Dearest friends,

2025 was a quiet whirlwind with so much happening, and one of the years where I browse backwards at my photos and think, "wow I haven't even reached 2024 yet."

I feel so fortunate to be able to explore so many new places this year. Internationally, I flew to India (Delhi, Shimla) for a colleague’s beautiful wedding in the Himalayan foothills; Seoul, Korea for the first time for a work trip; Squamish, British Columbia for a climbing trip; Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka) with my family for the first international family vacation in over 20 years; and just last week, Cabo Pulmo, Mexico (Baja) for a dive trip with whale sharks and mobulas (watch this short video we made together).

Domestically, I flew to Eugene to see my 2-year-old niece five times this year and watched her grow up so fast; down to San Diego for a short weekend to be reunited with some of my best friends I hadn’t seen in years; up to Seattle for a short boys trip with some other best friends; and backpacking in Big Sur with my little brother (first time together). I had the honor of marrying two other best friends, PR'ing in a 50K trail race, and adding someone special to my life.

I'm going into 2026 with this word in mind: kinetic.

The next year will be a lot of change, growth, and facing new balance challenges. I'm about to start a new job running a startup that is making what I think will be the most consequential sensor of the next decade. My partner is moving to Asia and we're figuring out how two "touch-grass" individuals can do long distance. All this will require a lot of constant transformation and taking advantage of momentum, and the conversion of potential energy into ... action. Sort of like monkey bars.

P.S. I loved receiving responses from you last year, I'm sorry if I forgot to respond but I promise I've been thinking about your dispatch all year because I kept snoozing the emails for a reply.

Mental wanderings

• I’ve spent some time this year optimizing for the “thickness” of experience. This means foregoing a lot of the conveniences of modernity, and instead anchoring my reality in the physical and sensory sensations of attention and effort. Less Uber, more biking and walking. More handwriting, less thumb-tapping. I also add "thickness" by embedding a lot of memory into things I own: I have 4 jars of chili oil in my fridge and I know exactly who, where, and when I acquired them (a “thin” experience is ordering one-day shipping on Amazon). Same goes for all my houseplants, climbing gear, clothes, etc. I like buying things used, or on a trip, because it adds a dimension of experience to an otherwise inanimate object. I even stop paying attention to the news and social media, and just ask people to tell me what’s happening directly. I don’t really feel that first-to-know urge any more.
• “Good enough” is actually really great, and I’ve internalized that so much more this year. Getting from 90% to 99% quality will take ten times as long as getting to the first 90%, and it’s almost never worth it. I’d rather get to 90% on ten other things. I could spend time perfecting a recipe, data analysis, a second language, an essay–or I could “A-” ten other things. The meta-pattern is that breadth compounds better than depth, simply because it can cross-pollinate with other things. I read Range by David Epstein a few years ago, loved it, and I think that seed is just now germinating that I can fully embrace being a generalist. What exactly 90% looks like is subjective, but I feel it when I’m hitting diminishing returns, and that’s when I’ll set a forcing function: I’m only spending 10-30 minutes more on this, and then I’m shipping.
• An apology to gamers. I confess, for the past 15 years I thought that video games were the reagents of brainrot. But last year, I owned the first console since I was a child (Playstation 5) and I’ve been surprised at how much my problem solving and other mental faculties (e.g., navigation, acute focus) have improved. This past year my favorite games were Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Spiderman 2, Hogwarts Legacy, and Ghost of Tsushima. I also enjoyed playing co-op games with my little brother, like Split Fiction and It Takes Two.
• Words to describe emotions are passé. Earlier this year I used this app called How We Feel that helps me label emotions (highly recommended for a few weeks just to buff up your emotional vocab). After a few months I realized how incredibly limiting it is to name emotions with a single word, and that even if I could be more granular, it doesn’t really solve the problem of the language constraint, because language is categorical by nature and trying to describe a higher dimensional experience. At one point this year I felt hurt, sad, happy, relieved, secure, and regret all at the same time, but after collapsing them to these words, I noticed the emergent properties between them: temporal, rhythmic, how those permutations affect the subtle “texture” of my breathing, the location (in my body), etc. This was such a richer experience than just trying to label it, and I’m reminded that really good poetry uses words to relay an experience that transcends words.
• Attention is all you need. I took an improv class and we played a warm up game with a partner where we alternated counting off one-two-three (with different modifications to make it harder). The big learning from this is that paying closer attention to the other person's subtle cues (eye contact, tone, rhythm, etc.) is a huge leverage in creating connection, and achieving goals together like performing an improv scene. But all life is improv, and I've been applying this small hack to every connection I have with people, and it pays dividends. You can always pay more attention to someone, no matter how much you think you already are.

Recommendations from the year

Doing

• 15 lb steel club (direct) - This is HANDS DOWN the best fitness thing I purchased in the past few years. I swear, training with this for 15 minutes a day for 2 weeks drastically made me so much stronger overall (including climbing). There is something about training rotational movement that makes you so much more coordinated (see this related video about rope flow). I recommend starting with 10 lbs, unless you know for sure you have a strong grip and forearms. Watch this short 30 second video for different movements.
• Mapo Ragu recipe (NYT) - One of the best recipes I’ve made this year, highly recommended. I’ve made it three times, and this is where I feel like the execution is so important, because they all tasted a little different every time, each one of them never “hitting” the same as the first time. My tip is to choose the sweetest onion you can (Vidalia or Walla Walla) and make sure you really cook down the onions near caramelization (aka don’t try to rush past Step 1).

Reading

• You Are Contaminated (NYT, 13 min read) - I was honored to be invited to a multi-day pollution workshop hosted by Homeworld Collective's Sarah Daniels, and it was eye-opening how many and how much chemical contamination we are exposed to, and we don’t even know the extent of it right now. Like, I thought lead pollution was a solved problem, but it still impacts the brains of 1 in 3 children worldwide.
• Tying Yourself to the Mast (Cate Hall, 12 min read) - Good blog on why optionality is a “temporary weakness” and is overrated, and how commitment is a learnable skill to overcome that.

Watching/listening

• David Foster Wallace on why reading feels so hard (YouTube, 2 min) - Interview clip from 2003 where DFW is talking about the feeling of dread of being in a world that’s more “hostile” to asking people to just sit quietly and think. In 2003!
• Longform wood-working videos like Foureyes Furniture (YouTube, 20 min) - whenever I want to just be a couch potato, I watch woodworking videos. I find that it’s the best thing to turn down my nervous system. I find it so relaxing. This is an example of one guy I love watching: nerdy, calm, authentic.
• Taking Anarchism Seriously (The Gray Area, 51 min listen) - I listened to this podcast 3 times, this is probably the first time in my life I recognized how incredibly strawmanned our usual discussion of anarchism is.
• Cognitive Tools for Making the Invisible Visible, Dr. Judy Fan (MIT) (YouTube, 1+ hour) -  this is probably peak-est nerd you’ll get from me (but I know some of my audience are super nerdy). I loved this seminar on the investigation of visual abstraction to communicate complex concepts, and the professor is engaging to listen to.

This is a PSA I've been holding onto for 4 years, since the pandemic pushed everyone to teleconferencing:

You should stop using AirPods for taking Zoom/phone calls.

It doesn't matter if you dished out $600 for an AirPod Max – it might feel like a Michelin-star dish on your ears, but it will sound like dog food on the other end of the call.

It is surprising how few people realize this, and how few people have actually tested their own mic. It feels like either only content creators know this because they've had to record voiceovers for their videos, or everyone is selfishly okay with giving everyone else a shitty conferencing experience.

Instead of wireless, you should either use your device's onboard mic, or use a wired earbud with a mic, namely the Apple Earpods are really, really good for being $20.

Listen to the samples below from when I was on the streets of NYC, recorded in the same place. This is the most drastic difference you will hear, but it's the difference between a $20 mic (better) and a $200 mic (worse):

Apple EarPods mic test NY (wired)

0:00

/0:23

1×

Beats Fit Pro mic test NY

0:00

/0:21

1×

But not all wired mics are the same! Listen to this wired USB-C mic from Belkin Soundform ($20), which sounds like decent but really low mic sensitivity. Compare that to another mic, from my JBL Quantum 300 ($50) which I use at work; it lacks a lot of dynamic range but it isolates the vocal frequency pretty well.

Belkin mic test (wired)

0:00

/0:35

1×

Jbl 300 mic test (wired)

0:00

/0:13

1×

Below are more Bluetooth samples: AirPod Pro ($250), Nothing Ear ($150), Shokz OpenRun Pro ($180), and also the onboard mic with the iPhone 15 Pro as a "positive" control. Environmental noise is around 65-70 dB.

AirPod Pro mic test

0:00

/0:18

1×

Nothing Ear mic test

0:00

/0:08

1×

Shokz Open Run mic test

0:00

/0:16

1×

iPhone 15 Pro mic test (onboard)

0:00

/0:14

1×

What about the Macbook Air onboard mic as the input? Again, these are much better than a wireless mic, but it sounds more sensitive to the ambient reverberations. You can hear the difference in the "echo" between having the laptop on the table versus in my lap. Ambient noise is 40 dB.

Macbook mic test table (onboard)

0:00

/0:19

1×

Macbook mic test lap (onboard)

0:00

/0:13

1×

Why does Bluetooth sound so bad?

In a nutshell, Bluetooth has a fundamental limitation in bandwidth.

Bluetooth is like a really narrow 2-lane highway, constructed on minimal resources (because it needs to balance energy consumption). If you're just listening to music and not using the mic, Bluetooth automatically uses both lanes of the highway to go in one direction, ~256-320 kbps.

But as soon you're taking a call, now you have to split the highway to allow for bidirectional audio, and your mic audio takes the brunt of it, dropping that bitrate to a disgusting phone-quality audio, ~64 kbps. For the nerds, this switches BT profiles from A2DP (advanced audio distribution) to HSP (handset).

If I had to extend the 2-lane highway analogy, by scale, the bandwidth of a wired earbud is like a 20-lane freeway, ~256 kbps vs. 2.3 Mbps theoretical max.

Bluetooth is a compromise technology, balancing all of these trade-offs:

1. It has to be low energy, because wireless communication is inherently more power hungry than wired, and it has to solve for the battery life dilemma
2. It has to be low latency to deliver a smooth user experience for conversations
3. It has to be robust and reliable in a noisy radio environment with interfering signals (yt: How does Bluetooth even exist?!)

The humble wired connection makes none of these trade offs.

Do something about it

If I were on the phone with you, this is a list of what I would want you to use, in order by preference:

1. Apple Earpods, or some wired mic that you have CONFIRMED to be good (I'd love to know what other good options you've tested).
2. Onboard mic (phone or laptop). This is not hard. Whenever I take a phone call, I hold the phone up to my ear like they did 20 years ago (gasp). On Zoom, if you insist on using your AirPods for listening, you're better off using your AirPods as your "speaker" and your laptop as your "microphone."
3. The last option you should even consider is the wireless earbud. In fact, I'd prefer you reschedule to another time when you can be on speaker or hold your phone to your ears.  

I hope these audio samples convinced you!

P.S. Apparently, Everything Millennial is cool again (NYT), including wired headphones.

P.P.S.

Wired headphones are making a comeback: Here’s why

Wired headphones are huge fashion accessories for Gen Z listeners, but we dig beyond the trend to learn why else wired cans are on the rise.

SoundGuysLil Katz

One of my weirdest fears is showing up at a dance party and nobody is dancing.

This literally happened when I first arrived at this “sunrise rave” I went to this morning. It's a trivial fear, but I love dancing, so I care. On rare occasions, I can overcome the activation energy to be the first one dancing (e.g., my best friend’s wedding). More often, I'll volunteer to be first if there is a friend with me, knowing that we will both be first, which basically means we're both second. And of course if there is already one person dancing, I will happily join as dancer 2.

I call this #2 energy.

In Granovetter's (1978) threshold model of collective behavior (e.g., riots), each person has a threshold based on the number of others who must participate before they will join. The first person is the radical/instigator with a threshold of "0," the second person has a threshold of "1" (joins after seeing one person), and so forth.

Most of the time, I notice that I am #2, which sounds denigrating in a competitive world where #1 is best, but it's very different than being just a non-leader or a "follower," because #2 is still far ahead of most people. New friends mistakenly think that I'm extroverted, partially because of my gregariousness, and also because I seem to lead in social situations. In reality, it's mostly because I feel safe being #1 knowing that someone will join immediately. I'm usually not #1 in a situation where I don't know anybody.

You could say that it’s a fear of rejection. Being #1 is a bid – for approval, for collective permission, etc. It’s essentially a public proposal that says “I believe we should transition from standing/watching to dancing/participating.” It’s cost-asymmetric in that it’s potentially a highly visible, public failure, but not the same public reward/credit. The time period between being first and having a second join is the tension that rejection is coming. I hate that feeling.

Derek Sivers calls #2 the “first follower” and says it’s an under-appreciated form of social leadership, because the first follower shows others how to follow but takes just as much risk (debatable).

Auto-enabling

At the beginning of the year I said to my friend that I think my growth edge is to be “uncapped” for 2025 – I thought that this meant that I would let loose more often, saying yes to more things, etc. It still doesn’t feel like I’ve properly identified the exact edge that I want to be growing.

I think that a more useful framework for me is to notice where/when I am #2, but not #1.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with being #2, but I think it’s worth exploring why being #1 is a lot harder. I'm trying to dissolve the stories and self-limiting beliefs I have about social rejection, but I think it needs more than rationalization.

So instead I imagine how I would convince a friend to be my #2, not with words, but with a warm energy. My smile is inviting, my eyes reassuring; my goal is to exude an affirmation of safety, that everything will be ok. A little safety is all we need to take risks (secure base theory).

In some kind of metacognitive splitting, can I simulate that same energy to reassure myself? Can I “be” my own #1 to my #2? Instead of trying to “fight” the threshold, I am assisting myself by providing myself safety signal. You would think that this is just a “self-pep-talk,” but it’s not about overcoming a fear as much as it is about creating conditions in which the fear response isn’t triggered.

I’m calling this hack “auto-enabling” because I’m using my “#1” voice to enable the #2 that is primary behavior.

2 + 2 = 1

I noticed that #2 energy became a bigger pattern in my life, especially in interpersonal relationships as opposed to collective behavior.

I used to have quite a lot of #1 energy in my twenties, but now in my thirties with reduced energy and risk tolerance, I can feel myself constantly sitting on a knife’s edge of choosing an adventure (exploring new events, new skills, new groups, new hobbies, etc.) or choosing to stay where it’s safe (home, coffee shops, work, etc.). I say knife’s edge because I’m very easily activated. Yesterday my friend texted me “do you wanna go kayaking with otter pups tomorrow” and I immediately said yes.

I’ve found that having two #2s together is essentially the same as having a #1’s initiating energy: They enable each other. And often it happens so fast that it blurs the line between first and second. When you feel safe knowing the other person is quickly enabled, you’re basically not taking any risk, whether it’s on the dance floor, going on a spontaneous kayaking trip, or a weekend warrior trip. I’ve had a lot of these 1:1 adventure-buddy relationships over the decades, and it’s magical when you can instigate trips knowing it’s not a big ask. It feels even more magical when you have several #2s in a group. The vibe is unmatched.

I also think that great couples are #2s to each other. This intersects nicely with the Gottman’s model of bids for affection. Not only do they accept bids for affection, but they also affirm bids for acceptance. And the faster they follow, the more it feels like “sameness” between two people. Totality in collective behavior is reached with a single follower, because your first follower is also the last follower.

In the last big relationship I was in, my workaholism stopped me from being the #2 to my #2, and then we broke up. With the last person I briefly dated, I feared instigating (#1) because I was afraid she wouldn’t follow, maybe also vice versa. A key lesson I learned in dating is that I thought I was looking for someone adventurous enough to be my #1, but really all I needed was someone who can match my #2 energy in the right ways, and that maybe the search strategy should just be focused on that.

Happy New Year from Taiwan! 🇹🇼

My brother and I flew here the day after Christmas to be here for New Years with one of my best friends (Michael what up!) who said I should celebrate New Years here. Absolutely no regrets so far. I'm writing this from a shoes-off Japanese reading room / art cafe, an experience I've never had before. There's so much cool stuff here that I wouldn't be able to find in the US. I've only explored around Taipei, but so far I love it here. Consider this a postcard.

This year has been wonderful. People and health are the two biggest themes of my 2024. I don't force any themes going into the new year, but I'm feeling... creative. I hope I get to share the fruits of that creativity in a letter a year from now.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and looking forward to seeing you in 2025~

P.S. you probably have my phone number. I love getting long voice message updates from friends. Something to listen to while I brush my teeth or clean my room. If you have time, I'd love to hear from you, if not a call, then maybe a voice message? 🫶

My people era

• In February, I went to Kenya for my friend Jenny's wedding and it was one of the most life-changing trips I've ever taken. I met her amazing now-husband and friends for the first time and realized "Oh right... this is why we became friends." The best advice that she had gotten about her wedding was "Don't just invite people who you've been close to for 5 years, invite people who you want to be closer to in 5 years." This is probably the life-changing part for me; I became much more intentional about who I spend my precious time with this year.

• Part of the intentionality is about making it easy. I listened to this podcast that made the case against managing your life. "If you learn to manage your life, you end up with a life that you need to manage." I leaned into what felt easy, to flow down the river instead of constantly going up it. Lean into the people who feel easy.
• Speaking of which, I made a new bestie (what up Mishi!) and we've only been friends for a year and it feels like much longer. Friendship is so much easier when you live a few blocks away and share location. We threw a joint birthday party, invited our closest friends, and asked them to bring a friend who we'd never met before. We had everyone wear a name tag with no name, just something that they loved (my name tag said "NPR tiny desk"). This catalyzed a bunch of new people in my life that I'm incredibly grateful for. Some I've run a Taco Bell marathon with (Camille what up). I camped at Burning Man with others (Jeff, Dan, what up). Joined a cookbook club that someone started. It's been a really fun year.

• I've spent more time flying to Eugene to be with my sister and my 14-month-old niece. I love them both, and I especially love being an uncle. Seriously, being with her brings me so much unabashed joy. It's really wonderful to share moments with your siblings and niece (pictured below: brother-in-law, sister, niece, brother).

My health era

• I consider this year "my health era," and one of the reasons is that I started to wear a continuous glucose monitor, which the FDA has approved a consumer version of this past summer, and you can get 2-week sensor for $45 (Stelo, Lingo). It is THE BIGGEST ROI on my health I have ever spent. I bought a few CGMs as Christmas gifts for my family. Being able to see how certain foods affect your blood sugar is game-changing, and it makes it much easier to change your diet when you can see and quantify what is going on.

• Added more structure to my running this year. Was gunning for a 2:52 marathon goal, but had to go to Buenos Aires for a work trip during the peak of my training, and my training got completely derailed by jet lag and not having enough time to run. I didn't run the race. My Garmin had already predicted 2:55 when the training started, so I was almost already there. But this was a growth moment for me: I wasn't sad about not being able to compete. I was grateful and proud of myself for enduring the grueling training, and all those moments at 6 am or 10 pm when I decided I wasn't going to skip the workout that day.
• I also bought a Zeel membership which is a monthly subscription to at-home massages. I was running on average 200 miles a month, so it was a little reward to myself. Zeel was also my answer to my friend asking me "What is something small you spend on now that you wouldn't spend when you were in your twenties?"
• Added strength training to my regimen again. I wrote about my training philosophy here. It feels good to be strong again.

Smaller updates

• I bought a Playstation 5. I don't consider myself a gamer and it's been 15 years since I last owned a gaming console (Nintendo GameCube), but I do love story-driven games like The Last Of Us (which was on HBO). The week of the election, I bought a used PS5 and have rotted many hours on the couch playing Hogwarts Legacy. I'm excited to play Black Myth: Wukong after my gaming reflexes get better.
• I bought a DJ deck this summer thinking that it would be fun to learn to DJ. I do not have an aptitude for this. Small learning lol.
• Remember that "made to fade" tattoo from Ephemeral that I got in 2022? Yeah... it's still only 90% faded. I'm not the only one.
• Officiated my fourth wedding!
• Started a practice of morning pages via The Artist's Way. I'm a firm believer of physical journaling now.
• Ran my first trail 50K since 2018. Placed 3rd in my age group.

Readings

• The Poppy War by RF Kuang - wow I'm 6 years late to this train, but I love this book. It's a mix of fantasy with 20th-century Chinese history (roughly the Sino-Japanese war and the Nanjing Massacre). It has world-building, humor, military action, magic, and dark themes like addiction, patriarchy, and politics.
• The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager - Was recommended this a few times, and finally read it. Really great story behind of one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, the Haber-Bosch method, which is the industrial-scale transformation of nitrogen into ammonia (which is used as both fertilizer to feed humans, and bombs and chemical warfare to kill them).

Viewings

• I've been loving Thomas Flight's videos on film and exposition, like this one. First found him when geeking on The Bear, and his video "Why The Bear Hits So Hard" and his videos have changed the way that I watch film
• I've listened to this set from FourColorZack (DJ) SO MANY TIMES, I love the wordplay and tone play when he transitions, he's creative and I am so engaged with the energy he brings to this set
• This video on the universal theory of Bo Burnham – I love Bo and it was such a treat to watch someone go through his body of work and interpret it.

Writings

• I was on a panel in Buenos Aires about climate change and food security. Here's roughly what I said there.
• I wrote about how I maintain friendships the plays in my playbook to do that
• The Kendrick v Drake beef stayed rent-free in my mind this whole summer. I had to write about it.
• I almost got killed by a car, the driver didn't have any remorse and didn't apologize. I was so fucking angry, I wanted to be violent. But then I channeled it into understanding using non-violent communication.
• I wrote about running, from a biochemical perspective, for anyone who is new to running or wants to get into it.

I'm a multi-athlete (climbing, running, yoga but also snowboarding, tennis, and rowing). My training goal is to be well-conditioned for a variety of movements, and to have the stability and coordination to not get injured.

Strength training is purely supplemental. It's maybe one-fifth of the time I spend running or climbing. Aesthetics is maybe 25% of the motivation, functionality is the other 75%. I'm not interested in hypertrophy or huge muscle mass. If it's not for sports performance or to carry a heavy basket of groceries, it's for the long tail: to carry a person in a rescue, or to throw around a girl to make her feel dainty.

I've honed my training philosophy over the past 15 years down to 5 principles.

1. 1:1 work-rest ratio

I use my Garmin to record the work and rest periods (it's a one-button toggle built into the "Strength" activity). I only do this to make sure that I don't rest too much. I aim for 1:1 but ideally, more work than rest. Rule of thumb, never rest more than 60 seconds.

In college and in my twenties, when my gym ego was calling the shots, I wanted to be seen with heavier weights. I was a dumb ape in a specific social hierarchy. I would do 30 seconds of actual lifting, and rest for 2-3 minutes while getting some water and congratulating myself. It was inefficient; in an hour, I'd maybe get about 10-15 minutes of actual work.

I'm much more focused today. In 40 minutes I can probably get 20-25 minutes of total work. I'm still doing progressive overloads. I'm still doing drop sets. It just happens at lower weights.

This principle is super important after a 45 min run, and need to get a good 15 minute workout (10 minutes of which will be actual work, which is probably more work than most people at the gym who TikTok between sets).

2. Supersets save time

I almost always do supersets, which is two or more exercises in a single set. This elevates the work:rest ratio, because I can "use" the same rest period for two different muscle groups. Instead of two exercises with two rest periods, you do two exercises with one rest period.

Example:

• Standing (unsupported!) one-arm db row, then kickstand squat (same db), then rest. Repeat 5 sets of 15.
• Weighted pull ups, then single leg RDL, then rest. Repeat 5 sets of 10.
• Medicine ball slams, then chin ups, then rest. Repeat 5 sets of 15.

Relatedly, I always try to do compound exercises for more bang-for-buck. I never, ever do bicep curls, but I will throw in chin-ups into the supersets, which engage biceps as well as lats and rear delts.

3. Always incorporate unilateral moves for core

Find a more core engaging version of your movement. If you insist on a bicep curl, don't do it upright. Do it standing, bent-over, and do it unilaterally. Your core has a lot of stamina already, it can survive being engaged your entire workout.

I never do sit ups, but I have a very strong core. I design my movements to focus on functionality and very compound movements that involve anti-rotational core stability. This involves the deep core muscles (transverse abdominals, aka the TVA), so put your ego aside, nobody will be able to see the results of training this, but it will help your back pain.

• Suitcase carry - carry a heavy dumbbell on one side and walk around for 30 seconds. Make it look easy. It's like carrying a basket at a grocery store.
• Do Cossack squats, or kickstand squats, with a heavy dumbbell on ONE side, so you get a suitcase carry as well as a leg exercise. Single leg RDL for a more intense variation. Shrimp squats if you have the coordination.
• Single arm dumbbell bench press or overhead press. Yes barbells bench press look more manly, but you don't get the same core workout.
• Instead of sit ups, I do hanging leg lifts, but I'll do them with one arm sometimes to focus on the grip strength.
• Push ups engage your core as much as sit-ups do. But try a variation called Typewriter push-ups (my favorite variation for climbing conditioning) for more core engagement.

4. Time under tension

It's not only how many reps you do, and or how much weight you're loading. It's also about the time you spend under load tension.

Some say it's better for muscle growth. I say it's more functional. In the end, time under tension is the difference between falling on a climb, and managing to put your protection in.

Shoulder shrugs taught me this lesson at 14, so here's an example for that movement: Shrug slowly for 2. Hold it at the top for 5. Lower it slowly for 2 to the full range of motion. 10 reps should take a minute and a half. It burns, and it gains, much more efficiently.

I vary the TUT principle for different lifts. A dumbbell bench press will maybe be really slow 5 second eccentric phase (lowering) and then a fast 1 second concentric (lifting). I don't focus on the number of reps, I focus on the time I'm in control. Again, this goes back to work:rest ratio.

Do the opposite what everyone else is doing: Make it look hard on the way down, and easy on the way up.

5. Weights sometimes, machines never

Machines should be barred from any gym that takes itself seriously. Yes, they do work, but they're for... actually I don't even know who they're for. I wouldn't even prescribe machines for elderly persons.

For example, using a dip machine violates the principle 3 above (unilateral &  core engagement). If you need assistance, use a band to relieve weight. The reason why you can't do a body-weight dip isn't because of your big muscles lacking strength, it's more likely because you're neglecting to strengthen the smaller, stabilizing muscles. Dip machines delude you; real dips on a bar actual train you.

Remember, my philosophy is functional. Free weights replicate the real movements you use in real life, and will require more coordination in different axes. A squat machine is not going to help me snowboard down moguls like Cossack squats do. A lat pulldown isn't going to help my climbing because it doesn't replicate the core strength a real pull up does.

Moderator: Is innovation in biotechnology happening fast enough to keep up with the challenges that climate change and food security represent?

I think we have to have an operational language around what “innovation” is, because we throw this word around a lot like it’s what’s going to save us all. People forget that innovation is a two-way street. Innovation is like a transaction. In a transaction you need a seller and a buyer. Innovation without a buyer is just called research. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a founder made a new product and nobody's around to buy it, would anyone call that it innovation?

The short answer to my question is, no. In food security, there is NOT enough innovation happening right now, because there aren’t enough buyers and “tryers” willing to give these innovations a chance.

If things go bad in the future (let’s say we're starving because our food production is diminished by 30%), I'm not going to look back and think, "if only we had done more research" -- Instead, I think I will be thinking "we could have avoided this if we gave more startups a chance."

In short, I am putting the burden of innovation on the buyers rather than the makers.

I’m going to contrast the food & ag space with the carbon markets, which I think does have a lot of great innovation happening right now. Why? Because of advance market commitments from Stripe, Alphabet, Microsoft, Shopify, etc. who have made a commitment to buy carbon at a specified price. Imagine if we had that for food & ag. Imagine if I said I can make high quality protein at really cheap, would you buy 50 tons from me for a certain price? If you said yes, I could get venture funding so much more easily, I could be building my company instead of spending time pandering for funding.

There could be structural ways to do this, and that's the government's job. Imagine if we had a tax credit, where farms who reserve up to 5% of their crops production to test new innovations from startups. Governments have vested interests to insure we don't have blights and widespread crop losses that threaten their agricultural outputs. Yes, crop insurance can absorb small shocks for farmers, but real material innovation is required absorb the GDP-sized shocks.

Here's a hot take: Because the original question was about climate change and food security… Is climate change actually the most disastrous thing to happen to our food security? Is a croissant really a food? It’s a refined starch, a refined sugar, and butter. That’s a monocropped wheat, monocropped sugar cane, and a monocropped cow (in the US, at least). Beef is the number one driver of deforestation in LATAM. We’re degrading our soils and deforesting our lands to grow croissants and twinkies and pasta. So even if we solved the climate change threat, how much closer are we to solving food security, and for whom?

Moderator: What emerging trends have you observed that could have a significant impact on productivity and efficiency and consequently on food security?

In my position as a really early stage investor, I’ve seen so many companies. Maybe 400+ food and ag related startups directly pitching to me or through a pitch deck. They all say they increase yield, or decrease crop loss somewhere in the chain. If you aren't looking closely, they all sound the same. So, our job as technically savvy investors is to focus not on what, but HOW. And that's where you see so many new opportunities to improve our food systems.

In just our portfolio alone we’re focusing on finding completely new modalities. One that comes to mind is BeeFlow which many Argentinians know, because it’s Argentinian. They boost bee immune systems and increase their pollinating power by hacking their minds. The more a flower gets pollinated, the bigger berries you get.

Another example, we have a company that is using electromagnetic fields to impact crop yields, and we've seen yield increases that are on par with the kind of fertilizers that we are using today, but without the harm like nitrogen runoffs. We also have a company that can fertilize a hectare with as little fertilizer as my thumb, the secret sauce is that they are optimizing on the bioavailability of the micronutrients instead of how much there is, and their number seems to be about 1,000,000 times more efficient.

So, I think we are in something I'm just going to make up called Ag 3.0.

Ag 1.0 is basically everything before the Green Revolution in the 1960's, and I would probably argue this was the best version of farming we had. We had accumulated a lot of indigenous knowledge about crop rotations and intercropping, etc. Then, around mid-20th century, Ag 2.0 took off when we globally expanded the Haber-Bosch derived nitrogen fertilizers and various pesticides to focus on productivity and efficiency, and in the process we just decimated our lands. We took the technology to make a bombs, and used that to make fertilizer, and now we’re bombing our soils.

Right now I think we're having something called Ag 3.0 which integrates more of our understanding of the complex ecosystems that are involved. The defining feature of Ag 3.0 is that I think we are starting to appreciate that soil is more biology than it is geology. We’re understanding more how fertilizers are put into the dirt, then go into our rivers, and kill our marine life. We have all this understanding thanks to new technologies elsewhere in biology, like cheaper sequencing to do metagenomic analysis, and faster/cheaper carbon MRV.

Moderator: Access to capital for start-ups has been a major challenge in the last 18-24 months, with stabilization of interest rates, are you guys seeing increasing interest from investors to fund new rounds in the biotech space?

The very first week I joined investing, we had a pandemic, when nobody wanted to invest in companies. Then the next year, we had the most investment ever where my team in SF alone deployed more than $50M in follow on capital to our portfolio. I’ve lived two ends of the extremes, and now we’re somewhere in the middle.

I can tell you that we’re definitely seeing more deals happening especially in our portfolio alone. I just can't tell you whether that’s increasing to what it should be, or more than what it should be.

But I think we are inching close to a very healthy amount right now. Because, what I can tell you is that the founders in my portfolio who are hustling the most are raising capital and they absolutely deserve it, and that the slowest companies in my portfolio (in terms of research and least hustle) are not. I think that’s where we should be.

To go a little further on that, it's not always a good sign that investors are putting more money into venture investing. Sometimes people call that a "bubble." I think that carbon markets had a little bit of this, where a lot of money went into carbon capture and sequestration, and then the the promises didn't deliver for various reasons, and now we have distrust in those markets, and distrust is the last thing we need right now when we have looming issues that need cooperation and coordination from the financial markets.

We have a fare-based public transit because of the private-sector commercialization of mass transit in the 19th century, which had to operate on a fare-basis to cover costs (and make a profit). When mass transit shifted to public ownership, it "inherited" the fare system because riders were already used to it, and it helped make the public costs of building the infrastructure an easier to pill to swallow.

But why do we even pay for fares for public transit, and not other public goods? We don't pay to use a public bathroom, or a public park, or public libraries, or public safety. I think it's fair to challenge the beneficiary-pays principle of being able to move around where we live. We can envision a city where we are entitled to move throughout the city regardless of whether we can pay for it. Wouldn't it be preposterous to envision a pedestrian toll sidewalk? In terms of what we expect people to pay for, why have we drawn the line at buses and trains?

Fare-free transit is not novel. I grew up in Oregon, where in the city of Portland can ride the light rail ("the MAX") for free within downtown limits. In Corvallis (home to Oregon State University) you can also ride the bus system fare-free. Other US cities that have experimented with fare-free systems are Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Olympia, Washington; Kansas City, Missouri; and Missoula, Montana, to name a few. (Notice that these are largely college towns; I suspect the fare-free system is to mitigate drunk driving).

Today, I live and ride in San Francisco, where I notice a lot of fare evasion. From my experience, maybe only 30% of people will actually "tag in" to pay for the $3 bus fare. I don't say this to poo-poo the fare evaders. I bring this up because if so such a small minority of riders pay the fares in the first place, it starts to make less sense that we all should pay for fares at all.  

To advocate for a fare-free system is to advocate for eliminating the small frictions snowball into bigger cultural shifts. In a fare-free system, the mental hurdle of "paying for a bus" is gone. You don't think about what distance is "worth" taking the bus. You just hop on and off the myriad moving platforms that transport you across the city. You don't worry about whether or not you're about to pay a transfer fee.

Most importantly, we can improve the culture around public transit. In a fare-free system, you don't expect a lot from something you don't pay for (see: Dan Ariely's zero-price effect and the price-quality heuristic). If something is free, you tend to value the service more than you expect it. This creates a constant positive (dare I say, invincible) aura around public transit.

The financial impact

If we went to a fare-free system, how would that impact SFMTA? Look at the breakdown of the operating revenue from the budget proposal below. Our fares only make up 10% of the total operating budget! ($141 million of $1.4 billion total).

For a balanced budget, you can safely assume that the revenue is roughly equivalent to the expenditures. But what's the biggest category for operating expenses?

Salaries comprise about 67% of the entire operating expenses.

Unlike Uber and Lyfts, ridership and operating expenses don't move in lockstep for public transit. An empty bus is just as expensive to run as a full bus (if you ignore fuel costs of a heavier bus). We're paying the driver and their pensions regardless of whether there is anyone in the bus.

The purpose of a public transit system is to 1) provide affordable access to all members of society regardless of socioeconomic status, 2) reduce the number of vehicles on the road for environmental and quality of life reasons, 3) RESOURCE EFFICIENCY. It's not efficient to run empty buses!

The bus was already manufactured. It is already eating fuel. The carbon footprint is imprinted. The best that we can do is actually utilize it to do what it's supposed to do: transport as many people as comfortably possible.

How much does it cost the SFMTA to operate a ride? And how does that compare to the fare?

The metric that we should focus on is the cost per ride.

We can estimate that SFMTA has roughly 120 million rides per year, estimated by a weekly ridership average of 395,000. (I don't know if the weekly ridership is already accounting for fare evasion, let's assume it is). We can also estimate that 80% of the total operating expenses are related to public transit (the other 20% are related to taxis, street services, etc.). This is about $1.1 billion.

$1.1 billion in costs for 120 million rides equates to: $9 per ride!

There are two ways to lower the cost. One is to just lower the operating expenditures per ride (this would cause massive upheaval). The other is to increase ridership by making it fare-free.

The status quo is that we pay $3 in fares, so it's actually a net $6 per ride. We can get to that net cost by increasing ridership by 33%, which, again, I argue could be possible if public transit didn't have a pay-per-ride system.

I'll continue with more thoughts in another blog post, especially those of you who are wondering "but how are we going to pay for it!" – I just wanted to get these thoughts out before this upcoming election in San Francisco, where reliable transit is one of the propositions on the ballot (Prop L).

Maintaining friendships is hard. It's even harder for friends in different time zones, friends who are busy and/or ambitious, and friends who have just fallen out of the radar over the years. I am reflecting on a few useful tactics I've accumulated over the years.

I hesitate to publish this because I'm afraid of it'll be interpreted as instrumental. I came up with the names an hour ago, only to help the reader remember.

Don't just employ these tactics as means to an end; I invite you to aim to be the kind of person who naturally finds creative ways to connect. Embody the friend you want to be, don't just act it out. In the end, it's not the number of interactions that deepens friendships, it's who you are during them.

The "Value-add"

This isn't a "play," per se, but it's important because once you read this, you'll know why the other plays make sense: I have learned to STOP asking "how are you?" It's a lot of burden on the other person. Where do they even start?

Instead, I try to "add value first." I offer a funny or heartwarming story from my life, or a photo of something they'd relate to. I usually inquire about something related to the last time we talked (what they've been struggling with, what they're been excited about, etc.). Good friends remember the details. In other words, don't ask the other person to start the fire; be a good guest, and come with the kindling already lit.

This isn't to say checking in with a "how are you" is completely useless. It can be posed and answered meaningfully, with the right relationships. But for most people, there are worthier alternatives like, "what's been on your mind lately" and "how are you feeling about life in general" and "what are you looking forward to?"

The "Pop-in"

If I'm going to be in some neighborhood that I don't live in, I'll text some of my friends who live in the area to let them know I'm nearby and I'd love to "pop in" if they're free. It's one step removed from just showing up at their door (a lot of cultures still do this!), but texting first gives my friend permission to veto if it doesn't work for them.

Last week, I was at a work-related networking event and texted my friends who live a few blocks away. It turns out they just had just delivered a baby four days prior, so not only did I get an early look, but also catching up with my friends in that post-natal period is precious in itself.

The "Pop-up"

I don't want to have to plan a whole thing just to chill with my friends, and I don't want the burden of hosting either. I have a whole anxiety around whether people will show up. So to make it more chill I'll post up somewhere with a book (a park or a coffee shop) and then let some of my friends know that I'm going to be there if they would like to join. Statistically, it leads to a small group or just one person, but as an introvert, this is the perfect size to not drain my social battery (did someone say Poisson distribution? 🤓).

I appreciate when friends do this with me. Example: my friend texted me saying she's at a Casements (a bar) and live music spontaneously appeared. I was biking home from work and was about to for my evening run, but chose to join her instead. Then my brother joined because he got locked out of the house. He helped me finish my second beer. Then we ate Mission tacos down the street, where I had a salsa so spicy I was crying for 15 minutes. I also then discovered how fluent my friend is in Spanish.

The "Flashback"

Text someone immediately when something reminds you of them. One of my best friends from grad school and I used to "sneak out" to get late night fast food, as if we were haphazardly having an affair (we were strictly platonic). We'd indulge in the secrecy, and eat in the car lest anybody finds us. It was usually on Fridays when McDonalds would have $2 Filet-o-Fish, but we'd also do this for the debut of new chicken sandwiches. Sometimes we'd let another person join in on our tryst. Now, she's 500 miles away and has a family, and neither of us eat fast food, but on the rare occasion I do, I'd text her immediately and tell her we need to sneak out again soon.

It's also just nice letting my friends know I'm thinking of them, and always try to make it interesting how I'm thinking of them.

The "Soft Now"

I have a friend who I will text to catch up, and then she'll offer that she's free for a call for the next few hours. She, in particular, is good at what I call the "soft now" – it's like now, but not now-now. To me, the gesture says, "I can prioritize you, if you can prioritize me." This has been really effective for squeezing in some quality time with a friend through a phone call. It also comes with the understanding that it's a late notice, and it might be ok for you to be doing something else (I was folding my laundry last time we called). The "Soft Now" is more casual and less formal, which is how I tend to like my friendships.

The "Hard Now"

I don't do this, but some of my friends will FaceTime me with no warning, which is weird for me because "hard now" phone calls are for ambulance-level emergencies, but I respect them for trying to change the culture around phone calls. By the end, I always appreciate receiving the "hard now" calls. It feels more intimate than a planned call. They delivered something I didn't know I needed!

The "Favor"

Ask your friends for favors instead of spending money on services. One time I rented a car that I muddied up because I took it backpacking, and I needed to get it cleaned before returning it. I could have spent $15 to run it through a car wash, but instead I called up a friend to ask if I could use her garden hose for a spray down. I spent more time driving to her house than it would have taken to go through a car wash, but it was time well spent because we were able to catch up.

Asking friends for favors is how you deepen relationships: It's the give-and-take dynamic, the vulnerability of asking for a favor, the affirmation from your friend who is willing to help, which strengthens the feeling of knowing you can rely on each other. A lot of our economy is built on being able to offer services to those who want to be independent, because that's just the American way, but inter-dependence is the key to stronger relationships!

The "Podcast"

Send really long voice messages to each other. I have a dear friend who is busy with her two kids, and sometimes it's hard to even find time to get on a phone call without being interrupted (ugh, children are so needy!). She appreciates getting the 5-10 minute voice messages from me through WhatsApp because she can listen while she's doing the dishes or on a driving commute. This is also an interesting format because it's actually difficult to monologue for that long... but it does make me delve into the topics a little deeper as I'm recording. It almost feels like journaling.

The "Half-Birthday"

Find any excuse to hang out. This was particularly useful for busy grad students who needed something more formal than a chill-hang to get them out of the lab or their pajamas. It started as a half-birthday celebration to get some frozen yogurt together, but we found any arbitrary reason to hang out: Summer solstice, a pet's "gotcha" day, go out to wear our latest new clothes, etc. Make a Google Calendar or a Partiful or whatever to turn it into a silly excuse for an "event."

The "Buddy Errand"

This is a tough one to execute, but sometimes running errands together is an easy way to extend time together. I had brunch with a friend and then extended it by going with her to run a 40 minute errand. I probably wouldn't START a hangout by asking someone to run an errand with me, so I'd characterize this more useful as an "extension." This especially doesn't work for high-cognitive errands like grocery shopping.

I think dragging a buddy with you on an errand from the beginning requires a bigger kind of errand, like driving to East/South Bay to pick up something from Craigslist or IKEA. A lot of quality conversation gets done in the car. Just make sure you treat them for coming with you.

Sometimes I combine this with The "Pop-In" and say "hey, I'm in your area running an errand if you wanna come with me to catch up!" (I always offer the alternative, to just hang out after my errand).

Bonus tool: Catchup app

I use the Catchup app to remind myself to catch up with the friends that I don't naturally text often – the kind of friendships that need a little more management. I set 3, 6 or 12 months reminders to catch up with them.

The Kendrick v Drake beef is over. Kendrick won, handily. So why am I still thinking about it?

It seems that everyone I talk to is either really invested, or not invested at all. To those of you who can’t stop thinking about this (like me): why is that? Are we complicit in the very things that Kendrick (and other artists) has been pointing to? And to those of you who aren't invested at all: you should be.

I have been feeling creative lately. Generously generative.

One of the reasons is because I started pondering more about the causal chains that trigger butterfly effects and catalyze domino effects. I've been scrawling a lot of journal entries lately in a bound notebook, and a prominent pattern has been my reflections on how certain events or decisions led to something else to happen.

I'm calling this "chain journaling" because it interlinks events in our recent memories in causal chains.

I'll give you an example:

• If I hadn’t gone to volunteer for the ultramarathon in Auburn, I wouldn’t have returned home with 50 leftover burritos to give away
• If I didn't have 50 burritos to give away, I wouldn't have formerly met some of my street's tent residents that night, and felt extra sociable
• If I hadn't felt sociable that night, I wouldn't have met my new friends E&V in my building in our common area (which led to a 2 hour chat until 1:00 am!)
• If I hadn’t met E&V, they wouldn't have invited me to join their small group doing The Artist's Way (fortunately, they just had started!)
• If I hadn't done The Artist's Way and joined those weekly phone calls, I wouldn’t have been close enough to be cat-sitting for them while they went camping last weekend
• If I hadn’t cat-sat for them, I wouldn’t have been able to meet their female friend at a door-key hand-off
• If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have been passed a second-hand compliment (E: “she told me to tell you she thinks you’re cute even though she already has a partner”)
• If I hadn't gotten that compliment, I wouldn't be feelin' myself so hard this weekend
• If I hadn't been so self-confident this weekend, then ... etc etc

I could trace this timeline even further forward or backward at any given moment, but usually I'm going backwards in time from a recent happening.

My favorite thing about chain journaling is that it really helps me cherish how much one thing precipitates another. I don't worry about whether things are genuinely interconnected. I'll seize whatever flap of a butterfly's wings and conjure my own butterfly effect. It is a practice of both observation and imbuing meaning.

But more importantly, chain journaling helps me appreciate the fruitfulness of an ostensibly standalone moment in time. Every small thing can topple the dominoes to something even grander. The fertility of every fleeting event is spine-tinglingly beautiful, and I love starting every morning of my day with the mindset that something today could blossom to something magnificent down the road.

Here's another "chain journal" I reflected on:

• If I hadn't been gifted a complimentary print New Yorker subscription from my friend, I wouldn't have made it a goal to read it every week
• If I hadn't aspired to read it every week, I wouldn't have been cultivated a habit to read the magazine at The Stable Cafe every Saturday morning
• If I hadn't been at that cafe that one morning, I wouldn't have met one of my new recent best friends, M
• If I hadn't met M, we wouldn't have hosted this joint birthday party with 80 guests (where I've met so many new friends!)
• If I hadn't met that particular new friend... etc etc.

Journaling like this is incredibly generative, because I can either trace further back in time and connect more things, or I can diverge at different points in the chain and start a new branch in the chain.

Another aspect that I love about chain journaling is that it makes it easier to be grateful for the people in my life, because I can see that they are entangled with something greater (e.g., "If you hadn't needed to use that bathroom that one time, XYZ wouldn't have happened...").

Chain journaling has helped draw meaningful constellations from the formerly punctilate picture of my cosmos. It interweaves events together. I've been really benefiting from meditating on the possibilities our lives hold at any moment in time. I'm starting to say yes to more things, as a mutual effort to co-create with what the universe is giving me. Woo.

In an hour, E&V are taking me on a field trip to their favorite grocery store. Who knows what will spring from that!

At 12:59 PM PST on March 11th, 2024, you violently swerved your white sedan into the bike lane that I was in. Luckily, I managed to skid my Lyft bike to avoid your car pinching me against the other parked car on the right.

In my rage, I caught up with your car to confront you at the next stop light, and you showed no remorse. Not even an apology. In fact, you were blaming ME for somehow getting your way.

The man in your passenger seat opened his door as if to scare me with a physical confrontation, but I was so angry, I wanted to fight. I wanted nothing more than to show you the same savage disregard for human life that you had shown me. But I know that violence only begets more violence. I wish I could make you understand what a split second could have done to my life, and even as I'm writing this, I don't know if words could ever be enough.

But to break the cycle of violence, I'll try anyway.

2: feelings

In the moments after our near-collision, I wasn't scared for my life. You made me scared for something much worse: A life where I couldn't move. I derive a lot of my identity from my able-bodiedness. I run, climb, bike, snowboard, hike, walk, swim, and dance. These make me feel alive.

Near-accidents like this force me to confront my able-bodied privilege in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Who am I, if not a person who moves?

I've had a small ankle injury a few years ago, and I fell into a victim mindset that led me to three years of a sedentary lifestyle, which spiraled into more and more disability and unhealthiness. Luckily, I snapped out of it. I know that I am much happier now when I get to celebrate life every day through unencumbered and pain-free movement.

What I'm trying to say is that I have a history of not handling injuries well.

When you almost hit me the other day, it horrified me to imagine a life deprived of my physical pursuits. I would grow plump and soft in a wheelchair or a couch, merely spectating everything I envisioned for my own life. New lovers dancing together on the pier. Happy parents riding bikes with their children with the summer evening breeze on their necks. Runners and climbers and hikers pushing their mental and physical limits. That near accident made me afraid that I would spiral downwards until I become overwhelmingly depressed that I am merely living a shell of a life.

But you wouldn't know any of this if you had hit me.

This is why I am angry. There was no remorse from you. You didn't acknowledge the accident was your fault. I don't think you understood your impact if you had hit me.

I'm angry knowing that you will drive away from this thinking you don't have to change anything about your driving. And I'm angry because someone else will have a bike accident with you, and everything I said above will be someone else's story instead of mine. I am angry because of the injustice in our system, that people like you can walk away from this completely unscathed.

3: needs

I need you to understand that there is unjust asymmetry between a driver and a cyclist. You are in a metal box designed to protect you against a collision from other metal boxes. My flesh and bones couldn't damage the even cosmetic parts of your car if I tried.

But you don’t have to completely crush a human body to ruin their life. You have to remember that athletes will frequently rupture ligaments in their knee just by pivoting around a basketball court. A driver can do more damage by parallel parking.

I need you to help me and other cyclists feel safe. If you enjoy car-centric culture, I might suggest you move to Houston, Dallas or Los Angeles. (I personally could never live there). Being able to walk or bike in a city makes me feel engaged and creative. Walking under a row of trees makes me feel lovely in a way that driving doesn't. I love the autonomy of being able to go anywhere with my feet or a quick Lyft bike. It is an expression of my individuality and my independence. In the future, I'd love to be able to run/walk my baby in a stroller, or bike with my toddler mounted in the back without fear of them dying.

I'd love to know how you feel alive. I'd love to know how you feel engaged with the world around you, and when you feel safe enough to be creative. And I'd love to contribute to that somehow.

4: requests

I humbly ask that you put yourself in my shoes, and empathize with me. So, I have two requests for you.

First, watch this video . These are accidents solely related to a driver opening their car door, and I wanted to show you this because these are just car vs. human accidents where the car is stationary. And while you watch it, I'd like for you to imagine if it happened to you.

Second request: After you watch that video, I want you to ditch your car for a month, and ride your bike everywhere in the city. I'll even let you borrow my bike. I just want you to understand that as a cyclist there are 10 ways to die every single minute.

Please just remember that shaving a few seconds (yes, seconds!) off of your commute isn't worth potentially ruining the rest of someone's life.

I care about your feelings. I care about your role in your friends and family's lives. I care about your hopes and dreams for this one life that you have. All I ask that you care about mine, too.

I started running seriously last year, coming from basically zero aerobic base. I think I made big improvements in a short amount of time, and it's largely because of how I focused my training.

There are 3 main modalities of training:

1. Mechanical - musculoskeletal, kinetic patterns, strength, flexibility
2. Mental - attitude, discipline, patience
3. Metabolic - energy sources (fat vs sugar), organelles, biochemistry

I've ordered this list above in order of what people tend to focus on the most, and at the bottom is what I think is under-appreciated.

People forget that their body is basically a big biochemical bag, and often neglect the metabolic aspects of training. Biochemical load is just as important as mechanical load, especially when it comes to long distance running.

This past season, I've focused on running through a metabolic perspective, so a lot of my running tips will be focused on that. But since I was coming from zero, I've also sprinkled in some tips for avoiding injuries (mechanical).

What is "load"

Mechanical load is pretty simple: The load of a squat, for example, is weight * reps (or: force * distance). Your fitness increase is your body's response or adaptation to the load. Mechanically, this could look like more neural recruitment, muscle fibers getting bigger, etc.

Biochemical load is similar: The "load" is what your cells are doing in order to respond to some kind of energy deprivation. Your fitness increases because your cells have to figure out how to get more energy.

For example, you're running, your cells eat up some kind of biochemical fuel (glucose, lactate, etc,) until it realizes it's running low, and then it wants to convert other things to fuel. You do this enough, and your cells will just adapt and be better at either using fuel or converting stuff to fuel.

Think if your training like that. You need to deprive your muscles of energy (by exerting energy), and you get better at running because of all the adaptation.

1) Run slow to run more

The biggest mistake most runners make is that they're running too hard during their easy runs. I spent my first month doing extremely slow running in order to keep my heart rate at Zone 2. It was frustrating, and frankly, it hurt my ego to even be seen in public running that slow. My watch kept beeping: "you're creeping into Zone 3!"

It all paid off in the end, and it will for you, too. Just trust the process. The more you run slow, the faster you'll be at it (to a certain extent). You'll notice your pace getting faster at the same heart rate. That's a biochemical adaptation. Your muscles are making more mitchondria, and tells your heart, "hey you don't have to pump so much blood, I got this 💪." It even makes more smaller blood vessels around your muscles so it can deliver more energy! Cool, right?

(When I started running, my Z2 was at 10:45/mile... six months later my Z2 went to 7:50/mile)

There are LOTS of benefits to running slow:

• Much lower injury rate. There's less ground impact force of your feet hitting the ground.
• Recovery is short. It's far easier to run the next day when your body has fully recovered from the day before. My mantra was "I run today in a way such that I can run tomorrow." It's far easier to get higher volume training with easy running 5 days a week, rather than moderately hard running every other day. Volume comes from frequency, not intensity.
• It's more social. You can run with people and have a conversation. Most people actually can't run and talk at Zone 2 (some people's Zone 2 is speed walking) but once you train consistently enough for 1-2 months, you can run and talk at the same time.
• You burn more fat. Low intensity running uses fat as the energy substrate. This is the ultimate goal of any long distance runner. There are 200,000 calories of fat your body can use; there are only 2,000 calories of glycogen (which is used in higher intensity runs). By the way, burning fat does NOT mean you will have less fat on your body. Sorry.

2) "Sprint" uphill to avoid injuries

You should do sprints. In running fitness, you want to raise the floor, AND raise the ceiling. Slow runs "raise the floor" (your slow runs get faster). Sprints "raise the ceiling" (the maximum work output, period). When you run, you'll exist somewhere between the floor and the ceiling, so move both.

(Btw: If slow running makes more mitochondria in your muscles, then high intensity enlarges those mitochondria.)

But as a beginner, you should do sprints uphill. This is to avoid injury. It's not about how fast you're actually going, it's about – say it with me– the biochemical load! You can jog up a hill and it'll feel just as hard as sprinting on a flat track. The difference is that there is half as much ground impact force jogging up a hill. It's the same ground impact force as walking, but with all the mechanical and metabolic benefits of sprinting. This is a neat trick that lots of runners do to avoid injury and have longevity in their training.

Btw, the opposite is true: running downhill has MORE ground impact force and increases your risk of injury by a lot. It also has no metabolic benefit (because all the work is done by gravity). So just be extra careful on those downhills and use them as your recovery between your sprints.

3) More work could mean better recovery

This is counter-intuitive, but running an extra easy mile at the end of a high-intensity workout makes it much easier for your body to recover.

Have you ever watched the Tour de France documentaries and you see the cyclists doing more riding on a stationary bike AFTER a stage? You're probably thinking, "why aren't they conserving their energy for the next stage?" This is because they produced a ton of lactate from the stage, and they need to do easy riding so that their muscles eat up that lactate (for energy), and not let it accumulate so they can stay fresh for the next stage. This is way more effective than a Theragun at "flushing out lactate."

So, if you're doing some sprints, or any other kind of threshold/anaerobic work, make sure you spend an extra 10 minutes with easy running afterwards so that your muscles eats up all the lactate that it's producing. It makes recovery so much faster.

4) Time not distance

Throw out the training plans that are based on distance. They are all working back from the ultimate goal (some distance-based race), but distance is a loose proxy for the amount of biochemical load that is put on your body.

Instead, focus on the amount of time you're running. I have some loose rules in my training plan. For building an aerobic base, there are only two durations never change: 40-60 minutes for a base run, and 20-30 minutes for a recovery run. (Do all of these at Zone 2 unless you're really dead tired, do Zone 1.)

I almost never look at distance. Personally, I don't think anything less than 30 minutes is productive for training. If you can't do more than 30 minutes, then decrease your intensity until you can. I've noticed 50 minutes is my sweet spot (I can do this every day, and I still get faster).

Time is a kinder metric to measure yourself against. Your biochemical load is just stimulus x time, anyway. Your mitochondria don't count distance.

Just as marinading meat, time is what gets you deep flavors. Zone 2 is your marinade, so just focus on clocking in the time.

5) You have to strengthen smaller muscles

Please respect the teamwork required of every muscle that lets you run. The smallest muscles in your feet, ankles, lower calves are important even though it's the big muscles that feel sore most of the time.

I highly recommend buying barefoot/minimal shoes (like vivobarefoot) and wearing them throughout the day, walking to work, and even taking them on smaller easy runs. This will teach your feet to re-engage the small muscles. Don't believe me? Try it for a day and you will notice how sore your legs will be in places you didn't know could get sore. It will stop hurting eventually.

This will bulletproof you for the high-load workouts where you need to really push yourself.

Have fun!

Happy holidays, friends.

Phenology refers to the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate, plant, and animal life cycles. I love writing an annual letter every year because it's like a phenology of the self. Some themes are cyclically recurring in my life. Some energies bloom, some wilt. All life is change, which is a beautiful immune system for the thing I dread most: repetitive stagnancy. I'm grateful that new challenges and new surprises are built into this experience.

Looking back at the year: 2023 felt like... cabin respite energy. I predict 2024 vibes will reflect the fact that I've recharged.

Also, if I haven't seen or heard from you in a while, I want to change that. Let's be more active in making our paths cross, be it San Diego, Seattle, France, Kenya, Australia, wherever. I'm sure we can make this work 😄

2023 in 23 big bullets

I. Updates

1/ 2023 was a recovery year for me. I was slowly killing myself with work for the past two years and lost many things along the way, including my fitness, my mental and physical health, my libido, my energy, and my openness to risk. Last year, I told my team that I'm consciously taking a step back from work to make it more sustainable, and they were supportive. I've reclaimed my nights and weekends, I've turned off all work notifications on my phone, and accepted that I can't do everything. The world keeps turning, and I am smiling more, dancing more, and get to think more creatively. It's magical what an extra breathing room can do.