Dickie's Digest - Mental Wealth, Magic Mind, Maker Time, Manager Time, and Seth Godin
Hey there - happy Sunday.
The Digest is PACKED this week. We’re talking mental wealth (and how to build it), Maker time (and how to schedule it), and sunk costs (and how to ignore them). Plus, a couple of epic podcast episodes. Let’s dive in.
One quick thing from me this week. I released the Digest Podcast Compendium. It’s a curation of my all-time favorite podcast episodes with links, tags, and summaries of the key takeaways. Every podcast the Digest has ever recommended is inside this table. You can check it out here!
After releasing it, the initial feedback was: this is epic but a bit overwhelming. Over 140 hours of podcast content: how would one ever get through them, and where should they start? So I went to work creating a premium version that includes summaries and key takeaways for every episode. On top of that, anyone who grabs the premium version will get three new summarized episodes every week and an invitation to a Slack channel to riff on the best episodes. If you love the Digest and want a rich library of podcast content, check out the compendium here. Digest readers are getting early access to the premium version, which will double in price next week.
That’s all from me! In this week’s Digest:
⏳ Maker Time, Manager Time, Time Boxing, and Intentional Day Planning
🎧 Justin Kan on the Below the Line Podcast with James Beshara
Have an epic week!
Dickie
🧠 Mental Wealth with James Beshara
This essay from James Beshara is a gem. When we think of mental health, it’s synonymous with mental illness. But with physical health, we think of someone in shape, happy, and energized.
In this essay, James flips the script, viewing our mental health as mental wealth, something we can invest in similar to physical health. As we do our physical health, we can make subtle changes over time that compound into mental wealth in the long run.
Mental Wealth = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Stress Management + Exogenous Compounds
The five pillars of mental wealth all depend on one another. They’re also correlated, with strong performance in one area making strong performance in another inevitable. You can think of your mental wealth as a flywheel, each pillar reinforcing the next.
There’s plenty to learn from this article. But for the TL;DR version, you can make one change in each area today that will kick off your investment in mental wealth.
Sleep: wake up at the same time every morning.
Diet: get your food allergens checked + stop drinking close to bed time.
Exercise: perform three high-intensity aerobic exercise sessions every week.
Stress management: journal on five things you’re greatful for + spend three minutes breathing every night and every morning.
Exogenous compounds: make this the last bucket you tinker with, only after auditing the first four.
James also has an epic podcast called Below the Line, which you can check out in the podcasts section below. I also picked up a case of his productivity drink Magic Mind which I’m excited to try out.
Read more: Mental Wealth.
PS: I wrote an essay on investing in the intellectual side of my definition of mental wealth: Idea Flow and Mental Wealth.
⏳ Maker Time, Manager Time, Time Boxing, and Intentional Day Planning
At the top of my project list sits a project called Intentional Day Design. I’m experimenting with different techniques for planning my week, planning my day, working, and scheduling. I plan on eventually writing an essay on the techniques I’m using.
The first thing I’m doing is splitting my time into Maker time and Manager time, based on Paul Graham’s classic essay. Maker time is for creating, building, and shipping. No distractions. No interruptions. No meetings. At least three hours in length. Manager time is everything else - administrative work, meetings, calls, anything I wish I could automate or delegate. Finding the right time of day to schedule my Maker time is the current experiment.
Zooming out to the weekly view, I’m experimenting with theming my days. I’m working on different projects which require different kinds of thinking. The context switching costs between them is overwhelming. To fight this, I’m creating a daily list of projects I’m NOT working on that day. Anything that comes in related to that project is shipped off and put out of mind until that project’s day. This one is challenging, but I’m getting there.
Finally, I’m thinking harder about how to spend my time. I’m trying to strip away the noise and ask: what is the highest leverage way to spend two hours today? I’m not sure if I 100% agree, Naval says you have just two productive, creative hours on any given day. I’m calling these sacred hours and defending them ruthlessly. This post from Khe Hy has been helpful in thinking about how to spend them.
If you’re looking to experiment with something similar, these are the resources I’ve found the most useful:
📝 Inside the Mind of Seth Godin
Seth Godin is one of my favorite online writers. In fact, the very first edition of Dickie’s Digest (sent to three readers) featured my favorite blog posts of his. This week, I dove back into his work after listening to him on the Tim Ferriss Show promoting his new book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work.
Seth has shipped a short blog post every day, literally every day, for a decade. That’s incredible. And it makes me want to start doing just that. He wastes no words, gets to the point, and moves on. Exactly how writing should be.
A few of my favorite blog posts from Seth:
Don’t Shave That Yak [HIGHY RECOMMEND]
You can see all my favorites in this tweet thread.
🎧This Week in Podcasts
If you love the Digest and its weekly podcast recommendations, consider checking out the Digest Podcast Compendium. It’s a curation of my favorite podcast episodes ever recorded, tagged, and summarized with three key takeaways. Supporters get three new podcasts and summaries every week plus an invitation to a private Slack group to chat about the best episodes.
Check it out: The Digest Podcast Compendium.
This week I listened to three epic podcasts which served as the inspirations for three tweet threads.
Steph Smith on the Creator Lab Podcast [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
The Creator Lab podcast is on fire. The last five episodes have been some of the better podcast episodes of 2020. In this episode, Steph Smith, leader of Trends at the Hustle, breaks down her process for creating content. She’s a prolific online creator who understands the space better than anyone I’ve heard. If you’re into creating content, this one is a must-listen.
Justin Kan on the Below the Line Podcast with James Beshara [HIGHLY RECOMMEND]
In my attempt to Lindy my podcast listening, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes from 2019. After reading James Beshara’s essay on mental wealth, I dove back into the first episode of his podcast Below the Line with Justin Kan. As someone who reached extreme success, Justin’s thoughts on wellness, happiness, and peace were refreshing. It sounds like he’s been on quite a journey of self-rediscovery, going six months sober and digging through some of his mental scar tissue. Now I’m going to revisit Part 2 and check out Justin Kan’s new podcast The Quest.
🧠 Idea Corner
🥃 Sunday Chaser
I may be a little late to the party, but The Queen’s Gambit is the best show I’ve watched in a while. I can’t put my finger on why, but it’s so well filmed, fast-moving, and just weird enough to keep my wanting more.
Thanks for reading!
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