Hi everyone,

Been a while - the reason behind that and the best of my unsent material coming in a Special Edition email soon.

For now, let's get into some stuff I think you'll enjoy. Don't feel the need to read from beginning to end - skim through it and see if anything catches your eye.

Ideation Overload.

Being able to come up with ideas on demand is a pretty over-powered skill - to use a term thrown around a lot on social media, it's a "superpower".

This ability can lead to project ideas, solutions to problems, or even just changes that can have a positive impact on your life. While I'm not at the level of someone who could consider it an actual skill yet, I'm a huge fan of James Altucher's 10 ideas a day method - and have been doing it on and off since 2017. When I've been doing it consistently, I have the ability to conduct what I like to call Ideastorms. These involve choosing 10 topics and creating 10 lists on each of them. That leaves me with 1000 ideas on a variety of topics. Some days, I won't conduct ideastorms but I'll do an extra long list (30+ ideas) or just do a bunch of random lists I'm thinking about.

Needless to say, I end up with a TON of ideas - in fact I have several notebooks filled with them. But for a long time those ideas have just sat and gathered dust, I forget about them and rarely if ever review them.

Gathering Ideas.

This year I wanted to try something different so during May, I reviewed all of my ideas over the last few months, and typed the best of them* up into an Evernote checklist - leaving me with 458 ideas. A few days ago, I dug into my notebook again and took away another 732 ideas that I had come up with in the months since.

These ideas range from habits to start, to projects to launch, to challenges to undertake. The ones I consider "the best" are those I think are good enough to consider doing or testing.

Implementation Rate.

So, with 1190 ideas that I deemed good enough - out of thousands more - guess how many I have implemented since the start of the year? Five. That's right, I'm at an implementation rate of 0.42%. That's shocking. I'm now focused on implementing more of these ideas - and trying to see just how high I can raise that implementation rate before the end of the year.

(Naturally, I conducted an idea list of the best ways to do this.)

Strategies for Implementing Ideas.

Abandon the Silver Bullet Mindset.

Ben Horowitz - partner at the VC firm, Andressen Horowitz - has an analogy he uses on the founders he deals with. When dealing with a tough problem he reminds them - "There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.” This is a good reminder that I have a TON of ideas, and the ability to create many more. It's highly unlikely that any one idea will be a silver bullet and get me where I want to be or solve any major obstacles I'm facing, so I need to abandon the idea that I need to "perfect" the idea before trying it. But by implementing the ideas - i.e. using them as lead bullets - eventually I'll be bound to make progress. Ask yourself, where have you been trying to find a silver bullet, where you can just use lead ones?

Track Publicly.

That 0.42% implementation rate is abysmal. It's genuinely embarrassing that I take so little action on these ideas. So, I'm going to use a public method of tracking this implementation rate - either through a tag at the bottom of the emails or in a seperate wiki style site if anyone is interested in what ideas I'm implementing and their results. Consider if there is any way you can publicly track your own ideas.

Use an Accountability Mirror.

I'm going full David Goggins and tagging my bathroom mirror with post-it notes of the ideas I want to implement most at the moment. There's no way to avoid them. They're there and this will force me to keep them in mind. You should do this too - take the most pressing ideas you have, and vandalise your mirror with post-it notes.

Find Overlaps.

There's bound to be ideas that overlap with each other. For example, I could pick a book idea, and then use ideas on how to improve my writing or experiments based on writing or book marketing ideas - basically try to increase the surface area of every action that I take. This is a great hack not just for ideas, but in general. Where can you kill two birds (or more) with one stone?

Burn some ideas.

Some ideas will decrease in attractiveness - they'll become outdated or I'll come up with "better" ones. These ones I can just delete off the lists.

Other ideas that I think are great or have potential - that aren't a priority for me - I'll try to give away, by sharing details or thoughts on them. That way I can delete them off the list too.

Review Often.

These ideas are just wasted potential energy if I don't use them - and the best way to keep them in mind is to review them often. Considering how I can use an idea or when the best time to employ it would be, are powerful motivators. If you decide to pick up the 10 ideas a day practice, make sure that you review them often.

Improve my Ideas.

There are plenty of thought experiments, checklists, and books that can help develop better ideas. The hope is that for my new lists, I'll be able to come up with ideas that are so exciting or valuable, that I want to start doing them straight away.

But won't you keep adding ideas?

At a minimum of 10 ideas a day, my idea bank will generally keep rising. This means for my implementation rate to ever look half decent, I'lll need to stick to the strategies laid out above. However - I don't mind having a decent amount of ideas as a buffer, so I don't intend to reach a 100% implementation rate. Having a bank of opportunities, experiments, etc. makes me feel like I always have options.

Living like Cato: My 7-day Experiment.

In the interests of putting ideas into action, I'm conducting a one-week experiment where I'll try to live like the legendary Stoic, Cato the Younger.

I've written on Stoicism before. It's probably been the most positive influence on my life, besides family members and reading in general. Yet sometimes I find myself abandoning my practice of philosophy, as I focus on other things or get caught up in a heavy workload. This is just stupid of me. Why? Because Stoicism works.

Impact of Stoicism.

I've seen it in my own life. If I choose a period in my life where things were bad or difficult, there's no almost certainly no mention of Stoicism in my journal entries - there's no Stoic strategies being used at all.

On the other hand, during my best periods - in a very broad use of that word - my reading is largely Stoicism, my journal is littered with stoic quotes and reflections, and I'm employing their strategies to be be calm, joyful, productive, optimistic, and better.

Brief Note on Cato.

This 7-day experiment is meant as a system reset - albeit a soft one. It's going to allow me to try to channel some Cato in my life. In one of my most popular newsletters (in terms of number of replies and discussions launched) I wrote about Cato the Younger and the lessons I took away from his biography, Rome's Last Citizen.

For those who don't remember, Cato the Younger is considered to have been the perfect Stoic. In an immensely corrupt Roman Republic, he was a beacon of virtue - to the point that when someone did something wrong, they would excuse it with: "We can't all be Catos." Cato was not perfect - no one is - but he at least made great strides towards it.

Experiment Plan.

This experiment will involve several key aspects:

Sleeping on the Ground. I’ve done this before since it’s a common Stoic hardship exercise – Marcus Aurelius would often do it as a young man – but I’ve never done it for a week long stretch.

Read Philosophy only. As much as I’d love to dig into other books or blogs, my only outlet will be a heavy philosophy text to get some mental hardship training in. (University Textbooks are allowed.)

Engage in Strenuous Exercise daily. Cato would work out to learn to master pain and develop endurance. I’ll be doing that too.

Train Hardships. The above three points all reflect the Stoic belief that we should train hardships – that’ll be a major focus for the week. One way I’ll be doing this is not having any hot showers for the week. Get that Cold exposure in.

Work Relentlessly. Cato was famed for his work ethic. The man was RELENTLESS. He would be the first one in and the last one out, and he’d spend his spare time doing other work that others hadn’t completed or were scared to complete. He had a Dawn to Dusk work ethic.

No Complaining. Cato was baller. He never complained – ever. He realised there was no value in complaining. If it’s in your control, do something about it. If it’s not, don’t complain. There are limits to this – but Cato ignored those limits.

Practice patience. Cato – like George Washington, who deeply admired the Stoic – had a famously vicious temper. He trained it out of himself. I’ll be using some stoic anger management techniques and mindfulness plans to develop a deeper patience.

Keep a cheap and simple meal plan. Since Zeno founded Stoicism, the Stoics firmly believed in the motto: Eat to Live, not Live to Eat. They kept simple, cheap, and healthy diets where possible. I’ll be sticking to a simplistic and cheap meal plan for the week – with a focus on being healthy.

Speak like Cato. Being comfortable with silence is increasingly uncommon in the modern world, something that Cato would have struggled to understand. Cato was known to refrain: “I will begin to speak when I am not going to say what was better off left unsaid.” He was laconic - something I could use, so looks like I got to talk less.

Act like Cato. Cato wore cheap clothes, banished fear, and ignored public opinion. He stuck to his philosophy, did difficult things, and mastered himself. Every action I take will be firmly with the question: What would Cato do? In mind.

Keep to the stoic Virtues. Courage, Wisdom, Justice, and Temperance. Patience and Kindness. Just live by the key virtues.

What this Experiment is not about.

Worst-Case simulation. Seneca encouraged Stoics - and anyone for that matter - to actively run worst-case simulations. In a letter to Lucilius, he wrote "Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition I so feared?'" While there are certainly aspects of this in the current experiment, this is not intended to be a simulation of the worst case scenario.

Elon Musk food challenge. There's a famous story of Elon Musk in his younger years, when he decided to see if he could live off $1 a day on food - to prepare himself for any lean years ahead as an Entrepreneur. While the Live like Cato challenge has a low-cost meal plan, the focus is on simple and healthier eating as well (so can't exactly go for the oranges and hot dog meal plan that Musk did.)

A challenge to practice Stoicism. Yes, Cato was considered the perfect Stoic - but paradoxically, this is not a challenge focused on practicing Stoicism. It's an experiment to live like Cato lived, so many aspects of Stoicism from other great Stoic thinkers will not be included.

Hardcore Catoism. Cato was more baller and intense than I have the desire to be - at least right now. He also had some intense flaws. While I never plan on mimicking the flaws, the other more intense aspects of him will be put on the back-burner for the time being.

Some cool links.

Lastly, I just wanted to drop some links I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks.

• I don't watch much TV and I very rarely watch any YouTubers - but over the last week I have devoured nearly every video that Patrick Gavia has put out. They're documentaries on UFC fighters, but the storytelling, video editing, and presentation are TOP TIER and can be appreciated by anyone. I recommend starting with the one on Demetrious Johnson - it's relatively short but excellent.

• I read a newsletter by Andrew Huberman where he spoke about the benefits of Binaural beats when trying to focus. Usually I'll just listen to a song on loop to focus but I wanted to test this out. I've been using this video (saved as an MP3) and if you ignore the clickbait and cringe title, it's actually pretty good. Listening to it as I write this.

• This podcast with Tim Ferriss and Bas Rutten, is one of the best that I have ever heard. There's a ton of practical takeaways from this episode that you can use now - but also, it's just a great story. From his Karate Kid style origins to being imprisoned in a Swedish mountain, Rutten's done it all.

• This book by Tim Kennedy is one of those things that you read that makes you want to change your life. I could be doing 10x what I'm currently doing, and I still would have felt this way. Kennedy is an example of what happens when you consistently take massive action. He had some big wins in his life, but also some major losses (including the infamous stoolgate incident).

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Thanks for reading.

Let me know your thoughts on this newsletter. What do you want to see more of or less of? What did you enjoy or find boring?

Finally, a shout out to Sophia who is amazing - and also asked for this shout out.