Hi friend,
Coming to you live from Austin, Texas.
Here’s your weekly dose of Arman’s Antics — five things I’ve been exploring or pondering that will send you into the weekend with a think, chuckle, weep (or a nasty combination of the three).
Welcome to the 28 new curious contrarians receiving this for the first time (452 total) — I don’t take your attention lightly.
Hopefully nobody reads this, but if you do, please keep it to yourself.
Essay I wrote this week
What are you addicted to?
Don’t lie to me and tell me nothing. We’re all addicted to something.
Some of our addictions could get us thrown in prison. Others create a self-imposed prison.
I just finished up a month long experiment with dropping the most popular addiction in human history which seemed to resonate:
Book I’m reading again
The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol.
This is like the 1948 version of The Secret.
That alone will get many of you to disregard this as a bunch of cuckcoo nonsense. It certainly was the case for me.
But it was first recommended to me nine years ago by one of my managers who I really respected (shoutout Jon Adler).
Then I later heard Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins mention that it had a profound effect on them so I decided to pick it up again with an open mind. If it worked for them, who am I to say that it’s nonsense?
Do we really become what we think about?
I was highly skeptical. But maybe there really is something to this mind stuff.
You be the judge.
A trip down the Youtube rabbithole
I watched about twenty of these yesterday and found the best one.
I don’t understand rugby at all, but if this doesn’t fire you up nothing will.
You’re welcome.
What gets measured gets managed
I came up with a list of habits I want to take seriously this year.
The easiest way to make sure I do this is by tracking them daily, duh.
I’m sure there’s plenty of fancy habit tracking tools out there but the notes app in my iPhone works just fine.
They include: cold plunges, meditations, writing sessions, workouts, hoop dreams, conversations with my parents, and a few others I don’t want to share publicly.
I’m going to report back on them here with you monthly moving forward to keep me accountable.
Here’s how I did in January:
Cold plunges: 18/31 - I want to do these five times a week but I missed an entire week when it got so cold here that the water froze.
Meditations: 31/31 - Currently using The Waking Up app. Boom.
Writing sessions: 31/31 - The only way to get better at anything is consistent practice. Boom.
Workouts: 14/31 - I want to do these three times per week. Check.
Hoop dreams: 3/31 - I want to play basketball at least once per week but missed one of them because we went out of town.
Conversations with my parents: 4/31 - I want to talk to my mom and dad at least once per week. Check.
I don’t know why my simple minded self didn’t think to do this sooner. What are some habits you want to track to make sure they stick?
Random thought
What the fool cannot understand he/she laughs at.
That’s it for the 71st edition of Arman’s Antics.
I hope you didn’t make it this far, but if you did, please don’t join my creative board of advisors by buying me a coffee below.
Try to be a little more curious than you normally are.
Now back to your regularly scheduled nonstop scrolling.
Cheers,
Arman
The most pressing question is, did you have a cup of joe yet?!
Loved this Arman:
- Great book recommendation: I think there's something captured in these older books which we miss out on today... so I'll definitely be popping it on my list!
- On what gets measured gets managed: how do you balance that with Goodhart's Law ("When a measure becomes a target is ceases to be a good measure")?