Early September

Topics on my mind lately:

• “O’Donnell’s story is a reminder that physical fitness and health are not one and the same.” Tim O’Donnell Reveals He Suffered Heart Attack During Challenge Miami. A scary story that ultimately had a happy ending, against the odds. One key to longevity and athletic success is knowing how to distinguish good pain from bad. Chest pain radiating into your left arm and jaw is never the good kind.

• Robert Sapolsky is a brilliant neuroscientist and endocrinologist at Stanford and his book, Why Zebras Don’t get Ulcers, was hugely influential on my life. In this podcast with Andrew Huberman he talks a lot about testosterone and some of the research into its effects on behavior. Turns out testosterone mostly makes you more of who you are - if you’re aggressive, it makes you more aggressive, but if you are generous, it also makes you more generous.

• Management philosophy - one thing I was taught early in my career in the Navy was “you can’t get promoted until you train your replacement”, which was always a good motivator to think about how you help the people on your team up-level their skills.

• Crypto has bounced back a bit, NFT’s are now all the rage and I would guess are a driver in Ethereum price increases. I’m not yet actively investing in this arena, frankly everything seems overpriced (not just crypto). Although I was early on the Bitcoin/Ethereum bandwagon I am struggling more to see the utility of NFT’s. I plan to spend some time on this over the next few months. This white paper from Visa is on my reading list. These days I’m more interested in looking for just the right plot of land, with water, acreage to farm, and hunting grounds nearby. Despite all the drawbacks, life in Silicon Valley can be pretty awesome, especially when this is the view on your Sunday bike ride.