3 Lessons & Reflections From My First 14 Days In Europe

Spoiler alert: I cancelled my return flight

Aug 05, 2023

Greetings from Amsterdam!

I’ve spent the last two weeks visiting Europe for the first time. I started with 7 days in London and just wrapped up my 5th day in Amsterdam.

I was supposed to fly back to Miami tomorrow, but this morning I woke up and cancelled my flight.

Amsterdam hooked me from the second I landed, so I’m going to spend the month of August exploring everything it has to offer.

With that in mind, here are 3 lessons and reflections I’ve had since arriving:

1. What is it that I like about Amsterdam—and where are the other cities like it?

If I could design an urban city, it would look just like Amsterdam—for 4 reasons:

The city is hyper-walkable. You can cover the entire city end-to-end, by foot, in 30 minutes. And if you hop on a bike (which is what almost everyone does here), you can cross the city in 10 minutes. This means the city optimizes streets for pedestrians, rather than for cars. And as someone who likes to put in 20k steps per day wandering and exploring, this is the dream setup.
The city optimizes for social connection (without any status signaling). On every street corner, you can find groups of people laughing, smiling, drinking, and having conversations. Every cafe has big coworking tables throughout, rather than individual working tables. But unlike New York and Miami (the two cities in the US I have spent the most time living in), there is very little “flashiness.” Everyone dresses in plain basics. There are *zero* nice cars on the street. And everything is based around function and efficiency, rather than signaling or status.
The architecture is classic but nonhomogenous. You can see the foundational parts of Dutch architecture in every building, yet they all look different. It’s like each building starts with the same rough sketch, but takes on their unique traits and characteristics as they come into their final form.
There is a global footprint of people. So far, I’ve met people from Australia, France, England, Mexico, Dubai, Germany, Switzerland, India, Italy, and Belgium. That’s the beautiful part about these European “hub” cities—you are just an hour or two on a plane or train away. An added bonus is there’s a premium on being from the USA. Any time I start to speak in English with an American accent, I can see the other person’s energy shift. It creates a bit of an “I’ve been training to be able to have this conversation in English, time to show up for it.” And I can tell they are more thoughtful and intentional with the words they use, which makes the conversation more engaging.

These are just a handful of the traits of the city that came to mind as I reflected on why I’ve enjoyed my first 7 days here.

Now I’m curious to find other cities that share similar traits.

To start, I plugged the 4 points above into ChatGPT and asked it to come up with some recommendations. It recommended Copenhagen, Berlin, Melbourne, and Barcelona.

Looks like I’ve got some more exploration to do!

2. What could you not pay me $1 billion to stop doing? And how can I shape my life around doing these every day?

One of the journal questions I’ve been reflecting on this week:

What could you not pay me $1 billion dollars to stop doing?

The point is to use this question to find activities you do *purely for the sake of doing them* rather than for any result or financial outcome.

To start, I listed out everything I’ve done over the past few days. Then, I asked myself if I would never do them again for $1 billion dollars.

And for these 5 questions, the answer was no:

For $1 billion dollars, would you never lift weights again? Absolutely not.
For $1 billion dollars, would you never write for 90 minutes in the morning again? Absolutely not.
For $1 billion dollars, would you never visit a new city again? Absolutely not.
For $1 billion dollars, would you never talk for think about business again? Absolutely not.
For $1 billion dollars, would you never go to dinner with friends again? Absolutely not.

From here, I asked a follow-up question: if these are activities no amount of money could stop me from doing, how can I shape my life around doing them every day?

And that left me with a rough “daily structure” that I’m doubling down on during my time traveling:

Morning writing & idea processing for at least 2 hours (done first thing over espresso, which I’m doing right now)
Spending a few hours in the middle of the day working on different businesses, collaborating with my team, and removing bottlenecks
Lifting weights or playing some kind of sport in the afternoon (completely tapped out from the internet & my phone)
Spending the evening with friends, reflecting on the day, and exploring different ideas (that I can then write about the following morning)

Now, the best about this daily structure?

I can do it basically anywhere in the world—which leads perfectly to my third reflection:

3. For the first time in human history, there is no tradeoff between exploration and personal ambition

Pre-COVID, there was a strong tradeoff between these two.

If you wanted to be professionally ambitious, that came at the expense of travel & exploration.

If you wanted to prioritize travel and exploration, that came at the expense of personal ambition.

But now, people are realizing you can have both. And that realization is only going to accelerate.

You can build businesses on the internet that allow you to work from wherever while still communicating with your team
You can access anything you need in any city to keep yourself healthy (gyms, nutritious food, social connection, rest)
You can segment your days to focus on the highest-leverage work in the morning, then shut your laptop and explore in the evening (without any negative impact on your business)
You can find other people living the same lifestyle in each place you travel (rather than live the solo “digital nomad” lifestyle that inevitably leads to loneliness)

However, permanent travel is not a lifestyle I want to live.

Instead, I see the ideal year as one with seasons of traveling and seasons being stationary.

For example, I find Miami to be the best place in the world to live from November to May. But from June to October, it’s not as ideal because of the summer heat and the follow-on of hurricane season.

This seasonality is similar for other popular places in the US like Austin and Scottsdale. And it’s also true for popular international hubs like Dubai and Cape Town.

This calendar lends itself to having:

7-8 months in one place, strapped in & building
4-5 months exploring (while still making progress, just a little bit less so)

I’m going to keep looking at this idea of the “ideal entrepreneurial year” from multiple perspectives and talking to different people about it. Stay tuned for a long-form piece in the future.

That’s it on the reflection side for this week. If any of those resonated, hit reply and let me know your thoughts—I reply to every email!

To finish out this Digest, here are 3 pieces of content I’ve been enjoying:

Jeremy Giffon on Invest Like The Best — one of those podcasts I stopped taking notes on because I knew I was going to relisten to it in the future
Huberman Lab on fostering and applying Growth Mindset — I particularly liked the ideas around praising yourself and others around “inputs” like effort rather than “traits” like being smart or talented.
Mr. Beast on Colin and Samir. I listen to just about every podcast interview this guy does. Pure obsession and intensity unlike anyone else in the world. Always inspires me to think bigger.

Thanks for reading! I’m going to continue to play around with the format of this newsletter over the coming weeks and months before recommitting to a consistent publishing cadence.

For now, I’d appreciate it if you hit reply with any points you would be interested in seeing go deeper on (via a long-form blog post or a YouTube video).

And as always, feel free to forward this to a friend who you think would find it interesting. That way, the newsletter continues to grow.

Chat next week!

Dickie