A short and sweet intro this week in the form of recommended reflection.

It is so easy to breeze through the holidays and move directly on to the next thing. What I am always left feeling after a long holiday period with friends and family is extreme thankfulness and appreciation for the smaller moments.

Give yourself the bandwidth this week to reflect. How fortunate are you to have gotten that one-on-one time with your family members? To laugh your way through a silly family tradition. To watch some football with a full belly with your brother, your dad, or your buddies. To have had that morning coffee with your folks before you headed back home. To be able to host your family in the house you’ve worked hard to afford.

A few minutes spent appreciating the little moments from a week like Thanksgiving is an easy way to reframe your mind and to have perspective to latch onto in the coming months and years for what really matters. It’s just as easy to not do so and move on to the next thing. Give thanks this week again -

Brain - Optimizing For Net Fulfillment

I was listening to a podcast last week (Optimizing Life For Maximum Fulfillment with Bill Perkins - #237 Peter Attia Drive Podcast) and picked up on a concept that I really, really enjoyed.

Bill Perkins, author of Die With Zero, introduces the concept of "net fulfillment" by framing life through three interrelated buckets: health, wealth, and time. His approach emphasizes maximizing life satisfaction rather than hoarding resources. So many of us are happy with our bodies, but not happy with our careers. Or happy with our bodies and careers, but feel like we don’t have the time we desire. Solving for fulfillment can be a healthy exercise to determine what is important to you, and then to optimize your life around those pillars. Here's a summary:

Health, Wealth, and Time Are Interdependent:

• Health: Your physical and mental health determines how well you can enjoy life's experiences.

• Wealth: Money provides access to experiences, comfort, and security, but its utility diminishes without time and health to enjoy it.

• Time: The most finite resource. Unlike health and wealth, time cannot be replenished.

Balancing the Buckets:

Each bucket has a "curve" that changes with age. For example, your health and time are most abundant when you’re young, while wealth tends to grow over time.

Perkins argues for aligning spending and actions with the moments when you have the most net utility from all three buckets. For example, taking a dream vacation earlier in life, when you can fully enjoy it, instead of postponing it to retirement when health or time may limit the experience.

Key Principles of the Framework:

• Front-Load Experiences: Invest in experiences earlier when you can maximize enjoyment and memories.

• Optimize Wealth Use: Don’t hoard money with the sole goal of dying rich. Instead, allocate it strategically to enhance your life and help others (like family or charity).

• Health Investments Pay Dividends: Good health amplifies the return on both time and wealth.

• Track Your "Memory Dividends": Experiences create memories that continue to provide joy over time, making them a high-value investment.

The goal is to maximize life fulfillment by being intentional about how you allocate resources across these three buckets throughout your life stages. This framework helps you focus on the quality of your life, rather than simply accumulating wealth or deferring enjoyment indefinitely.

I plan on picking up “Die With Zero" for a read while on our honeymoon, and plan to be intentional about ensuring my 2025 goals are not only set for loft individual feats, but also optimized for balance and fulfillment at the end of the year.

Body - Rebounding From Thanksgiving Week

We talked last week about some effective strategies to successfully approach the Thanksgiving holiday, to enjoy the moment, not stress about calories, but also to not go overboard. Regardless of how successful you were in this pursuit, chances are you are reading this feeling at least a little bit of guilt about how the week went.

It’s not just the Thanksgiving meal. It’s the leftovers your folks guilt trip you into eating. The second and third Thanksgivings with the other sides of the family. Layer in a few hours of napping and a few gallons of booze, and here we are.

If you want a quick protocol for getting back on the wagon and rebounding from the week, look to these few actions:

Hydrate & Recover:

Holiday meals often contain excess sodium, which can lead to bloating and dehydration. To flush that excess sodium, aim for 8–10 cups of water daily this week. You can also incorporate natural diuretics like cucumber, lemon, or herbal teas (e.g., dandelion root).

Rebalance With Nutrient-Dense Meals:

Reintroducing balanced meals helps stabilize blood sugar and reduces cravings for leftovers or sugary treats. Focus on lean protein (chicken, fish, tofu), Fiber-rich vegetables (broccoli, spinach, carrots), Healthy fats (avocado, nuts, olive oil), Whole grains or starchy vegetables (quinoa, sweet potatoes).

Get Active Again:

Thanksgiving can lead to a large increase in sedentary periods, which leads to fewer calories being burned and a lingering feeling of lethargy. Commit to getting back in the gym Monday morning, and be diligent about getting your 10,000 steps in especially this week

Detox The Body Naturally:

The increased calories and sodium leave the body with a prolonged state of inflammation. The body naturally detoxes via the liver and kidneys - focus on eating anti-inflammatory foods like leafy greens, berries, and ginger, and avoid alcohol at all costs.

Avoid The Guilt:

Emotional reactions to overindulging this week can have lasting effects on your mental state. Be grateful for the benefits of the week, put together a plan, and instead of wasting mental energy and increasing stress by focusing on what you ate, put that energy towards focusing on what you will do today, tomorrow, and the day after to restabilize.

Those calories have been consumed, there’s no going back on it. If you avoided overeating, kudos to you! That is a high level of discipline to be proud of. If you didn’t you have a month until the next Christmas holiday. Let’s kick these 3 - 4 weeks’ ass with intentional planning and focused execution.

Book - OutRead The Average American in 2025

One of the more alarming statistics about reading in the United States is simply the volume at which the average person in our country reads. A Pew Research study from 2023 suggests that the average American reads 12 books a year (one a month), which is low in comparison to some of our other domesticated counterparts, but the even more alarming stat is that the median from this study was 4 books a year, or one a quarter.

If the average book is say, 250 pages, then to outpace the median number in America next year, one would simply only have to read 2.73 pages a day.

Even to beat the average one would only need to read 8.2 pages a day.

Reading is the simplest form of compound interest for knowledge. If we use these statistics from above, the average American will read 120 books over the next decade. The median will read 40. That’s a delta of 80 books by a simple increase of about 6 pages a day.

If you were to read just two books a month for the next decade, you would read 120 more books than the average American, and 200 more than the median.

If you are reading this and would consider yourself at or under that median number over the last few years, I personally believe it’s time to challenge yourself next year. There is only upside to reading. The mental benefits are immediate and compounding, and history is littered with quotes from the brightest minds of our time about the importance of spending time between a few pages.

When you attempt to lose weight, get stronger in the gym, save money, etc. - you tend to have a plan and steps for how you foresee getting there. The same approach can be benefited from with reading. Set a minimum reading goal per week (pages or minutes). Ensure you hit this every week, even if you miss a few days. Bring your book with you to work. Make sure it is on the nightstand for when you get in and out of bed. Plan out the next 6 books you want to read. Go ahead and buy them.

If I told you that you could become 300% more fit than the average American over the next year by working out for 6 more minutes a day, everyone would do it. I say we change that stigma around reading by leading the charge -