Somewhere along the way, society decided that changing your mind is a weakness. We celebrate certainty. We reward conviction. We lambast the person who goes public with an opinion that contradicts one they have previously held.

But that’s backwards. Growth, by definition, requires change. If your opinions, habits, and beliefs haven’t evolved over the last five years, you’re either a genius who had it all figured out early, or you’ve stopped paying attention.

As we age, we gather data. More experience. More failures. More perspective. More access to information. That should inform how we think and operate. Yet in today’s culture, it’s become taboo to admit we’ve changed our stance, especially when it comes to things like politics, nutrition, training, or even career philosophy. People cling to old opinions out of pride, not principle.

Changing your mind isn’t inconsistency, it’s progress. It’s what happens when wisdom replaces ego. When you stop defending what used to be right for you and start pursuing what is right for you now.

Over time, my views on many things have evolved - how I train, how I eat, how I read, how I rest, even how I define success. I’ve learned that letting go of rigid beliefs creates space for better systems, better habits, and better thinking.

This week’s issue of The Superset explores just that: ideas I’ve changed my mind on through experience, data, and honest reflection. My hope is that it encourages you to do the same - to examine where your beliefs might be outdated, and to have the courage to update them.

Changing your mind isn’t a flaw. It’s a sign that you’re still paying attention.

The more experience and data you collect, the more your beliefs evolve. Here are a few things I’ve changed my mind on over time.

1. Consuming All the Content

If you listed every podcast and YouTube channel you’ve consumed, how long would it be?
For me…impossible to count. Huberman, Modern Wisdom, Rich Roll, Nick Bare—the list never ends.

You can’t consume everything, and you certainly can’t apply everything. I used to treat podcasts like a productivity checklist. Something new every day. Listen to be listening, working towards getting the time remaining to 0:00. Then, onto another podcast. Keep the information flowing. Now, I narrow my focus to a few that truly resonate, and spend time implementing what I learn.

I will be the first to say that if you are choosing between listening non-stop and not listening to podcasts at all, I would obviously avoid the latter. I myself have benefited from the simple positive mental stimulus of having productive speak running into my ears. But at some point, you’re either listening to listen, or you’re listening to act. More acting.

Action: Stop collecting inspiration. Start executing on it.

2. Over-Optimization

The wellness world can turn into an obsession:
Wake up at 5.
Cold plunge by 7.
Protein by 8.
Sauna by 9.
Room set to 67.8°.

Exhausting. I’ve chased perfection hard enough to know it kills consistency. If you are attempting to do everything at once, chances are you are not doing very many of them well, or consistently at all.

Instead, I am a fan of trial and error. Implement, test, see what works for you and for your routine. Gather data and information, but make your own conclusions based on how specific routines make you feel and perform.

What works for me is simple:
Sleep 7–8 hours. Read in the morning. Train daily. Eat high-protein meals.
Everything else is additive.

Action: Simplify your system. Consistency beats complexity.

3. Sleep Isn’t Optional

For years, I wore my 5 AM alarm like a badge of honor - early mornings, even after late nights - caffeine-fueled “discipline.”

Now I know better. Sleep is a performance multiplier. I notice a tangible difference when I sleep 6 hours versus when I sleep 8. And it’s an even steeper drop off when I get less than 6. For me, I also know that I don’t feel markedly better when I get over 8. There is a sweet spot. If I get home after a late night of travel or work, and I can afford to get an extra hour of sleep in the morning and still accomplish what I need to, I am going to do so.

This is never at the sacrifice of the workout I need to get in, simply shuffling the schedule around to accommodate proper recovery has risen up the list of priorities.

I still rise at 5 AM I would say, 310 out of the 356 days a year. I just no longer base my discipline-meter around that metric. I also get in bed before 9 the same amount of nights…A trade I will always make (Saying all of this with a newborn en route in 3 months..)

Action: Treat sleep as your most anabolic supplement.

4. Training by Movement, Not Muscle

My first fitness love, bodybuilding, taught me structure - Chest Day, Back Day, Leg Day.
Performance training has taught me balance.

As I have merged endurance work with strength training, I shifted from isolated body-part splits to movement splits: upper, lower, full-body, circuits, cardio.

For me, this has allowed me to train the muscle groups with more frequency, also adding more intensity to my workouts. I used to think my physique would suffer if I didn’t have dedicated days for each body part. Now I understand that over the long haul, I am able to get better workouts and better balance in over time if I combine multiple muscle groups and focus on volume over time as a whole.

Action: Train for your current performance. Adjust your routines. Training can feel stale if you never switch things up.

5. Flexibility With Diet

When I made some of my major lifestyle changes, I used to eat like a robot: eggs, chicken, rice, repeat. It worked, and guess what? It still works. If you stick to that routine, you will get shredded. Period.

It’s also much easier to do as a single man with no one else relying on you, and also much easier to do when your routine is mostly from the comfort of your own home, with minimal travel, and minimal other life obligations.

Now, I keep the main things the main things, but I adapt.

• When I am on the road: prioritize protein, cut carbs, avoid decision fatigue and having to go out of your way to stay in between the lines

  • Low carbs on the road helps me avoid poor food choices and makes my options much simpler. I also find a hold less water weight and rarely come back from a trip up on the scale.

• At home: Use loose intermittent fasting to manage calories and hunger.

  • If I really want to go on a short weight-loss period, I will toy around with the intermittent fasting windows. Not for the marketing benefits influencers cling to, but for the simple fact that starting to eat at 10 or 11 shrinks the window I can potentially consume calories in, and backweights my calories for when I am most hungry - dinner.

Different seasons require different strategies.

Action: Build principles, but don’t turn them into prisons.

6. Finishing Every Book

I used to finish every book I started, no matter how bad it was. I treated books like workouts, and hard headedly approached every one I started like it was a race that had to be finished.

As I sit here looking at a shelf full of over 150+ books that I have read over the years, I can say for certain that many of them were titles I should have DNF’d. So many books are the same thoughts repackaged from a different point of view, or said in a different way. Much like the podcast point above - finishing a bunch of books isn’t the goal. Reading a bunch of books and taking action is. It took me years to figure this out.

The result? Recurring reading slumps from brunting my way through books that I didn’t want to open, making reading no fun and wasting time.

We quit shows after one bad episode. Why not books?
Now, if a book doesn’t grab me by page 50, I move on.

Action: Quit more bad books. Revisit the great ones.

7. Revisiting and Re-Reading

CC Point 6 Above) My bookshelf holds 150+ books, many repeating the same lessons in different voices. New always has an allure. The new book just released. The new title you saw someone else reading on social media. A new author you listened to on a podcast.

Much like the point above of putting books down, we should always be diligent about picking books up again for the second, third, and tenth times. You know what resonates with you. When I need inspiration, I know exactly what books I am going back to. I know I am not going to reach for a new title to do so.

David Goggins for the motivation. Ryan Holiday for the Stoic framework. Cal Newport for the balance and productivity models. If I read just these three authors and took action on their principles, I wouldn’t be searching many other places for things to be working on. There is a laundry list of actions that I know I have yet to solidify in practice consistently.

Before picking up something new, I now ask:
Have I applied what I learned from the last great book I read?

Action: Read less. Implement more.

10. Goals vs. Systems

I obsess over goals - benchmarks, mile times, revenue targets.
The problem is that over time, every win becomes temporary. I’ll hit one milestone and immediately chase the next.

I have always understood that having a deadline target to work for in the future is a space my brain operates well in. Have a goal, work backward - thrive on the motivation to see that goal through.

A decade into this development journey, I am becoming more reliant and focused on setting goals that help me build systems that I can hopefully rely on long after a race day.

I try to utilize dedicated focus windows around a weight target, an endurance race, or a professional milestone to help reinforce those habits that can keep me ready throughout the year. Training for 20 weeks for a race is great, but if you stop training for months after, you’re starting back over next block. Dieting for a weight target is great - hitting that then seeing the scale creep the other way is not.

Now my largest current focus is on the daily reps - the habits that compound quietly over time.

The weekly mileage to stay ready. The consistency in the 80/20 of an diet for year-long shape over summer blitz diets. Weekly framework at my job to steadily keep improving.

You can’t rely on a goal forever, but you can certainly rely on a system.

Action: Build systems that make success inevitable.

The inspiration for writing a different piece like this was fairly random, but a topic I have been thinking about a lot. I have evolved my opinions on a number of things for the better, and think it’s a valuable exercise for everyone to take inventory of for themselves.

What have you changed your beliefs on?

What is some stance you are clinging to out of pride or fear of retribution from your peers?

Look at your daily habits - why do you continue to do what you do? If they’re positive, continue. If they are not - what are you going to do about it.

Our goal in this life should be to feel like we never stop evolving. And you can get back on that train, today.