Welcome!

This is an email I send to keep in touch with people and share a bit about what I'm doing and thinking about.

This month, I'm:

• Celebrating my new book release!
• Using AI to help me plan
• Learning to love meetings

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📇 My new book is out!

My new book, "7 Myths About Money", came out on Thursday!

I'm unusually nervous about how this book will be received, because it challenges the status quo like nothing I've ever written before.

Poking holes in the "miracle" of compound interest, questioning home ownership, suggesting that saving is over-rated... there's a lot for people to take objection to.

Which is uncomfortable, because I have a deep and psychologically unhealthy need to be liked by everyone.

But whereas my last effort The Price Of Money was a "huh that's interesting" book, I believe this one will directly help a lot of people get unstuck and feel empowered rather than hopeless about their finances – so despite my fears, I'm super happy to have it out in the world.

If you'd like to read it, you can pick it up as a hardback, grab the digital version or listen to the audiobook.

The book!

📆 How I learned to love meetings

Like all right-thinking people, I hate meetings. Oh no, wait: I hated meetings. But that changed a few months ago when I reframed them in my mind.

Rather than seeing them as an annoyance that cuts into time when I could be doing "real work", I came to think of meetings as being the highest leverage activity in my week.

Think about it: if you're leading a weekly meeting with four full-time team members, you're influencing 160 hours of human effort! What an amazing time-bargain that you can achieve that by showing up for just an hour.

And the corollary of this framing is just as powerful: meetings are to be prepared for, engaged with and reflected on – not merely endured.

If you're attending a meeting as a contributor rather than in a "leadership" role, you still have high leverage: in a good meeting you'll receive the context you need to make sure that your own 40 hours of effort is being applied to maximum effect.

(Of course, it's also worth questioning whether a meeting is the right format to achieve the outcome you want. For example, to explain an idea or kick-start a new project, I'll often share a document or a Loom video then hold a follow-up meeting if necessary.)

POV: You've got a stinking cold but have an audiobook to record.

🤔 The obligatory "new year's goals" bit

On the off-chance you haven't done any goal-setting for 2025 yet, two great resources are Anthony Gustin's process and the Year Compass. Good planning mostly comes down to asking yourself powerful questions, and these are full of them.

Something I found helpful was to use ChatGPT's advanced voice mode while I rambled around some of these questions, asking it to just say "mmhm" to show it was listening and not chip in beyond that unless asked. I asked its opinion on a few things as I went along, then got it to write everything up into a coherent, detailed plan once "we'd" finished. Job done!

Granted, the best way to do planning is probably with pen and paper, interspersed with leisurely walks and reflective conversations with people who know you deeply. But when time is tight (as it has been for me this year), I've found doing it verbally to be way better than not doing it at all.

In the end I landed on four goals for the year – fewer than ever before. This is largely a deliberate choice: I've gradually learned that if you can't quickly reel your goals off when asked, you won't be able to keep them fresh in your mind throughout the year.

But pleasingly it's also because there are parts of my life (like fitness) that "just work" as a result of habits that are already well ingrained, so they don't need any specific goals.

🔗 Odds and ends

• Family trips we're considering for this year: Barcelona (again), Malaga (again), Krakow, a Baltic summer (based in Riga?), some kind of Swiss rail trip. If that sparks any thoughts or recommendations, please let me know!

• A powerful question I'm reflecting on: how much do your habits and patterns help you versus hinder you? (Taken from Tim Ferriss' interview with Cyan Banister, which in itself is insane and worth watching.)

• I'm getting interested in building my own little AI-enabled tools for personal use, and have been looking at platforms including Relevance AI, Cursor and Langflow. If you have any experience or recommendations in this area, I'd love to hear from you!

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers!

Rob

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