Tag: framing

Stop counting pushups

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I was never good at push-ups. But good is subjective. If the pool of push-up people is small enough, I’m the best, and if it’s large enough, I am not.

Better is better. Better shows progress, and that’s what life is really about. Progress, walking your path, stumbling, succeeding, and meeting people along your journey.

I did pushups wrong. I counted push-ups, not minutes. I was thinking about the wrong number.

in my class, we do an accountability partner assignment. Students choose two areas to improve, and an accountability partner for each one. I offer – if needed -to be their accountability partner.

One student, Aaron, wanted to do 100 push-ups a day. I was his accountability partner.

This was too many for me. But it was because I was doing 100. If I change the metric to minutes of push push-ups per day, it became more achievable.

Set a timer for one minute. Do as many push-ups as possible. When not doing Push-ups just be in the push-up position with arms extended.

That’s it!

My guess for the effect is ambiguity and familiarity. How many sets? How long will this take? Do I have time for this?

Nothing in my life is denominated in number of push-ups. There’s no context. But minutes, I’ve got minutes everywhere.

Where else could this work?

Difficult? Hardly!

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“I was the fastest person in my regiment to be promoted to corporal. And I was in the marching band and I did an excellent drill as well. And, you know, something I take away from some of the commanding officers whom I grew close to, they would tell me that, you know, the ethic of the army was that whatever you imagine is the most difficult thing, you should simply re-conceptualize it as the easiest thing and then you just do it.”

From Conversations with Tyler: Dan Wang on What China and America Can Learn from Each Other, Dec 3, 2025

Something to Play For

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The new year is a fresh start, time to think about and assess our lives, direction, relationships and so on.

However, if you need a little extra framing, Bill Simmons spoke about how the Celtics are doing so well and why. It might be because…

“Every single guy has some sort of hunger for something. So it’s like Jalen Brown, Tatum’s not here. I’ve always thought I could carry a team like this, so he’s in. Derrick White. I’ve always thought I could do a little more offensively. Here we go. Same for Prichard. Simons, contract here. Cada, I’ve never gotten a chance.Hauser, finally getting more minutes. You’re going down line. Jordan Walsh. I would fucking kill somebody to play 25 minutes a game. Hugo, I’m 19, I’m a rookie. Josh Minot, thank God I’m finally playing basketball.”

It’s great. Each guy, no matter what level, has something to play for.

Framing Resolutions

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Reframing metrics is catnip. In book form this is Moneyball, but there are many posts about framing and metrics.

How might we frame a meaningful life? And what metrics?

“Ultimately, the number of things you did can’t be definition of a. meaningful life. It’s got to be what you did and whether you did it in the spirit of showing up for it.”

That’s Oliver Burkeman’s advice to Rich Roll (November 2025). Burkeman’s book, 4000 Weeks, was one of my favorites last year. Happy New Year.

How to Make Air Travel Better with Orthogonal Thinking

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Orthogonal thinking and alchemy means solving problems with nonintuitive variables.

A lot of great finance book use orthogonal thinking. Rather than ask: how to shop for Christmas on a budget, orthogonal thinking moves past money and asks something closer to: how to create meaningful Christmas moments.

That reframing changes the variable from dollars/gifts to moments/meaning. To get in that spirit, Blake Scholl told Tyler Cowen how to make air travel better (no indentation).

The other thing that we need to do, and this is part of why it’s not a solved problem, is we need to fix checked baggage. Because baggage check is unreliable and slow, we have people carrying onto airplanes things they absolutely do not want to carry.

If we fix airports such that baggage check is fast and reliable, then we can stop having carry-ons, and we can get on and off airplanes much, much faster than we can today. That would actually be the biggest win. Imagine an experience where you take your Uber to the airport. The bag that today you would carry on is in your trunk. You step out of the car, someone, maybe even a robot, grabs your bag from the trunk. You don’t see it again.

After you land, you get a push notification on your phone that says your Uber’s in slot seven A, and by the time you get to your Uber, your bag is back in the trunk. The customer experience is your bag teleports from the trunk of your Uber at your origin to the trunk of your Uber at your destination. That’s how they should work. Then you don’t carry on all this stuff and it’s much faster to get on and off airplanes.

The Art of Frugal Hedonism (Book Review)

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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?

Framing “Life Energy”

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From Your Money or Your Life

“Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time.”

Money is important and how someone thinks about money should be how you communicate about money.

  1. Money is something you trade your life energy for.
  2. Money makes progress in JTBD. How to talk with your rich friends about money.
  3. I live in the tribe, the tribe keeps me safe. Our tribe has a leader.
  4. Money is part of the system. ERE and Wheaton Scales.
  5. Money is about doing good things with good people and not too much friction. Should you buy a ski chalet?
  6. Money has external roles (saving, investing, spending, etc.) and internal roles (goals, FOMO, Jones’s, Always Buy Two New Cars). The Psychology of Money.

It’s wild the resources spent on money.

Did the internet need another post about money? Yet here we are.

But maybe what we’re really talking about is spirit. It’s philosophy. It’s spiritual. What am I supposed to do? What is a life well lived? Posing the easier question shifts the topic to money.

Framing Housing

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Kris is buying a house. This is how he and his wife think about it:

Personal thinking: whether we rent or own, we ask ourselves “At what level do we want to consume housing at?”. Even if we can afford more, we try to be ruthless about what is a must-have vs nice-to-have and not let the nice-to-have creep out like a wolf spider hatching. Neither of us wants to find ourselves servicing interest payments to some mimetic trend. The cost is not just denominated in dollars but in utils of resilience and optionality which are key to peace of mind and lower stress.

At what level do we consume housing?

Great line.

Good framing asks a different question. It’s the same information, but a new view changes the image.

This frames views versus vacations, countertops versus career changes, and intentions and time.

They’re just Puppies

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All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way. – The Old Man

There were frustrations when I returned to the classroom. Pesky persistent complainers. Foot draggers. Sleepers. Phone concealers. Make up concealers. C’mon, we’re in this together.

But then, after threatened and assigned detentions. After exhausted days. After hallway gripes. I realized, they’re just puppies.

People are just like puppies. Both have basic states of operation given their genetics, rules of physics, body chemistry and so on. Then, they both learn rules.

Puppies are taught not to pee in the house. Puppies are taught to walk on a leash. Puppies are taught to socialize. We don’t get mad at puppies for being puppies – we once had a puppy that only chewed up the right shoe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Everything my students did was learned – successfully!

Complaining got results. Procrastination worked. Sleep was fine.

Life got a lot better when I thought about students as puppies.

Don’t Shoot the Dog! It takes time, persistence, and work to train puppies. Oh, and it’s fun. Puppies are happy to learn things and it feels good to teach them. Just like students. Just like all of us.

They’re just puppies.

It’s not the weather

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Growing up, my dad took my brother and I duck hunting. The worst the weather for humans, goes the rule of thumb, the better the conditions for ducks. So, we grew up, sitting in cold, windy, wet marshes around northern Ohio and southern Michigan. It was miserable.

It was miserable, for me. My brother actually liked it a lot, and we think it’s because of the clothes.

When I was young and out with my dad, it was a lot of cotton and some wool. When my brother started there was Gore-Tex, Under Armour, dry fit, and a whole list of synthetic fabrics that repelled water, retained warmth, and didn’t cost too much.

We came to joke in our family, it’s not bad weather, it’s the wrong clothes. 

Now I’m the parent, not duck hunting, but travel volleyball, and we spend a lot of time in the car. Car time can be a little aggravating. 

But isn’t it a little like the weather?

The problem isn’t the traffic and other drivers the problem is me. Both weather and traffic are out of my control, and both have solutions in my control.

And unlike my youth, driving is nice. There are podcasts and audiobooks. They are comfortable chairs with heated lumbar supports. There’s adaptive cruise control. A lot to be grateful for!

Pause more. Be grateful. Don’t focus on the uncontrollable, be creative, and find things you can do. It’s not the bad __________, it’s the wrong ________.