[antifragile 4 🔥] Turkish Olympic shooting sensation simplicity, the Tao subtracts, mind-blowing sci-fi audiobooks, choosing your parenting descriptions
#9: a weekly newsletter on leveraging fatherhood into massive personal growth (plus the occasional fun find). on being the fire and wishing for the wind.
Welcome to the 9th edition of The Antifragile Dad’s newsletter, the antifragile 4 🔥.
It’s a weekly 4-item newsletter on leveraging fatherhood into massive personal growth (plus the occasional fun find). Expect it every Friday.
Here’s this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:
a lesson in simplicity 🔫 from the Turkish Olympic shooting sensation.
a line from the Tao Te Ching 📖 on addition and subtraction.
a sci-fi audiobook series 🪐 that continues to blow my mind.
an idea 💡 about choosing your parenting descriptions.
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1.) a lesson in simplicity 🔫 from the Turkish Olympic shooting sensation.
I tend to overcomplicate things. Usually under the banner of “optimization”.
Last week it started happening again. I kicked my real work to the curb as I was wooed by the siren song of yet another productivity software, promising (as always) the sweet nectar of happiness via a superiorly optimized life.
Then this tweet was shared with me.
I love it so much 😂
I don’t make cold calls, but I have my equivalents. They’re the things you know need to get done. The things you know will lead you to success. But that are incredibly unsexy.
But it’s those unsexy things, done consistently, that will take you where you want to go.
What can you simplify? What have you unnecessarily overcomplicated?
2.) a line from the Tao Te Ching 📖 on addition and subtraction.
In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Simplicity is clearly the theme this week.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to accumulate.
Money, experiences, relationships, things.
But it’s the dropping I need more practice with. Because I think that’s where the most happiness will be unearthed.
3.) a sci-fi audiobook series 🪐 that continues to blow my mind.
Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown.
Hard to express how engrossing these audiobooks are. The plots and character arcs are ridiculously complex and riveting. Plus the voice performances are phenomenal.
If you even have an ounce of interest in sci-fi or fantasy and don’t mind a staggering amount of violence and casualties in your novels, give this a try. You will not be disappointed.
4.) an idea 💡 about choosing your parenting descriptions.
I subscribe to the following mental model:
Happiness is not a result of the events in your life. In fact, the events are kind of irrelevant. Happiness is about how you think (and talk) about the events in your life.
I was fortunate to have this introduced to me mere months before my son was born.
Since then, I’ve made it a point to never describe my parenting experience as anything but absolutely amazing.
Never exhausted (even if I’ve gotten 2 hours of sleep).
Never frustrated (even if my son has unscrewed the lid of his milk & shot-putted it into my lap in front seat…again)
Never stressed (even if it seems fitting everything I need to do in a day defies the laws of physics)
I bring this up because we’re about to have our 2nd kid (<1 month!) and this philosophy will again be put to the test. Extremely excited for the next adventure.
How do you describe your parenting experience? Is it worth experimenting with describing it differently?
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I have 3 asks for you this week:
Look someone in the eye and tell them something you admire about them. They’ll probably remember it for a year.
Drop one thing this week. Get lighter.
Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥
With love,
Chris