By Colby Kultgen
Hey friends.
If you're new here, this is the newsletter where I share the 5 best things I find each week to help you get a little better each day.
Let's dive in!
Today at a Glance:
1. Advice: It's not too late
2. Article: 40 thoughts on 40
3. Thread: 15 useful razors
4. List: 50 years of travel tips
5. Funny: Harsh truth from Clippy
Read time: 3 minutes 25 seconds
A piece of advice everyone should see
I think about this all the time.
The whole notion of “too late” is deeply flawed—based on arbitrary rules about when things should happen.
In reality, the value of an achievement is rarely diminished by age.
A degree earned at 43 can be just as valuable—if not more—than one earned at 23 because it comes enriched with experience, perspective, and wisdom only time can bring.
It reminds me of a story Mark Manson once shared:
A friend of mine once told me a story about his grandmother.
He said that when her husband died, she was 62, and for the first time in her life, she began to take piano lessons. For weeks, she practiced all day, every day. At first, the family thought it was a phase, a way for her to process her grief.
But months went by, and she continued to play every day. People started to wonder if she was crazy or something was wrong. They told her to give it up. To go back to her life. To face reality.
By the time she was in her 90s, she had been playing piano every day for 30 years—longer than most professional musicians have been alive. She had mastered all of the classics: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Vivaldi. Everyone who heard her play swore she must have been a concert pianist in her youth. No one believed her when she said she took her first lesson in her sixties.
Erase "too late" from your vocabulary.
An article so good I read it twice
Paul Millerd is a writer, coach, and author of The Pathless Path.
Here he shares 40 thoughts on turning 40.
A few of my favorites:
4. “The moment” when people take bold action is often a post hoc fabrication. Real change is slow and confusing, I want more people to know this so that they might feel permission to embrace the slow and more confusing journey of going after things that matter to them.
10. Finding your “good work,” the work that feels satisfying at the moment and satisfying upon reflection, can take years to find. But once you find it, you’ll be happy you never gave up.
17. Defining success on your own terms will create tension with those around you who don’t value the same things. It is easier to succeed like those around you, but more satisfying to make progress against your own secret mission over the long-term.
Note: I saw this in my friend Rich Webster's newsletter (always a great read).
A thread everyone should have bookmarked
I revisit this thread from George Mack at least once per year.
These are mental models everyone should download into their head.
A few that standout to me:
Skinner's Law:
If procrastinating on an item, you only have 2 options:
1. Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it.
2. Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.
Bragging Razor:
If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim. If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.
Munger's Law:
Never allow yourself to have an opinion on a subject unless you can state the opposing argument better than the opposition can.
Taleb's Surgeon:
If presented with two seemingly equal candidates for a role, pick the one with the least amount of charisma. The uncharismatic one has got there despite their lack of charisma. The charismatic one has got there with the aid of their charisma.
A list of tips from 50 years of travelling
Yes, I'm sharing a lot of lists today.
But c'mon, who doesn't love a good list.
These 50 years of travel tips comes courtesy of Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine and "real-life Most Interesting Man In The World" according to Tim Ferriss.
Here are some I'll be using on my next trip:
The most significant criteria to use when selecting travel companions is: do they complain or not, even when complaints are justified? No complaining! Complaints are for the debriefing afterwards when travel is over.
Your enjoyment of a trip will be inversely related to the weight of your luggage. Counterintuitively, the longer your trip, the less stuff you should haul. Travelers still happy on a 6-week trip will only have carry-on luggage.
The best souvenirs from a trip are your memories of the trip so find a way to memorialize them; keep a journal, send updates to a friend, take a sketchbook, post some observations, make a photo book.
I seriously could have included them all here, they're so good.
Some harsh truth from Clippy
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Much love!
—Colby
