Mike's notes.
“No one,” Zach Lowe told Bill Simmons, “is arguing for a longer season. No one wants more than 82 games.”
“I’ve never seen a study,” Dr. Longo told Rich Roll, “showing that if you do 12 hours of fasting a day you’re going to have a problem.”
Both of these November episodes fit within maxims for thinking analytically. Not all of life will include common ground, but when it does, we can start there and decide how much to move away from there.
Previous editions: 2024, 2022, 2018 , 2016
Best of the best
A Woman of No Importance. Wow. A work of nonfiction that reads like fiction. Forget David Goggins, get some Virginia Hall in your life. Not since Hillenbrand’s Unbroken did I read a book that was so powerful and inspiring.
4000 Weeks. Though I’ve read a lot of time management/ productivity books and followed hustle porn online, this book was different. It fit with a shift towards timelessness, depth, long term goals and thoughts, etc.
10 to 25 and The Anxious Generation were the best parenting, teaching, and coaching books I read this year. The former reinforces the effects of status, and what the authors call “earned prestige”. The latter goes beyond infinity pools and shows how the life of young people has changed (since the 90s) and what the adults in their life can do. Along with Good Inside, these are my favorite family books.
Your Money or Your Life. The classic is classic for good reason. Reading it after Early Retirement Extreme is backwards, but it was a reminder about why we talk about money so much, because we need that much help to live better.
Second tier
Revenge of the Tipping Point. Enjoyed this much more than expected. Gladwell was the non-fiction author who got me interested in reading as an adult but I didn’t care for much of his recent work (and don’t follow his podcast). But this was great!
The Art of Frugal Hedonism. This book wasn’t great – but it was fun! It’s like Your Money or Your Life but written by a pair of Australian hippies. It’s the most fun “personal finance” book I’ve ever ready.
Thinking in Systems. Another classic that was good, but resonated differently because we’ve been playing with these ideas.
Self improvement
The Four Agreements and Who Moved my Cheese are life compasses. We need to regularly read things to get our bearings.
Fun Fiction
Theft of Fire, a science fiction space trip. Overall fun and the first true “space travel” book I’ve read. I continued to enjoy the Slow Horses series to the point of bugging my daughters about the exploits of Jackson Lamb. The show is on Apple TV.
Speaking of which, the Murderbot stories continue to thrill though the Apple TV show didn’t resonate with me. Stick with these books first.
I read a handful of Jack Reacher books this year, mostly comfort rereads. It’s great to have a series of books that are plentiful enough to be different but also follow familiar trails.
ChatGPT was helpful to find older fun fiction: The Old Man from Thomas Perry, The Bourne Identity, and The Kill Artist. The Bourne Identity has a heavy Vietnam shadow, something that was part of all the movies I watched as a kid but few of the books I’ve read.
Misc.
Two books that were great but I need to think about more were Inner Excellence and Designing Your Life.
This year was a shift in reading patterns. Of the 29 books (not all listed) 16 were fiction. What used to be a handful is now more than half. Happy holidays and happy reading.
In November 2025, Rich Roll release a podcast about fasting. This compilation episode included an overview of why fasting works, how to fast, an additional details. But, what stood out was the importance of design.
Dr. Valter Longo spoke about the effectiveness of a 12/12 fast. That includes a twelve hour eating window and a twelve hour non-eating window.
Roll pushed back, asking is that enough non-eating time?
Yes, Longo explained, there are positive health effects but more importantly it’s easier to do.
Dr. Michael Greger said the same thing – only in reverse. Greger’s early advice was about a daily dozen set of foods people should eat. A dozen foods a day?
Inconceivable! Vizzini shouts.
That led to a lot of explaining by Greger. It’s aspirational. It’s a suggestion. It’s something to work towards.
Actions are based on frictions. How easy is something: to understand, to follow, to fit with my current worldview?
Better fits may not be perfect fits, but they’ll happen more.
Greg Olsen is a former NFL player and current NFL broadcaster. He also coaches a middle school football team. What’s nice about Olsen’s perspective is that he’s played at the highest levels (“The U”, The NFL) and still says it’s the little things that matter. (Apple Podcast) ““The shit that Luke and I are yelling at the kids when we’re trying to coach seventh and eighth grade defense is the exact same coaching points the good coaches are trying to give pro bowlers. It’s all the same.”
What are those things? It’s not the highlights, flash, plays, or scheme. It’s “little technique, fundamental habits. How do we do pat and go in football? Like no one spends any time on that. And I think if people realized how much that would move the needle, they’d be shocked.”
Okay. So it’s the little things that matter. How do you coach them? Specific solutions
“But what I’ve learned is like you can be loud and you can be boisterous, but you have to give them solutions. You have to give them, it can’t just be, we got to tackle better.
“You missed that tackle, tackle them. Like, you know, go get them, go get them. Yeah, what?
“I don’t know, coach, I’m trying, but like, I don’t know what that means. So to your point, what I’ve learned is like, when you are yelling instruction, it’s got to be very specific. Alex, Alex, you’re tackling the wrong hip.”
The wrong hip. That’s specific. That’s fundamental. That’s helpful. It’s the little things.
My daughter’s high school (where I teach) has a new software program this year called Parent Square. It’s an app/service that allows school messages to be delivered more consistently, more immediately, and (unfortunately) more often.
During our training meeting where the administration sung the app’s praises I couldn’t help but think like an economist: oh this is too easy.
We all want to be informed parents. Or do we? Do parents want to know everything going on their children’s lives?
Regardless of if we want it (I don’t think we should) – we can’t!
Around the same time as my frustration with so many notifications, Kris Abdelmessih was asked about how to be a trader. He gives helpful advice. He’s a great writer, a good dad, super smart, and kind online. But part of kindness is honesty, he wrote:
“It’s gonna sound maybe harsh, but I tend to think that if you’re gonna figure it out, you just kind of are. You’re gonna find what to read; you’re gonna find the right things. And it’s like, if you’re unable to do that meta work, you’re just not cut out for it.”
Don’t bring information to a design fight. Want to change behaviors? Make it easier to people to take actions. Want to not change behaviors? Give people (more) information about the world. The ones who want it will get it.
From Jakob Lund Fisher, author of my favorite personal finance / philosophy book:
The freedom to buy anything you want is actually really limited because it’s proscribed by things that are for sale.
It’s a well kept secret that there is actually a lot more to life than what one can buy.
For example, $10M gives you the freedom to buy seasonal tickets to any seat (including boxes) in the stadium. It might even buy a handshake from the players or a backstage pass. However, it does not buy the freedom to actually play a useful role in a game or as part of the coaching, even at amateur level. It does not buy the feeling of playing—deking an opposing player or dunking a basketball after jumping 2ft in the air—or the game knowledge to appreciate all the nuances of the game. Or even having an interesting conversation with a professional player. These are not bought with money but with (sometimes lots of) time and practice.
“Catherine (a former alcoholic) put the kettle on and, while waiting, scrubbed at a stain on the kitchen counter. There was always something. Not long ago, she’d imagined herself out of Slough House for good, and the life she’s led during those few months had been serviceable enough: evenings had followed afternoons had followed mornings, and during none of them had she drunk. But they weighed heavy. There are worse things an alcoholic can have on her hands than time, but not many.”
From London Rules by Mick Herron.
This is my favorite current series (even more than Reacher). The Apple TV show is great.
Even though London is foreign and there are many references I don’t get, Herron’s created wonderful characters including Catherine. If you’ve found a recent favorite, let me know!
The girl, the guy. The spot on the varsity team. The vacation. The elite college, program, or club. The job (and of course the salary). The membership. The friend group. The invitation.
My daughters are in their sophomore and senior years. There are a lot of shiny prizes on their radar. I want them to chase the prizes – it reflects on me. My ego demands it.
But why?
Years ago a friend offered us tickets to a University of Florida football game. They were playing a good team. It would have been fun. But we didn’t really want to go.
The tickets were valuable to someone, just not us.
I think about this often when I get stuck on shiny prizes. One person’s prize is another persons meh. What one person wants so badly another person asks so what. And these prizes lose their appeal.
Step 1: Want a thing.
Step 2: Get a thing.
Step 3: Ask why we wanted the thing so badly in the first place.
All parents want for their kids. But do we want the right thing? The shiny prizes or valuable ones?
Related: How will you measure your life?
This is a fun book. Besides the charming Australian narrator, this book about personal finance was full of whimsy and fun. The chapters are short. The tips are good. The point is the same.
When I taught personal finance in school this year it was heavy on Morgan Housel’s ideas: there’s internal finance and external. The internal stuff is about how you view money. The external stuff is about what to do with money.
There are simple and straightforward answers to both these areas. The Art of Frugal Hedonism provides many ideas for both.
The book reminded me a lot of the joys of college. A thirty dollar paycheck was enough for a full weekend of fun: bars, pizza, games, being outside. It was all there. And the book wants us to get back to that point.
We can always shift our framing of the world and the authors of this book want us to think of that time. You don’t need money to have fun – we already know that – we lived that!
The Art of Frugal Hedonism is reminder of that. Find fun. Be around people. Embrace weirdness. Eat basic and delicious food.
Though a totally different financial scale, the suggestions in Frugal Hedonism align with the answer to: Should you buy a ski chalet?
Our annual reminder to revisit Dan Carlin’s podcast on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Destroyer of Worlds. I’m amazed that when talking to people who lived 62 years ago, most don’t bring up this event as “significant” in their lives.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was one of the near misses throughout history.
The Waiter's Pad 