A question I’ve been pondering of late - How do I know that I’m doing my best?

I feel like I am pushing it in the gym? But how do I know for sure it’s all I have? I feel like I am dialing in on my diet, but do I have blind spots, or are there areas I need to clean up? I feel like I am working hard at my job, but who am I comparing myself to? Is there a higher level?

The only answer I have been able to find to remedy this on-going question is to attempt short bursts of all-out energy in each bucket. Push to failure in the gym. Cut a few more calories and see how I feel. Take on a few extra projects with work and see how I can balance.

Everyone will have their own strategies, but if we want to avoid regret at the end of our road, I just believe it’s important that we reflect and reengage multiple times throughout every given year. We owe it to ourselves.

Brain - How to Do Great Work - Paul Graham

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t know who Paul Graham was to this point, but I hope this essay below inspires you to get more familiar with his work.

Paul is a computer scientist and famed entrepreneur for many different ventures, most famously known in the grander business circle as the founder of Y Combinator - a startup accelerator known for its aid in helping launch Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and more.

While Paul is great at many things technical, his lasting impact in the business world might just be the forever lasting pieces he has published on his own site in the form of essays about varying topics over the years.

I found Paul’s essays on the Founder’s podcast (Link to Episode 314 - Paul Graham) a few weeks ago, and I have been steadily making my way through the library since.

“How to Do Great Work” is about just that - great work. What great work is, what it looks like, how to find something to work on, what to do when you find it, what to do when you can’t find it - the front to back of doing great work.

Paul has worked with some of the best entrepreneurs in history, and has seen the common threads in successes and failures. While you might not be an entrepreneur (right now), we can all gleam inspiring ideas that can motivate us to do great work in our own circle of life. Try and read this piece (it’s on the longer side) without feeling inspired. I dare you!

“How to Do Great Work” by Paul Graham

A few of my favorite lines:

• The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.

• But pick something and get going. You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.

• What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for.

• The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all.

• So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.

• Curiosity and originality are closely related. Curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on. But the relationship is closer than that. Curiosity is itself a kind of originality; it's roughly to questions what originality is to answers. And since questions at their best are a big component of answers, curiosity

  at its best is a creative force.

• Part of the reason we underrate questions is the way they're used in schools. In schools they tend to exist only briefly before being answered, like unstable particles. But a really good question can be much more than that. A really good question is a partial discovery. How do new species arise? Is the force that makes objects fall to earth the same as the one that keeps planets in their orbits? By even asking such questions you were already in excitingly novel territory.

Body - Add a “Buy In - Cash Out” to Your Workouts

Are you looking to maximize your time in the gym and / or add a little extra intensity into your workouts? Enter in the “Buy In - Cash Out” strategy.

My coach who has been writing up my plans over the last 60 days has been steadily adding more of these into my weeks as we get deeper into the cut. The idea is simple:

• Buy In - Like poker, this is your ante entrance into the game. Something quick but difficult to kick of the lift

• Cash Out - Often the same as the buy in, but something again difficult to cap off the workout

We don’t want these additions taking up crazy amounts of time, but we do want them to be intense. I’ve found that adding these in a few days of the week has kept my strength progressing while I lift, but has kept my cardio shape and endurance high along side.

A Buy In - Cash Out can look something like this:

• Buy In - 1 Mile Run  Cash Out - 1 Mile Run

• Buy In - 1000M Run Cash Out - 1000M Run

• Buy In - 500 Cal Row Cash Out - 500 Cal Ski Erg

• Buy In - 100 Mountain Climbers Cash Out - 100 Mountain Climbers

Up the stakes on your workouts this week and see how your body responds!

Book - Become a Better Reader with the SQ3R Method

Trying to become a reader for someone who has never consistently read can be as daunting of a task as trying to run a marathon for someone who has never consistently run. Yet we know that when we sign up for a marathon, we need to find a plan and a strategy to follow to prepare and improve. Where is the similar approach with reading? It’s not there (at least consistently discussed and portrayed).

I will be the first to admit - this is not a strategy I follow. I have a system for my reading that works, and some of it intertwines with these ideas. If you have tried to start a reading journey and have quickly fallen off, I recommend looking into this approach - the SQ3R Method:

• Survey: Read the title – Help your mind prepare to receive the subject at hand. Read the introduction and/or summary. Notice each boldface heading and subheading – Organize your mind before you begin to read and build a structure for the thoughts and details to come.

• Question: Turn the boldface heading for each section into as many questions as you think will be answered in that section. The better the questions, the better your comprehension is likely to be.

• Read: Read one section at a time with your questions in mind and look for the answers.

• Recite: After each section, stop and recall your questions and see if you can answer them from memory.

• Review: Once you've finished the entire chapter using the preceding steps, go back over the questions you create for every heading.

This is primarily a business / self-help / personal development reading strategy (although maybe you do want to ask questions about the next chapter in your Game of Thrones book?). More detail can be found in this article here from Virginia Tech, but if you struggle with reading and retention, give this a try.