Hey I’m Max Finder and welcome to another edition of the Living30 newsletter. Whenever there’s a new podcast episode, original post or something from around the web that’s so inspiring we just have to share, you’ll get an email directly to your inbox.
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The days are long but the decades are short
This is an essay that I’ve loved for a very long time by Sam Altman, the former President of Y Combinator, one of the original incubators founded by Paul Graham. Sam wrote this when he turned 30 and it’s filled amazing snippets of wisdom. Some of my favorites include:
“24) Do new things often. This seems to be really important. Not only does doing new things seem to slow down the perception of time, increase happiness, and keep life interesting, but it seems to prevent people from calcifying in the ways that they think. Aim to do something big, new, and risky every year in your personal and professional life.”
“30) Existential angst is part of life. It is particularly noticeable around major life events or just after major career milestones. It seems to particularly affect smart, ambitious people. I think one of the reasons some people work so hard is so they don’t have to spend too much time thinking about this. Nothing is wrong with you for feeling this way; you are not alone.”
Read the whole list for some inspiration.
Effie Rinsky - How to write a book
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Here’s the latest episode of the Living30 Podcast with Effie Rinsky. Get the episode here or on Spotfiy, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen.
It was a scintillating conversation with a man who has read Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, twice. Just to say, Bill Gates, an avid reader, is afraid of even starting this 1000 page tome. Effie and I talk morning habits, exercise, drinking and drugs, procrastination, how in writing you can only learn by doing and being terrible for a while, and if you're going to do something hard it has to be the thing you want to do the most.
E.Z. Rinsky has worked as a bagel maker, statistics professor and–for one misguided year–a street musician. He's released two novels with Harper Collins (as E.Z. Rinsky). The first, Palindrome, was short-listed for the International Thriller Writers award for best debut novel, and has been translated and published in the Czech Republic. He's currently working on a new novel and a TV pilot. He lives in Tel Aviv.
You can find Effie on his website www.ezrinsky.com
Pair with this episode interviewing film director Ali Klayman, and read this post about cold showers.
The Pale Blue Dot Meditation Tactic
Carl Sagan, famed astronomer and astrophysicist, coined the term “Pale Blue Dot” while looking at the photo below. Earth is seemingly ‘suspended’ in the sunbeam farthest to the right, just above the middle of the picture.
The photo was taken as the Voyager 1 was leaving the solar system, and NASA, at Carl Sagan’s request, maneuvered it to turn around its camera and take a final photograph of Earth. Voyager was launched in 1977 and this photograph was taken in 1990 — just some frame of reference for how long it takes to leave the solar system.
Carl Sagan then wrote a book inspired by this photograph also called Pale Blue Dot.
The significance of the photo is profound and Carl Sagan captures it beautifully in the quote below. You can also hear him say this.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
So how does this concept and picture weave its way into meditative thought? Well, personally every time I begin to get aggravated by something I think about the Pale Blue Dot. I think about the image of the vastness of space juxtaposed to the tiny speck of all we’ve ever known about humanity. And I think “the person or thing that is aggravating me right now — the inane ‘problem’ that is presenting itself to me right now — is really just a very minor blip in the entire history of space and time.”
While this knowledge may sound intuitive or has been preached in numerous other ways, it really clicked together for me when I started actually visualizing the above photograph. Visualizing Earth as such a tiny speck enveloped by space and then, realizing that whatever tiny problem or irritating instance you’re having at this very moment is taking place on that EXTREMELY tiny Pale Blue Dot, is effectively a fast track to liberating yourself from that irritating thing. Trust me, the visualizing makes it that much more effective.
Next time you’re annoyed and in line at the grocery store, or some idiot is igniting your road rage, I encourage you to visualize the Pale Blue Dot image, remember that the problem is happening on that tiny dot, and then soak up the pleasure and humor in knowing that the problem is so minuscule that it is borderline laughable.
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That’s all for now. Thank you so much for reading.
Lots of love,
Max