievement fulfilling. You need expectations and a standard to hold yourself to, and a recognition that the outcomes you want will be a natural byproduct of simply meeting the bar - assuming it is high enough.

Expectation Implications

Let me provide a few more rapid fire thoughts on expectations before we close:


1. Expectations are a Shortcut to Self-Fulfilling Prophecies


This is something that has stuck out to me like a sore thumb watching college football over the last two weeks - some teams simply find a way, no matter the circumstances. I believe this is something naturally stems from high expectations.


Take Georgia as an example. Two weeks ago, they won an 8 OT thriller against Georgia Tech in a matchup where they brought their “D-” performance to the field. A mere week later, they followed that performance up by winning the SEC Championship after having to insert their backup quarterback into the game for the entirety of the second half - a player that has attempted less than 40 pass attempts over the last two seasons combined.


During both games, the odds were bleak for the Dawgs at critical points - but it didn’t matter. Down 14 to your in-state rival with 5:37 left in the 4th quarter at home? No problem, we’ll win anyways. Lost your starting QB against a top 5 defense in the country in the biggest game of the year? No problem, we’ll win anyways.


In both cases when it mattered most, Georgia found a way to win because it is was their expectation. Circumstances be damned, they were going to come out on top because that’s simply what they do. And I’d be lying if they didn’t have me believing the same way as I watched those games unfold: regardless of the score, I couldn’t help but think they’d wind up on top when the clock hit 0:00.


So call it what you want: confidence or conviction; the placebo effect or a self-fulfilling process. But the point remains: more often than you think, you don’t get what you want. You get what you expect.


2. Expectations You Set for Yourself >>> Expectations Others Set for You


We live in a world where people are hyper-focused on what others think of them. Our friends, our parents, our co-workers, our bosses - in every aspect of our lives, there is a never-ending stream of people that supposedly get to have an opinion on us. And the weight of all those expectations for us can be a hard burden to bear.


But there is a hack to solving this, one I’ve learned personally over the past number of years: the higher the expectations you set for yourself, the less you have to worry about the ones others set for you.


Setting your own standards high is a shortcut to stripping the pressure from others out of the equation. Because when you set the bar for yourself higher than anyone could ever set for you, a perspective shift occurs: you no longer need to focus on rising to the expectations of others because the ones you have of yourself are plenty enough.


Meet your high expectations first and it will leave no doubt that you’ll meet those of others.


3. The Dark Side of Expectations


Expectations are a paradox in that they are freeing yet demanding. And as such, there is a dark side that can come with them if not managed properly.


A key here is that your expectations have to be somewhat aligned with reality - because while they can force you to rise to a new level, they can also drag you into the darkness should you fail to meet them.


To misalign your expectations with reality is a recipe for disaster: at a certain point, no matter of effort or confidence will be sufficient to surmount a large gap between where you expect to be and where you actually are. And in the case where your expectations are poorly calibrated to truth, that is likely going to lead to you being pissed off a lot.


This is a concept that likely bears deeper discussion at some point, as it is perhaps the biggest thing I see holding athletes and others back from true progress. But for now I’ll leave you with this: leveraging expectations properly necessitates an appropriate alignment between where you actually are and where you believe you should be.

Closing - Expect More, Get More

From my view, great expectations are in short supply in our modern world. We have shifted away from standards in favor of goals, rewarding participation with trophies and prizes regardless of where the bar is set in the first place. And so it is my strong belief that we are in need of a perspective shift as a society, one that eschews the allure of goals and instead priorities the power of expectation.


Lyndon B Johnson once said that “what convinces is conviction”, and it is this sentiment that underscores the necessity of expectations over goals.


Internal standards and expectations lend themselves to a resulting conviction that far outweighs the power of aspiration. Which leads me to a hard truth to close: people that expect more generally get more.


Many want, but few expect. And in that realization is all the help you need. Change your expectations first, and watch your outcomes change as a result.


It really is as simple as that.

Hey Everyone,


Happy Sunday, and welcome back to The Gunn Show. Hope you all have had a fantastic week.


Even though the 100 degree Dallas summer has yet to subside, fall is coming quickly and with it so too is one of the best times of the year - football season. NFL pre-season games are underway, fantasy drafts are getting scheduled in droves, and we have officially passed one of the biggest hurdles of all - no more college football-less Saturdays until January.


With my excitement for the fall building, I spent some time over the last couple weeks watching HBO’s Hard Knocks - Offseason With the New York Giants. While I’ve loved the on-field focused seasons of Hard Knocks in the past, I found this style of series to be especially interesting as it peels back the curtain on both the why and how underlying decisions made to construct a team by the front office. And while football and baseball stand alone as separate sports, I was struck by the relative similarities that underly the processes of roster construction between the two - at least in the way the show represented it. From scouts on the road to analysts in the office and executives on the phone, the number of pieces that get layered into a decision never ceases to amaze me.


But as I thought about the show more, one thing stood out to me above all else - a truth that applies just as equally to baseball as it does any other sport: as ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ as the sports industry has gotten, there will always be a critical art underpinning it that will determine the difference between the winners and losers. Because for all of the models and complex information that now go into the process of making decisions, it is ultimately the people behind it and how they apply that information that will ultimately make the difference.


So this week’s edition is a riff on this topic - on the dichotomy between science and art; why each needs the other; and why even in a world where science is ascending to the pantheon, art will always have a critical role to play.


I hope you enjoy, and as always, please share any thoughts that the discussion stimulates on your end.


Look forward to chatting again next week.

- CG

Thinking - On Art and Science


Back in an earlier phase of my life, I found myself spending a great deal of time in a laboratory setting running experiments and doing ‘science’.


Life as a pre-medical student demanded it. In order to understand the three main branches of science - biology, chemistry, and physics - you needed to gain an understanding of the underlying concept each of them has revolved around for centuries: how to uncover new knowledge via experimentation. Doing so meant becoming best friends with the crown jewel of science - the scientific method - learning it inside out until you knew it like the back of your hand. Make a hypothesis. Design a study. Perform the study. Observe the results and validate or invalidate your assumptions based on what you’ve seen.


Experiments were the vehicle through which science was meant to be pounded into your brain. It wasn’t enough to sit in a lecture hall for multiple hours a week learning about the infinite things humans have uncovered by simply doing things and watching what happened. To truly understand science, you had to move from the theory of the lecture hall to the practice of the lab. To truly understand science, you had to do it yourself.


As my fellow classmates and I learned quickly, it was one thing to design a study and something else entirely to conduct it. Frequently, one experiment was enough to show you how big the gap between theory and reality truly is. Just ask anyone that has bred fruit flies with the intent of studying Mendelian genetics if everything turned out exactly how they expected - they will almost certainly respond with a resounding “no” (as would I - since most of my flies wound up dead). More often than not at the start of your science journey, you were spending the aftermath of your study trying to figure out where it went wrong rather than where it went right.


But as you spent more time in the lab and the experiment counts began to mount, something interesting happened - your results started getting better. With each lab, study and hypothesis, your outcomes began to more closely resemble your expectations. The surprises and mix ups became fewer and further in-between.


Why? Well, on the surface it might seem quite clear: you are simply getting better at doing ‘science’. But if you step back and think about it more deeply, you’ll notice that there is actually something else happening behind the scenes. The science is getting better because you are slowly perfecting the art of the science.


And that, to me, is a critical point to recognize.


Often times we speak about art and science as two sides of a spectrum, as if we are capable of partaking in only one or the other at a given point in time. Science, from this broader perspective, is what we would describe as the ‘harder’ or more ‘technical’ skills - things like math, physics, or computer programming. Art, on the other hand, is the ‘softer’ or more ‘subjective’ side of things - creativity, language, philosophy, emotional intelligence, and the like. In general, society likes to draw a hard line between the two in order to create clear buckets that each of us can fit into based on our skills and inclinations. Into complex equations and fancy math? Science is likely your thing. Love expressing your creativity through design? Congratulations, you are artistically skilled.


But I think such a distinction misses the boat. Because from my perspective, art and science are not two concepts that reside at opposite poles, but rather two sides of the same coin. In the same way that tails needs heads, art and science need each other to make themselves whole. Science needs art to be science, in the same way that art needs science to be art.


What do I mean by this? Consider again the example of a laboratory study, the quintessential representation of what it means to be ‘scientific’. In this sense, good science means a well designed study - one that is rigorous in adherence to the scientific method and thus one from which high quality conclusions can be drawn. Good science = good conclusions, or at least we are led to believe. Yet there is something important to recognize here: execution of the study is as much of a determinant of the outcome as the design of the study itself. If the execution - or the art of performing the study - is off, the results will be unreliable. Science thus cannot be said to have occurred without a sufficient amount of art.


For many at the start of their scientific journeys it is frequently the art of doing science that causes more hiccups than the science itself. I can speak from experience here, because as an amateur chemist I was quite poor at the minutia of running an experiment. Portioning out the ingredients always seemed to be a taller task than I expected, as did mixing them in the appropriate manner. And because my execution of the details - the art - was frequently off, there was almost always a skewness in the results of the science as well.


Okay, but why does this distinction matter when it come to sports?


Because at some point, science and art need to be balanced in proportion with each other. And when it comes to sport, if there is one trend that has dominated the industry over the last few decades it is an unbalancing of these two concepts - a trend towards becoming more scientific in nearly every manner possible.


In recent years, the same forces of technology that have shaped the world at large have come for the sports industry as well. We are at a point in sports history where quantification is now the norm - from advanced on-field performance analytics, to live biometric monitoring, and even computer vision use for measuring first downs, we are increasingly able to attach a number to - and thus to be scientific about - anything we could possibly imagine. The result is a landscape in which data literacy has been both prioritized and rewarded above virtually all else - it is no stretch to say that executives, coaches, and even players now possess greater levels of technical understanding than at any point in the history of athletics. Put simply, sport has increasingly swung the pendulum towards rewarding those capable of doing good science - but in my opinion, perhaps at the expense of those capable of good art.


This is a problem, from my perspective, because as we’ve discussed good science can only come if good art is present at the same time. And when you prioritize one too much at the expense of the other, pieces are likely to be missing as a result.


This distinction is important in sport today, as the current landscape is one in which separation rarely lies in the form of the information advantages of old. More or less, teams competing against one another today all have similar levels of ‘knowledge’, with each possessing access to the same data, the same video, and more.


As such, what you do with the knowledge you have now tends to carry the majority of the weight, to demarcate the fine line between winning and losing. It is not enough to simply collect data and do research - you have to find a way to move from theory to practice - to get your insights onto the field - or else it is all for naught. In other words, victory in the modern era of sport is now dependent on who has the application advantage much more so than who has the information advantage.


And application, more frequently than not, tends to be the domain of the artist.


Because where scientists are great at dealing with theory, artists excel in dealing with reality. Rather than spending their time with models and equations, they are the ones in the field getting their hands dirty with the work, their smocks covered in paint. They are the ones focused on execution, putting their experiments to the test and watching them break to figure out how to put them back together again. See, where the scientist learns his lessons on paper, the artist learns his through experience. And unlike their close siblings, artists possess superpowers in that they are more fluid; more variable; more adaptable. They lack the rigidity that handicaps the scientists, granting them an inherent flexibility that allows them to adjust to whatever the environment in front of them presents. The see the way the world truly works, and are the ones that partake in the process of trial and error that takes theory and puts it into practice.


In the context of sport, there is a demographic of person that I think best represents both the necessity and the staying power of art: the people that are most directly responsible for getting the most out of players, coaches.


Certainly, the modern coach has to be much more of a scientist than in the past - data and technology are ubiquitous, and you cannot really say that you are turning over every stone to help your players without them. But at the end of the day, the job of the coach is take information that seems to work for a player in theory and ensure that it actually works in practice. Doing so requires an inherent give and take, a process of trial and error where you match what you think should work up with what actually does. To coach is thus much more similar to the running of the actual experiment than to the design of it. Said differently, a good coach must excel at the art of doing science rather than merely the science itself.


To borrow from Jeff Bezos in predicting the future, it is important to focus on the things that will never change. And at the top of that list is that reality will continue to be messy, that experiments will continue to offer us surprises, that science will always require art to give it its power.


It is for this reason that I think good coaching, good decision making, and thus good art, will never go out of style. Even if both the sporting industry and the world at large have strayed heavily towards science as of late. There will always be a place for the artist in sport - for the person with the softer skills, capable of dealing with the messiness of reality. The person that understands that at the end of the day this about humans, not numbers, and operates accordingly.


Because at the end of the day, science and art are not an either/or phenomenon. And I’m willing to bet that the champions of the future will be every bit as good at the art of science as they will be at the science itself

Reading

The Worst Technology of the 21st Century - George Mack (~1 min)


A great, short read in which George shares a helpful model for thinking about the value technology provides: the ability to do more with less. Through the lens of the QR code at a restaurant, he highlights an important understanding for our modern era - digital does not always mean better. For certain things - of which the restaurant menu is a perfect example - analog has served us well for many years. Sometimes, there is no need to reinvent the wheel when it already does exactly what is needed.

What and How to Read - Janan Ganesh (~3 min)


No, this isn’t a full list of things you can take with you into reading hibernation mode guaranteed to come out smarter on the other side. It’s much more important than that - a call to action in how you think about what you read, specifically through the lens of books. Janan makes a great point that I’ve found to be useful in selecting what gets added to your library: you should use the filtering effect of time to choose what is worth your time, with a specific emphasis to read as few contemporary books as possible.

77 Lessons at 77 - Arnold Schwarzenegger (~25 min)


A treasure trove of insight from a true polymath. 6 of my favorites:

• “Everything starts with vision. You have to see it before you can achieve it. You will never regret the time you spend to develop a very clear vision. When I say clear, I mean so clear that it plays in your mind like a movie.”
  

• “The joy is not in the victory or in standing at the top of the mountain. The joy is the work that gets you there.”
  

• “Reps, reps, reps. You might think you only do reps in the gym, but repetitions are the key to life. Whether you want to improve at speaking in public or reading books or just eating better, you will need to do reps. Whatever you work at, it becomes easier and less uncomfortable with every rep you do.”
  

• “If you can make discomfort your friend, you will find that most limits you’ve placed on yourself or others have placed on you are totally fake.”
  

• “If you don’t love failure, how can you love success? It’s the failures and the struggles that give our success meaning. Why would you care about winning if you didn’t know what it felt like to lose?” (absolute banger)
  

• “They have a rule on airplanes that applies to life. You’re supposed to put your oxygen mask on before you help anyone else. Even your kid. It sounds crazy. But I (naturally) asked about it. If you don’t put yours on first, you can pass out before you can help your kid, and then everybody’s screwed. When people tell me they feel selfish working on themselves, whether it’s mentally or physically, I remind them of this. The more you do for yourself, the more you can help others.”

Hi everyone!


And welcome to the Gunn Show. Sending this week’s newsletter a bit later today as a function of travel home - I was out in the oil fields of Midland, TX for the week watching our AA team play.


This week’s edition focuses on a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a number of years - what is it that makes sports so thrilling and keeps us coming back? From my perspective, there are some things to be learned from two important concepts in life - contrasts and magic - that sports weave together naturally to create thrilling experiences. Hope you enjoy, and as always please share any thoughts you have after reading my way.


Catch you all next week!

- CG

What I’m Thinking - On Contrasts, Magic and the Thrill of Sport


Monday night, at approximately 10pm CT, our miniature bernedoodle - and fearless protector - was barking madly in the apartment. She had snapped to attention at the behest of some loud noises in the apartment, but little did she know that there was nothing to fear. Because those sounds were coming from a familiar source - yours truly.


Brooklyn and I were watching the Rangers game in the living room, and Josh Smith had just hit a two-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the tenth inning to, as Dave Raymond so perfectly put it on the broadcast, “pull a rabbit out of the hat” for the Rangers to take down the Houston Astros 4-3. And I was some kind of excited. It was a big game and thus a big win, magnified by the stakes of the division race at hand. But even more so by the fashion in which it happened - it was victory, snatched from the jaws of defeat by a crack of the bat, and a ball in the seats.


Moments like those are hard to top, and while the encore the next day didn’t quite serve as a repeat, there was certainly an underlying rhyme to the story of the game. The Astros sent their ace Framber Valdez to the mound for Game 2 in order to stop the bleeding, and he did more than just that. For 8 and 2/3 innings he was in exceptional form, defying bats with a mix of sinkers and curveballs to stand on the precipice of his second no-hitter in two seasons. That is until somehow, on a night where nearly every pitch was perfect for Framber, one slipped away - an 85 mph slider that hung in the middle of the plate long enough for Corey Seager to give the fans in the right field bleacher a souvenir, breaking the no-hitter and bringing the Rangers within two runs of tying the lead.


And while we ultimately lost that second game, I couldn’t help but leave with a similar feeling to Monday night. Now, it certainly wasn’t the same feeling of elation that I had after the walk-off. The outcomes were different, after all, and so too were the overarching emotions that came in the aftermath. But even so, I knew the two games possessed an underlying similarity - one that was divorced from what the final scoreboard said and instead focused on the full story of the game rather than its ending alone. Because while Monday and Tuesday’s games were different in a myriad of ways, they were ultimately similar in one critical fashion: both games were thrilling beyond belief.


A life in sport has caused me to spend a great deal of time thinking about this concept - what is it about sports that makes them so thrilling - so captivating - to those of us that play or watch them? Why, of all the things that we could possibly be entertained by, do we keep coming back to competitive athletics? It wasn’t until those two games this week, juxtaposed back-to-back, that I think I finally found answer.


If you think deeply about both of those games, you’ll notice that the thrill comes from the same place: each offered the likelihood of one outcome, and then presented another one instead. In the case of Game 1, an Astros win was all but guaranteed until Smith’s fateful swing. In the case of Game 2, Framber’s dominance for 26 outs led us to believe that the 27th was an inevitability - until Seager had other plans. Two unique scripts, two unique outcomes - but each game borrowed from the same underlying guideline: create a contrast between two things → promise one → deliver the other.


This sequence is not too dissimilar from magic, and how magicians set you up to fall for a trick: they present you with a set of context clues, and lead you to make a prediction about what will happen next. And then, right at the moment that you are about to have that prediction validated, they pull the rug out from under your feet and steer the outcome in a different direction. They make you think you are about to see the Seven of Hearts, and then wham - it’s the Ace of Spades. The ‘sleight of hand’ is only made possible by the fact that you think there is a specific ‘hand’ coming in the first place.


Sports, like magicians, are expectation violation machines. And as such, they rely on contrasts between likely and unlikely outcomes in order to create a sense of awe and wonder. The more you watch them over time, the more you become attuned to the ‘usual’ course of events that a game takes. Take the case of Game 1 and the walk-off. If you’ve watched enough baseball you likely go into the last at-bat knowing that there is a possibility of a game-winning home run, but at the same time recognizing that the probability of that scenario coming to fruition is in fact quite low. Sure, you’ve seen some walk-offs over the course of your life, but you’ve also seen that same scenario end in a game-ending out many more times than not. Regardless of what your hope may be, your expectation is much more skewed towards “game over, we lose” than it is towards “game over, we win”. It is the violation of that expectation in the positive direction that makes the walk-off so elating.


But while the two share many similarities, sports differ from magic in a key way: namely, that there is not always a sleight of hand or misdirection to be had. Unlike in magic where you have 100% certainty that there is a trick to be played out, there are many times in sports where the game goes exactly how you would expect - the 1 seed cruises past the 16 seed in the NCAA tournament, the team that jumped out to a three touchdown lead in the first half is never threatened in the second.


Frequently, these are the type of contests that the average fan would describe as “boring” - there is no violation in expectation, no twist in the story. But I think there is something important here to recognize: these types of outcomes in sports are a feature, not a bug.


Because without these contrasts - between success and failure, between regular and irregular, between likely and unlikely - we are unable to fully appreciate both sides. One needs the other, in the same way that the light needs the dark. Without the mundane, the spectacular would never carry any weight.


We can see this represented in the win probability chart of the Smith walk-off game, which highlights each team’s chances of victory at various points throughout the game:

The gravity of the last swing is captured well, represented by the sharp line downwards at the far right. One swing led to a massive change in win probability: prior to when the pitch was thrown and hit for a homer, Houston had an 85%+ probability of winning the baseball game. Afterwards, those odds dropped all the way to 0% as the Rangers mobbed Smith at home plate.


It’s easy to take a look at this chart and see why sports are such thrilling spectacles - there are few things in life like them that are capable of swinging the odds so substantially on but a single action. But the point I think worth making here is that focusing on the last point alone misses the boat - it is not about it or the point before it, but ultimately the contrast between the two that creates the significance. It is that delta - in this case between 85% and 0% - that sets us up for elation; that presents the opportunity for our expectations to be violated, and thus for our hopes to be validated.


A corollary here is to recognize that each of the points on this chart is dependent on thousands of similar situations that came before it. What has happened in the past helps inform our expectation of what will happen in the future, especially in the realm of sport. So at the end of the day, the 85% to 0% swing that is so thrilling is in fact only made possible - and powerful - by everything that happened before it that did not result in the same outcome. All of the 3-2 games where that single, final out was recorded and any possible dramatics were snuffed out accordingly.


And so, I’d challenge us to keep this lesson in mind the next time each of us is watching a game - whichever side of the ‘boring’/’thrilling’ spectrum it comes to reside on. Remember that sports revolve around contrast - that the sours of defeat are necessary for the elation of victory, that the mundane is an ingredient in the recipe for the spectacular.


Because at the end of the day, the thrill of the rabbit coming out of the hat is only magic if we don’t expect it in the first place.

What I’m Reading


The Science Behind the 400m Sprint - Trung Phan (~1 min)


This was a fascinating look into the science behind one of the Olympics’s crown jewel events - the 400m sprint - with a specific focus on how the race pushes the boundaries of human metabolism. If you are a science nerd like me, it was especially cool to see how different 50-100m intervals of the race challenge different aspects of the human body’s ability to create energy.

Lessons from Whiplash on Transcending Mediocrity (~3 min)

Whiplash is one of my favorite movies in the past 10 years or so, thanks partly because of Miles Teller’s spectacular acting but mostly the film’s commentary on the sacrifices and standards that are often necessary for greatness. I always find this scene to be a great reminder that it is not always comfortable to have someone hold us to high standards, but often times it is exactly the thing we need to transcend mediocrity and become the best version of ourselves.

How to Create a Villain - Nathan Baugh (~5 min)

This was a great read from Nathan on what makes a good villain tick, and one that ties nicely into this week’s theme as good villain and hero combinations also rely on contrast. Through the lens of Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), Killmonger (Black Panther), and The Joker (Batman), Nathan shows how good villains are not stand-alones but rather complements to the heroes they oppose. As he says:

Remember the Joker’s iconic line to Batman, “You… you complete me.”

The best villains aren't simply obstacles to be overcome. They're reflections, inversions, or exaggerations of the hero’s own traits.

The hero needs the villain, in the same way the villain needs the hero.

The Cost of Apathy - Jack Raines (~10 min)

A eye-opening read from Jack on one of the greatest risks of life: not doing much of anything with the time that you have been given. This is especially relevant in today’s world where many people can lead a comfortable life with a fairly limited amount of effort, meaning that we all too often life our lives on autopilot rather than with intentionality. This part from Jack was especially good:

The point of life is to live, and living isn’t a spectator sport.

Living means taking risks, pursuing your interests, embarrassing yourself, attempting difficult things, setting ambitious goals, trying, failing, and trying again. Living means pushing your mind and body to their limits, just to see what you’re capable of. Living means fighting back against the inertial forces that draw all of us toward the apathetic life. Living means being the protagonist of your own story, not a passenger whose outcomes are at the mercy of their environment.

Highly recommend you carve out 10 minutes of your day to read the full piece.


9 Uncomfortable Signs of Personal Growth - Sahil Bloom (~9 min)


If the above piece from Jack stirred something inside youI, this is a great follow up read on how to cultivate awareness for signs that you are stimulating personal growth. Two of my favorite signs to be on the lookout for from Sahil’s list:

• You stop concerning yourself with how your growth makes others feels and
  

• You start cringing at yourself from six months ago
  
  

All nine are worth the read.

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Hey Everyone!


Happy Sunday, and welcome back. I hope you all have had a fantastic week!


Tuesday marked the passing of the MLB Trade Deadline and it has been nice to have things slow down a touch toward the end of the week. The home stretch of the season is now all that remains with two months left in the regular season calendar, and we are looking forward to making a playoff push here in Texas. Here’s hoping there’s some 2023 magic left out there for us to recapture.


As promised last week, looking forward to getting back to some more normal programming for the newsletter with more time now available. This week’s edition was a fun one to write, as it centers around a key reflection point from the past month’s worth of work - how our efforts are not always correlated with our results. Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to pass along any thoughts or comments my way.


Catch you all next week!

- CG

Thinking - Input/Output Asymmetry

With July coming to a close and both the MLB Draft and the Trade Deadline in the rear-view mirror, it has been nice to take a few days to unplug and recharge after the gauntlet of the past month. It is one of the few periods of the baseball calendar where things go into ‘quiet mode’ a bit - players have been selected, rosters are set in stone, and all that is left is to go play the games out on the field and let the chips fall where they may.


And while it is nice to have an opportunity to slow down somewhat - at least relative to the past 45+ days - I find it difficult to completely disconnect. When your brain has been ramped up into hyperdrive for so long, the engines don’t spool down quite as quickly as you would like. So every year during this time frame, I naturally find my brain shifting focus in two directions: the future of what is left to accomplish this year, and the past of where we’ve been to get to the present.


As I’ve been reflecting on the path we’ve taken to this point in the year, one thing has stood out as it relates to the past month - what I’ll call the asymmetry between inputs and outputs. Let me explain.


One of the most unique things about the month of July in professional baseball is that there is an enormous disconnect between the amount of effort that you put in and the corresponding results that come out on the other side. So much so, in fact, that I would say this disconnect is one of the defining principles for both the MLB Draft and the Trade Deadline, all because of a simple underlying truth: the fact that you do work on a player says next to nothing about whether or not you will actually acquire the player.


As anyone that has worked in professional sports will tell you, evaluation and acquisition are two related but distant concepts. You can think of the evaluation - the underlying ‘work’ required to form an opinion on the player - as the ticket for admission to the dance. In order to make a recommendation on drafting, signing, or trading for a player, you need to have put in the necessary effort to give you confidence that he is the right fit for your organization. Your recommendations can’t be a house of cards built on a foundation of sand - instead, they require a combination of data, expertise, and conviction to make sure you get it right.


But what comes after is the ultimate challenge. Acquiring a player requires a unique alignment of stars, such that you need multiple things to work in lockstep with each other to even have a chance. Not only must you like the player, but you must also have access to him and be able to meet the price the market demands for him. At any point in the process, any one of these things can go wrong and dictate an outcome that is not in your favor.


The Draft serves as a great example of this. To participate in the process, you have to be willing to accept the notion that you will do a lot of work on a pool of players and may not get rewarded with an acquisition. Few are more familiar with this concept than area scouts - they are the lifeblood of the amateur process, the people that each year spend countless hours in cars and hotels scouting, all with zero guarantee that come the close of the Draft one of their players will be selected and signed to be part of the organization. In fact, it is not uncommon for a scout to put in thousands of hours of work over a year and get ‘shutout’ (ie have no players selected from their area by their team) come Draft day, depending on how the board falls.


I can speak from experience on this, too. Over the past two drafts, I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate 338 different hitters from all across the country for the amateur process, a pool from which we have been able to select and sign eleven (11) in total. Some quick napkin math will tell you that that is not a great ‘return on work’ (ROW), with 11 divided by 338 giving you a mere 3.25%.


You might assume that the apparently low ‘ROW’ makes the player acquisition process less rewarding for anyone involved in it - but you would be wrong. In fact, I’d argue the exact opposite - I believe acquisition is one of the most rewarding aspects of professional baseball, specifically because of how difficult it truly is. The more involvement you have in the player procurement process over the years, the more attuned you become to the low probability reality of taking a deal from start to finish. You quickly come to both recognize and appreciate the many hurdles that lie between evaluation and acquisition, between wanting a player and actually getting him. And as a result, a natural scarcity effect emerges - when the stars finally align, you are rewarded with an incredibly satiating - and oftentimes, intoxicating - feeling as a direct function of how hard it is to come by.


This principle has broader applications beyond baseball as well. In fact, there are many areas of life where you have to put in the work with no guarantee of the outcome, while recognizing that you won’t get the outcome without the work.


Some that come to mind:

• Job Applications - The job market often necessitates you submit hundreds of applications when you will ultimately land only one position.
  

• Businesses - Serial entrepreneurs may start multiple companies that fail before they ever have one that succeeds.
  

• Venture Capital - VCs cut many checks to seed startups but may ultimately only see a few pan out.
  

• Academic Research - There are hundreds of thousands of research papers published each year, but very few will ever gain mass acclaim and influence society at scale.
  
  

All of these come with the same scarcity effect outlined in the baseball examples above - low probabilities of success (or low ‘ROW’) make the wins incredibly sweet. There are few feelings like the moment when you finally land the job or make your first sale, if only because you understand exactly how hard that moment was to come by in the first place.


But while these situations of high effort / low guarantee are frequently the norm, that does not mean they are the only. To see this, we can think of effort and guarantee as two variables that exist separately with their own scales. And when we put the two together, we quickly see that there are multiple different combinations of the two.

To this point, everything discussed falls in Quadrant II (High Effort, Low Guarantee) - but what about some of the others?


Let’s start on the ‘lower effort’ side of the equation with Quadrant IV. From my perspective, this is perhaps the most desirable spot to be in, the ‘$$ Zone’, where most of us would like to live as much as possible. These are the ‘low hanging fruits’ or ‘leveraged’ aspects of life, the things that require very limited effort but can give you outsized returns with high probability. Things like:

• Index Funds - It takes no effort to set a recurring index investment to tap into the long-term powers of compounding.
  

• Publishing on the Internet - The cost to publishing content on the internet is virtually $0 and comes with a high probability of added connectivity or others getting exposed to your ideas.
  

• Minor Health Interventions - Small changes such as getting 8 hours of sleep or drinking sufficient amounts of water can have drastic effects on your health.

Quadrant III, on the other hand, is similar in effort but differs in results. To me this is the ‘Re-Charge’ zone, an area you are fine living in sometimes-but-not always, one encompassing things that require limited work but don’t give you much of a guarantee on what, if anything, you are getting out of it. Things like:

• Casual Gaming/Reading - Are the video games or romance novels really giving you any value outside of decompressing?
  

• Social Media Scrolling - What did you really get out of all the Tik-Tok scrolling, except for lost time?
  
  

And lastly, we have Quadrant I, which I think of as the ‘Agency Zone’: areas in which you are almost guaranteed to succeed if only you are willing to take initiative and put in the work. Things in this bucket differ from Quadrant II in that there is a much higher ‘ROW’ (return on work) effect - you can go into these types of projects or tasks with higher levels of expectation of what you will get out of it. Things like:

• Physical Fitness and Health - Exercising, eating a clean diet, and living a healthy lifestyle require effort and commitment but come with a guarantee of positive outcomes.
  

• Education - Studying/reading are hard work, but there is a clear correlation between time invested and the knowledge you emerge with on the other side as a result.
  

• Skill Development - Whether in athletics, music, or other competitive arenas of life where skill is a separating factor, hard practice tends to lead to increased performance.
  
  

The more I’ve thought about the above graph and the subsequent buckets, the more I’ve come to believe that we can view it as a ‘map’ for different aspects of our lives, for two main reasons.


First, I think the distinction between inputs and expected outputs can serve as a valuable ‘perspective setter’, especially in regards to areas of life that require high effort. Think back to times in your life where you have had a crushing disappointment - a moment where something you expected to happen as a function of all the work you put into it did not come to fruition. Ask yourself the following: why was that moment so devastating, the disappointment so difficult to deal with? After doing the exercise for myself, I think the answer is relatively clear: there was likely a misalignment between your effort and your expectation. You thought you were in Quadrant I - where you effort is directly correlated with your probability of success - when in reality you were in Quadrant II - where your effort was the price to pay for the opportunity, but came as no guarantee of the result. The better aligned our expectations are, such as in the case of player acquisition, the better positioned I think we all will be to deal with the outcomes.


Secondly, I think we want to create a balance of all of these things. My guess is that while each of us will naturally gravitate towards one area or the other, spending too much time in one will cause us to miss out on other equally important aspects of life. Living on the right side of the chart at all times is likely a recipe for burnout, but living on the left is sure to keep you stagnant without any opportunity for growth. We need each of these things as much as the other - high effort things balanced with low effort things, high guarantees balanced with low guarantees.


And so, I think the best place to start is by gaining an understanding of the game you are playing - how much effort does the task require, and what is the guarantee that it will be rewarded in kind? Because unlike the story that we’ve been sold for much of our lives, there is no guarantee that more effort is correlated to better outcomes. As we’ve seen, this is not necessarily a story of more equals more and less equals less - it’s not that simple, as much as we would like it to be.


The path to aligning our expectations - and subsequently, our reactions - comes through understanding where each aspect of life falls on the map. By doing the exercise to place each one in its appropriate place, we can begin to tease out what game we are playing - and whether or not we should be playing it in the first place.

Reading

Health/Fitness

Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Oral Health - Peter Attia (~6 min)


From Peter Attia’s commentary on a recent study that examined the connection between oral health and hospital-contracted pneumonia:

For critically ill, hospitalized patients, a relatively simple intervention of toothbrushing reduced the risk of hospital-acquired pneumonia. Toothbrushing also had broader implications for recovery, reducing overall time of ventilation and ICU stay, demonstrating that at minimum, oral health is a barometer for overall health, and in all likelihood, has systemic effects.

A good and important reminder for those of us that may skimp on the ‘2 brushes per day’ rule from time to time.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

AI Can Help You Make Big Life Decisions - Dan Shipper, Every (~9 min)

Found this to be a great read from Dan on how you can use AI tools to deal with big ‘one-way door’ life decisions that can be challenging to navigate.

Machines Have Surpassed Humans in Empathy - Adam Grant (~1 min)

I like this take from Adam Grant on a recent study that suggested AI tools are capable of beating humans in decoding emotions. Rather than giving the common ‘doomsday’ take that AI is surpassing humans in all areas of other life, he suggests something different: AI is only beating us in certain areas such as emotional intelligence because we are failing to use our full capabilities.

Personal Growth

What Shapes Our Desires? - Luke Burgis (~16 min)

A good interview of Luke featuring a wide ranging discussion on books, memetics, the humanities, AI, and more. A couple of my favorite quotes:

“The world needs more mystagogues—those who know how to lead others into mystery.”

[On AI and the Humanities] I always come back to the language of supplements versus substitutes, which I learned from my friend Dr. Josh Mitchell. Is AI a supplement or a substitute? I think it’s a supplement that we risk turning into a substitute. And it is certainly a substitute, and should be, for certain things.

How I Reduced My Screentime by 80% - Reysu (~10 min)

Wanted to share this as I’ve found two resources in this video - ScreenZen and SocialFocus - to be extremely helpful in cutting down screen time usage on social media of late. The former is a clear step up from Apple’s ScreenTime blocking functions, while the later allows you to customize what your social apps show when viewed through the browser - giving you the ability to hide things like replies, certain feeds, ads, and more. Powerful combination I’ve been liking of late.

Hey Everyone,



Hope you all have had a great week. It’s been a busy one on my end with our draft camp out in Arizona and the Trade Deadline upcoming, so this week’s edition is going to center around the biggest topic I’ve been thinking on (energy) in lieu of any resource shares. Will try to get back to more normal programming next week as time permits.


As always, hope you enjoy - and please reach out with any thoughts or comments!

- CG

Thinking - Energy

This past week is one of the most paradoxical time periods of the baseball calendar.


When the league office decided in 2020 to move the MLB draft back a month in order to line it up with All-Star festivities, they ended up creating a unique blend of overlapping ‘befores’ and ‘afters’. The last week of July is no longer simply the domain of the Trade Deadline - it also now coincides with the aftermath of the MLB draft, and all that it entails.


On the player development side, most every organization runs a ‘Draft Camp’ in the immediate week after new players are both selected and signed. It is an excellent opportunity every year to build relationships and welcome the newest members your organization; for staff and players to get to know each other on a more personal level; to expose draftees to your organization’s core principles and philosophies.


But it is is also one of the most grueling weeks of the year, on par with the challenges endured yearly during Spring Training. From the time players are selected in the draft to Day 1 of camp, PD staff embark on a quick sprint to get everything in place - daily schedules, medical screenings, presentations, training session designs, and more. It is controlled chaos at its finest, and a true feat of collaborative effort that the camp comes together in such a tight window each year.


And then you layer in the heat. For us and 14 other MLB clubs, Draft Camp occurs in the hell that is Arizona in the last week of July. You hop on the plane Sunday evening knowing that you are buckling up for 7 days of 110+ degree weather in the desert, an environment where your energy levels get sapped by 50% the second that you step out into the high sky sun. Regardless of how many times you’ve been there and done it, it never gets easier. If going to Dallas in August is the equivalent of being cremated, then going to Arizona in July is like being cremated, reincarnated, and cremated again just in case you didn’t get the point the first time (side note: every year this trip gives me an immense amount of appreciation for our Arizona Complex League staff that grinds in this environment every day for 7+ months).

Add in on top of this the fact that you are often pulling triple duties with Draft Camp in the morning, Arizona Complex League games at night, and trade deadline work interspersed throughout the day. One of these things alone is enough to drain you heavily - all three at once is a nearly impossible task.


So suffice it to say that when I got onto my plane last night to head home to Dallas, I had every intention of melting into my seat for the 2+ hour long flight. Of turning my brain off, shutting it down, and recharging the batteries after a grind of a week. But when I sat down, I noticed something I didn’t expect.


It was an energy paradox, of sorts - a tension between two states, a strange existence of polar opposites at the same moment. I wanted to sleep and shut off, yet I couldn’t - my mind was racing, energized with excitement even though my body had had its fill. It was like my batteries were empty, but somehow still brimming with a kinetic charge at the same time. The week took a great bit out of me, but it also gave me energy in a different form in exchange.


Noticing that paradox got me thinking on a concept with which I have become well acquainted over the past couple of years: energy - what it is, where it comes from, how we strike a balance with it. And as an extension, how we can prevent against energy depletion. Or, as we most frequently call it, burn-out.


If you work in professional sports - especially baseball, with a 162+ game season - you will inevitably have a run in with burn-out at some point. It’s an incredibly rewarding lifestyle, one where you get to be a part of something bigger than yourself and help others accomplish their dreams. One where climbing to the pinnacle will give you emotion and feelings that you never thought possible to experience - as we learned in Texas in 2023.


But a life of sport is also a grind - don’t let anyone tell you any differently. It requires an inordinate amount of sacrifice that you hope will be paid in full over time, but comes with no guarantee. It means countless hours on planes and beds that are frequently not your own. At some point you stop viewing the number of nights in your Marriott account as a badge of honor, and start thinking about the opportunity cost of what they represent: the time away from home, from your family, from your loved ones. Because at the end of the day, that is what the loyalty points are: an objective measure of all the sacrifices you have made to get them. The longer you are in it, the more that recognition will start to set in. And the more it will test your faith, your belief that what you are doing is right, your conviction that your feet are in the right place.


I’ve been around the game for long enough to know that the people that think they are the most immune to this reality are in fact the ones that are most susceptible - they are the ones that think they have an unlimited charge to their energy stores, a motor that will never stop running, one that others cannot match. And for a while they are right. They outpace people out of sheer will - they are the first to arrive and the last to leave, the ones that pride themselves on how many flights they can cram in over the summer without needing to take a single day off. But at some point rent is due, and the reaper cometh. Of the people I know that were in and out of the professional sports lifestyle quickly, there’s often a commonality - they burned bright and fast early, and their candles wore down too quickly with no wax to build them back up.


I know this story better than most because I’ve fallen into the trap more times than I care to admit. It happened after my senior season in college, where I grinded through a hip surgery for the year and was burnt-out from the effort at the end. It led me to turn down an opportunity to play professionally in Europe, one that I never got again and regret not taking. It happened again when I was in my first spring training, where I tried to be the first one in and the last one out - more for show than the fact that I was actually doing anything important. I needed multiple weeks to feel like myself again when I got back home. And again the following year when I realized I hadn’t seen any of my closest friends in over 2 years since I moved to Texas for work. It ate at me heavily and compounded a feeling of isolation I’d been developing, with not knowing a single person nearby where I’d chosen to start my career.


The truth is that some of us are more pre-disposed to falling into this energy trap than others - those of us that have an obsessive passion for something and are willing to invest every waking moment into it. That’s me, for sure, and I’m guessing that some of you feel the same way as you read this. Burn-out is real and no one is immune - that reality necessitates having some guardrails in place to solve the problem.


For me, the solution I’ve found over the years is the following: I am much more interested in energy creation than I am in energy preservation. I know my bias is to dive into something heavily and exhaust myself on it - and that’s okay. It’s that obsessive nature that makes the process rewarding most-times, and I don’t want to strip that away. So rather than treating energy like a finite store, I’ve started to think about it much more along the lines of the devices we carry in our hands - the more I ask of myself the faster the battery will drain, but there are an infinite number of outlets I can use to plug-in and charge back up. Things that can give me energy, even as I use up whatever it was I had before up. Things like a good book; a hard workout; a morning writing session; quality time with friends; Sunday home-cooked steak dinners with my wife. And more.


Sometimes you have energy sources that already exist but you forget about - that was the lesson I learned when I didn’t see any of my best friends - from home and college - over those first two years in Texas. They were a charging plug that gave me life and energy, but one I lost when I moved far away. And I didn’t realize what I had until I didn’t have it anymore. The only way to plug back into that source was with intentionality - it takes money for flights and time for travel, but the ROI I get back in terms of the energy far exceeds anything I spend to get it.


Other times you’ll need to tune into the world around you and look for new sources of energy that you haven’t previously discovered. That’s what this week of the year has turned into for me - Draft Camp, and the time it gives us with our new players, has a unique way of imbuing me with a newfound sense of excitement for what’s ahead. It’s a similar feeling I get when I go to the Dominican, or travel to our affiliates to see our coaches and players - I come out of the week having been given energy back at at least the rate that I expended it.


Over time, I think what each of us needs is two things: (1) to avoid things that unnecessarily drain our energy - a topic for another time - and (2) consistent energy sources we can turn to in order to charge ourselves back up. The answer to the second part will differ for each of us - but the first step is to recognize that regardless of what the answer is, each of us has to have one (if not multiple).


No phone or laptop is capable of running forever on a single charge, and humans are no different. Energy drives us and sustains us - so where are you getting yours?

Hey Everyone!


Hope you all have had a great 7 day stretch and are enjoying your Sunday.


It was a big and exciting week in Texas, as we selected 20 new Rangers in the MLB Draft and celebrated afterwards by hosting the All-Star Game in our home ballpark. It was my first time going to the Mid-Summer Classic and what an experience it was. I couldn’t believe the amount of talent put together on the field, and came away thinking about how great of a platform it was for the game of baseball to showcase the best it has to offer on that stage.

We have another big stretch coming up with the Trade Deadline fast approaching on July 30th and Draft Camp in Arizona this week to welcome our new players to the organization. So with that said, let’s get into this week’s newsletter - which features some in depth commentary on optimism, pessimism, and what I think is missing in the distinction between the two.


Hope you enjoy, and catch you next week!

- CG

What I’ve Been Thinking - Optimism, Pessimism, and Why the Distinction Between the Two is Not Enough

This year’s Draft process was an enjoyable one as always. As I’ve written about for the last couple of weeks, this is one of my favorite times of the year because it is the period in which I find my thought processes being challenged the most. And subsequently, the period of the year I always come away feeling like I have experienced the most growth.


With the acknowledgment that it is difficult to pause and catch your breath in the fast paced rush up to the Draft, I always try to create some time for reflection in the immediate aftermath while things are still fresh. I find it a great opportunity to assess the effectiveness of my personal processes for evaluating, presenting, and discussing players - while also revisiting any interactions I may have had with others throughout the course of the meetings.


As I’ve been reflecting towards the end of this week, there was one moment from Draft meetings that stood out to me above all else: an interaction with one of our scouts that caused me to think more deeply on the lenses each of takes to our jobs - and the broader world as a whole.


Without revealing too much of the specifics, the general construct of the conversation was the following: the two of us were discussing a high profile player with some very clear, very major offensive flaws. His perspective was that the flaws were nails in the coffin to the player’s value at the next level, regardless of the natural talent he possessed. It was an especially jarring perspective because this scout in particular is one of the top 2-3 evaluators of pure talent that I have ever had the pleasure of being around. I respect his opinion heavily, and so when he runs away from talent because of flaws, I know my radar needs to go up. We generally see things very similarly, but in this case I had the opposite viewpoint - I fully recognized and acknowledged the flaws the player possessed, but felt we were in a position as a developmental group to help him overcome them. A great back and forth ensued that led me to think more deeply.


In sports, business, and life, disagreements like these are common. In fact, I’d go even further to say that they are not only common but also healthy - without them, we cannot fully appreciate the arguments that exist on both sides of an issue. The more we work through differences in opinion to arrive at consensus, the more confidence we can have in that decision as a result. And as I wrote about last week, these differences in perspective are a unique and special piece of what it means to be human in the first place.


So at the end of the day, it wasn’t the disagreement itself that got me thinking, but rather a small yet powerful comment that got dropped in at the end: “See, I get that you think you can help him - but that perspective is skewed considering that your job is to be an optimist.”


I didn’t respond in the moment, but it was enough to get me thinking: is that statement really true? Is being an ‘optimist’ a defining aspect of my job? And if so, what does that even entail?


The more I’ve thought on that question, the more I’m reminded of something I heard when I was first starting in professional baseball: “I want my scouts to be pessimists and my coaches to be optimists.” I disagreed with that statement then, and still do today for a simple reason: optimism and pessimism depend heavily on what what we like, not necessarily on what we do. This is a defining factor of behind the scenes player discussions, regardless of whether you are a scout or a coach. We tend to make optimistic arguments for a player’s future if we like the player, and pessimistic ones if we do not. This is ‘confirmation bias 101’, and I’ll be the first to identify myself as an offender.


Now, everyone tends to have a natural bent, a personality orientation that draws them closer to one side or the other regardless of the issue at hand. Some people are wired to see the glass half full, others to see it half empty. Neither is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ - both just are, and that is entirely okay. Simply acknowledging that these biases exists is a start in each of us being able to think - and disagree - more appropriately.

|But what I would argue to all of this is that while understanding the distinction between optimism and pessimism is a start, it is by no means a sufficient way to think about the problem. You need to add another axis to the chart, one that moves beyond preference and deals with the facts. Because it is not merely enough to be an ‘optimist for optimism’s sake’ - or vice versa - you have to deal with reality too. The evidence matters every bit as much as what you want it to mean.

And so, when we layer in the dichotomy of rationality vs. irrationality to the debate, we see that there are four distinct profiles that emerge:

1. Rational Optimism - Arriving at a positive outlook from a foundation of evidence.
   

2. Irrational Optimism - Arriving at a positive outlook from speculation or exuberance.
   

3. Irrational Pessimism - Arriving at a negative outlook from speculation or exuberance.
   

4. Rational Pessimism - Arriving at a negative outlook from a foundation of evidence.

Similar to how each of us has either a natural bent towards either optimism or pessimism, it seems to me that each of us likely gravitates towards one of these buckets when we layer in our willingness to deal with the facts in front of us (ie our ability to be rational). Speaking for myself, I’d like to think that I live my life in quadrant I, rational optimism. I tend to take a more positive stance on the future, and like to think I do a decent job of being rational in the face of evidence.


But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to think that this is not so much a static graph as it is a dynamic one. As much as I’d like to live every moment of my life as a rational optimist, there are inevitably situations that dictate I be something else. Two examples from a baseball specific context to illustrate this point:

• In the context where I am working with players, my job is almost certainly to be a rational optimist. I have to believe there is a path to helping them be better, and ground the path to achieving that in the facts as they stand.
  
  

• In the context where I am evaluating players, my job is to be as rational as possible and move along the optimism/pessimism scale according to experience. There are certain cases where I should be rationally optimistic because experience has told me that we can fix or overcome the player’s issues. But there are other cases where I should be rationally pessimistic - in situations where I know a players flaws are difficult to both fix and overcome, there should be no shame in sliding further to the left on the scale. The point is to get the evaluation and projection of the player as right as possible, personal bias to optimism or pessimism be damned.

So, rational optimism and rational pessimism can both have their place. But is there no case for the lower quadrants at all? No case for irrationality? Not so fast.


While I admittedly struggle to think of cases where it is beneficial to be irrationally pessimistic (if you have any ideas, please feel free to send my way!), there is a very clear area of the world where I think irrational optimism is a great thing: sports fandom.


As a sports professional, my job is to be as rational as possible, while blending in my personal spice of optimism to the recipe. But as a sports fan I am decidedly irrationally optimistic. I start every fall football season thinking that the Tennessee Volunteers have a greater than zero percent chance of winning the National Championship - recruiting rankings, depth charts, and schedules be damned. Week 1 rolls around, and I think the Vols are going undefeated. The first loss comes, and I’m still crafting playoff scenarios in my mind. Hope exists under the guise of irrational optimism until the last possible moment.


And to me that it is exactly what makes being a fan so exciting - the fact that we can have a little bit of irrational hope, a small shred of belief that greatness is possible even in light of all the evidence that diminishes that possibility. It is what makes the pain of the valleys so sharp, but the euphoria of the highs unlike few feelings on this earth. I see irrational optimism as part of what makes sports sports - the pageantry, the passion, the excitement. Stadiums with thousands of people screaming in unison, all thanks to the existence of belief.


With all of this in mind, I’ve started to think of life as a game in which we get rewarded for being in the right quadrant at the right time - oscillating back and forth between optimism and pessimism, between rationality and irrationality depending on the environment at hand.


What I’m trying to get better at personally is identifying two things: (a) where I should be depending on the issue and (b) where I actually am. I’ve come to view these two questions as especially important to answer, as I see them as the main reasons for why I may have ‘missed’ on player evaluations or recommendations in the past: I either think I’m somewhere I’m not (ie I think I’m being rationally optimistic when I am in fact being irrationally optimistic) or I misdiagnose the appropriate perspective to take (ie I think I should be rationally pessimistic when I should be rationally optimistic).


And so, returning back to the initial conversation that sparked this whole thought, I think I’ve figured out how I’d respond. It would be something along the lines of “My job isn’t to be an optimist - it’s to be what the situation requires.”


Because like most everything in life, it will always depend.

What I’m Reading

Health/Fitness

A Lesson in Overtraining - Peter Attia (~3 min)


While most of the modern discourse centers around the issue of not getting enough physical activity, this was an insightful read from Peter on the perils at the other side of the equation with overtraining. As a result of travel, he was forced to take a week off from his upper body lifts - only to find that when he came back he set personal bests in every single exercise after the time off.


A good reminder that there are two buckets we can fall into rather than just one - under-doing it vs. over-doing it - and the later can cause just as many problems as the former.

Writing and Creativity

Creativity - Jared Dillian (~6 min)


A good read on the creative process and the necessity of realizing that not everything will be perfect, and not everything has to be. Two great pieces that struck home especially:

“I just have to accept that was the best job that I could do at the time, with the information I had available to me. And part of being a creative is knowing that not everything you do is going to be perfect, and you have to accept that. This is no business for perfectionists.”

There is a quote: “I only write when inspiration strikes, but fortunately it strikes at 9am every morning.” Writers write. Painters paint. If you’ve ever run into a writer who’s always “working” on a book, and has been for ten years, and can’t seem to finish it, that is not a real writer. That is a writer who waits for inspiration to strike.

How to Think in Writing - Henrik Karlsson (~12 min)


This piece shares some similarities to the above in it’s discussion of the writing process, namely in drawing the distinction between writing to think vs. thinking to write. Henrik does a great job arguing that writing is best used as a tool to clarify your thinking, to bring take your fluid ideas and make them more rigid, more concrete - all while exposing and filling in the gaps in your logic. Here’s a great quote from the article:

When I write, I get to observe the transition from this fluid mode of thinking to the rigid. As I type, I’m often in a fluid mode—writing at the speed of thought. I feel confident about what I’m saying. But as soon as I stop, the thoughts solidify, rigid on the page, and, as I read what I’ve written, I see cracks spreading through my ideas. What seemed right in my head fell to pieces on the page.

Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

The Purpose of Doing Things is Not to Stop Doing Them - Jack Raines (~7 min)


I’d put this up there for one of the best - and most important - pieces of content that I’ve come across this year. Last week, Jack shared his thoughts on a concept I’ve written about a lot on this newsletter, which he calls “the dangerous idea that we should outsource many aspects of our lives to technology”.


It is great commentary on the downside risks of using AI, and subsequently how we should think about using it to amplify our skill sets rather than replacing them. Two quotes that I found especially insightful:

The problem with taking an AI-first approach to tasks is that it robs you of everything that you would have gained by doing the work yourself.

⁠First, folks who are willing to go out of their way to add a human touch to their work will only become more valuable as more people elect to outsource their work to AI. A thoughtful email (or, even better, handwritten note) will standout in a sea of AI-generated messages.⁠⁠

Second, the ability to discern value and insight from a flood of information will grow more and more important as the cost of producing data approaches zero. Models and reports that took days to build can be AI-generated in seconds, but what are you going to do with their results? The world will only grow noisier, and your ability to answer the latter is what really matters.

Personal Growth

How to be (Reasonably) Hard on Yourself - Nat Eliason (~5 min)


In this piece, Nat shares one of the biggest insights he has taken away as someone that has high standards for his work: there are both right and wrong ways to be hard on yourself. As someone that tends to expect a lot of himself - and sometimes too much - this hit really hit home.

The four part mantra to keep in mind for all high performers, according to Nat:

1. It’s Good
   

2. It Can be Better
   

3. Eventually it Will be Good Enough
   

4. Next Time will be Even Better

Hey everyone!


And welcome back to The Gunn Show, Edition #23.


It’s a big Sunday for us here in Texas, as a long awaited day is finally here: Day 1 of the MLB Draft. Each year, this day marks the culmination of an incredible amount of work and collaboration put in by people across our organization, all with a singular goal in mind: finding the future stars of our game.


This year is extra special for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it marks the first time in organization history that we will pick last as the defending World Series Champions. Even 9 months later, that still feels surreal to say. We’ll have to wait much longer to make our first pick than we are used to as a result, but ask anyone in baseball and that is a tradeoff they’d be willing to make in a heartbeat.


Secondly, we are fortunate enough to be hosting the All-Star Game (and all the events that come with it) in Arlington this year. It is a unique opportunity for the organization to take center stage for the next 4 days, and the excitement and energy around the ballpark as a result are palpable. Can’t wait to experience everything that comes with the Mid-Summer Classic over the next few days.


If you are interested in following along with the Draft tonight, it will be on ESPN starting around 6PM CT. Look for us on TV at approximately 7:30PM CT when we should be making our first round selection. Let’s go find some Rangers.


- CG

What I’m Thinking - Preferences

As a nature of Draft season, I’ve been spending a good deal of time thinking about the idea of preferences - the things we like, and why we like them.


I find the concept fascinating in that preferences are ultimately the story of differences emerging from similarities - how we can come to entirely different conclusions (and decisions) even when presented with the exact same starting information. From my perspective, it is to preferences that we owe a great deal of our uniqueness as a species. They are the avenue through which sectors of society grow and differentiate - things like music, fashion, culture, and more - like different flowers all growing from the branches of the same tree. I find it to be a marvel of human psychology that our world bends increasingly towards diversity even when we all begin with virtually the same ingredients, how each of us is capable of telling a different story when given the same characters.


Looking beyond the surface level of preferences is an invitation to exploration, an opportunity to study deeper levels of human psychology. They provide us a window into each of our souls, a looking glass through which to observe the things that each of us cares most deeply about for a simple reason: preferences are the path that ends at values. By studying what we choose, we begin to understand who we are.


When it comes to thinking about how preferences emerge - and what they reveal - fields such as economics and behavioral science are quite instructive. Namely, they teach us that there are certain conditions under which they are most apt to be studied: environments that are defined both by symmetric information and unconstrained choice. Only when all parties have access to the same knowledge and are free to make their own decisions without restriction can we begin to truly asses what preferences reveal.


It is for this reason that I find myself thinking about the concept in the midst of Draft season - because from my lens, the nature of information and choice within it perfectly fit these environmental requisites.


The modern era of the Draft is one in which information tends to be highly symmetric - long gone are the days where teams captured value by simply ‘knowing more’ than everyone else. What has replaced it instead is a landscape in which each organization has access to the same things as the others - the same performance data, the same tracking data, the same video, and so on. As a result, as the game of baseball has arced from from the asymmetric environments of the past to the symmetric ones of the present, the leverage point now lies much more in what you do with the information you have rather than whether or not you have it in the first place.


The Draft also fits the bill in regards to choice, as it provides an environment in which teams have a remarkable amount of freedom. From the moment you go on the clock, the decision on which players you will select is yours and no-one else’s; no other organization will make your pick for you, and the league office will not push you in one direction or another. The only constraint is the board itself - the players that are left when it comes your time to choose.


The result is that come each July, the Draft provides us a front row view into what organizations value through the lens of the players they select - as well as what they do not. Given the same board and the same information about those players remaining on it, teams will come to an infinite variety of decisions - all owing to their specific preferences. It is a large part of what makes predicting the MLB Draft and which players will go where such an interesting exercise - over time, with enough picks to study and line up together, consistent patterns can reveal behind the scenes preferences unique to each team. Team X may like a certain ‘profile’ of player, while Team Y may opt for another.


More generally, what these differences in preference revolve around are differences in values. It is here where gray begins to muddy the black and white, because values are far from objective - it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to say which values are ‘right’ and which are ‘wrong’. Values are instead highly subjective - meaning that they are entirely dependent on the eye of the beholder.


The result is that there are a million different possible values that can give rise to an equal amount of possible preferences. We don’t need to look hard to see that this is true - in fact, this fundamental principle helps forms the basis of everything from attachments to diets (Carnivore vs. Keto vs. Paleo vs. Vegan), attachment to music (Rap vs. R&B vs. Country vs. Pop), and even attachment baseball players (Power vs. Contact for hitters, Pitchability vs. Stuff for pitchers). None of these are any more ‘right’ than the other - they simply ‘are’, and that recognition should be enough.


With all of this in mind, it strikes me that it is not nearly as important to have the right preferences as it is to have them in the first place. And subsequently, to be convicted in them in a manner that allows us to stick to them consistently. Put simply, I think each of us could benefit from doing a bit more soul searching to figure out what we like, but most importantly why we like it.


Because without preferences, or an understanding of why we have them, we have no guidance for our choices. In my view, this is most frequently where people - and organizations - go wrong: we lack an understanding of what we value, leading us to oscillate back and forth between an endless amount of possibilities. The result is no strategy, no consistency. We have nothing to lean into, nothing to fall back on, meaning we are destined to become feathers at the mercy of the wind.


The antidote is simple: find your preferences, and be comfortable leaning into them. Don’t feel the need to apologize for whatever you have found works best for you, so long as you have a backing as to why. Recognize that ‘best for others’ may not mean ‘best for you’, that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the domain of values, per say. Know that you and others may come to some different conclusions, and that is entirely okay.


That differences can get carved out of similarities is something that makes humans truly unique. The more we recognize and appreciate this truth, the better off I think we will all be.

What I’m Reading

Health/Fitness

Exercise for Aging People: Where to Begin, And How to Minimize Risk While Maximizing Potential - Peter Attia (~57 min)


A great listen from Dr. Peter Attia that centers around the topic of starting or returning to an exercise routine over the age of 50. While this is a worthwhile share for anyone in your life that might fit into this category, I thought there were some relevant implications hidden within it that apply regardless of age, namely the following:

1. Think of Exercise as Having 4 Pillars → Stability, strength, aerobic efficiency (Zone 2), and peak aerobic output (Zone 5) form the foundation of a healthy body. Regardless of how old you are, you can design a weekly exercise that addresses each of these core systems to optimize for health and longevity.
   
   

2. Think of Exercise as a Retirement Account - As Peter says, it is never too late to start saving for a retirement account. But you have to understand the longer you wait to start the harder it will get - and the more risk you will need to take. Just like it is never too late to start saving, it is never too late to start exercising. Don’t wait.
   
   

Note: If you prefer reading over listening, you can find the full show notes at the above link that I’ve downloaded into my Readwise Reader app as a premium subscriber of ‘The Drive’.

Personal Growth

High Agency Learning - George Mack (~1 min)


A great short note on a concept we’d all benefit from getting familiar with: our education is in our hands, and no-one else's. This quote George highlighted within it hit hard:

One should not read like a dog obeying its master, but like an eagle hunting its prey - Dee Hock

Learn like an eagle on the hunt, not a dog waiting for it’s master.


Become Undefinable - Dan Koe (~1 min)


Loved this perspective from Dan on becoming ‘irreplaceable’ by becoming ‘undefinable’:

Become undefinable.


Run a marathon one day, write an essay the next. Direct a short film, build an app, deadlift 500lbs, strategize a marketing campaign, or do whatever your curiosity draws you to.


If you can be defined as "____," you face either competition or replacement.

Mental Models/Principles

The Right Kind of Stubborn - Paul Graham (~8 min)


I find Paul Graham, founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, to be one of the best synthesizers in the world on common traits found in high performers.


This was a great piece in which he argues for finding people that are the ‘right kind of stubborn’, which he defines as *persistent (*people are attached to their goals) rather than *obstinate (*people who are attached to their ideas). While both seem similar in that they are ‘hard to stop’, Graham’s perspective is that successful people tend to fall much more so into the persistent bucket because they are willing to exchange their ideas in service of whatever it is they wish to accomplish. Though these two quotes were especially good framings of the differences between the two:

The reason the persistent and the obstinate seem similar is that they're both hard to stop. But they're hard to stop in different senses. The persistent are like boats whose engines can't be throttled back. The obstinate are like boats whose rudders can't be turned…….

The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.

Good Morning Everyone!


And welcome back to The Gunn Show for Edition #21. This is an extra special one for me, as having pressed the ‘send’ button now means that I’ve hit the goal I had set out for the 2024 calendar year - to publish 26 articles on this Substack.


My initial plan was to shoot for one article every two weeks, to accommodate for the stressors and time constraints that come up throughout the MLB season. But then the weekly version of this newsletter came together in early February, and I’ve had too much fun writing it to slow down. So here we are in June, well ahead of pace and already across the finish line set all the way back in December of 2023 (which I thought quite ambitious at the time!).


I owe a great deal of where this is at now to those of you that read each week - the feedback and conversation that has come as a result is exactly what I was looking for when I wanted to start writing. So thank you for tuning in up to this point - 26 down, and many more to go.


Now, let’s get on to this week’s newsletter, featuring the biggest thing I’ve been thinking about this week: what the roller-coaster ride of Tennessee Athletics tells us about the value of top to bottom organizational alignment.

Organizational Unity through the Lens of Tennessee Athletics


Monday was one of the more exciting days I can remember as a Tennessee Volunteer fan, as the Baseball team clinched their first College World Series Championship in program history.


Two weeks ago, I shared a bit about my experiences growing up as a young Volunteer - and baseball - fan during the heyday of Tennessee baseball. It has been a joy to watch the success of the team over the past 4+ years and to see, as Karl Ravich said on the ESPN broadcast with the final out in hand, “Rocky Top reach the mountaintop of college baseball”.


In the aftermath of the championship series - a riveting three game affair that came down to the final out of game 3 with the tying run at the plate - I couldn’t help but reflecting on all that has transpired over the past 20+ years in Knoxville. It’s hard to believe the level that not just the baseball program but all of Tennessee’s major athletic teams are playing at right now. Because for much of the 21st century, I think there is a pretty strong argument that the Volunteers have been one of the most tortured fanbases in all of sport.


Prior to Monday, there had been zero National Championships won by Tennessee in any of the three major sports (football, basketball, baseball) since 1998. I was too young to even remember when the football team held up the BCS trophy after beating Florida State 23-16 in the Fiesta Bowl to claim the crown.


Things really started downhill in 2007 after the football team last played for the SEC championship. The following year, legendary coach Phil Fulmer was fired - a date in Tennessee lore that Vol fans like to mark as when it all went sour. The ‘lost decade’ of the 2010s followed suit quickly - from 2009 to 2020, the Big 3 programs saw the following:

• 12 different head coaches (6 in football, 3 in baseball, 3 in basketball)

• 5 different Athletics Directors

• 0 National Championships

• 0 Major Playoff Appearances (BCS/Playoff Games, Final 4, College World Series)

• 1 SEC Championship (Basketball, 2017-2018)

The Vols - regardless of sport, but especially in football - were a national punching bag. Turn on ESPN any day of the week and you couldn’t miss them in the highlights - clips of heart breaking losses (don’t click the links, to any Vol fans reading), head coaches leaving in the middle of the night for greener pastures, public PR disasters with hirings, and (yes, this is real) recruiting violations where cash was being handed out in McDonald’s bags.


For a lot of years, it was hard to wear your orange and white around with any sort of pride.


If you paid attention while all this was going on, you noticed something: this amount of consistent disfunction at the public level was only made possible by consistent disfunction at the private level. At a school like Tennessee, with a rich history of tradition across a wide variety of sports, the lack of on-field success was not a function of a lack of resources. Those have never been question. The only logical explanation was something else entirely: mismanagement at the decision making level.


No athletic department is without its challenges, but throughout the 2010s it seemed like Tennessee far outpaced the rest of the country with its mix-ups. Public recruiting violations, poor hires, budget mismanagement, and losses piling up - all a result of poor decisions compounding over time. Back office power struggles and inconsistencies in leadership - at both the department and coaching level - set the programs back years.


And then, things started to change. In 2015, Rick Barnes was hired to helm the men’s basketball program. In 2017, Tony Vitello was tasked with returning the BaseVols to national prominence. And in 2021, Josh Heupel was brought in to restore the crown jewel of Tennessee Athletics - the football program - back to its roots of dominance. Three outstanding decisions made that have proved fruitful at all levels, made within quick succession of each other.


It’s tempting to look back on this run of good decisions and try to find the turning point, the single moment in time where “Tennessee got its shit together and started making good decisions”. But in the case of Volunteer Athletics, I just don’t think that one exists. In fact, each of the current Big 3 head coaches were hired by different athletic directors and administrations - Rick Barnes by Dave Hart, Tony Vitello by John Currie, and Josh Huepel by Danny White. There was no singular knight in shining armor that came to save Tennessee Athletics - instead, it was a slow (and incredibly painful) evolution of getting the right people in the building and getting them aligned on the right things.


The point is this - as anyone that has worked in sports will tell you, the challenges of scale are daunting. There is an enormous amount of coordination required to get players, coaches, support staff, and administration aligned on a consistent vision - and even more importantly, working together to achieve it.


Rarely, if ever, does it come together overnight. There is no silver bullet. It is a much slower process instead - one of continuous tweaks and iteration over time, a trial and error experiment where you try your best to keep what works and discard what does not. It requires more than just one good decision - you need a number of them in lockstep with each other to get the pieces operating in the right way.


But when you do, it’s magic. You create a continuous flywheel effect where every piece of the operation reinforces the other, and it is almost as is the organization starts to run itself.


When I look at Tennessee Athletics today, that is what I see. Not the chaos that many of us had grown accustomed to, but something else entirely - a group of people that is aligned on a consistent vision for success, and working together to achieve it. No infighting. No clashing of egos. Only unity - between leaders, administrators, and coaches.


And the results are starting to show it.


For the first time since 1998, the Vols are champions in a major sport. In 2023, they accomplished a feat that had never before been done in the history of college athletics, becoming the only school to win a NY6 football bowl, have the Men’s and Women’s basketball teams both play to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, and advance to the Men’s and Women’s College World Series - all in the same academic year. That success has continued into 2024, with Tennessee finishing 3rd overall in the Learfield Director’s Cup standings - which uses a points system to encapsulate success across the entirety of an athletic department.


With all that has transpired in Knoxville over the last two decades, I can’t help but be reminded of Harvey Dent’s famous quote from The Dark Knight. It is a sentiment Heupel echoed amidst a sea of orange after the Vols took the goal posts down against Alabama in Neyland in 2022. One he said again later that year after they thumped Clemson in the Orange Bowl. And one Peyton echoed in Omaha on Monday night.

“The night is darkest before the dawn. And the dawn is coming.”

The night was long, no doubt. But today Vol fans can bask in the light because that dawn is no longer ‘coming’ to Knoxville.


It’s here.

This Week’s Finds

Storytelling

On Writing Better: 43 Things I Learned from My Insane 2 Years of Study - Nat Eliason (~30 min)


This is a depth-y article, but worth its weight in gold for anyone interested in borrowing some hard earned lessons on how to write more effectively. Nat has been head down for the last year plus working on his new book Crypto Confidential, and he synthesized all of his biggest lessons learned from the process into this piece.


Some of my favorites:

• Don’t Be too Concise - This is about knowing your audience, and knowing yourself. Write the thing both you and your reader want to read - and for books, that necessitates some depth.
  
  

• Be Much Simpler - The goal is to be understood, not to sound smart - and to do so often requires stripping out detail that appeals to the top 1% in order to make your work understandable to the 99%. But make no mistake - this is not about being short, but instead about being clear.
  
  

• Protect Your Subconscious - This could very easily be rephrased to go for a walk. In a world where we are constantly flooded with information, creating space for our minds to wander is often the clearest path to finding the things worth saying.
  
  

• It’s Okay to Ask Someone to Tell You You are Good - Loved this one, and see application beyond just writing. Too often when we try something new - a new skill, a new job, etc. - the challenges that come as a result can quickly erode our self-confidence. This was a good reminder of the value in surrounding yourself with people that will provide support along that learning curve, as well as a reminder to try to be that person for others.
  

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

Turning the Tables on AI - iA (~4 min)


This was a great, quick read that hits on a topic covered frequently in this newsletter: what are the implications of AI for how we work? It argues that there are two routes you can travel: you can use AI to think less and worse, or you can use it to think more and better.


This is a critical distinction for me - I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to properly use AI in such a way that I am enhancing my thinking rather than outsourcing it. My general rationale is the following - the mind operates like a muscle, and the less we use it the more atrophy we need expect. I don’t know about you, but I’d like my mind to get stronger over time - not weaker. This piece provided a great framework for how to think about doing so.

Mental Models/Principles

Looking for the Anti-Mimetic Doctors - Daniel Turski (~9 min)


I’ve shared some resources in here before from Luke Bergis, author of Wanting and a deep thinker on the concept of mimesis, which involves thinking about why we want the things we want and do the things we do. This was a great guest share on his Substack recently that looks into the challenges of non-conformity in the field of medicine. While I’d encourage any of you to read through as it is an enlightening perspective for navigating our own medical experiences, I found this piece from the closing argument to be especially interesting:

Thinking in order to do better in a system that rewards doing over thinking is a core, anti-mimetic feature in medicine. And it’s especially difficult for two reasons: The first and obvious is letting old habits die while facing potential rejection from professional colleagues. The second and more subtle one is that doing better can mean doing less. It might mean making less money, acknowledging that we’re not as important as we’d like to be—and that somehow, in some way, out best intentions can make things worse. Those are tough pills to swallow. But maybe those pills are just the medicine that Western society needs right now.

13 Ways to Spot High Agency People - George Mack (~3 min)


Agency - the measure of how capable humans are of accomplishing things - has been on my mind a good bit lately. This was a great thread I came across from George that shares how we can spot people with high agency in the world and - if we invert this - how we can think about cultivating it ourselves. I’m working on a more in depth piece on the concept that I’ll share soon, but these were my two favorite points from the thread:

• Ask The Golden Question - If you could only call one person to get you out of a 3rd world prison, who would it be? That is the highest agency person you know.
  
  

• Build Unique Language - High agency people often create their own personal version of the dictionary. As George says, they have “isms” - Musk-isms, Bezos-isms, etc. They don’t conform to the ‘rules’ of language - they bend it to their will instead.

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Good morning everyone!


And welcome back to Edition #20 of this newsletter. A couple of announcements before we get going.


First, in case you missed it - I published a long-form article this week titled Simple is No Guarantee of Beautiful. It is a dive into a pithy phrase that has been making the rounds of late - “Simple is Beautiful” - and why I think it misses the point. I had a lot of fun writing it and hope you get some value out of it.


Next, as I’ve mentioned in past editions of the newsletter - I’ve been experimenting with the format, attempting to find the appropriate balance between breadth of resources and depth of discussion. Over recent weeks, the scale has tipped much towards the later as I’ve been going much deeper on a smaller range of topics. While I’ve enjoyed thinking more introspectively about a narrower band of ideas, I’d like to find a happy medium - something that blends the best of both approaches, providing a sufficient level of depth to be insightful and that challenges my thinking while also covering a broader range of topics.


In response to this, I plan to shift towards a two-pronged newsletter for the foreseeable future. Each week, rather than going deep on 4-5 topics I’ll instead choose one - something that has been top of mind for the week and I think merits diving into more deeply. I will then follow that up with our normal programming - the best resources I came across that week for our normal topics (Sports, Health, Communication, The Future, Personal Growth, Mental Models/Principles) with brief supporting commentary.


We’ll see how this goes, and, as always, make adjustments as necessary. If you prefer one style or the other, please feel free to shoot me a note.


Also, with the focus shifting more so towards what I’ve been thinking and less so what I’ve been reading, we are going to rename this newsletter to the name of this site - The Gunn Show.


With that said, let’s kick this week’s edition off.

July is but a week away, meaning we are on the precipice of the busiest month in the professional baseball calendar. Whether you work for a club or the league office, there is no more jam packed portion of the year: the All-Star break, MLB Draft, and Trade Deadline - three of the biggest events of the entire season - all happen within a mere two weeks of one another. It is one of the most stressful and exhausting periods of the season, with the gauntlet of October being the only other thing that can possibly compare.


Yet even so, it is perhaps my favorite part of the calendar. Because for as challenging as July, I find it to be equal parts rewarding.


Why? Because in my opinion, there is no portion of the MLB season that challenges your ability to think like July does - whether as an organization or as an individual. The amount of high leverage decisions made in such a short time frame is astounding - you select players, trade for players, or trade away players all in the span of but a few weeks. The implications of any one of those decisions is remarkable - make the right (or wrong) one, and you can drastically alter both the short and long term future of your club.


As a result, strategy becomes paramount. You have to have your ducks in a row as best you can, thinking through all scenarios and choosing the optimal one - as you see it - based on the board in front of you.


To get aligned on a strategy requires a large amount of conversation, and the setting for those conversations is one with which we are all familiar: meetings. As much as you could say July is the month of the MLB Draft, the MLB All-Star Game, or the MLB Trade Deadline, you could equally say that for front offices, it is the month of meetings. So. Many. Meetings.


Typically, the gauntlet starts in late June as clubs begin breaking down the Draft board. They continue on from there, gaining speed into the three days of the Draft and maintaining a break neck pace all the way up until the Trade Deadline bell rings on July 30th at 6PM ET.


To put it simply, July is both a marathon and a sprint - the pace is unrelenting, and you have to keep up.


I love the grind of the month. Don’t get me wrong - it is a challenge, for sure. But it is also extremely invigorating at the same time if you have any penchant for deep conversation on players, strategy, philosophy, and the like. And while the meetings themselves are great, some of the best conversations happen completely unscripted - during a break in the bathroom or while you are heating up your lunch. To me, this is most frequently where the magic happens. And every once in a while, you come away with an idea that changes not just how you see the game of baseball - but how you see the world.


I had one of these conversations recently, when a coworker and I got into discussion on a concept called ‘Pay Now, Pay Later’. Frequently thrown around in Draft circles, the idea revolves around top tier HS players that have strong college commitments. The logic goes like this: either you take him in the draft out of HS and “pay him a lot of money now” to make sure he never gets to campus, or you wait for him to go to college and “pay him a lot of money later” when he is inevitably a top performer - and therefore a top pick. It’s your choice on when you are going to pay him, or at least the logic goes.


But as my coworker pointed out - there are two fallacies in this argument. First, you may never get the chance to “pay later”. Some players simply become so good in college that they play themselves up to the absolute top of the draft board - and depending on where your pick is, you may have no opportunity to select him. Secondly, “pay now, pay later” often assumes that the dollar amounts of both cases are the same - pay him $1 Million now, or pay him $1 Million later when he comes out of school. But for this to happen, a player’s value has to remain equivalent from high school to college - and anyone that has followed the draft knows that the cases where this happens are few and far between. Very frequently, a player you could have had for < $1 Million in HS suddenly costs $7 Million+ after winning a bevy of NCAA awards and going in the top 5 picks. Ouch, talk about a missed opportunity.


That conversation opened my mind in more ways than one. I couldn’t help but leave it thinking that while we’d just had a conversation on baseball, we’d really had a conversation on life.


To highlight what I mean, let’s flip this to our own experiences and ask a simple question: how many decisions in our lives can we think of as “pay now, pay later?”. My guess is it is significantly more than we think.


As an example, I’ll share how this concept really hit me in the face. Over the last year, my wife and I have been making a concerted effort to live healthier lifestyles - especially when it comes to what we put in our bodies. As such. we’ve put a heavy emphasis on the quality of our food, eliminating any type of processed items in favor of natural, organic, single ingredient foods.


The results have been amazing - we feel great, look great, and are functioning great. Yet the process hasn’t come devoid of hurdles, namely one big one with which we are all familiar: shopping healthy is more expensive when compared to not shopping healthy. Avocados cost more than crackers; wild caught fish costs more than farm raised. Simply put, it’s not quite as fun to get the receipt at the grocery store now as it used to be, even though we know it’s the right decision for us to make.


‘Pay Now, Pay Later’ has been extremely helpful to keep in mind when I swipe my card at checkout. My goal here is to my make the best decisions in the short term - now - to set myself up for an optimal life in the long run - later. Through this framework, I can rationalize my decision at the counter like this: if I don’t pay for this now, it’s pretty likely that at some point I’ll be paying much more in the future - in the form of poor health, excess medical bills, and more. And that’s assuming I even have the opportunity to pay at all, which is no guarantee.


This is only one small example, but I think there are a many aspects of our lives where ‘Pay Now, Pay Later’ applies. To name a few more:

• Fitness - Work out now, or pay a higher price with a failing body later
  

• Relationships - Spend time with friends and family now, else you may not have the chance later
  

• Procrastination - Do it now, or you might not have the chance to do it later

I know there’s more to uncover here, other areas where the principle can be put to use. But that conversation shifted my perspective greatly, and I hope that in sharing my experience it can help some of you all do the same.


What are you paying for (or not paying for) now, and what does that mean for later?


- CG

Weekly Finds

Sports/High Performance

Inside the Mind of Jaylen Brown - GQ (~8 min)

One of the things I enjoy most about Championship runs is the stories about the people behind them that get uncovered in the process. This was a great piece on Jaylen Brown of the newly minted NBA Champion Boston Celtics, revealing a person that is much more a polymath than a basketball player.

Health/Fitness

Your Health is An Investment, Not an Expense (~1 min)

A good thread that has some parallels to the message above - decisions we make in relation to our health are investments, not expenses. Personal investments I’ve made off this list that I’d highly recommend: stainless steel pans, blue-light blocking glasses, a juicer, and high quality nutrition.

Mental Models/Principles

Attention Residue - Sahil Bloom (~2 min)

I’ve talked a lot on this Substack about focus, and this concept ties in well. Attention Residue, as identified by Dr. Sophie Leroy and defined here by Sahil is “the cost of shifting our attention from one task to another”, such that when we do so a “residue” remains and impairs our performance on the new task.


Something I’ve noticed this personally with: using my phone first thing in the morning. The more I use it to start the day, the more I find myself using it throughout the day. It seems to leave a ‘residue’ such that I have a harder time focusing on deeper work tasks for longer period of times.

The solution to this problem I’ve found to work the best: no phone for the first 30 minutes of the morning upon waking, to the extent possible.

Turning Life Into a Video Game - George Mack (~5 min)



I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept of incentive design lately, and found this to be a good read from George on how we can take the principles from game design and apply them to creating motivating environments. As he highlights, the more manageable we make our tasks and the better we track our progress, the more likely we are to gain forward momentum and accomplish our goals.

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Hey Everyone,

Welcome back for this Father’s Day edition of The Gunn Show. What a special day it is - an opportunity for us all to be thankful for the Dads in our lives that have given us so much and asked for so little in return.


To my own, the man who has affectionately been known as many things - Doc Gunn, The Doc, PJ (Papa Joe), KJ (King Joe - h/t Sam Fowler) - but who to me has always simply been “Dad”:


Thank you for all of the love, support, and memories along the way. I wouldn’t change a second of it all and know that we have much more life to live together - can’t wait to get to living it.

Now, onto this week’s edition - which goes focused and deep on some more sports related topic including:

• A powerful definition of success, courtesy of Tony Vitello
  

• Sports as a pathway to doing hard things, courtesy of Tom Brady
  

• and thoughts from the US Open, courtesy of your truly
  
  

As always, hope you enjoy and see you next week!

- CG


P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.

Sports/High Performance

Tony Vitello on Success (~6 min)


Excuse the personal bias in here, but this was far and away one of the best things I saw this week - and it hit home especially after nearly 30 years of watching the ups and downs of Tennessee Baseball.


My roots with the program run deep, having grown up just down the road from Knoxville in Kingsport, TN. As a young kid, spring time meant games in Lindsey Nelson sandwiched around my own. Every winter I’d attend the Vol baseball camp and when middle school rolled around I found myself taking lessons in the Tennessee batting cages underneath the stadium concourse. In high school I’d go on to play with and against a number of friends that would later suit up for the Vols, and even when I left for my own college baseball journey I still followed the program closely.


The era of Vol baseball I grew up watching was a golden one - in just a 10 year span from 1995 to 2005 the Vols won three SEC championships and made the same number of trips to Omaha. The 2005 regional at Lindsey Nelson is still burned into my memory after getting to watch the likes of Chase Headley, JP Arencebia, and Luke Hochevar lead Tennessee to a sweep of the field at home to set themselves up for a Super Regional win at Georgia Tech.


Things fell off quickly from there - from 2006 to 2017, the Vols finished no better than 6th in the SEC East and constantly missed out on the yearly pilgrimage of teams to Hoover, AL for the SEC tournament (which featured the top 12 programs in the league - out of 14 total). Regionals, super regionals, and the College World Series were a distant memory that seemed hard to believe they ever existed.


But since 2018 when the Vols hired Tony Vitello, the program has re-established itself as one of the premier groups in the country. Of the last 5 years in which the NCAA tournament has been played, Tennessee has been in every one of them - playing in 4 straight super regionals from 2021 to 2024, and winning three to head to Omaha.


It’s hard to believe the turnaround happened so quickly for a program that was stuck in neutral for over a decade. Much of that is owed to Vitello and his work to rebuild it from scratch by instilling a culture and pride that had long since been lost. This clip was a perfect window into where much of that has come from - and there were two main things that stood out to me:

You Pick What Success Means to You:

Success is a fuzzy word, one we use a great deal but seem to have very little grasp of what it truly means. I think this is part of why sports are so powerful - they provide a black and white measure of success through points and runs, wins and losses. Or at least so we think.


The truth - articulated well in the clip - is that success is relative: it need not be defined by someone else’s arbitrary scoreboard. Instead, it is much more effective to establish your own definition - what does success look like to you? As Vitello says, you have a choice. You are the one that gets to decide


And to do so is liberating. Rather than living up to the expectations of others, you need only live up to the ones you have for yourself. You get to define the rules of the game however you like. No-one can do it for you, and frankly, you shouldn’t let them.

The way to success doesn’t lie in letting someone else pick the winners and losers. It lies in playing a different game entirely - your own.

Success Comes with Layers (And Trade Offs):

Another trap we fall into in regards to success is thinking that it can be encapsulated by one single thing. Reality is such that wins and losses, successes and ‘failures’, can come on a variety of avenues. It is entirely possible that you can be succeeding in one area of your life and failing in a different one. You can win at work, but lose at home - or as we like to say in baseball, succeed in fair territory but fail in foul territory.


The truth is that it is hard to succeed at everything, and that is okay. Success - however you define it - is not meant to be easy, and that is exactly what makes it so rewarding. And as such, that means that finding success in one area is likely to come at the expense of another. To get something necessitates you give something in return.


Trade offs are real, and there is always a price to pay. But the best part? Once again, just as in definition, we get to pick.

To wrap up on this topic, I’ve been enjoying watching this Vol baseball run - not only because of the wins on the field, but for the lessons that have come as a result. To me, this is not the most talented team the Vols have fielded in recent years. But I do believe this is Tennessee’s best team - specifically as a function of the togetherness with which they play and the resilience with which they respond in the face of adversity (look no further than Game 1 in Omaha).


I’m looking forward to watching how this all plays out on College Baseball’s biggest stage. And hopefully some more lessons along the way.

Tom Brady Patriots HOF Induction Speech (~20 min)


Building on the topic of memorable sport speeches from this week, Tom Brady delivered an epic one during his Patriots Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Wednesday. While the entire speech is worth your time, if you want the highlights I’d highly suggest watching this short ~2 min clip.


The main message? Something I fully agree with: we should encourage as many people as possible to play sports for one simple reason - they are hard.


In my opinion, the totality of sports creates a level of difficulty that is nearly impossible to replicate in any other domain of the world. Math may strain you mentally, lifting weights may strain you physically, and your 9-5 may strain you emotionally. But none of these alone can compare to the complete challenge that is inherent in sport. Whether in football, baseball, or any other athletic activity, if you make the choice to participate you will be taxed in every possible way you can imagine. Your body, your brain, your heart - nothing is exempt from paying the price. That is a given, the price of admission.


In this way, as Brady says, sports are the perfect representation of life. Because life is hard and, just as in sports, it will test you along every dimension.


From my perspective, there is no better way to prepare for those challenges than learning through experience via sport. For anyone reading this that has been an athlete at any point in their life, I’d be willing to bet there are lessons you carry from those experiences with you into whatever it is you do now - whether as a professional, a spouse, a parent, or otherwise. Because as the NCAA has had right for a long time, “almost everyone will be going pro in something other than sports.”


In this way, sports serve as a looking glass into the future. They can teach us things in the more controlled setting of competition that we will need to succeed in the very uncontrolled setting of life. Lessons like the value of commitment, what hard work really looks like, and how to be resilient in the face of adversity.


And so to close, one more hidden lesson on life that sport reveals, from Brady himself:

“To be successful at anything, the truth is that you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. No shortcuts.”

Amen.

US Open Thoughts

This is less What I Read, and more What I Watched amidst the 124th edition of the US Open at Pinehurst No. 2 this week. There has been some fantastic golf on a gorgeous (and treacherous) course and it is shaping up to be a great final round on Father’s Day. These are some miscellaneous thoughts I’ve gathered after following along for the weekend

Patience, Patience, Patience:

The theme that seems to be the biggest commonality for this week’s tournament, with broadcasters and players alike agreeing that US Open golf demands a unique level of patience relative to other tournaments (Rory even said this explicitly before the week began). The US Open is my favorite golf tournament for this exact reason - each year, the USGA puts together a remarkably difficult setup with which to challenge the best golfers in the world. What’s even better is that the style of challenge is entirely different from year to year: last year at LACC it was 4”+ rough, while this year at Pinehurst it is greens rolling at a 6 foot faster pace than the average course. The result is the highest average finishing score for any of golf’s major championships on a yearly basis.


While talent and skill certainly play a role, I think the US Open tests a key trait at a higher level than any other tournament: emotional control. You can’t win any major without it, but especially this one. It will test you to limits few others have, and how players respond makes all the difference. So sure, we can look at stats like driving distance, greens in regulation and strokes gained to assess the performance of the field. But to me, the lowest total posted at the US Open says a great deal more about the things we can’t measure - namely those two organs that sit in the middle of head and chest.

Experimentation

If there is one trait golfers deserve the most credit for and possess above all other athletes, I believe it has to be this: the willingness to experiment: I find it endlessly fascinating the lengths to which they will go to pursue a competitive advantage, leaving no stone unturned. Here are a but a few of the small details documented on big names near the top of the leaderboard currently:

• Tony Finau - Changed his standard putter grip this week to a ‘claw grip’.
  

• Bryson DeChambeau - Customized the curvature of his 5 iron to prevent overcorrection of the club at his high swing speeds.
  

• Patrick Cantlay - Played the practice round with 4 different putters, all the same model but with variations in weight distribution to change takeway/follow through length.
  
  

I just don’t think we see these types of examples at this level/frequency in any other sport. Athletes tend to be so highly routine and comfort driven prior to competition that making sweeping changes to equipment or style prior to a big event is a rare occurrence.


But in professional golf, it seems to be more of the rule than the exception - if you aren’t evolving alongside the rest, the probability you will be left behind on the leaderboards becomes increasingly high. I wonder what other sports would look like if they followed in the same mold.


Who are the ‘Bryson DeChambeau’ of other sports? Do they exist?

First they laugh, then they mimic - that is the story of Bryson DeChambeau, professional golf’s ‘mad scientist’. Over the course of his career, he has been the subject of much ridicule for his ‘curious’ methods to optimizing his game: from 3D printed irons, to how he marks his golf balls to align dimples for putting, and even his amped up swing speed training regiment. But now, he has evolved into the crowd (and media) favorite. It has been quite the journey, and quite the transformation.


I’ve long been fascinated by his approach to golf, as well as for his relentless conviction in that approach even in the face of all the backlash. Which got me thinking, who are the ‘Brysons’ in the other professional sports?


It’s hard to think of other athletes that match his relentless attention to detail and scientific rigor. Tom Brady comes to mind, certainly, for his TB12 training, nutrition, and recovery regiment (and perhaps deflation of footballs). But where are the others? Do they exist?


I think much of this owes to the fact that golf is so highly ‘equipment’ dependent: it is the sport where individual athletes have the most control over the implements they use in the midst of competition, which in turn provides a very fertile ground for experimentation. Visibility plays a big role too, I’m sure: because this equipment is easily viewable on the course, both fans and media are much more likely to take notice and stories emerge as a result. After all, we only know a scientist is mad if we get a look at the dark magic he is performing.

But still, the question remains. I’m not sure anyone matches Bryson’s level of wizardry when it comes to this stuff, but surely others with a similar determination have to exist.

Off to do some work to find them.

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Hey Everyone!

Happy Sunday, and welcome back to this edition of The Gunn Show - #18. Hard to believe that we are almost at 20 total newsletters - time has been flying as I’ve been enjoying writing this every week. And I hope you have enjoyed following along.

Not much to report on the home front this week, outside of the fact that we are barreling towards the busiest month of the baseball calendar in July with the MLB Draft and Deadline fast approaching. So with that, let's get into this week’s newsletter featuring:

• The why and how of famous speeches in sports
  

• Why you should drop what you are doing and get tested for Lp(a) - seriously, if you want to stop reading and go now please do
  

• Some thoughts on longevity as it relates to the thing it creates: more time

  
  

And more! As always, please feel free to share any thoughts or ideas. See you all next week!

- CG

P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.

Sports/High Performance

Inch-by-Inch? Or An On-Field Dressing Down? - The Most Famous (and Infamous) Sporting Speeches - The Athletic (~13 min)


This was an interesting piece from The Athletic, which contains a collection of famous speeches from across the sports landscape.


There is something unique about the competitive nature of sport that makes it a fertile ground for memorable words. So much so that I’m willing to bet each of you reading this could recall 3-4 well knowns in but the snap of a finger. This read got me thinking into both the why and the how for these speeches.


First, on the why - why do many of history’s landscape stem from either the locker room or the field? My best guess is that it has something to do with the human love for cause and effect.


As a species, we have an innate desire to make sense of the world. We want clear pictures that tell us how actions affect outcomes, such that if we want result B we simply need perform action A. This sense for understanding maps neatly to speeches in sport - we use the subsequent performance (the outcome) to assess the quality of the speech itself (the action). There are few things we love more than the post-game breakdown of the rousing speech in the huddle that magically ‘spurred’ a team to victory, so much so that when there isn’t one - a critical moment to point to, an impassioned call to action by a coach or player - we can’t help but feel a little disappointed.


Second, on the how - what traits to the greatest speeches share? what characteristics can we call on if we are ever in a position where we need make our own?


Pulling from the speeches in the article, these are some of the aspects I see as commonalities:

• Appeal to Emotion - One of the more powerful things in human experience. What emotion are your athletes or team running on? Love? Pride? Respect? And how can you channel that into a driving force?
  

• Brevity & Simplicity - Keep it short and to the point (like this sentence). Keep the main thing the main thing.
  

• Leveraging Expectations - Sometimes the most effective call is not to rise to the moment, but rather for the team or individuals to rise to their own expectations.
  

• Source - The person drives the message. Regardless of where it comes from - coach, superstar, bench player, or elsewhere - that person must carry a unique aura of respect and credibility with the group in order for it to resonate.
  

• Timing - The right thing must be said at the right time. The moment drives the message just as much as - if not more so - the message drives the moment.
  

Health/Fitness

Your Top Questions on Sleep Answered - Andrew Huberman (~8 min)


This article from Andrew Huberman dives beyond general sleep recommendations and research, instead focusing on more specific questions brought to the table by his followers.


The item that stood out to me the most: we cannot accumulate a sleep debt and ‘pay it off later’. According to Huberman, the body can only recoup approximately 25% of lost sleep hours. So for those of us sleeping less than the recommended 7-8 hours on a consistent basis - especially during the week - and trying to ‘catch up’ later, it looks like it may be fruitful to reconsider that strategy. Those weekend sleep-ins don’t seem to carry as much value as we may have once thought…..


Instead, to counteract the sleep-debt effect, Huberman suggests being proactive rather than reactive: if you know there is likely to be a night or two where you sleep will be compromised, you can try to ‘bank’ more sleep ahead of time so that you have a deeper reserve from which to pull.

High Lp(a) Warrants Intervention, Even Without Other Cardiovascular Risk Factors - Peter Attia (~4 min)


After first hearing about the concept of Lp(a) in Peter’s book Outlive, and subsequently getting tested for it myself, I am convinced this is one of the most slept on biomarkers in the health sphere.


The acronym stands for Lipoprotein(a), which is a type of lipid that scoops up and transports other lipid molecules through the bloodstream. As a function of its structure, which is characterized by large loops of amino acids called ‘kringles’, it is especially prone to getting stuck in the walls of your arteries and thus plays a role in increasing the risk of sudden cardiovascular disease incidents. Newer research suggest that it is one of the strongest indicators for sudden, seemingly premature heart attacks. And as Peter details in the book, it has a very strong hereditary component such that it is the most prevalent factor for heart disease that ‘runs in the family’.


This piece brings added context to the table that reinforces the importance of assessing Lp(a) in bloodwork. According to a recent study that examined Lp(a) in relation to a wide variety of other modifiable heart disease risk factors (think diabetes, smoking, etc.), it appears that Lp(a) is associated with a higher risk for heart attacks regardless of whether these other risk factors are present or not.


So what does this mean, especially given the fact discussed above that Lp(a) is largely hereditary? As Peter argues, paraphrased in my own words, your number should inform your habits. Even though you have limited control over your Lp(a) counts, you have complete control over the habits that could potentially amplify its effects. So if your Lp(a) numbers are high - even in light of the fact that we do not currently know how to reduce them - you should take a much more aggressive stance towards managing other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.


If you get nothing else out of this newsletter this week, let it be this: go get tested for your LP(a) levels if your doctor is not already doing so.

Storytelling

Paint With Words - Nathan Baugh (~4 min)


This was a great, short read by Nathan on a topic I’ve been thinking a lot on recently: the dichotomy between minimalistic and descriptive presentation of ideas. My personal perspective is that the world is biasing much more towards the former of late - opting for short and concise at the expense of painting beautiful pictures.


Expanding on a few examples from the writer John MacDonald, Nathan discusses the perils of opting for ‘subjective words’ - words that are short and concise, but are up for interpretation because the storyteller has not given you any context within which to interpret them. Rather than opting for these subjective words, he argues that we should instead create more ‘objectivity’ in our communication, using both unique and specific language to create the appropriate amount of detail. When we do so, we avoid allowing our audience to take our words out of context and instead paint a high resolution picture for them.


From my perspective, this is becoming an increasingly important consideration as the internet trends towards ‘Threadification’ and bite-sized content to satisfy our ever-compressing attention spans. Be on the lookout for a piece from me= later this week that discusses the idea in more detail.

Personal Growth

Longevity & Interest - Naval Ravikant (~3 min)


This conversation between Naval Ravikant and Chrys Bader on the challenges associated with life span extension smacked me right in the face. Why? Because many of us - myself included - like to think about the longevity space as inherently positive sum, devoid of tradeoffs. After all, what could possibly be wrong with humans living longer, healthier lives? Isn’t that something every person on the planet can get behind?


One of the reason’s I appreciate Naval Ravikant’s work so much is that he has a unique ability to be both forward thinking about future possibilities yet introspective about the accompanying implications. And he applies that skill especially well here in regards to longevity, urging us to consider an important analogous question: what will we do with all that extra time


It’s a great point, and one worth all of us thinking a bit more deeply on. As I’ve wrestled with this concept, I’ve found myself biasing towards this framework providing by Naval (emphasis mine):

“But if you have a lifespan measure in the hundreds and thousands of years, you’re going to have to play really long-term games to hold your interest.”

I think this is as good of a place for us to start as any - rather than by thinking about the different games we might play as life extends, and how we might oscillate between them, is it possible instead for us to find a singular one that we are comfortable playing for however long we have left?


The earlier each of us can find the answer to this question, the better off I think we will be.

Mental Models/Principles

The Pursuit Map: 3 Steps to Choose Your Life Pursuits - Sahil Bloom (~ 7 min)


I found this piece from Sahil to be analogous to the above conversation, as it provides a tactical framework from choosing what games you want to play.


In it, he suggests using two grading scales through which to assess the possible pursuits in your life - energy (draining to creating) and competency (low to high). By assessing our possible options along each of these dimensions, he argues, we can then create a ‘map’ that adds more clarity to what each pursuit may provide. With this in place, it quickly becomes clear which actions we should be allocating our time more heavily towards - and which ones we should avoid.

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Hey everyone!


Happy Sunday, and welcome back to the weekly newsletter.


I mentioned in last week’s edition that my family I were out at Pebble Beach for Memorial Day on a belated birthday celebration for my dad and I. It was an epic and unforgettable experience with some great golf (I mean the courses, perhaps not the play itself…). Few things will compare to playing Pebble on Sunday afternoon - especially walking down the 18th fairway as the sun was setting. Magnificent.

I mentioned I would report back on how we faired on #7, and am happy to say that no balls were lost by the Gunn men on the hole (a rarity!). And last but not least - a very special thank you from Dad and I to both of our ladies for making a true bucket list trip come together in spectacular fashion. The memories from last week will last us all a lifetime, and beyond thankful we got to share the experience together as a group!


Now, let’s get on to this week’s letter. I didn’t intend for this going in, but it turned out to be a more philosophical edition centered around the topics of AI, hard vs. soft skills, and the humanities - and what each means for the future. If you are interested in where we are going in the next 5-10 years, and what that means for how we should develop ourselves, this is the edition for you.


Look forward to hearing any thoughts/comments, and see you all next week!


- CG

Health/Fitness

How Exercise Prevents & Reverses Heart Aging w/ Benjamin Levine, MD - Dr. Rhonda Patrick (~18 min)

Starting on the health side of things, this was a great listen packed with insights on the role cardiovascular exercise plays in health and longevity from the perspective of Dr. Benjamin Levine. Dr. Levine is a renowned sports cardiologist with a unique perspective - not only does he have an extensive research background as an author on over 300 peer-reviewed studies, but he also has spent decades working alongside high level athletes at various levels of sport - including the NCAA, NHL, NFL, and US Olympics. Few people are better qualified to give advice on how to maintain a youthful heart & cardiovascular system to fight against the aging process, for both the average person and competitive athlete alike.

Some of the standout points from the interview from my perspective:

• Inactivity is a Cardiovascular Stressor - Lack of cardiovascular exercise causes both weakening and atrophy of the heart. The 1966 Dallas Bed Rest and Training Study showed that after three weeks of bed rest, cardiorespiratory fitness for participants declined by 27 percent. According to Dr. Levine in the aftermath of a series of follow-up studies, “three weeks of bed rest at age 20 years was worse for the body’s ability to do physical work than 30 years of aging.”
  

• Exercise Keeps the Heart Loose and Pliable at a Minimum Threshold of 4-5x Per Week - The heart operates like a rubber band, such that its ability to stretch and compress is a direct indicator of its health. The further it can stretch while maintaining its strength, the more efficiently it can compress to pump blood through the body. But as we age, that rubber band effect starts to decay - our hearts become stiffer, less pliable, and less powerful. In his research, Dr. Levine has shown that cardiovascular exercise blunts this atrophying effect, such that individuals with 4-5 days per week of physical activity start to show greater heart resiliency and pliability.
  

• Optimal Health Means Engaging in Both Resistance and Aerobic Training, Not One or the Other - If you are only strength training in lieu of cardio work - or vice versa - you are missing out on key longevity promoting effects. This is because the heart is a muscle with a structure that responds differently to different types of exercise. Cardio/endurance exercise overloads the heart from a volume standpoint, leading to increase in chamber size and wall thickness, whereas strength training overloads the heart with pressure, resulting in increases in wall thickness but not chamber size. Your heart needs ‘remodeling’ in both areas to stay healthy.
  

• Dr. Levine’s Prescription for Life - Born from his experience with both average individuals and competitive athletes, Dr. Levine has synthesized an exercise regimen he believes to be the most beneficial for preserving heart health:
  

  • One long (60 min+), easy aerobic session per week (think a long walk/bike ride)

  • One high intensity exercise session per week (Z5 training, discussed here before)

  • 2-3 sessions of moderate intensity exercise (Z2 training, also discussed here before)

  • 2-3 sessions of resistance training weekly
    

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

Math and Verbal Skills in the AI Era - Peter Thiel (~2 min)

I’ve been spending a good deal of time recently thinking about the implications an AI centric world will have on the distribution of human skills. And while it is difficult to predict the exact course the future will take, I do think there is a rough outline starting to show itself today.

Our ability to see it requires a willingness to set our egos aside and recognize the skills where computers possess clear advantages over humans. We can think about these skills on a spectrum - ranging from “harder” (such as math, science, or coding) to “softer” (such as leadership, or communication). The world has always been a balance of both, but it’s fair to say the scale has tilted heavily towards the former in recent years. With the proliferation of technology, we’ve seen programming and analytical experience become highly desirable traits - often at the expense of some of the more ‘human’ skills.

But what happens when computers start to catch up? We are already seeing AI tools capable of writing code more effectively than humans, and the higher levels of math are soon to be under siege as well. If AI is decreasing the barrier to technicality, what does that mean for the spectrum of skills in the future?

In my opinion, it means the following: we are in for a long-overdue ‘rebalancing’ of society from a skill perspective. As Peter Thiel says in this interview, “AI seems much worse for the math people than the word people”. When AI allows everyone to code or perform complicated math problems, these skills cease to be critical separation points. If everyone is technical, then no one is.

Instead, future leverage will lie in the things that computers cannot master - the softer skills that make humans human. Even in a world of incredible machine intelligence, we will always have an innate attachment to human interaction. And with that comes a need to proficient in speaking to people, not machines.

I think this is a good thing, and hope it brings us back to an equilibrium point. The world operates best in balance, and the skill distribution of society is no exception - we need a healthy tension between the technical perspective and the verbal, between the hard skills and the soft.

As I’ve written before, the future will be best as a pairing between human and machine. So let this be a call for each of us to lean into the the things that make us human in the first place.

A Bull Market in the Humanities - Luke Burgis (~6 min)

A logical segue from the above conversation on human skills in an AI world, this was a great piece from Luke Burgis (author of one of my favorite books - Wanting) on the role that the humanities will come to play in the future.

Luke’s perspective is that we are about to experience a renaissance in the humanities, which he defines as the exploration of what it means to be human - subjects such as art, philosophy, religion and the like (you know, the classes most of us tried to avoid in our college studies). To him, these topics constitute the real world - the things that technology cannot be a substitute for, and thus the things that will never become outdated or automated. They are old studies of old problems, ones that have shrunk into the shadows but whose lessons carry more significance now than ever.

He argues that the education of the future will come in the form of sensory perception - namely, the ability to observe the world for what it truly is and not as what we wish it were. And as such, AI doesn’t mean that we will see a bull market for those who are good at calculating thought. Instead, those capable of meditative thought are likely to reap most of the rewards.

As a graduate from a liberal arts school with a degree in mathematics, this struck a cord with me. While in college, most of the courses I sought out on my own were of the calculating variety - those centered around ‘harder’ skills such as math, science, and statistics. I still use these frequently in my work today, yet as I look back on that time I find myself most thankful for the meditative courses instead: the Classics course that gave me an appreciation for ancient literature; the Italian language courses that opened up my understanding of a different culture; the European studies course that was a gateway to history on the surface and a workshop on how to write underneath it.

Both perspectives are valuable, certainly. And even more so when combined together - meditative and calculating thought complement each other like the perfect wine and steak pairing at dinner.

But in today’s world, I share Luke’s opinion that we can all benefit from drawing the slider back towards the meditative perspective. Not only because the world has pushed us too heavily towards the calculating, but also since the future is likely to demand it. Because as Luke writes, when AI comes for one, we’d be wise to lean into the other:

The most fundamental response to this electronic age should be a return to the most personal, affective, human part of our existence.

I couldn’t agree more.

Personal Growth

How to Become More Likable Using 9 Techniques from the World’s Most Charismatic People - Polina Pompliano (~14 min)

As we’ve established, it looks increasingly likely that the world will make a shift back towards valuing verbal/soft skills at a higher premium than in recent years. But how do we prepare for that future when the present rewards the opposite, in an education environment that biases towards technicality and a digital landscape that puts up constant barriers to real-world interaction?

Simply put, we study those that have figured it out. And that’s exactly what this guide from Polina does, in which she dives deep into the commonalities that underlie some of the most charismatic people on the planet. Think of this as a starter kit of principles for building energy and connection with the people around you - and a recipe for cultivating better personal skills for the future. The 9 techniques she identified, with my personal favorites bolded/italicized:

1. Set the energy when you walk into a room

2. Say people’s names a lot

3. Remember the small talk details

4. Commit random acts of kindness

5. Know how to tell a compelling story

6. Romanticize risk

7. Anticipate the joke - and tell it better

8. Avoid one-upping in conversations

9. Be comfortable as your awkward, imperfect self

Good Morning Everyone!


And Happy Memorial Day Weekend. I hope you all are having a fantastic time with friends and family and finding opportunities to enjoy the long weekend. My family and I are doing just that, as we are out in Pebble Beach, CA for a delayed birthday celebration for my father and I. It’s a bucket list trip for the both of us, and I will report back next week on whether or not I skulled a wedge into the ocean on Number 7.


So in the interest of time, let’s get into the newsletter. This week, finds featuring:

• Lessons from Jerry Seinfeld’s pursuit of mastery

• What fish oil research can tell us about the traps of headlines

• Technology as a cumulative concept and

• What a big legal week for crypto tells us about the industry going ‘political’
  
  

As always, hope you all enjoy! See you next week.

- CG

Sports/High Performance

Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki, and the Pursuit of Mastery - Trung Phan (~20 min)

This was a fascinating breakdown on the concept of mastery and the commonalities that underly it across various domains. I found the inspiration for the piece especially interesting, as Trung looks through the eyes of Jerry Seinfeld in an attempt to understand his the comedian’s life journey.

In recent years, Seinfeld has shared a great deal about the intricacies of his creative process. And while a number of themes stand out (practice and repetition, namely), it is the continual pursuit of mastery that seems to drive Seinfeld more than anything else. Because for him, mastery is is not just a concept - it is a calling. It is something he believes we should all strive for, as we can see in this response to a interview questions from The New Yorker:

David Remnick: It is possible that you've probably made a dollar or two from Seinfeld, and yet you still work so hard. Why?

Jerry Seinfeld: Because the only thing in life that's really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. The things that money buys are fine. They're good. I like them. But having a skill [is the most important thing].

I very much like this perspective that one of life’s goals is to maximize our abilities, as if it is a responsibility for each of us to find a skill that we can hone in pursuit of mastery. It’s a powerful thought - one that gives a challenge for each of us to rise to.

But what does that process look like? According to Trung, there are a few core concepts to keep in mind when it comes to mastery:

1. Anyone Can Pursue It

2. It Is a Lifelong Journey of Plateaus and Progress

3. The Path Requires a Child-like Mindset

4. Practice is a Requisite for Achieving It
   

Lastly, he wraps up with four commonalities found in masters of their craft that were originally shared in a 1987 article of Esquire (which supposedly served as inspiration for Seinfeld himself):

• Enthusiasm - Masters of their craft are shamelessly enthusiastic about their calling.

• Generosity - When it comes to their own pursuits of excellence, masters have an endless ability to give everything and hold nothing back.

• Zonshin - A Japanese concept that roughly translates to ‘unbroken concentration’. Masters seem always be in ‘on’ mode when it comes to performing their craft.

• Playfulness - They are willing to take chances and play the fool.

There is much more to be said on this concept, but I’d encourage you to give this piece a more in depth read. And for those interested in diving into the concept further, I’d highly recommend checking out the books Mastery (by Robert Greene) and Peak (by Anders Ericsson).

Health/Fitness

Does Fish Oil Cause Cardiac Arrhythmia in High-Risk Individuals? - Peter Attia (~6 min)

Fish Oil has become a hot topic of late as the debate over different types of oils and fats has grown to a crescendo. A new study published this week in the BMJ Journal of Medicine added further fuel to the fire, suggesting that regular fish oil supplementation use might boost first time heart disease and stroke risk. Per usual, the internet took a headline and ran much too far, much too quickly.

Back in 2021, Peter Attia shared some of his own thoughts on the matter that he resurfaced this week in his newsletter. His take is significantly more measured, leaving room for nuance on both sides of the equation:

An association between supplemental [Fish Oil] and increased risk of AFib seems likely to exists, but perhaps only for those already at significant risk for cardiovascular events… Pending further insight, all patients who are advised to take supplemental or prescription [Fish Oil] products should also be advised of the potential risks, and caution is warranted particularly for those with a predisposition to AFib.

Considering that a wide variety of research has shown Omega3s to be beneficial on a number of avenues such as cardiovascular health, neurodegenerative diseases, and age-related decline, it is worth squaring new evidence up against the old. Like most things, it is likely that there is a balance of risks and rewards to be managed here.

Yet another good reminder that headlines tell the ‘news’ but often miss the story.

Storytelling

Jeff Bezos on Writing Well - @nurijanian (~2 min)

I’ve long been fascinated with Amazon’s culture as a ‘writing company’, and have been fortunate enough to get a behind the scenes look from my wife’s work there over the last few years. While it may be a stretch to say that every company should take a cue from Amazon, I do think it’s worth considering how little most businesses focus on the role of communication in the workplace - and the ways in which they can use writing specifically to level up.

This was a great short synopsis of some of Amazon’s highest leverage writing principles. A couple of my favorites:

• Avoid jargon and acronyms as they exclude non-experts and newcomers

• Weasel words are vague and create the impressed of meaning. Don’t use them!

• Replace adjectives with data.
  

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

Better Tools, Bigger Companies - Packy McCormick, Not Boring (~20 min)

This was one of the better pieces I have read on how technology shapes the future - period. The gist from Packy: technologies are cumulative. As he writes:

As technologists develop and improve new technologies, they contribute them to a global toolkit that entrepreneurs can pull from to tackle ever-grander challenges. The more and better tools, the bigger and harder challenges builders can address with them.

You have likely read this perspective in this newsletter before: we stand on the shoulders of giants. The future is built from the past, such that each innovation we see today is enabled only by the thousands that came before it. One leads to the next as if we are building a ‘ladder of innovation’ - we can only get to the highest rungs if the lowest ones are already in place. This graphic from Packy sums up the concept perfectly:

But why is this important?

Well, it means that even if you believe strongly in a future made better by technology, it is likely that you are drastically underestimating what that future will look like.

Technology already compounds at a rate that is difficult for us to comprehend. And that pace is only accelerating up. Time has granted us an embarrassment of riches - of technologies - with which to build. And as our world becomes increasingly more digital, our ability to search for the right building blocks and figure out how to combine them to solve the problems of the world is only becoming easier.

With each day, our toolset with which to solve problems is becoming more well supplied.

So bet on those building the future - if only because we know what it is they will be able to work with.

Ethereum ETF Approved - Decrypt (~3 min)

It was an enormous week in the crypto space, with multiple highly surprising policy wins coming in the span of a mere 2-3 days.

First, the House voted in favor of passing a The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, which seeks to establish a clear regulatory framework for utilizing and building with crypto technologies in America. This is a big step forward in establishing the United States as a leader in the crypto industry - with a bill that provides both clear rules and positive incentives for builders. Doing so makes it increasingly likely that the US will be viewed as a safe haven for technological innovation - something that has been a national calling card for many decades and was at risk of slipping away with a heavily anti-crypto stance.

Adding fuel to the fire, the SEC made a big flip on Thursday when they approved the first spot Ethereum ETFs for trading. As recently as Tuesday, prediction markets were showing an 85% rejection probability - so what changed?

While hard to fully know, I think something is happening behind the scenes: crypto is becoming political. There is a growing rallying cry in the crypto space for taking a ‘single-issue’ stance in the upcoming election, and supporting the candidate(s) that promise to create the most promising future in America. And with nearly 50 million people in the US owning crypto-assets, politicians are starting to recognize that taking a pro-crypto stance is a potentially high-leverage opportunity to capture votes.

While I have no idea how this will turn out, I am certainly intrigued for what the election cycle will do for the industry as a whole. If ‘all press is good press’, then this should be a fun and fascinating ride.

Hey Everyone,

Happy Sunday and welcome back!

I recently returned state-side from a trip to our complex down in the Dominican Republic. After 5+ years of traveling down there, there is a common theme that emerges in the aftermath of each trip: I always come back with a newfound energy. A purity exists to the game on the island that is hard to replicate elsewhere, and it never fails to recharge my batteries while giving me an appreciation for the fortune we have here in the United States. And not to mention a respect for the great impact sport has on our world.

Speaking of sport, what a great week. This is one of the best times of the year to be a sports fan with the MLB regular season in full-swing and the NBA/NHL deep into their respective playoff brackets. Dallas specifically is brimming with a special buzz right now, as both the Stars and Mavericks are on their way to the Western Conference Finals and will be alternating games in the AAC over the upcoming weeks. Add that on top of the World Series run from last year (with hopefully another to come this fall), and it’s hard to find a time where it’s been better to be involved in the DFW sports scene.

With that said, let’s transition into this week’s newsletter. This week:

• What Scottie Scheffler’s journey teaches us about the bright - and dark - sides of competitive fire in high level athletes

• OpenAI’s big GPT updates

• A refreshing alternative to networking for networkings’ sake

• Decisions as ‘day trading’ against our futures

Hope you all enjoy, and see you back here next week!


- CG

P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.

Sports/High Performance

Scottie Scheffler’s Secret: How a ‘Venomous’ Trash Talker Became the Best Golfer in the World - The Athletic (~13 min)

What an epic weekend if you have any sort of affinity for the sport of golf.

It’s shaping up to be an incredible day at the PGA Championship with an absolutely stacked leaderboard heading into the final round, and the storylines have been spectacular up to this point. Heading into the day, there are 13 players within 5 strokes of the lead, - including some big names like DeChambeau, Hovland, Rose, Thomas, and Finau - all chasing Schauffele and Morikawa at 15-under. We’ve seen the major championship single-round scoring record bend but not break twice, with Xander Schauffele and Shane Lowry narrowly missing out on history with 62s. We’ve also seen 50+ hole-outs over the course of the tournament so far, making for some spectacular highlight clips - including this beauty from Justin Thomas yesterday.

And somehow, with as good as the golf has been, those storylines pale in comparison to what happened Friday morning when Scottie Scheffler - the world’s #1 golfer - was arrested due to a traffic misunderstanding while trying to pull into Valhalla Golf Club. It was one of those headlines that you couldn’t believe reading, one of the crazier storylines in sport I can remember. And the best part? He went out and shot a 5 under 66 after teeing off within 2 hours of being released on bail. Can’t make it up.

Moments like these often lead to unforgettable content, and the internet rose to the challenge. Friday gave us some absolutely incredible memes, including my personal favorite that was too good not to share:

Back on Thursday morning, I had no idea what was in store for us all when I came across this profile of Scheffler from the New York Times and planned to include it in this newsletter. Given everything that has happened since Friday morning, I think it shines a revealing light on the competitive traits that helped him go from jail cell to a 5 under round at a major championship in the frame of a single day.

Yet while the piece tells us a great deal about Scheffler himself, I find it also reveals an important lesson about competitive desire in high level athletes as a whole: at the highest level of sport, competitive fire is necessary but not sufficient. When the desire to be great is merely the bar for admission, separation lies in the ability to channel that fire in way that is productive rather than destructive.

This is because competitiveness is a double-edged sword: the emotions that drive us to be great and help us arrive at the precipice of victory can be the same ones that derail us from capturing it. Too many times, athletes let emotions overwhelm them in high pressure situations. It is in these moments where the desire to win burns most hot - they sense the opportunity in front of them, the chance to capture that which they most desire: victory. Yet if left unchecked, that fire can quickly spill over and cause things to go up in flames. The nerves escalate as result of too much desire, rather than too little.

The best learn to walk this balance delicately; they string a tightrope between fire and ice, shifting back and forth between the two depending on what the moment requires. They develop a knack for adjusting the temperature in both directions, an ability to distinguish between the moments that call for the dial to be turned up and those that call for it to be turned down.

But as Scheffler’s story teaches us, this balance often comes as a result of a process along the way. Few, if any, are born with the ability to recognize the line in the sand, the point at which competitive desire becomes destructive rather than productive. Instead, this line is often revealed through experience: athletes must overstep, at times, falling short in competition as a victim of their own expectations. They must be consumed by their fire in order to learn how to tame it.

As both a fan of sports and a professional within it, that is what I love the most about watching high stakes sporting environments. In pressure moments, we get an opportunity to distinguish between those that have taken this lesson home already and the ones yet to learn it.

So cheers to championship Sunday - here’s hoping it continues to provide great storylines and a lens into what it takes to perform at the highest levels.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

GPT-4o and OpenAi’s Race to Win Consumers - Every (~8 min)

In case you missed it, OpenAI made some big announcements this week that centered around two main things relevant to this newsletter: (1) GPT-4o, an updated Large Language Model and (2) a Mac desktop app. From my perspective, both of these are enormously valuable (and long overdue) updates made that address some specific pain points of OpenAI’s products.

First, on the topic of GPT-4o. As Dan writes in this article, OpenAI’s new model builds upon prior iterations by bundling functionalities that previously existed in separate models. This new ‘omnimodel’ allows video, audio, and text to be processed all at once instead of in separate models running in the background. The old way of keeping these different functionalities separate presented a host of problems - if you needed to blend any of these processes together, ChatGPT was either (a) very slow or (b) very inaccurate.

As an example, I’ve been a frequent user of the audio feature in the app for a number of months, using it to dialogue back and forth on ideas. One of the more frustrating aspects of interacting with ChatGPT in this way was its inability to deal with natural conversational patterns such as interruptions, pauses, etc. It would often cut me off mid point if I paused too long, or struggle to switch gears from idea to idea. After reading about these updates, it now makes sense why this was happening - it had to record my voice, transcribe it, send it to GPT-4 for an answer, and then convert that answer back into audio format as a response. Now, since all of these functionalities are contained in the same model, ChatGPT can deal with these natural conversation patterns much, much better. The results for back and forth conversation with the app are now pretty staggering, opening up new exciting use cases such as real time translation.

Secondly, on the desktop app. This would appear to be a big step towards something I’m very bullish on - personalized AI assistants. One of the key insights to LLMs is that they thrive off of the data they are given - the more they have, the more specific they can be in response. Running ChatGPT in a browser, while generally beneficial, creates some problem - it is constrained only to the things that we specifically give to it. Things like conversations, files, and more that we must manually upload as context. But imagine what becomes possible when it is now an app, running in the background on your computer. Suddenly you can ‘feed’ it more much data without requiring any added effort at all. As a result, a host of whole new things becomes possible.

I am a big believer in the ability of AI tools to help us lean into our individuality, as companions for our minds. By providing them with information specific to us - think highlights, book notes, things we’ve written, projects we’ve built, and more - we will be able to draw deeper connections and reveal insights that were previously hidden.

Both of these updates are big steps towards this future, and I’m personally excited to see what comes of them in the near future.

Personal Growth

The Anti-Networking Guide - Sahil Bloom (~9 min)

I loved this guide from Sahil, which takes an ‘inversion’ lens to a well known but somewhat polarizing topic: networking.

The concept has always felt superficial to me, as I think there is something inherently shallow to accumulating connections for connections’ sake. I’ve always found relationships to be infinitely more rewarding the deeper they are, and traditional networking - especially in the LinkedIn era - has always seemed to stand in opposition to that.

Sahil gets at that in this piece, writing:

“You don’t get anywhere by accumulating thousands of transactional personal and professional connections. You get somewhere by building genuine relationships:

- Giving with no intention of receiving in return
- Acting in the service of others
- Creating value for those around you

Those who invest in building (rather than networking) will reap most of the valuable long-term rewards - health, wealth and happiness.”

To counter hustle-networking culture, he suggests we lean into what he calls anti-networking, in four specific ways:

1. Find Value Aligned Rooms - Put yourself into rooms that have a high-density of people who are aligned with your core values, hobbies, and interests.
   

2. Ask Engaging Questions - Once in the room, build connections by focusing on being interested rather than being interesting.
   

3. Become a Level 2/3 Listener - Shift from relating everything you hear to your own life to being deeply focused about what the other person’s words say about theirs.
   

4. Use Creative Follow-Ups - In the aftermath, work to deepen the relationships you find worthwhile by following up on specific notes/ideas you had from your initial conversation.
   

Overall, this framework was refreshing to read as it feels like a much more ‘authentic’ way of building connections by leaning into depth over breadth.

Mental Models/Principles

Day Trading - Jack Butcher (~1 min)

I loved this visual from Jack Butcher at Visualize Value, which he called ‘Day Trading’. I think it provides an interesting commentary on the interplay between our decisions and time, and it got me thinking: what if we evaluated all of our decisions as ‘day trading’ against our futures?

In theory, each decision is a choice to do something at the expense of something else - the concept of opportunity cost from economics. And when we aggregate these decisions together, they amount to something quite powerful: us. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has said, “What you repeatedly do forms the person you are”.

But decisions are not only discreet, beholden to a singular moment in time. Instead, many come with significant repercussions down the line - what we often call second order consequences. As Jack hints at in his visual, time is an important variable in the context of our decisions. Depending upon the frame in which we operate, results can vary drastically.

Here, the order matters. An interplay exists between the concepts of pain and gain, such that one often precedes the other. Many decisions exists that cause short term setbacks for long term growth - what the red to green coloring in the visual represents. Think of these as things like setting aside financial savings, eating a health diet, exercising regularly, etc. They are not necessarily the most pleasurable in the moment, but the payoffs come in spades down the road.

An interesting insight here, however, is that by inverting these habits we also invert the visual. Rather than working from red to green - from pain to gain - we can very easily for from green to red - from gain to pain. These are the traps of life - the decisions that make us feel good in the short term but come with negative repercussions down the road.

If we think more deeply on Clear’s quote from above, we recognize that the way to improve the direction of our futures is to shift our focus from the outcome level to the decision level, from the macro to the micro. We can think of each decision we make as ‘day trading’ against some version of our future - we get to determine both what that future is and what order it comes in.

So in theory, we would have the above visual not just for the broad arc of our life but also for each aspect of it. Think about having a ‘day trading dashboard’, from which you could monitor the short-term vs. long-term trade offs of various decisions across different domains of your life. Each of us would likely have the same basic starting template - a chart each for areas of life such as health, personal finances, relationships, work, etc. But along with that initial version would come a ‘customize’ option - an ability to add your own charts that monitor the health of your various interests and hobbies.

I have some more to think about on this concept, but in general I find this to be a helpful framework for creating the big picture results we want: if each you make decision is a trade against your future, what bets are you willing to make?

Hey Everyone,

Happy Mother’s Day! To any of the moms reading this (and especially mine!) - I hope you have had a fantastic day and been celebrated in the way you deserve. Thank you everything you all do for us - we are beyond fortunate to have you in our lives.

As we get into this week’s newsletter, some of you all may have noticed a shift in recent weeks. I’ve been experimenting with the structure a bit, trying to find the right balance of sharing resources vs. providing commentary on the themes they reveal. I’ve been enjoying going a bit more in depth on a smaller number of finds over the past couple of weeks, but am not wedded to one approach or the other. If you have any thoughts on what you prefer best - more shares/less detail vs. less shares/more detail - please feel free to shoot me a note or leave a comment. Would love to get some feedback on what you all enjoy most.

Now, on to this week’s edition - featuring finds on:

• How to optimize your protein intake

• The hidden danger of phthalates in our food

• The answer to the question of humanity’s role in an AI era and

• High impact tips on public speaking from the world’s best

As always, hope you enjoy! Catch you next week.


- CG


P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.

Health/Fitness

Optimizing Protein Quantity, Distribution, and Quality - Peter Attia (~9 min)

Protein is one of if not the most critical macronutrients when it comes to human health, and Attia goes deep on optimizing intake in this article. The main takeaways on my end:

1. Old Recommendations Miss the Mark - Traditional dietary recommendations (~.8g protein per kg body weight) are far too low for those that either (a) want to increase/maintain their lean mass or (b) are moderately to intensely active. Newer research suggests that the optimal intake range lies somewhere between 1.2-2.2g protein/kg body weight daily, with Attia’s aiming for the upper end of this range for his patients.
   

2. Distribute Evenly for Ease of Hitting Your Target - Given that a 175 lb person would want to consume ~175 g of protein daily, how that protein is distributed plays an important role. As Attia argues, hitting that target in one sitting is virtually impossible - a main drawback of time restricted eating/intermittent fasting (I have personally experienced this). Instead, it is far more effective to distribute that intake across the day, over 3-5 portions rather than 1-2. In doing so, we make our target protein goal easier to reach by breaking it into small hills climbed over time rather than one massive mountain.
   

3. Better Distribution = Better Usability - While the primary benefit of breaking up protein dosages is that it makes hitting targets more feasible, there is an equally important secondary benefit: our bodies use the protein better. Each of us has a maximal rate at which we can synthesize new proteins/muscle that, while highly individual, is strongly regulated by the human body. When the amount of circulating proteins/amino acids surpasses this level, the body simply uses the excess as fuel instead of putting them towards anabolism (muscle building). In other words, the protein we consumed goes to waste. By spreading out our intake more regularly, the body is able to keep muscle building ‘turned on’ without risk of maxing out our capacity.
   

4. Minimum 25g-30g Per Serving (If You Want Gains) - The body requires a signal for it to flip muscle building into the ‘on’ phase. That signal comes in molecular form via the essential amino acid leucine - when concentrations in the blood are high enough, the body takes that to mean there are enough protein ‘materials’ for construction to begin. The threshold, though, is important - so much so that muscle synthesis will not occur until leucine concentrations doubles. Research shows that this occurs with around 25-30g of ingested protein, assuming it is a complete source with sufficient leucine composition. Unfortunately that 15g protein bar isn’t likely getting the job done.
   

5. Quality and Source Matter - While raw numbers certainly matter, we shouldn’t eschew quality in favor of them. Protein source plays a critical role - we want protein that is both complete (contains a full array of essential amino acids) and usable (is easily digested and reused for protein synthesis). Depending on the food, certain amino acids will be more or less prevalent and those aminos can be either more or less usable. Animal and plant sources present the starkest contrast, as animal based sources tend to have much better amino composition, digestibility, and usability when compared to protein coming from plants. So if you are going to get a large amount of protein from plants, it is important to balance that source with other protein-rich foods that complement the amino profile you are getting.
   

The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food - Consumer Report (~4 min)

This was a jarring read. In this piece, Consumer Report pulls back the curtain on the chemical concentrations hiding in well known foods that many of us have likely consumed at one point or the other.

Recent research has highlighted the negative consequences of chemicals like bisphenols and phthalates, suggesting that they serve as powerful endocrine system disruptors. Considering the connection between hormones and health problems like diabetes, cancer, birth defects, and more, it is likely good practice to reduce the presence of these chemicals in our daily lives.

Yet while we are well aware of the obvious role plastics have to play in things such as water bottles and storage containers, it seems we are blissfully unaware of the role it is playing in our food. According to Consumer Report, while BPA and other bisphenols are decreasing in terms of prevalence since they last tested in 2009, phthalates were present in every single food item tested but one.

The most surprising one to me? Fairlife Core Power protein shakes, registering over 20,452 nanograms of pthalates per serving - about the same amount as present in a Burger King Whopper with Cheese wrapped in aluminum foil.

A good reminder that while the macros on the label are a good starting point, there is a lot more to uncover behind the scenes.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

ChatGPT and the Future of the Human Mind - Dan Shipper (~10 min)

This was a great article by Dan that addresses a common question many of us have in regards to AI: what role will humans have to play in the future?

The question is interesting for a number of reasons, but primarily to me because of its lindyness - its ability to endure through time. It is nothing new; we’ve been asking the same one for centuries, each time a new technology threatens to change the world.

But where does it come from? As Dan argues, it stems from a place of insecurity - from a challenge to our sense of self. Each time a new technology comes along and is able to do a formerly human skill at a higher level than the human themself, it is natural that we begin to have second thoughts about what differentiates us as a species.

And while technologies such as writing, the printing press, and the internet have all forced us to ask this same question, none has done so in the way that AI has. Because where others have challenged our skills, AI challenges something else entirely: the thing that we believe makes us most human, our minds.

How do we reconcile the fact that a technology challenges the essence of human thought itself? From Dan’s perspective, we simply answer the question in the same way we always have: not by thinking about what we are, but by thinking about what we do.

AI does not at all change what humans are - but it will certainly have effects on what we do. We are still figuring out exactly what those things are. But regardless of the skills AI comes to possess, the key will remain the same: to detach from skills we priorly viewed as core to our identities whenever a new technology finds a better way of doing it. As an example, we already know that AIs are incredible summarizing tools. We should have no problem subtracting ‘summarizer’ from our talent stack - AI is better at it than we are, and that is perfectly okay.

And while there is much left to unfold in the AI saga, we can take solace in what Dan suggests as the separating trait humans possess above all else: adaptability. Humans have been through this same story in different ways, hundreds of times.

So when it comes to the question of what role humans will play in the future, the answer is simple: we’ll figure it out.

Personal Growth

11 Public Speaking Techniques from the World’s Greatest Speakers - Polina Pompliano (~15 min)

I enjoyed this piece from Polina at the Profile as it hits on a topic we all can benefit from and one I’ve become intensely interested in over the past few years: public speaking. In order to help herself level up and overcome her nervousness, she sought to create a practical guide of techniques borrowed from the best speakers in history.

This resonated with me as I see myself in her story. Early on in my professional career, I struggled heavily with confidence in public speaking settings - so much so that I could feel my body shaking when I talked in front of large groups. I knew those nerves were not sustainable in order to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, and so I set out determined to find a solution. My attempted remedy was the same - to study the best and figure out what made them tick, in the hopes I could borrow some of the most successful strategies to level up. In the aftermath of a 5+ year process, I can thankfully say those days of jitters and nerves are long gone.

The main lesson I took from the journey is this: public speaking is an entirely learnable skill. And there are many people out there that have already figured it out, people that can serve as models to help you along in your own evolution

So with that, a couple of my favorite insights from Polina’s piece, including one suggestion of my own:

1. Address the Group As If You Are Addressing an An Individual - This is one of the most common pieces of advice given to new writers, and I can say with 100% confidence that there is direct transfer to the art of public speaking. Speak to an audience of one, even if you are speaking to an audience of one million. Doing so pays dividends on a number of levels - it builds intimacy with your audience while giving you a clear vision for who you are trying to reach (and what you need to say to do so). Oh yeah, and it has the added benefit of making you forget how many people you are actually talking to.
   

2. Slow Down (Or Speed Up) - Speed dictates a great deal for how a speech lands, and it is important you know what your bias is. Do you move too quickly, leaving your audience in the dust behind you (me!)! Or do you move too slowly such that your listeners lose interest and move on to other things? Once you know your bias, you can craft a plan to avoid it. If you move too quickly, build mental line breaks into your speech. Force yourself to draw out your words. Too slowly? Find a way to elevate your heart rate prior to speaking so that you’ll pick up the pace. Ultimately this one is about self-awareness: know thyself, and you can strike the proper balance. Fast enough to be captivating, yet slow enough to be understood.
   

3. Say Yes to Opportunities - As Polina suggests, the best way to get better at public speaking is to build a portfolio. I personally ascribe to this as I am convinced I became a better public speaker as a function of having to do a couple of wedding speeches (including my own). I had no clue what I was doing going in, but somehow figured it out each time. I learned that when you come out on the other side to people telling you “good job” - and meaning it - it’s a hell of a confidence booster. I also quickly figured out that if I could speak in front of 200 people at a formal then it should be far easier to speak in front of 15 people for a presentation in the office. So take it from me: don’t shy away. Say ‘yes’ when asked, volunteer when no-one else will. Small wins accumulate quicker than you think.
   

4. Ditch the Script. Use a Notecard Instead. (Personal Lesson) - Ever listened to someone reading off of a piece of paper for a speech and thought they sounded like a robot? Yeah, me too. It’s a tempting strategy to reduce the anxiety of a stressful situation - write down everything you want to say, and simply read it. But there is a big problem that results: your audience starts to feel like there is something fake about what is being said. Why? Because the script is perfect, and humans are inherently not. When we listen to others speak, we don’t expect 100% execution. We know there will be some “umms”, some pauses, some filler words. But that’s perfectly okay - to an extent - because it makes us sound less like a robot and more like a person. So instead of a script, I find it far more helpful to use a notecard. Mark down the big ideas - the points you can’t miss, the roadmarkers for your talk. Then let your mind and mouth do the rest - if you know the material as well as you should, you’ll be surprised at how easy the in-between pieces flow. Don’t shoot for perfection - ditch the script and simply be good enough.
   

Hey everyone,


Happy Cinco de Mayo Sunday! Hope you are able to enjoy today’s newsletter with your favorite Mexican beverage of choice this afternoon. It’s been a busy week out on the road for some AAA baseball in Albuquerque, so in the spirit of time let’s jump right into it.


In this edition of Weekly Reads:

• What Michael Penix’s letter to NFL GMs tells us about a key but often dismissed athletic trait

• How crypto helps put a price on ‘attention’

• Why writers are like DJs when it comes to ideas

And more! As always, hope you enjoy - and please feel free to share any feedback in the comments below.

- CG

P.S. - As a reminder, you can find the master database of Weekly Read resources here.

Sports/High Performance

A Letter to NFL GMs - Michael Penix (~5 min)


If you can spare 5 minutes of your day after reading this newsletter, I would highly suggest you invest that time into reading this piece to GMs in advance of the NFL draft from Michael Penix Jr. (former Washington QB; 8th overall pick by the Falcons). If you are a sports fan, this will be one of the best things you see today.


While you should read it for yourself, there were a couple things that stuck out to me. First and foremost, I think The Player’s Tribune is one of the most powerful platforms in media. Why? Because it gives a voice to the currency of sport - the players. It’s one thing to read stories told by reporters watching from the sidelines, and something else entirely to hear them from the perspectives of the athletes living in the arena. There is a piercing level of authenticity that comes from hearing the best in the world share their stories in long form format - one I don’t think can be captured in any other way.


And secondly, specific to this piece from Penix, there is a key trait that jumps off the page to me, one I’ve seen in the best athletes I’ve been fortunate to interact with: confidence. The best seem to have an unwavering belief in the fact that they belong, an inner conviction that no matter what they face they can rise to meet the challenge.


I’ve come to view confidence as essential to high performance, because the expectations at the highest levels of sport are intensely demanding. They come from everywhere - both from those outside the building (fans, media) and those within it (coaches, front offices, the athletes themselves). It takes a certain level of self-belief to acknowledge the bar and rise to meet it. Without it, it becomes far too easy to succumb to the pressures each sport presents. So much so that in baseball we often joke that there is a necessary sixth tool for big leaguers: delusion.


If you’ve followed Penix throughout his NCAA career, you’ll have noticed the conviction he has in himself. From his perspective, it is what has allowed him to overcome trials throughout his life to ascend to the pantheon of his sport. From a gritty upbringing to 4 season ending injuries, he was presented with many opportunities to fold - but never did. Instead, he used each challenge to make himself stronger, writing:

Truth is, I’d be more worried if I had never been injured. We don’t all come back the same. I can’t speak for those that have never gone through anything. But I can speak on me. I’ve seen how deep my foundation is. I know the storms I’m prepared to weather. For most people that’d be the end of their story. But there’s more to my story, and I own every page of it.

So while there’s much we can take from his story, I think the most important is exactly what he closes the piece with: MRIs, X-Rays, film, and statistics all matter. But more often than not it is an EKG that will tell us everything we need to know about a player.

Health/Fitness

With Exercise, Results Matter More than ‘Time Served’ - Peter Attia (~3 min)


A short but impactful piece from Peter Attia that addresses a familiar question: how much time do we need to spend exercising?


Attia’s response is simple: however long it takes to get the thing we care about - results. I think this is especially helpful to keep in mind given the proliferation of fitness protocols on platforms such as X, many of which suggest an ‘exact’ number of reps or amount of time for a given exercise. While helpful as a starting point, we should be wary of anchoring specifically to any recommendations we find.


Instead, as Attia writes, we should be much more focused on assessing whether or not progress is being made:

If the goal for exercise is to improve health and extend lifespan, then the metrics that matter are those most closely related to health and lifespan – i.e., VO2 max and muscle strength. Exercise duration is another step removed from that aim and is only one of the various “inputs”.

So while the inputs are certainly helpful, don’t lose the forrest for the trees. Measure what matters - the outputs that come as a result. Only then can we adjust the inputs accordingly.

Storytelling

The Best Way to Grow on Social Media - Dan Koe (~11 min)

I read through Dan’s newsletter weekly and find his takes on entrepreneurship to be particularly insightful. And while social media growth is distinctly not the purposes of this newsletter, there was a specific analogy in this piece I found to be particularly intriguing: writers as DJs for ideas. As Dan writes:

Writers are DJs with ideas. DJs take songs and sounds from multiple sources to create something new. Writers take ideas from multiple sources and string them together into something of their own.

It reminded me of a principle I’ve noticed in regards to creativity and communication: there are very few new ideas, but many new ways of presenting old ones. I find this to be a helpful framework through which to think about creating new things, as too often we put up barriers in our mind by believing we need to produce something entirely new.

I think our experiences in the education system are partly to blame for this fallacy in logic. From the second we step into our first English classes in grade school, we are beaten over the heads with the importance of avoiding a dangerous villain: plagiarism. Certainly, copying the works of others verbatim and without attribution is bad form. But I don’t think we get taught an important analogous truth: that the essence of creation is humans building - and expanding - upon the work of others before them. As Sir Isaac Newton said in a 1675 article to his fellow scientist Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

I find Dan’s analogy to be a helpful antidote to the creative roadblock from above. As writers and creators, we should think of ourselves as DJs looking to create our own ‘sound’. We do so by taking what we find from others and articulating them through our own worldviews, allowing old ideas to be shaped by our own experiences. In the process, we can reduce the activation energy needed for us to do the most important thing when it comes to creating: getting started.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

What Multicoin is Excited About in 2024 - Multicoin Capital (~12 min)

I find Multicoin Capital to be one of the more fascinating stories in the crypto space. Co-founded by Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain, Multicoin has had a remarkable journey of highs and lows. The firm rose to prominence on the back of early investments in technologies such as FTX and Solana, but was then crushed in the aftermath of the FTX blowup as Solana bottomed from highs of $260 all the way down to $8 in December of ‘22. They have since regained standing as their investments have recovered, serving as a great example in the space for both foresight and conviction.

In this piece, various members of the firm share the trends they are excited to follow into 2024 and beyond. And while I found the entire article to be insightful, there was a specific item that stuck out - what they call The Attention Theory of Value.

The crux of the argument is this: while traditional exchanges have established trading for ‘easy to price’ assets such as stocks and commodities, crypto enables price discovery for ‘hard to price’ assets that are oriented around attention. We’ve seen this in the past with markets centered around things such as sneakers and collectibles, but as Multicoin writes, crypto is serving as an amplifying force for such assets as a function of two key traits:

1. Permissionlessness: Anyone can issue an asset of any kind

2. Composability: Anyone can trade those assets on any venue

These are the mechanisms that underly the chaos you’ve no doubt witnessed with things such as meme coins and NFTs. The price discovery of these ‘hard to price assets’ is a function of the underlying technology itself. Markets like these have never before existed, and the result is a natural exploration phase that leads to the headline-making booms and busts.

The Attention Theory of Value hits at something I’ve long felt about crypto: it is as much as study of psychology as it is a study of technology and finance. Crypto enables a new speed through which assets can both be created and traded, and as a result we get to watch in real time how markets for previously un-priceable assets move. And while there is a great deal of noise created as a result, I think there are some fascinating things to be learned about how humans perceive the world and the value within it - if only we care enough to pay attention.

What Can Language Models Actually Do? - Dan Shipper (~9 min)

I’ve talked a lot here in past editions about how AI will shape our future as a species. Yet while this higher level discussion is important to get us thinking about the future implications of the technology, we are likely to miss the mark if we don’t first understand exactly what Large Language Models (LLMs) are, and therefore what they are capable - and not capable - of.

Dan from Every provides a great perspective here in a new series on how language models transform text in four unique ways: compression, expansion, translation, and remixing.

Starting with the idea of compression in this first piece, he highlights this as one of the primary roles of LLMs: taking large bodies of text and compressing them into useful formats. Where humans tend to struggle dealing with large amounts of information, LLMs are the exact opposite. What is our kryptonite happens to be their superpower. They are incredibly good at working from big to small, such that the more information with which they have to work the better they are. In more colloquial terms, they are exceptional at starting with a haystack and finding the needle.

Dan argues that this is a primary vector upon which LLMs and AI tools can be useful for humans. This is because when we think about human knowledge work specifically, we find that much of it is an experimentation in the art of compression. As he writes:

Once you start to look at things this way, you’ll see compression everywhere. Emails are often compressions of what people said in meetings. Poems are compressions of sensory experiences. Good decisions are compressions of the results of previous decisions. Basic programming is compressions of Stack Overflow answers.

By viewing LLMs as compressors, we can thus see a significant area of human function in which they can be useful for creative work.

The overarching theme is this: the more we understand the specific capabilities of AI tools, the more appropriately we can apply them to suit our needs and augment our productivity.

Personal Growth

101 Additional Advices - Kevin Kelly (9 min)

I found this to be a quality list of principles from Kevin Kelly, the well-respected technologist and founding executive editor of Wired magazine.


In general, I believe the best philosophy for dealing with advice is to borrow what you yourself find useful and discard the rest - especially in contexts like these where the advice giver has no knowledge of your specific life and experiences. As such, I’d highly suggest you read through this list yourself and pick out what resonates most deeply to you.


But in the meantime, these are the top 10 ideas from Kevin’s list that stuck out to me:

• The best way to criticize something is to make it better.

• Never hesitate to invest in yourself—to pay for a class, a course, a new skill. These modest expenditures pay outsized dividends.

• You can become the world’s best in something primarily by caring more about it than anyone else.

• Asking “what-if?” about your past is a waste of time; asking “what-if?” about your future is tremendously productive.

• Every now and then throw a memorable party. The price will be steep, but long afterwards you will remember the party, whereas you won’t remember how much is in your checking account.

• The surest way to be successful is to invent your own definition of success. Shoot your arrows first and then paint a bull’s eye around where they land. You’re the winner!

• Don’t fear failure. Fear average.

• For steady satisfaction, work on improving your worst days, rather than your best days.

• You can not truly become yourself, by yourself. Becoming one-of-a-kind is not a solo job. Paradoxically you need everyone else in the world to help make you unique.

• If you are more fortunate than others, build a longer table rather than a taller fence.

  
  

Hey Everyone,

Happy Sunday, and welcome back for a special post-birthday edition of Weekly Reads. I turned 30 yesterday and, thanks to some incredible (and sneaky) planning from my amazing wife, I was able to celebrate with some of my closest friends. Feeling especially grateful today for my time on this Earth so far and all of the relationships that have brought it to life. Thanks to all of you that have been a part of it.

Before we get into this week’s edition, I wanted to share something I thought might be valuable. With 12 editions now of Weekly Reads, I took the time to put all of the shared clips and commentary up to this point into an easily accessible, filterable Notion database. You can think of this as a place to find aggregated ‘signal’ - if someone were to ask me for the best resources on a specific topic, I would point them to this page.

You can find the link to it here. If you have any thought/comments on this, please let me know!

Now, to this week’s newsletter, featuring:

• Why operating from a “copycat league” standpoint in sport misses the point

• An important counter to the ever-increasing ‘biohacking’ movement

• “Why” Leading to “How” in Crypto

And, as always, more. Enjoy, and see you next week!

- CG

Sports/High Performance

Inside the Mind of David Stearns - ESPN (~17 min)

A great read on one of the more widely respected executives in professional sports. While I’ll leave the commentary on the nuances of organizational philosophy alone, there is a powerful sentiment in here that I personally ascribe to, encapsulated in this quote from Stearns (emphasis mine):

“With all of these things, it’s important to recognize that every situation is unique… We aren’t trying to be the Dodgers. We have to create our own identity, our own organizational way and be elite in a way that is unique to the New York Mets.”

You’ve probably heard the words “copycat league” at some point in the past in reference to the NFL, MLB, NBA, or other professional sports leagues. The phrase stems from a commonality across sports: everyone spends an inordinate amount of time looking around at everyone else, mimicking strategies, styles, and techniques that have bred success. Competitive advantages don’t last long according to this logic - if you find something that works before everyone else, well, congrats. But you best get back to work - others are paying attention and will quickly copy it for themselves.

Generally, this phrase is true and stems from sound logic. Success leaves clues, after all. But there is a dark side to spending too much time looking outward at others, whether in sports or in life: it makes it far too easy to forget who you are in the first place. Follow others, but do so with the recognition that the cost can be yourself.

There is a more effective strategy, which Stearns hits on in the quote. Order of operations matters here: you want to look inward first, so that you can establish what makes you both successful and unique. Only with this foundation in place does it then make sense to start looking externally - borrowing what you find to enhance your processes and principles, pushing the rest to the side.

You can’t ignore the industry completely; that is as good a recipe as any for getting left behind. But too many people and organizations spend time trying to copy those around them. It’s far more effective to lean into being yourself instead.

With the Help of an Innovative Coach, Rudy Gobert Aims to Convince His Legion of Critics - The Athletic (~12 min)

Found this to be an insightful piece that hit on an often under-discussed aspect of high level sport: the brain and decision making.

Whether to the evaluator or the common fan, it is easy to fawn over raw athletic traits; things like power, speed, or explosiveness. They are the things that jump off the screen at us, the components of sport that we can most easily identify with our eyes. They give us the “wow” factor, causing us to ooh and awe at the hitter that puts a ball 20 rows deep into the seats, or the quarterback that unleashes a 60 yard pass with but a flick of the wrist.

But while these traits are often necessary, that does not mean they are sufficient. We can think of them like a ticket to the dance - you’ll need them to gain admission, but having them alone is no guarantee that you’ll be crowned the belle of the ball. Instead, at the highest levels of sport where the margins are increasingly thin, there is something else that is often the separator: skill.

Skill, unlike athleticism, operates a bit more under the surface. It is a manifestation of an athlete’s hardwiring - their eyes, their brain, their bodies - all working in conjunction. It is an ability to process what the game in front of you requires at that moment, to decide and act according to the task at hand. Skill is harder to see, but that makes it no less important. In chaotic environments - which high level sport provides in spades - it is often how one reacts that demarcates the line between success and failure.

And just like you can get stronger in the gym or faster through sprints, skill at the highest level can be trained. The process to doing so is a a bit finer, and requires some more unorthodox measures. But the logic is quite simple: the more chaotic we make the environment in practice, the easier we make it for the athlete to respond to the challenges of the game. By incorporating various stimuli into training that force the brain and body to work together, we can take raw athleticism and work to smooth out its edges.

So, some simple advice for anyone working with athletes: Train the bodies. But don’t neglect the brain.

Health/Fitness

Why Biohacking Sends the Wrong Messages - Peter Attia (~7 min)

A great video from Dr. Peter Attia, whose work in the longevity space I highly respect, that hits on an important topic: the shortcomings of biohacking.

I see this as especially relevant considering the current landscape of health and fitness content, with the proliferation of people on the internet claiming to provide a golden supplement or protocol to both enhance and extend your life.

I share Peter’s perspective that biohacking is a trap. Truth be told, there is no shortcut to health and longevity. Rather than searching for the perfect supplement or training regimen, you are much better off mastering the basics: eat well, sleep well, train well. Do these three things at a high level, each in conjunction with the others, and the ROI will drastically outpace any single ‘miracle’ drug you could ever find.

The best part? The highest leverage actions are virtually zero cost. It takes a very limited amount of money to consume nutritious foods, get 8 hours of quality sleep, and find ways to enhance your fitness. Don’t fall into the trap thinking you need to spend an exorbitant amount of your hard earned dollars to move the needle. The things that matter are more likely than not free.

I’ll leave off with a quote I came across recently that I think puts the final nail of the coffin of biohacking: you can’t out-science hard f***ing training (hat tip to Layne Norton for this blunt truth).

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

The Robotics Renaissance - The Generalist (~10 min)

Thought this was an insightful read on a slightly different topic than I’ve shared here in the past: physical robotics. In it, Mario lays out the case that while AI is captivating the mindshare of the tech space currently, we shouldn’t discount the coming impact that physical machines will have on every aspect of daily life. Major progress has been made in the robotics space of late, with companies such as Tesla, Amazon, Google and others investing a substantial amount of human and financial capital to bring functional products to market.

While I appreciated the commentary at large, there was one point that stuck out to towards the end. Mario argues that as a result of VC money and hype cycles, it is likely robotics turns into somewhat of a ‘bubble’. Irrational investments and poor decisions will almost certainly be made. But the important piece is that regardless of whether said bubble ‘pops’, it is still likely to be productive. While many companies in the space will fall and rise, the ones that persist will usher in some of the most valuable technologies for our future.

I think this speaks to a broader principle underlying the arc of innovation, one we’ve seen at play in sectors such as crypto and AI already. Optimism in a technology tends to bring attention along with it as people sense opportunity. And where people see opportunity, money closely follows.

Both the attention and money are critically important for innovation - the presence of both increases the likelihood that a future altering technology will come to fruition. The more money and attention on a space, the more builders will flock to it. And while it is the building that ultimately matters most, the conditions that give rise to it are a critical component of the equation.

Crypto As Culture / Crypto as Tech (”Why” vs. “How”) - Jesse Walden (~2 min)

A good, short framing of crypto along two avenues by Jesse Walden of Variant Fund: crypto as culture (the ‘why’) vs. crypto as tech (the ‘how’).

In it, he argues that crypto as a technology will ultimately feel invisible as it becomes baked into the backend of products and services we use daily. Soon it will be the ‘how’ behind things that work. I tend to agree, as I see similarities between crypto’s arc and the evolution of the internet during the late 1990s.

As the Internet grew, a proliferation of self-described “Internet companies” followed - companies that significantly leveraged the web as their main platform for their services, products, or business models. Over time, this moniker disappeared as virtually every company came to rely on the Internet. No one today describes themselves as an “Internet company” - doing so would be like a Golden Retriever using the word “dog” to describe itself. Duh, we know.

In a similar fashion, I expect the term “crypto company” will fade out of style as it becomes engrained into the backbone of more and more services. If everyone is a crypto company, then no-one is a crypto company (side note: the same is likely to happen with AI as LLMs become plugged into the fabric of pre-existing products).

But where I find Jesse’s take to be most insightful is the path he provides for how we get there: crypto as culture. The ‘how’ will only come as a function of the ‘why’, he argues - it starts with having enough convicted builders to make the technology work in the first place. The specific reason for participation carries less significance than the fact that one exists - libertarians, cyperphunks, technologists, and traders are all in crypto for different ‘whys’. But they are all here, and that is the thing that matters most.

The why leads to the how. One is here already, and the other is coming soon as a result.

Personal Growth

7 Questions that Improved My Life - Sahil Bloom (~ 8 min)

One of my favorite quotes comes from the end of Tim Ferriss’s book Tools of Titans:

If you want better answers, ask better questions.

Ever since reading it, I’ve been on the lookout for insightful questions that can help me think about the world more effectively. This piece from Sahil provides a great starting list, derived from his personal experiences. Two of my favorites:

If someone observed my actions for a week, what would they say my priorities are?

This one has some parallels to a quote from the stoic philosopher Epictetus, which happens to be the background of my phone: “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody It.”

The point is one with which we are familiar: actions speak louder than words. But oftentimes, it is difficult to zoom out and see what our actions are saying; we are all the main character in our own plays, and with that comes challenges of perspective. This question is a helpful antidote: asking it takes us out of the staring role and puts us into the shoes of others more easily. Clarity increases as a result.

Am I allowing more information to get in the way of more action?

This one resonated with me because it hits at what the core of this newsletter means for me: a shift from consumption to production, from inaction to action. As Sahil mentions, increased information comes with a silent downside: it makes us more likely to get stuck in consumption mode. We sit in idle adding gas to the tank, rather than putting the car in motion. Information is but a means to an end - don’t fall into the trap of letting it become the goal itself.

Note: I’ve written more deeply on this concept in my pieces Philosophy of Focus and Focus in Practice.

Mental Models/Principles

High Capacity People - Kpaxs (~2 min)

I was drawn to the concept of ‘High Capacity People’ in Kpaxs most recent newsletter. The crux of the model is this: people possess varying degrees of ‘Capacity’ - the ability to consciously make things happen around them.

I find this especially insightful on two levels. First, from a personal standpoint - ‘High Capacity’ is something we should strive for and work towards. In my mind, this is what the pursuit of knowledge and skills helps us acquire: the ability to get things done. The more things we add to our toolbox, the higher our capacity becomes. And the more we are able to bend the world to our will.

Secondly, I see clear implications from a hiring perspective. ‘High Capacity People’ often form the bedrock of successful organizations. They solve problems that materialize out of nowhere, can put together novel connections for results, and generally operate better in high stakes environments. They are also incredibly fun to manage, if only for the reason that they are incredibly easy to manage. Simply give them a problem, get out of their way, and let them solve it.

To summarize: more capacity = more results. Build your own and bring others into the fold that have it in spades.

Hey Everyone,

Happy Sunday and welcome back to What I Read This Week, coming to your inbox from Greensboro, NC today.

It’s been a great week, which kicked off by receiving our World Series rings back in Arlington on Monday. Hard to describe the feeling of putting it on your finger, especially when you consider all of the effort and sacrifice that went into turning a dream into reality. In case you missed it, here’s how they turned out (in one word, incredible):

Now, lets get to some more “shiny” content. This week, thoughts on:

• Mounting injury rates for pitchers in baseball, and why there is no simple answer

• Exercise as an assassin for cancer cells

• The role of experimentation in creating the future

• And more

Enjoy!

- CG

Sports/High Performance

Pitchers and Injury Rates - Ben Brewster, Tread Athletics (~8 min)

Mounting arm injury rates for pitchers across professional baseball are a hot topic of late. While the rate of injuries early in this season may not be entirely abnormal compared to recent years, the issue is magnified as a result of the names involved. There may be more top-tier pitching talent on the injured list right now than at any point in the history of the game.

Currently, I’d describe the debate as murky at best. There is a cacophony of opinions from a variety of different perspectives, each adding a unique angle to the conversation. Each looking for a reason to point to, a scapegoat to bear the burden.

I’m not sure there is a singular rationale for what we are seeing. Instead, it’s like a wide variety of factors are combining to produce the effects we are seeing. Ben lays this out well in his thread, citing a variety of potential factors such as:

• Higher velocities across the game

• Pitching through fatigue

• Higher workloads at younger ages before ligaments are fully developed

• Higher velocities at younger ages (again, before ligaments are fully developed)

• Year round-throwing

• Ramped up early season intensity as a function of evaluation

• Changes in pitch frequencies, with pitchers throwing increasingly more breaking balls

• A decrease in the use of sticky substances for gripping the baseball

• The pitch clock and

• Mechanical factors

The jury is still out here, and there is much work to be done in order to solve the problem. But while we work towards a solution, nuanced takes like these from Ben that recognize the variety of factors at play can help us avoid the temptation to pin blame on one culprit alone.

Health/Fitness

Exercise as a Cancer Killer - Dr. Rhonda Patrick (~ 1 min)

A great nugget from Rhonda at Found My Fitness, in which she shares some recent findings on the relationship between cancer and exercise. According to newer research, high intensity exercise has the power to serve not only as a preventative strategy against cancer but also as a supportive treatment. In fact, a recent study showed that patients with stage 3 colon cancer who also engaged in aerobic exercise had a 40% reduction in reoccurrence and a 63% reduction in mortality.

The potential mechanism at play underneath the surface is fascinating, and relates to how your blood moves through body. Higher intensity exercise is related to faster blood flow, which in turn creates an intense shearing force on circulating cells. Cancer cells appear to be more susceptible to degradation by the stress caused from these forces and thus are more likely to be destroyed by rapid blood flow than normal cells.

Wild stuff, and yet another feather in the cap for intense exercise.

Storytelling

Writing Is Thinking: Learning to Write With Confidence - Steph Smith (~15 min)

I have followed Steph for a little bit as a function of her work at a16z, but went down the rabbit hole after listening to her interview on David Perell’s How I Write. That podcast led me to this older piece on her process for growing as a writer/storyteller, which contains some valuable insights. A couple that stuck out:

• Writing is Thinking - To write well means to think well. Oftentimes it is not the writing that is difficult, but rather the thinking behind it. And just like a muscle, it can be trained with consistent practice.

• Reduce the Activation Energy - Just showing up can be the most difficult part. But there is no path to improving at the thing without doing the thing. Step 1 is to reduce the energy needed to start.

• Decouple Steps of the Process - In order to think clearly, we need space. Writing is no different. Whatever our individual processes, creating ‘line breaks’ in between them can be a helpful way to allow for us to transition smoothly from one to the next.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

Reid Hoffman on How AI Might Answer our Biggest Questions - Every (~8 min)

Reid Hoffman’s resume is impressive, to put it lightly. Co-founder of LinkedIn. Former member of the PayPal mafia. Early investor in companies such as Facebook and AirBnb. Suffice it to say that when Reid talks about the future, I find it wise to listen.

In this interview with Every, Reid shares a unique perspective on how AI will shape our future through the lens of philosophy. Through his lens, AI is yet another example of how humans evolve with the world around us. Reid shares the perspective I have written about here before - that technology and humans have a bi-directional relationship. Humans influence technology, and technology influences humans.

As he says in the interview:

We’re not static as we are constituted by the technology that we engage and bring into our lives… Part of what we’re doing with AI and LLMs is creating tools to help accelerate that cultural/digital evolution.

In other words, AI will shape us in nearly as many ways as we will shape it. And due to the pace at which this change is occurring, it is more important than ever for us to pay attention to the underlying mechanisms at play from a more human level.

Let us not go blindly into the dark.

The Window of Opportunity is Here - Nat Eliason (~4 min)

Found this to be a good thought piece by Nat on how technology impacts both quantity and quality.

Throughout history, technology has shown a bias towards the former over the later - improving scale but not necessarily improving the standard. The printing press led to many more books published, but that says nothing about the quality of the books themselves. We can see this today with the proliferation of social media and online writing - there is more content than ever before as a result, but is that content actually any better?

Yet while this has been true up until now, Nat argues that AI is changing the game. From his perspective, it is a unique technology in that it not only helps you do something more efficiently but also helps you do something more effectively. Specifically in regards to writing. With tools such as Claude and ChatGPT, you now have a personal ghostwriter/editor that can enhance the quality of your output in ways never before possible.

Now is the time to take advantage - the “Window of Opportunity” as Nat calls it. Don’t get stuck in neutral.

Crypto Social Experiments - Maria Shen (~7 min)

This is a great read on some of the experiments being run in crypto, specifically from the social coordination perspective. From my view, highlighting projects like those listed here is critically important. Doing so provides a counter to the perception problem crypto has faced since its inception.

The industry as a whole takes a good deal of flak, with many viewing it solely as a casino for tokens and JPEGs. Right or wrong, one can understand where this comes from. Narrative is often driven by hype cycles, of which crypto is the king - big swings in price actions lend themselves to big swings in reactions. And at the top of the list every time the chart turns red is the never-ending question “where are the real use cases?”.

I think this line of questioning misses the point in many ways. First and foremost, the line of questioning is often disingenuous - I find it hard to believe you can take a real, honest look at the current landscape and fail to identify ‘use cases’. Bitcoin (hard capped monetary policy) and Ethereum (smart contracts) alone are enough to lend the space credibility.

Secondly, asking the question as if they must exist today is naive. The truth is this - crypto is a mechanism through which to take a new lens to old ideas, ones that have existed for centuries. The rules of money. Social coordination. Incentive structures. Property Rights. This list could go on and on. These ideas have formed the bedrock of our world for centuries - do people really think that we are going to figure out the definitive path to making them better overnight?

No, we certainly won’t. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Solving these problems requires both new technology and new lines of thinking. The latter often leads to the former, but once the technology is in place we must learn how it is best applied. This is where we are today - rewriting the fundamentals of society requires constant iteration.

So sure, much of crypto is a casino. But there is an entirely different — and more important — section that you’ll miss if you don’t pay attention. At its core, crypto is an idea factory. It is society’s version of an R&D division, taking new ways of thinking about the world and bringing them to light through technology.

Doing so takes time, and iteration. But make no mistake - where many ideas will fail, the ones that succeed and reach the final version will change how humans operate forever.

Personal Growth

How I Tricked My Brain Into Liking Running - Erik Vance (~4 min)

Found this to be a quick, insightful read on a couple of strategies we can implement to take something we don’t particular like — but know is important for us — and turn it into a habit.

One of the main takeaways for me: find a way to make it enjoyable.

Sure, a 3 min ice bath is probably going to suck. Same with those hill sprints or a 5am Barry’s class. But through the lens of reward bundling, there are small things we can do to make whatever it is we are trying to start suck less. And, dare I say it, perhaps even come to find ourselves enjoying it.

This is where the “treat yourself” line of thinking comes into play - bundle something you like into the action of the thing that you don’t. This could be something as simple as lighting a scented candle for the start of your home workout routine. Or in my case, a pot of coffee and a sparkling water next to my computer when the time comes to write.

Over time, the things you bundle start to blend together as one. In the process, your perception of the thing you hate becomes skewed toward the positive by the things you don’t.

Like trying to down a smoothie with spinach, it’s a hell of a lot easier if you just add a little bit of fruit.

Hey Everyone,

Happy Master’s Sunday! Publishing this week from out on the road, so let’s jump right in.

Today, finds on:

• Resistance training as a time machine

• Practical use cases for AI/ChatGPT you can tap into today

• A call to action to re-discover each of our “third places”

And more! Enjoy, and see you next week.

- CG

Health/Fitness

Resistance Training Partially Reverses Some of the Hallmarks of Aging - Dr. Peter Attia (~6 min)

If you were looking for a reason to pick some heavy things up and put them down, this is it.

In recent years, longevity focused research has begun to center heavily on the role of muscle mass and strength in age-related decline. A growing body of research in the field suggests that sarcopenia - the loss in muscle strength and mass as we age - is a primary culprit for decreases in quality of life, as muscle strength has been linked to a wide range of human functions such as cognition and metabolic health.

Yet while this process is a natural law of biology that we all must face, hope is not entirely lost. In fact, as Dr. Attia highlights here, new research suggests that strength training can serve as a de facto time machine for us to fight the aging process itself. By delaying atrophy of Type II muscle fibers, those most responsible for power output, resistance training can allow us to preserve muscular function more indefinitely than initially thought.

Most importantly, as the article points out, these effects appear to be age-agnostic. Both young and old adults alike experienced similar effects in terms of delayed Type II fiber atrophy, suggesting that it is never too late to start.

To Build Muscle, It’s the Sets That Count - Alex Hutchinson (~4 min)

We now know that resistance training is key to both building muscle mass and maintaining it over the course of a lifespan. But considering the impact that increased mass seems to have on human function, how can we be more strategic in gaining it?

While some may respond to a “minimum-effective-dose” of reps, as this article suggests, many others will find a “strength plateau” such that a minimum set is not enough. The antidote? More reps. According to a new research paper published in February, increasing the number of reps/sets performed with a given weight has a clear, direct relationship to muscle mass growth.

For muscle size, five sets is better than three and three sets are better than one. Essentially: whatever you are picking up and putting down, do it more.

How Sauna Frequency Affects All-Cause & Cardiovascular Mortality - Dr. Rhonda Patrick (~1 min)

Found this to be an interesting quick hitter on the health benefits of consistent sauna exposure. According to Rhonda, research has shown nearly a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality with a minimum-effective-dose of four 20 minute sauna sessions per week.

If you are not a fan of steady state cardio but still want to accrue similar benefits, this is your lifeline to go sit in a sauna instead (bonus points for doing both!).

Storytelling

The More You Say - Robert Greene (~1 min)

I liked this quote from Robert Greene, author of Mastery and The 48 Laws of Power:

“The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.”

I found it to be a blunt yet insightful re-framing of the commonly held advice to “say more by saying less”. Greene takes a different angle, encouraging us instead to focus on what we should avoid - sticking our feet in our mouths.

The shorter your message, the less opportunity you have to mess it up.

The Future (AI, Tech, etc.)

How I Use ChatGPT (As a Reasonable Person) - Evan Armstrong (~10 min)

If you have been reading this newsletter for the last couple months, then you are well aware of my belief that AI is leading to a fundamental shift in how humans work. Yet for all the promise the technology offers, it also comes with an accompanying air of intimidation. As a result, I find it valuable to demystify AI through practical tools, tips, and the like that any of us can follow. Theory is great, but practicality is even better.

In this piece, Evan Armstrong from Every offers just that - providing examples of specific use cases that ChatGPT can help you with today. In his words:

“Now - right now - AI has both the capability and ubiquity to significantly improve your productivity by more than 20%. We have crossed the product Rubicon.

Two specific ways Evan suggests to think about AI, both of which I personally ascribe to:

• Automation of Low Leverage Thought - For any and all low-leverage, tedious thoughts, think about ChatGPT as your first lifeline. Outsource the simple tasks, the questions you need answered so that you can open up space for your mind to focus on the things that carry the most leverage.

• AI as Your Personal Intern - Imagine having your own personal assistant, one that can create a graph, write lines of code, or format a paper for you at the drop of a hat. AI can do just that for you, today. A good rule of thumb: if you don’t have the time for it but you need it, see if ChatGPT can help.

How AI Will Usher in an Era of Abundance - a16z (~2 min)

Shifting from practicality to theory, I found this to be an insightful take from a16z on the broader impacts of AI across society. In short, they predict an era of abundance, writing:

Consumers’ lives will be enriched through new channels for creativity and self expression, new paths to self discovery and belonging, and new ways to do the most meaningful work of their lives.

Personal Growth

3 Steps to Avoid the Dark Side of Compounding - Sahil Bloom (~2 min)

Much of the personal development space revolves around the idea of marginal gains. The concept is simple: improve by merely 1% each day and you will experience valuable compounding effects as time works its magic. The more small wins we stack today, the bigger our spoils tomorrow.

Yet while it can be instructive to focus on the value of compounding the things we do want, it can be just as important to focus on avoiding what we don’t. This is because of a simple truth: compounding works in both directions, positive and negative.

As Sahil lays out in this piece, there is a dark side of compounding that we can quickly fall into if we are not careful. Small losses can accrue nearly as quickly as small wins. As a result, the next decision after a mistake carries an elevated sense of importance: we may have gotten cut, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop the bleeding.

We want compounding to work for us, not against us. So the next time you make a small mistake, realize the quickest way to get back on track is simply to take the next right step. You are always just one good decision away.

Third Places - Noah Ryan (~1 min)

We are all familiar with the concept of ‘work-life balance’, which establishes a dichotomy between the two areas in which we invest most of our time as humans. I’ve always felt there to be something missing in that framework, and think Noah helps fill in the gaps here with the concept of a third place: a separate, physical space for ritualistic social connection.

He points out that we have lost sight today of what many before us knew: strong social bonds are key for human functioning. As a downstream effect of modern concepts such as social media and remote work, we have become more physically disconnected than ever. We are spending less time with each other in person, losing out the benefits of togetherness in the process.

But there is a remedy. Noah suggests we move forward by first looking backward, re-establishing habitual locations where we can share space - and the moments it gives rise to - with others.

So here’s to each of us finding our own third places where we can connect on a deeper level. Let’s rediscover that which we once knew.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

The MiLB season kicked off on Friday night and it is some kind of exciting to be back into the full swing of things. 5 games per night across the full organization - hard to ask for anything better.

Back this week with edition #9 of Weekly Reads, featuring:

• Why Occam’s Razor is the most important mental model for dealing with sports data/technology

• Some good news on health benefits for coffee drinkers

• Why the framing of an idea is more important than the idea itself

• and more!

Enjoy, and see you all next week.

- CG

Sports/High Performance

Occam’s Razor & Sports Technology - Sian Allen (~2 min)

Found this tweet by Sian to be especially relevant in the current landscape of sports technology.

Over the past decade, the amount of data available on high performance has exploded. By way of technologies such as wearables, ball tracking systems, and motion capture, we currently have access to more data than at any other point in the history of sport.

On first thought, this is an overwhelming positive. But as someone that has spent the last 6 years knee deep in this information, I’ve found there are frequently times where the application falls short of expectation.

There is a simple reason for this, which I think of as an information paradox: large amounts of data present the opportunity for deeper insight, but the sheer volume of that information often obscures the truth. It is a story of signal and noise - the more data we have, the harder it becomes to figure what of that data actually matters.

The result, all too frequently, is exactly what the research abstract suggests:

An all too common trap for sport scientists is to get caught up in collecting information - then trawl through reams of numbers in an attempt to find relationships of interest (that may not even exist) - without being able to provide the coach or athlete with any meaningful information.

The antidote? From experience, it is simple: leverage expertise. Talk to the people that have spent time in the mud with the problem you are studying and now attempting to objectify. Chances are they will have highly valuable ‘anecdata’ - subjective knowledge gained from many years of hard work, things they know intuitively but they’ve always struggled to prove. By tapping into those perspectives, you can often take a short cut to finding the relationships that will carry value on the field.

Only by squaring theory against reality, data against expertise, can we give the data the utility it so desperately needs.

Health/Fitness

Is Coffee Healthy? - Layne Norton (~2 min)

Great news for the coffee drinking community (of which I am a proud member): human outcome data suggests there are a ton of positive benefits to regular consumption. Some standout benefits the “magic beans” have been associated with:

• Up to a 17% decrease in all-cause mortality (influence peaking at 3-4 cups/day)

• Up to an 18% decrease in cancer incidence

• Reduction in body fat without negatively impacting insulin sensitivity

• Improvements in cognition and exercise performance

Consider me sold. Now, if you need me you can find me at a coffee shop with a cold brew in hand (assuming I’m not at a baseball field).

Health Effects of Omega 3-Fatty Acids - Rhonda Patrick, Found My Fitness (~30 min)

What if I told you could take one supplement, and subsequently improve each of your cardiovascular, neurocognitive, musculoskeletal, immune, and respiratory systems?

Well, let me introduce you to Omega-3s. A growing body of research suggests that regular, high doses of Omega-3 fatty acids (especially DHA and EPA) have substantial benefits across a broad range of human functions. And while there is a wide array of controversy around fish oils on public forums, I found this breakdown to both informative and rooted in scientific research.

In it Rhonda mentions that the latest research suggests we should be targeting an Omega-3 Index (a bloodwork measurement of Omega-3 concentration) of about 8-10%. To do so, she suggests we should be taking about 1.75 g to 2.5 g per day, a number I have also seen Peter Attia mention as a target.

The easiest avenue (outside of eating wild caught fish such as Salmon) is through daily Fish Oil supplementation. But an important note: quality matters. Due to the molecular construction of Omega 3s, the bonds are fragile and can easily degrade if not properly isolated. So when some companies isolate their oils with excessive heat, they create a poor product that can cause more harm than good. To solve for this, check out Consumer Lab’s fish oil breakdown on common supplements found in the market and their respective qualities.

Rhonda Patrick’s top 3 Diet/Behavior Interventions for Optimal Health - Rhonda Patrick, Found My Fitness (~2 min)

Speaking of Rhonda Patrick, she did a crossover interview on one of my favorite podcasts: The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish. In it, she provides simple frameworks for both diet and behavioral interventions to target optimal health. Those interventions, put simply:

• Diet: Adequate Omega-3s + Adequate Vitamin D + Adequate Greens/Protein

• Behaviors: High Intensity Exercise + Resistance Training + Heat Exposure

Storytelling

Ogilvy on Advertising - David Senra, Founders Podcast (~3 min)

A great breakdown of advertising titan David Ogilvy’s magnum opus, ‘On Advertising’. You may not work in advertising or sales, but at some point all of us deal in communication - and these principles can help make whatever it is you are presenting stickier. A trio of my favorites:

• “You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.” - The world changes. So too must your message when the time calls for it.

• “You are a human being writing to another human being. Neither of you is an institution. Be personal, direct and natural.” - Write for an audience of one. You’ll be amazed how much easier this makes the process.

• “Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion… A communicator must be concerned with the unchanging man.” - Follow the advice of Jeff Bezos: focus on what won’t change.

How Art Silverman Took on the Movie Popcorn Industry - David Perell (~2 min)

A small story that shares a great lesson about communication: tiny shifts in how an idea is presented can cause big differences in how well it spreads. Reframe the same message in a different light and you’ll get an entirely different impact.

The Future (AI, Crypto, Tech, etc.)

The Knowledge Economy is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy. - Dan Shipper (~8 min)

Have you ever wanted to be a manager? Well congratulations, now you are.

In this piece, Dan provides an excellent take on how AI tools will make everyone a manager in the years to come, whether they realize it or not. He argues that if we are to get the most out of our AI models in the future, doing so will require skills we often attribute to the domain of management: setting a vision, evaluating talent, and knowing when it is the right time to get into the details.

The better we can “lead” our models in the future, the greater impact they will have on both our creativity and productivity.

Personal Growth

Should You Reverse Any Advice You Hear? - Scott Alexander (~6 min)

A piece on taking advice from others, which I find especially relevant for anyone that is young/up and coming in their career.

If you’ve ever been the ‘young person’ in the building, you’ve likely experienced a never-ending flow of advice from those with more experience than you. But while guidance is often valuable, there is a catch: how do you know if that advice is relevant to you, the individual?

Advice is always relative to the individual giving it. As such, I’ve always felt it important not to take advice at face value - to instead think deeply about where it is coming from and what that says about its intentions. Only by squaring it against what you know of yourself can you determine what is useful for you, and what is not; what is worth keeping, and what should be discarded.

I like Scott’s suggestion here to create a more attuned filter: invert any advice you receive. Rather than instantly conforming to what is front of mind, challenge yourself to consider the opposite perspective. In doing so, you open up the full spectrum of the advice presented rather than the narrow band brought to light by the person that gave it.

You may find what you need is not what was given, but instead the exact opposite.

Mental Models/Principles

The Top 1% of New Ideas I’ve Encountered - Sahil Bloom (~4 min)

Resurfaced an old but good thread from Sahil on some high value ideas/models. A couple of my favorites:

• Page 2 Learning - Asymmetric opportunities come from understandings that surpass the surface level. Everyone reads Page 1 - keep going to Page 2 and beyond for the real alpha.

• Anti-Goals - We spend a large amount of time investing in goals, thinking about the optimal outcome. But we can also borrow from Charlie Munger (”Invert, always invert”) and think about the opposite - Anti-Goals. By avoiding what we don’t want, we can craft a clearer path to what we do.