(Read this on the web browser if you prefer)
Hey beautiful people, Happy new year!
Wow, this was the longest week ever! It feels like 3 months have passed since the last SOAK edition, right!? Well, it’s true.
The reason? Not sure… it can go all the way from pure laziness to a super busy schedule, but as it usually does, the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
Anyway, who cares!? I’m back and that’s what matters.
Some of you lovely people showed your love and kindness and said you missed me, which is always a good thing to know, and I also missed connecting with you online and through SOAK, so let’s make this a regular for 2022.
The SOAK #5 was sent on October 11th, almost 3 months ago (!). As I said numerous times, writing this newsletter is really fun, because I’m literally talking to friends, but 3 months ago I was feeling overwhelmed with information and content consumption, and with that came anxiety, a new feeling for me, because I’m a laid back kind of person (sometimes too much). I wasn’t feeling well so I decided to quit the internet for a week. But then one week became 2 weeks, and then 3 weeks.
I then started feeling better and got back to consuming content again, but that away time broke my creative practice, and for someone that has always struggled with consistency, that was a big blow on my writing process. These are the first lines that I write in the last 3 months, besides stuff related to my day job.
Speaking of it, my day job also had some impact on this, because there were some changes on my team and I ended up with more work to do, which lead to less time and less mental energy at the end of the day.
Moving on with this newsletter, here’s some of the stuff I’ve been thinking about.
🧽 What I’m Soaking In
For 2022 I have 3 big goals:
Writing Consistently - New year, old goals, I know, but writing is so important to clarify my ideas that it must be a constant objective in my life.
Evolve Professionally - I’m assuming a totally new position at my day job in a couple of weeks, and I’m convinced I can have a meaningful impact on it, so for the first time in many years I’m actually excited about my corporate career.
Get Healthier - More than a goal, this is a necessity. I’m in the worst shape I’ve ever been, and I’m turning 40 in 2 weeks, so I need to take care of myself so I can be around for another 40 years spreading stupid jokes on the internet.
With these goals in mind, I’m currently focusing on writing (at least) this newsletter without missing a single week in 2022, and so far I’m 100% successful! (hey, I’m 500 words down this newsletter, and it’s my first “new year’s“ joke, so I think I have reasons to be proud).
I’m also doing as many online courses as I can get on Linkedin Learning, mainly on technical stuff like Power BI so I can be better prepared for my new role at the office and kick ass at it.
Last but not least, I’m focusing on my diet and workouts. Ok, to be honest, obviously this time of the year is the worst for implementing big changes on a diet because there’s too much food involved in celebrations, so what I’ve done so far was just planning, but I’m implementing that after this last weekend of festivities.
My main resource for this is also my book recommendation this week, so more on this later.
🦉 Soaking Up Knowledge
If I was a millionaire and 10X more interesting and smarter, I’m sure these would be a duo that I would love to hang out with.
I never miss The Random Show (any episode of The Tim Ferriss Show that has Kevin Rose as a guest). The amount of knowledge and novelties they share is tremendous, and they’re always hilarious.
If you have 2.5 hours to spend, go watch this episode.
📚Books
The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
I’m revisiting this book to help me with my 3rd big goal for 2022: Get Healthier.
Despite his huge audience, Tim Ferriss is controversial in many of the issues he tackles, and a quick search for this book reviews will show you many 1-2 stars, so if you’re not familiar with Ferriss’ work, that can be a red flag.
For those who follow his work, however, you know that his work and ideas lay strongly on the notion of the Minimum Effective Dose, i.e., “the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome“.
This book is all about that premise, and for my experience, it delivers.
I’ll be doing the Slow Carb Diet, with which I had great results before, and I expect to lose 20% of my current body weight during the next 6 months.
The Slow Carb Diet in a sentence: Meat, Fish, Eggs, with Beans and (lots of) Vegetables. Always eat until you’re full, and have one cheat day a week, where you really eat anything you want
💣Recommendations
This SOAK edition could well be called “The Tim Ferriss Recommendations’ Newsletter“, but when things are good, they’re good.
Ferriss recently recommended “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee“in his newsletter, and as a comedy fan, I had to check it. How did I’ve missed this for so long?? It’s a show by Jerry Seinfeld made from 2012 to 2019, and the title says it all: in each episode, Seinfeld takes one comedian to get some coffee, while riding great cars and having hilarious conversations.
So far I’ve only watched the episodes with Jim Carrey and Jimmy Fallon, but I can’t wait to watch many more with people like Ricky Gervais, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, or Jon Stewart.
Since episodes are around 15-20 minutes long, they’re perfect for a little relaxing time between tasks or to binge-watch a few at the end of the day.
✔️ Fun Trivia
It’s the first day of the year, yeah! But why are we in 2022?
Well, what the western world uses nowadays is the Gregorian Calendar, which was implemented by Pope Gregory the thirteenth in 1582, precisely 400 years before another world-changing event, the birth of yours truly.
The Pope hired some astronomers to come up with a calendar that worked better than what they used at the time (the Julian Calendar), mainly because the celebration of Easter on March 21st was slipping later on the solar event that originally marked the date (the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox). This happened because a full solar cycle is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, and the Julian Calendar didn’t consider exactly that.
The Gregorian Calendar was strongly based on the work of Dionysius Exiguus, the Roman theologian, mathematician, and astronomer, that invented the Christian Calendar more than 1000 years earlier than Pope Gregory’s decision!
Dionysius was also the one that introduced the designations of b.c. and a.d. that we currently use.
At the time of his living, the calendar used was the Julian Calendar, which started counting the years since the founding of Rome (753 b.c.), but Dionysius determined that Jesus was born in the Roman year 753, and started counting the years again from there. This system spread throughout Europe and the Christian world during the following centuries, and the b.c (before Christ) and a.d. (Anno Domini - the year of the Lord) were adopted to differentiate historical dates.
Looking back a few millenniums, the idea of having some folks looking at the sky and determining how long solar cycles took and inventing calendars that represent that with incredible precision is mindblowing, and puts in perspective all the power and resources that any one of us have on our hands nowadays.
We have more knowledge available on our smartphones than all the libraries together had during dozens of centuries, and yet we do so little with this gift.
🏁Finish Line
And this is it.
I really missed this, the SOAK gives me the opportunity to develop ideas that otherwise I wouldn’t, and to connect with many of you in a more meaningful way.
I wish you a great year, and that we all make something special of it.
Thank you for doing this with me, I hope I’ll see you next week!
-Danny
Welcome back!! I hear you on the creativity inertia. Let’s get back on the wagon together!