Fail Harder, Fail Faster

Nearly 2,500 years ago, Socrates made his now famous statement, "A life unobserved is not worth living." That is certainly true; without taking the time to observe and appreciate our behaviors, thoughts, ideas, hopes, and dreams... well, what's the point of it all? However, with the exponential advancement of technology and information access, I would posit that Socrates' statement is outdated. In a world where observation is cheap and ever-present (simply look at the heaps and heaps of self-illustrative garbage we all post on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, myself included), I would argue that today, it is the life unoptimized that is not worth living. 

With so much technology and even more information at our fingertips, there is ample opportunity to "hack" or somehow optimize nearly every process in your personal, professional, or physical life. As an avid lifehacker, I've endeavored to do just that, hacking at least the 20% of my processes that can generate 80% gains. Perhaps I've ventured a bit far into the "deep end" with all of these hacks, but I'm really enjoying the process, the research, and I find the introspection and disassembly of every process to be fun and fascinating. As long as I'm maintaining physical and mental health, then the experiments can and will go on. Hey, it beats collecting salt shakers. 

And so, here are my thoughts on the various "hacks" I've experimented with, where they stand, and my hopes for them. If you are unaware of some of the opportunities for "hacking" these processes, I hope that this post will turn you on to the idea, pique your curiosity, and maybe even do some experiments with a sample size of 1. 

Health

Sleep Hacking: This obvious candidate was one of my first health experiments, and has had varying success. While at times I have been able to subsist on as little as 4.5 hours a night of core sleep (with 1-2 naps of 22 minutes each), I find that my ability to do so is extremely dependent on the amount of work on my plate, the deadlines approaching, and my level of excitement about the work I'm doing. As of right now, sleep hacking is contradicting with other hacks in my life (see below), which I believe require that I sleep more. I was also influenced greatly by a recent podcast by Tim Ferriss featuring Kelly Starrett and Tim's physician, suggesting that cheating the sleep system is probably not a good idea. In any case, while I'll continue to use power-napping during the day for the various cognitive and memory benefits, I'll likely put sleep hacking on hiatus for now and experiment with longer periods of sleep than I've likely had since age 13. Worth noting, I'm regularly using SleepCycle for the iPhone, though I'm disappointed in the imprecision of the data. I'm hoping to rig a solution with the Melon band  (see below) to track actual brainwaves during sleep

Strength, Movement, Muscular Health: Since reading Kelly Starrett's landmark book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, I've taken a whole new approach to what physical health actually means. I came to realize that 99.9% of the world is, from a physiological perspective, dysfunctional, broken, and begging for chronic pain or avoidable muscle trauma. I promptly ditched my traditional gym membership and nearly every movement I performed week after week for 13 years, instead opting in to the cult of CrossFit. I invested in a standing desk. I've traded bicep curls and cable flies for foam rollers and lacrosse balls. I've come to realize just how weak I was before; in fact, my time at the gym was contributing to a number of chronic muscle imbalances, which caused pain and instability in what should have been a supple, healthy, 25-year-old body. Since drinking the CrossFit Kool-Aid and placing great emphasis not just on strength but also on mobility, my strength is up, endurance is at record highs, my knee and shoulder pain are mostly gone, and I feel like a freaking rock star. More on that below. This hack? A massive success. 

Diet & Nutrition: I came to understand, first through Tim Ferriss' incredible Four Hour Body, and then through my own research, that grains and sugar are as close to poison as you'll find in a restaurant, outside of the cleaning supply cabinet. Everything you've ever been told about nutrition, besides "eat your veggies," is a bald-faced lie. Carbs kill, and fat, especially natural fats, promote massive health benefits. I started out with Tim's "Slow Carb Diet," eliminating all carbs except for legumes, 6 days a week. I've since changed things up a bit, fasting once a week, minimizing cheat day impact where possible, and cutting legumes to a bare, bare minimum (you can't avoid Hummus in Israel - you just can't). The results are incredible: I've gained muscle mass (heavier than I've ever been), dropped body fat (6 pack for the first time in my life), and my cholesterol, lipids, blood glucose, and other key indicators are all quite good. It's important to note that I'm not only using subjective measures (I receive comments on my physique almost daily now), but also objective ones; get your blood tested regularly, people. It's worth it.

Supplementation, Hormone Regulation, and Feeling Like an Alpha Lion: It's not enough to be a Supple Leopard, you also need to be an Alpha Lion. I came to understand, again through Tim Ferriss' work, that most men today are vastly Testosterone-deficient. And so, in addition to Tim's recommendations of all the usual suspects (garlic, green tea extract, fish oil, magnesium, zinc, policosanol, alpha-lipoid acid) and a few of my own favorite endurance and strength enhancing substances (creatine, glutamine, taurine, BCAA, and Beta-Alanine), I've modified my diet even further to include Brazil nuts and high saturated fat foods such as egg yolks and avocados. A lot of them. The results here are also promising. My testosterone in 2011 (age 24) was a "healthy" but unimpressive 563ng/DL. Recently, I was tested at 671ng/DL, despite the fact that my testosterone should have dropped a good amount as I approach my 30s. But forget the numbers; I can tell you that my voice has become deeper, my beard grows faster, my muscles heal faster, and I've received a number of comments from the opposite sex indicating increased attraction. Then there's the effects I won't write about. I'm telling you - Brazil nuts. 

Other fun hacks: I'm writing this blog post with ice packs on my shoulders and stomach - yet another way to decrease my body fat by activating brown adipose tissue and thermogenic effect. I've also been taking cold showers, hacking my environment to promote health (see below), minimizing all alcohol consumption besides occasional wine, and taking strictly ice-cold showers. The benefits of most of this are apparent; I generate more body heat than before, I feel the difference in my skin's health, and I have more energy. I'm also waiting on a Melon Headband from Kickstarter (if they ever ship - they're over a year delayed), which is a sort of everyman's ECG sensor. The possibility of tracking my brain's activity and response to certain stimuli/situations is alluring, and can take my entire game to a whole new level. 

Work & Productivity

Income Generation: Using methods described in Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Four Hour Work Week, I've set up a series of passive income businesses that involve little to no daily work, but which cumulatively net me 2-3x more income than I earned as founder & CEO of a $3M/year business. It's far more than I need to live a very comfortable life. Pretty astounding what you can do with some automation.

Outsourcing: I'm outsourcing more and more of my undesirable tasks, specifically to an assistant in India. In the last week, she has found me a list of apartments, saved me $100 on a flight, and rearranged my Russian study materials to facilitate faster learning. I've learned that I can accomplish a lot more if I just pass off the things I simply don't want to do. I'm still looking for things she can do for me. 

I'm relying more and more on increasingly complex combinations of IFTTT and Google Sheets to automate things like accounting, time management, etc. While I do use RescueTime to track my on-computer time, I've set up spreadsheets to keep track of time spent at home, at the office, at CrossFit, and so on. I'm not sure what I'll do with this data, but for now it's good to start tracking it. 

I'm returning to the "Wheel of Life" philosophy that I was taught by Phil Kristianson back in my EO days. The idea here is that you have different sections of your life (Social, Fun, Exercise, Work, etc), and you should try to maximize them all as much as possible. The best way to do this is to never partake in activities that don't fulfill at least 2 categories. If you have to watch movies (Fun/Enjoyment), do so in a foreign language to incorporate learning. If you're going to go for a run, do it with friends or family. Because of this, I'm experimenting with different ways to achieve near 100% productivity during waking hours. This might sound absolutely insane, but I'm defining productivity loosely; spending time building friendships or developing skills like Surfing is productive time. Essentially, the key here is to add a productive component (such as stretching, flossing, or other mindless activities) to guilty pleasures such as television, 9gag.com, or sunbathing.

Environment

I've begun experimenting with light, not only by creating a blackout environment to sleep in, but also by equipping my apartment with Philips Hue intelligent light bulbs and IFTTT recipes to gradually dim and alter the colors of lights for sleeping and waking. So far, the results haven't been profound, but I'm hoping to see some long term effects not unlike those I saw with flux for my Mac. 

I'm beginning to work on an interesting project for a "Life Dashboard" type thing where I can track my goals, current levels of satisfaction with various aspects of life, and other interesting pieces of information I want to be constantly in my face. The first prototype will be whiteboards with some permanent markings on them, but I'm considering building some type of web interface to aggregate such content.

Standing Desk is still going strong, though I am not using it nearly as much as I should be. I'm wishing it were socially acceptable to have standing desks in café's. That would be great

Learning

Needless to say, I'm still very actively superlearning, and in fact, I now have 10,000 students who are learning to do the same. I've fallen behind on my nightly reading ritual since business school - it seems that I broke the habit by being overwhelmed with social events during that time. I'm slowly working on getting back into it, and may use some kind of app like Lift to modify habits.

My language study experiments have NOT been tremendously successful, not because of flawed methodologies, but because I've found it difficult to practice what I preach. It's far more comfortable to spend my language learning time in Anki building up vocabulary than it is to talk to native speakers or take grammar lessons on iTalki. I've been a bit lazy with my Russian studies, and haven't made mind-blowing progress with Hebrew reading and writing (though both are quite above adequate at this point). I attribute the latter to Pareto's law, as I'm already beyond functional fluency in Hebrew. Russian, however, has thrown me for a loop, and I need to spend some time developing more innovative ways to learn and become comfortable with the падежи

Social Life & Romance

There's only so much I will write about here, as it's deeply personal. However, I am only a bit ashamed to admit that I have put together a spreadsheet of all the people with whom I wish to be in touch with. Without giving too much away, I am developing a sort of unique methodology for actively maintaining relationships that matter to me across borders and time zones - again with some element of Google Sheets and perhaps some IFTTT interplay.

I'm working on developing more sophisticated ways of finding interesting people I want in my life. This was one of the most impactful things I took away from Ryan Allis' recent slides, specifically his wisdom on the power of a good partner in one's life. I haven't gone too far with this yet, but I intend to find a hack - even if it's changing where I look in some sort of conscientious way. 

So, that's the majority of the "high-level" hacks right now. I could go into detail about how I've programmed keyboard shortcuts to dim all the lights to bluish-purple hues in my house, open the movie player on my Mac, and turn on Airplay Streaming all at once, but that's not really big picture stuff. Instead, the overall picture here is to eek-out any big wins that can be made in the areas of my life that matter most; health, social life, work and productivity, and so on. 

My goals right now are to master habit creation, minimize "unproductive" time to nearly 0, and develop a more regimented approach to everything I need to get done. I'm still quite productive, but the amount of time I waste every day is truly astounding. 

We live in an unprecedented time in human history where you (yes, you) have a never-before-seen level of freedom and agency to build the world and the life YOU want to see. The sheer power, diversity, and availability of tools of mass creativity, productivity, and education are all simply mind-boggling.

What does that mean?

100 years ago, your access to self-educational resources, much less your access to design, develop, and publish your thoughts, works, and opinions, would have been virtually 0. As Ze Frank points out in one episode of "The Show," for most of human history a few people have held the capacity to spread thoughts and ideas, and have thus carefully curated what is and is not worthy of dissemination. And it's not just about spreading written word, either. The barrier to entry of most types of artistic expression, from music and painting to digital arts, are all pretty much non-existent. Take the example of Charles Peignot, who spent $600,000 in 1963 to create a new font family - something you can do today for free with tools already at your disposal. 

Today, the ability to learn anything or spread anything and everything is virtually limitless. 

We live in a world where an 18 year old kid with a bright idea and an internet connection can change the way people everywhere live, interact and work, whereas a dictator with seemingly limitless resources and a 21st-century military cannot even maintain control of his own impoverished and uneducated people. And I'm not even talking about Mark Zuckerberg; hell, when he created Facebook just 10 years ago, things were actually exponentially more difficult than they are today, just due to the density of the human network and the massive leaps in computing and creative technologies. You could realistically build an MVP of something like Facebook in under a week using modern development frameworks. You could reach a million people in under a month with the existing networks. You could raise funding in half a year with open-source term sheets and AngelList. 

But this isn't the only revolution that has happened.

No, not only can you change the world on a large scale, but you can change your world on a smaller scale. You see, human history has witnessed quite a number of paradigms for human productivity. Feudalism, Communism, Corporate Capitalism. Lots of "isms," but none of them quite like what we're seeing today with the prevalence of Lifestyle Design, a term borrowed from Tim Ferris. Without going into the specifics of what Lifestyle Design means or illustrating the many ways in which Tim gave it its first critical push into mainstream, I will say this much; never before have human beings had such a degree of choice over how, where, when, and how much they work and live. Never before in human history has such a large portion of the population had access to the type of lifestyle that pays you to pursue your passions. In fact, as Karl Marx points out, for much of human history, our productive lives were really quite a drag. Toiling in the fields either for ourselves or a feudal lord, becoming cogs in a corporate machine that alienates us from our productive outputs, and so on and so forth. 

Today, however, we exist in a reality where:

Virtually anything can be learned for free

Virtually any expert or mentor can be accessed instantly

You can create almost anything you can dream of with little to no money, and, where money is needed to get started...

You can access capital from investors or the crowd across the globe for no up-front costs

You can live and work from virtually anywhere and travel between countries with minimal friction as a global citizen

You have access to powerful international finance tools for investing, moving money, or remaining mobile

You have access not only to cheap, high-quality, outsourced labor, but also to automation tools that enable you to build "set it and forget it" income streams

You have greater information and understanding, as well as the ability to solve, more of the world's pressing problems, from the edges of the earth - that's because people there, too, have unprecedented access to people like you

With an internet connection, a laptop, and an international debit card, I may well have more information, market access, and creative capacity at my fingertips sitting on the beach in Colombo, Sri Lanka than the top 10 wealthiest people in the world combined could have had in 1980. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is pretty well articulated by Steve Jobs' 1994 quote:

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use...

...Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

When Steve said that, it was perhaps only marginally true; today, however, it's a complete reality.

The point is this: You have the power to shape your life and the world around you in a way that would be inconceivable to people even 20 years ago.

Lecturing on common startup mistakes and the role of failure in startup culture.

Recently, I had the very exciting opportunity to speak at the 2014 Pivot East Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. During my time in this upcoming startup hub, I gave a lecture on failure, mistakes, and startup strategies. I also mentored startups, judged their pitches, and visited the Accelerators and Incubators where they are building East Africa’s startup ecosystem one product at a time. Additionally, some may know that I've begun working with a startup called nFrnds, which builds highly innovative mobile technologies to connect the 5 Billion people at the Base of the Pyramid to internet services, affordably and immediately. I took advantage of the trip to share nFrnds with local entrepreneurs and investors, and to explore one of the fastest-growing markets for the product.

As a neophyte to the African Startup Ecosystem and a new member of the nFrnds team, a few interesting experiences stood out for me, and I drew a few conclusions worth sharing.

East African Entrepreneurs are Coming Up – FAST

Fellow judge and Director of Engineering at Facebook said it best – “when I told my colleagues in Silicon Valley that I was headed to Nairobi for this conference, most of them were unaware that there were even startups in Africa.” Though Matthew and I had a few good laughs about the Valley’s nearsightedness issues, the reality is no laughing matter. Despite having considerable experience in the two top startup ecosystems of Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley,  I was nonetheless blown away by the absolute hustle of these entrepreneurs from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia; one of the audio technicians even cornered me in the men’s room to ask me for advice on incorporating his own side venture! These entrepreneurs seem to have very little concern for the decreasingly relevant gaps between their home turf and Palo Alto. They’re hungry, they’re innovative, and they follow The Lean Startup, TechCrunch, and Hackernews just like you and I. If you’re an entrepreneur in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, London, New York, Berlin, Río, Austin, or anywhere else for that matter, be prepared: East Africa is here, and as far as entrepreneurial talent goes, they’re catching up fast.

Home Field Advantage: Building Products That Matter

As Asana’s Justin Rosenstein, Bill Gates, and many others have noted, many of the more developed startup ecosystems are currently suffering crises of relevance, building startups that are fundamentally, well, silly. Not so in East Africa. While entrepreneurs in SF & TLV are building apps to better share pictures of your dog or send a flirty message to the girl sitting next to you on the bus, entrepreneurs in East Africa are connecting tens of thousands of farmers to powerful agricultural markets, making transportation more safe and reliable, and providing affordable health solutions for prenatal care. In many ways, I believe this is the advantage of East Africa as a market; the relevancy problem is simply irrelevant to an entrepreneur who grew up on a 90 square meter farm, and the innovations he builds can spread like wildfire to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of new consumers.

Unlimited, Affordable Connectivity Will be a Game-Changer (for Both Innovators and Individuals)

Founders from two startups, in awe at the seemingly miraculous data-free email.

Within 3 days of my arrival in Nairobi, I had exhausted about $25 in credit. Despite the fact that smartphones are becoming more and more accessible, connectivity is still wildly expensive in the developing world. Imagine my surprise when my cab driver admitted to spending as much as 3,000 shillings ($33) per month on SMS and voice calls, on his simple phone with no data! This might not sound like a huge sum of money – but it is. When I lived in France, my €15.99 ($21.70) per month provided me with Unlimited SMS, Unlimited voice calls to 100 international countries, and 20 Gigabytes of 4G data. This doesn’t even take into consideration the median income differences between France and Kenya.

The point here, is that on a relative scale, even basic use of your phone in Kenya is exponentially more expensive. Compare my cab driver’s 3,000-shilling-a-month bill to the average cost of an unlimited nFrnds account: 90 Kenyan Shillings. Though nFrnds can’t replace all of his voice calls and SMS, it can easily replace 60% of it by switching his SMS usage to unlimited, free chat. He can also access email and Wikipedia for the first time, without having to pay for an expensive internet cafe. Perhaps most importantly of all, nFrnds’ open platform could one day theoretically be adapted to host unique and innovative solutions for coordination and dispatch of fares, similar to what we are currently doing for farmers and agricultural traders. In order to understand the magnitude of the impact nFrnds’ technologies, one needs only show the technology to any mobile phone user in Kenya. After showing the technology to one or two entrepreneurs during the conference, I observed a recognizable pattern. There’s a specific moment when the proverbial “ball” drops; that moment when a person realizes that the email they just received was sent with no data, no sms, and no airtime usage. In that moment, their faces light up with a mix of excitement and disbelief, and they blurt out a response ranging from “What kind of voodoo is this?” to “But… that’s not possible!” Of the entrepreneurs I showed nFrnds to, the majority of them couldn’t help but explain what a massive impact the platform can have on their product and on their user experience. A few of them demanded full-stop that we partner with them (see above remarks on hustle). All of this is quite exciting; nFrnds’ true potential will be realized not by our engineers, but by the need-knowers in the field who dream up innovative ways to harness it in service of their users. I traveled to Kenya with the suspicion that nFrnds was on to something big.