I started this newsletter as an outlet to share what I’m learning, from books, travel, work, conversations, and whatever I’m wrestling with.

In these letters, I share what’s caught my attention: one quote that’s impacted me, one reflection I’m sitting with, and one good find I think you’ll enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Favorite quote of the week:

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”

— Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air

Something worth thinking about:

We all have buckets in our lives that we’re constantly trying to keep full. One bucket is for our health, another for our work, relationships, creative projects, and fun.

Whenever I take a trip abroad, I’m faced with the reality that they’ll never all be filled at once.

For instance, I landed back home from London last night after two weeks in Europe. As I write this, my relationship feels great. I had an opportunity to brainstorm for my creative projects during the quiet transit time between cities. Besides great food and beautiful landmarks, I got to check out a few museums that left me feeling inspired. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun and feel refreshed.

Yet my inbox is full of unanswered client requests. I had dessert almost every night while wandering the narrow European streets (never once touching a dumbbell while abroad). And I’ve got days of playing catch-up ahead of me.

Right now, some of my life buckets are practically overflowing with energy, while others look quite neglected.

As much as I aim for balance (as I wrote last week, I try to prioritize equilibrium), it seems that whenever I’m thriving in one area of my life, another area suffers.

Keeping clients happy sometimes means temporarily having an unhappy partner and a neglected gym routine. Lots of fun, travel, and exploration can sometimes mean falling a bit behind on a few deadlines. And on and on.

I’ve come to view perfect, total balance as a worthy, but impossible goal. Because there are always tradeoffs in life.

In the same way you cannot physically be in two places at once, you cannot focus entirely on two tasks at the same time. I cannot write this letter while simultaneously responding to a client email. I cannot go to the gym while intensely studying a course. I cannot wander through a museum, fully taking in the works of art, while on the phone with a business partner.

Embracing this reality of unavoidable tradeoffs has created a new kind of peace for me. I no longer feel behind because I’m not operating at 100% in all areas of my life. I’ve accepted that directing my focus inevitably means shifting attention away from something (or someone) else.

Now, am I saying it’s impossible to multitask? No, I’m not.

You can go for a walk with your spouse and technically fill your health and relationships buckets at the same time. And you can respond to clients and colleagues in the morning before you head out to explore a new city (as I’ve done before).

But there will always be periods in your life when you must prioritize your attention to one bucket over another. The first few years of launching a business or creative project will take up the majority of your evenings and weekends. Picking up a new hobby may eat into your reading time, just as a new gym routine and diet may take away from something else.

As you prioritize some buckets, others will inevitably empty, and that’s okay. Striving for balance in your life doesn’t mean you need to perfectly have everything under control. Some things may fall through the cracks. Some people may be disappointed. Some streaks may be broken.

The key is to cultivate the art of prioritization: intuitively recognizing what’s truly important and shifting your attention between buckets as they fill and empty. (A good rule of thumb, when in doubt, is that your health and relationships should always be priority, in that order.)

Learn to be comfortable with imperfection and “good enough,” especially when you’re juggling so much at once.

The truth is that it’s not easy to be a perfect friend and partner, stay on top of your personal studies, climb a corporate ladder or build a business, tinker with creative projects, and maintain your health while making time for fun.

Give yourself grace as you strive to maintain so many areas of your life at once. Be comfortable when not every one of those areas is entirely under control. They never will be.

In striving to give your attention to each of those important areas of your life, you’ll create something that resembles balance. And that’s as close as we can get to feeling fully on top of things.

One good find worth your time:

I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation between Henry Oliver and Jared Henderson. As my reading interests keep expanding, this interview gave me a lot to think about on how I read and how I’m cultivating my taste.

Until next time,

Diego

I started this newsletter as an outlet to share what I’m learning, from books, travel, work, conversations, and whatever I’m wrestling with.

In these letters, I share what’s caught my attention: one quote that’s impacted me, one reflection I’m sitting with, and one good find I think you’ll enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Favorite quote of the week:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Something worth thinking about:

To form your point of view on something, start by considering the extremes.

Learning about the extreme opposites of an argument or topic creates a spectrum. If you reflect on the ends of the spectrum long enough, you’ll naturally come to your own conclusions.

For example, I wanted to figure out my thoughts about money—something we spend so much of our time earning, yet never take the time to learn about. Because of my ignorance, I resolved to spend most of Q4 last year reading finance books.

I started with The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom, followed by The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel, Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Peter D. Kaufman, and The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. Beyond the books, I watched interviews with finance guys like Mohnish Pabrai, Scott Galloway, and Morgan Housel, and lurked on the Bogleheads subreddit.

What did I take away from all of that financial consumption?

1. Nobody knows where the stock market will go, and trying to time it is a loser’s game. (Stock picking also appears to be a loser’s game.)

2. Over the long run, index funds (and eventually bonds as you get older) appear to be one of the best places to park your hard-earned cash if you want to get a return while outpacing inflation.

3. Once you’ve invested your money and found your preferred asset allocation (X% in domestic investments, Y% in international, Z% in bonds, etc.), keep reinvesting and resist the urge to peek. Constantly checking your portfolio can cause you to sell early, rather than letting compounding do its thing.

4. If you zoom out of the chart far enough, the stock market appears to have a steady (but jagged) rise upward. Through wars, pandemics, crashes, and economic uncertainty, the graph continues up and to the right. Things can change, but going as far back as we’ve had a market in the US, that’s been the pattern.

5. How you invest your money is a very personal decision, so knowing your risk tolerance is crucial before you start taking advice from others. A good rule of thumb, though, is to always have 6 months’ cash saved up before you start investing.

6. There are psychological reasons why we make bad decisions, especially with our money. It’s worth knowing them (look up The Psychology of Human Misjudgment by Charlie Munger).

7. JL Collins’ rules are worth living by: spend less than you earn, invest the surplus, and avoid debt.

Now, the point of this letter isn’t to give away finance tips, though you’d do well to reflect on the ones above.

The point, as I said at the start, is how I arrived at my perspective on money by seeking out opposing views on the topic.

After all that research, I jumped to the opposite end of the spectrum, reading books that run contrary to everything recommended above, like Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.

As the book’s title suggests, Perkins’ main argument is that, if you’re aiming to maximize your fulfillment in life, your goal should be to die with zero dollars in your bank account.

You read that right.

Exactly $0 at the time of your death.

There are a few supplementary points worth noting from Perkins’ book:

1. Your goal in life should be to maximize your experiences, not your net worth.

2. You can always make more money later, but you can’t get back time or your youth.

3. Some experiences are age-dependent. Chances are slim you’ll be running a marathon in your eighties, so if you want to run one, do it while you can.

4. Investing in experiences gives you a “memory dividend.” Every time you think or talk about the original experience, you benefit in the form of good feelings and moments with others. As you get older, those compounding memories will be all you have.

5. Money is life energy. By oversaving, you’re wasting your life energy since money represents hours of your life you spent accumulating wealth you’ll never use. Dying with zero means you spent every ounce of your life energy while you were around.

So on one end of the scale, I have Collins’ advice to live below my means and invest the savings in an index fund. On the other end of the scale, I have Perkins’ advice to invest in as many experiences as I can while I’m young (since some experiences will be closed off to me as I age due to declining energy and health).

Both arguments are compelling.

I suspect most of us probably sit too far on one end of the spectrum: we spend too much . . . we save too much . . . we wish we’d traveled more in our youth . . . we wish we’d spent our youth investing more and not frittering away our money on ephemeral experiences.

I’ve come to realize that no matter which route you take with your money, you’re bound to have some level of regret, so it’s best you choose your regret consciously, rather than living your life on autopilot.

All of this pondering leads me to my own point of view, one that prioritizes striving for equilibrium as much as possible in life, especially when it comes to money.

My mantra has always been to be ambitious without being imbalanced.

I don’t believe in single-mindedly chasing a goal while neglecting other equally important aspects of my life. I refuse to be the successful entrepreneur who lets his relationships and health deteriorate. I refuse to be the guy who hoards the money he’s spent his life earning (getting satisfaction and psychological safety from digital numbers on a screen) while never having created irreplaceable memories in the real world.

I know a guy with more money than he’ll spend in this lifetime who dreams of going to Japan. Yet the chances are slim he’ll ever go because of some internal fear around money holding him back.

I refuse to be like him.

Therefore, my view on money is now this:

1. The hedonic treadmill is a real thing, and if there’s any one skill worth cultivating, it’s the discipline to be able to reject the siren calls of endless wants and needs.

2. As the line often attributed to Albert Einstein goes, “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.” You should always let a portion of your money experience such a wonder—whether in a high-yield savings account, an index fund, or another investment. Every day that passes becomes a day in your favor.

3. Yet life is incredibly short, and you can’t take your money with you. Aim to have experiences in life. Visit one new country a year, and if you’re lucky, two. Have moments outside your comfort zone. Try a new dish. Take your family and friends out to dinner every now and then. Give to others while you’re alive. These are equally important investments in your life.

So there you have it. That’s my new view on money—to save, invest, and spend on experiences, to varying degrees throughout the year.

There are no percentages to share here, since everyone’s financial situation is different. But as with all things, aiming for balance will always be a constant recommendation of mine, no matter what stage of your life you’re in.

Next time you’re forming your perspective on something, consider seeking out opposing views, reflecting deeply, and challenging your assumptions.

You’ll be surprised at what insights you come to, balanced insights that will be uniquely your own.

One good find worth your time:

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins

If there’s one book I’d recommend on personal finance, this is it. Think of it as Atomic Habits but for your money. Even if you don’t follow every idea Collins recommends, you’ll be better off for having read it. Trust me.

Until next time,

Diego

PS. Most of this letter was edited while on a train from Prague to Vienna. Seemed fitting for a post about remembering to invest in experiences.

The Kaizen philosophy assumes that our way of life – be it our working life, our social life, or our home life – deserves to be constantly improved.

– Masaaki Imai

Everything can (and should) be improved. This is a concept I’ve been living by over the past five years. I didn’t know about it until recently, but there’s a whole philosophy around this art of continuous improvement—it’s a Japanese word, kaizen.

Kaizen means “change for the better” or “continuous improvement.” In business, it refers to improving the processes and functions within an organization. In life, it means improving any personal area you see as important.

For you to adopt a kaizen mentality, you should believe that nothing stays the same; things either get better or worse. This includes your relationships, career, craft, and hobbies.

Most people think there’s a state known as “constant.” Neither good nor bad, neither better nor worse—constant is the state in between. Here, you’re maintaining. You’re maintaining your marriage, job, health.

The issue is that with enough time, maintaining eventually turns to degrading. A maintained marriage with enough time will revert to one spouse becoming bored. A maintained job with enough time will revert to an employee becoming apathetic. A maintained gym routine with enough time will revert to a plateau.

What’s interesting is that we know when it’s time to improve something. We know we should take our wife on a trip. We know we should sign up for that conference. We know we should hire that personal trainer. But in all three cases, we make excuses about why we can’t do them.

Again, we’re simply maintaining, believing that we’re neither making things better nor worse. But as I’ve said before, if left unimproved, all things degrade with enough time.

Kaizen helps us look at things from a different perspective. Rather than looking at things as static, we see them as always moving. Like a scale that hasn’t found its balance, we feel as though we’re always staring at a seesaw: on the left we have “better” and on the right we have “worse.” As the viewer, we decide who wins by sitting on one end.

With kaizen on our mind, we don’t quiet the inner voice that says “surprise her with flowers” or “buy a ticket to that conference.” Instead, we listen to that voice. We treat it as an advisor. We choose to sit with better.

Now some may say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I get that. But anytime I’ve heard this statement, I always wonder why we couldn’t improve it, especially when there’s nothing to fix. Why should we wait for a problem to start tinkering with something? Why should we wait for our relationships to grow stale to add a little spontaneity into them? Why should we wait until our skills grow obsolete to begin studying something new? The answer is we shouldn’t.

A fun, happy, ever-evolving life is one that is proactive. It’s thoughtful about everything around it. It looks for messes to clean, places to see, new restaurants to try, and interesting projects to start. It endlessly looks for ways to improve its environment by asking itself a simple question: “How can I make this better?”

If you want to make your life better, consider adopting kaizen as a life philosophy. Every minute, hour, day, week, month—use your time to improve things. Study to become a better writer. Try a new film technique. Get creative with your spouse. Change up your workouts. Attempt a new process at work. Do something extra for a client, something that this client couldn’t get from any other business because of your originality.

You’ll find that with enough time, kaizen, this art of continually making things better, will become second nature to you.