December Reflections • Pauses & Pivots
#01 | December 2024
Last Month Year, In a Thought
I'm writing this on my birthday in December, staring a blank page.
The timing feels strange — I'm neither sad nor elated, just... suspended in a contemplative state between what was and what could be. December always feels like a quiet room, heavy with the year’s choices, waiting for examination.
What's so special about having been born?
What do you celebrate when you're not sure if you're any closer to where you want to be?
These thoughts mirror a larger pattern in my year: figuring out what I should doing, but avoiding, because it's scary or uncertain.
This year taught me an uncomfortable truth about progress. Sometimes the hardest part is resisting pointless motion masquerading as progress; other times, it's refusing to let the search for perfect clarity become an excuse for inaction.
This tension played out when I faced a choice. I had plans drawn up for a longevity-focused business — the kind you're 'supposed' to launch because 'failing fast' is what entrepreneurs do. I was ready, the market was waiting, and many expected me to run with it. After all, isn't any progress better than standing still?
But something felt off. A quiet doubt, nearly drowned out by the allure of momentum.
The more I examined it, the clearer it became: this wouldn't be the kind of business I wanted to build. It would lack leverage, be a nightmare to scale, and ultimately just be another fancy job in disguise. The world would see motion, but I'd be running in place — trading time and energy for barely equal returns instead of exponential possibilities.
It would be a symmetric bet: time for time, energy for energy. I’m after asymmetry.
So I pivoted. Or maybe I paused. The line between the two isn't always clear when you're trying to build something without a blueprint. 🤔
After returning from Seoul last spring, where a friend was working on his fourth successful exit, I realized waiting for the perfect plan was just another form of hiding. I told myself something simple:
I'm just going to do sh*t.
No grand plans. Just create things that might reveal the next step.
The first half of my year felt like limbo — a fog of uncertainty and false starts. But something shifted when I stopped waiting for clarity and started moving.
What looked like minor tweaks became foundational changes: morning workouts (instead of evenings) reclaimed my best hours, a trainer made my training more surgical, and calendar blocking forced me to face how I actually spend my time versus how I think I do.
Paradoxically, while connecting with far more people than the prior year, I'm preparing to end some of my longest friendships.
It's a brutal calculus I face each December: which relationships still serve mutual growth, and which have become comfortable arrangements of stagnation?
Some of my closest friends no longer pull me forward — brilliant minds caught in different forms of stasis. Some talk about ambition but flinch at the real work: the boring hours of deep work, the uncomfortable self-examination, the ruthless culling of comfortable distractions. They chase the exciting mirages of ‘success’ while avoiding the unglamorous foundation it requires.
Others have settled for comfort, which would be fine if they had chosen it deliberately. But they've drifted into it without examination, never testing their choices against their deepest beliefs. This unexamined comfort breeds a peculiar resistance — a defensiveness toward anyone whose presence makes them question their assumptions.
This annual pruning of relationships is perhaps the hardest part of personal growth. These aren't bad people — many are wonderful humans who've been there for me in tough times. But every relationship needs to answer one question: does this person push me to be better, or do they subtly pull me back? Past value doesn't offset present stagnation.
So I started with the simplest thing I could control — a blog to pour out the jungle of thoughts from all the reading, podcasts, and deep conversations swimming in my head.
That tiny act of creation led me to Write of Passage, where I found people who pushed my thinking in new directions — minds who understood that conventional paths aren't always the right ones.
The maddening thing about choosing your own path is the silence.
A heavy lift at the gym speaks an immediate truth: burning muscles, shaking limbs, next-day soreness that proves you were there. But building something new (content, capabilities, character, businesses) feels like calibrating an instrument without a reference point. You adjust, refine, improve, and then…silence. Few signals to confirm or correct your course.
Until suddenly, everything happens all at once. ⚡️ Or so I'm told.
I have no idea if I'm any closer to some grand destination, but I'm not standing still waiting for certainty.
This void has pushed me to make more bets, write more, test more ideas. I proceed with the faith that each step will reveal the next, even when the path isn't clear.
I'm in that space between doing and becoming, trusting that these small acts will yield fruit.
This newsletter will be my monthly check-in to share:
What I'm building (and tearing down)
What I'm learning (often the hard way)
What I'm walking away from (and what it costs)
What I can't stop thinking about
It won't always be this reflective, but you'll see every stumble, pivot, and breakthrough as they happen. 🚀
Thoughts I’ve Sweated Over
If words were currency, these essays cost me a fortune. Each extracted its toll — weeks wrestling with words, countless revisions, emotional excavation I'm still recovering from. They're glimpses into questions I can't shake and truths I'm still trying to understand. My latest three, published over six intense weeks.
Creating to be Seen: My Battle Against Oblivion
An exploration of why we're drawn to create despite the pain and probable failure, and how in the process of making something real, we discover that we're not just the makers — we're the thing being made.
Politeness isn't kindness. It's the costume kindness wears when it's too afraid to show up as itself.'
A wake-up call for everyone hiding behind polite fictions: our calendars turned to graveyards of half-hearted commitments, our 'yes' degraded to 'maybe,' and 'maybe' almost always meaning 'no.'
I'm training to stay on the right side of the hospital bed. Every day, I watch people engulfed in their busy careers while their bodies write health stories that won't surface for decades.
When I'm grinding through workouts, I'm not just chasing heavier lifts or faster miles — I'm trying to buy time. Time to be the one helping others up from their chairs, not the one needing help.
Behind The Lens
Photography is my pause button on life — an attempt to paint a picture of things I fail to put into words.
I finally published my travel photos from 2023. Yes, it took me that long to sift through them! Life pulled me in other directions, but these albums feel like my best work yet. Sharing them now brings that chapter to a close.
Lisbon felt like a story in motion. Its iconic trams clattering uphill, weaving through narrow streets drenched in light and shadow. In every frame, the city invited me to slow down, look closer, and let its rhythm carry me.
This was one of the most breathtaking sunsets I’ve ever witnessed. Every evening in Porto, I found myself returning to this spot, chasing the light as it bathed the city in gold. I hope my camera did it justice, but no photo could truly capture the way it felt to get lost in this sunset.
Alsace was a place where time seemed to slow down, with its timbered houses and quiet canals reflecting the calm. It wasn’t the most exciting stop on my travels, but its tranquil charm and history left an impression.
Florence didn’t leave a strong impression on me overall, but this view made it all worthwhile. Even in the chaos of a crowded viewpoint, watching the city soak in the golden hues of sunset felt special. Sunsets are my weakness, and this one felt like the perfect way to see the city.
Experiments in Motion
1. Creating Vital Shift
My longevity newsletter finally went live on December 22nd, after two months of obsessing over details I didn't know existed.
I agonized over the name (seventeen options), rewrote introductions hours before publishing, and scrapped drafts that felt too textbook — second-guessing every step of the way.
Want to know why so few people write about complex health topics?
Try explaining cellular senescence in a way that's both accurate and interesting. Some pieces took 10+ hours just to find that sweet spot between "too simple" and "eyes glazing over."
The hypothesis behind Vital Shift is simple: if I can translate complex longevity concepts into clear, engaging writing, that you can digest in under 5 minutes, two things might happen:
I prove I actually understand this stuff and establish credibility in the space (nothing exposes knowledge gaps like trying to explain something).
I connect with people to let them show me what to build. Less guessing what they need, more listening to what's missing. Let them point to the problems worth solving.
2. Learning to be Loud
In the next quarter, I'm tackling the gap between creating and distributing. Writing essays behind closed doors is one thing; amplifying your voice on LinkedIn and Twitter feels like stepping onto a stage naked.
The irony isn't lost on me. I can write a 2,000-word essay about fighting obscurity, yet hesitate to share a simple tweet about it.
Each post feels like it carries whispers of potential judgment: "Is he just self-promoting?" "Who does he think he is?"
The reality is that great ideas die in quiet corners of the internet every day. Effective distribution is the difference between writing into the void and actually connecting with people who might care.
I just need to get over myself first.
3. The Calculated Slowdown: A Counterintuitive Bet
I've restructured my clinical work to 50% time — a decision that looks unconventional and raises eyebrows. But, it’s a deliberate bet on something I can't yet see but deeply feel — the need for space to think clearly, create freely, and build something of my own.
The trade is simple: give income and security now for the cognitive bandwidth to build something meaningful later.
What’s harder is explaining what I’m doing with all this newfound time when I’m still in the process of becoming — learning, thinking, and creating without a neat package (or proof of work) to show for it. Figuring things out is both the journey and the destination.
The hardest part is the voice in my head asking if these hours of reading, thinking, and creating will compound into something valuable.
I had to make this bet on myself though, because having only one gear isn't how I'm built.
4. Sitting Still (Or Trying to)
I've been running from meditation for years. Between 8-hour sleeps, workouts, writing, and everything else, finding an hour feels impossible. But that's only half the story.
Put a heavy weight in front of me or a complex problem to solve, and I'll grind through it. Meditation is different. The first 60 days will be just me versus my thoughts, with nowhere to hide. No weights to lift, no problems to solve – just the chaos in my head demanding to be heard.
There are so many unprocessed thoughts and emotions piling up in the corners of my mind. Worries I've pushed aside, decisions I'm avoiding, paths I'm afraid to examine too closely.
Naval Ravikant puts it perfectly:
Meditation isn't about clearing your mind. It's about sitting with the chaos until it exhausts itself, about letting your thoughts run out of energy to distract you.
15-minutes doesn’t cut it for me. I need a full hour. It takes that long just to get past the initial resistance, the fidgeting, the endless bargaining with myself about why I shouldn’t just get up and do something "productive" instead.
So I'm starting with 3 x 1-hour sessions per week. It feels both ambitious and insufficient. But maybe that's the point — to sit with that contradiction, along with all the others I've been avoiding.
Sweat Equity
My weekly rhythm for the past four months: 3 strength sessions and 4 runs (3 when post-call exhaustion wins).
I've written about the difference between exercise and training before, but my trainer recently made it visceral. After I complained about the brutal weekly barbell lunges and heavy step-ups, he delivered a reality check:
If you want to exercise for fun, we can make changes. But if you want to train for your goals...It being hard has nothing to do with you. The work demands what it demands.
Lesson Learned: Sometimes the hardest part isn't the heavy weights or early alarms (although it still hurts!) — it's accepting that the path to our goals isn't meant to always feel good. It's meant to work. Comfort and progress rarely co-exist.
Workouts Logged: 24/31 days active (10 strength, 14 runs)
Mileage: 107 km
Mind Fuel
Instead of my usual monthly reads, here's something different: the top ten pieces of content that made me pause this year. Each one changed something in me, even if I fought it at first.
📜 This Moment Is Your Life - Nat Eliason
📜 You Have No Idea How Much Better You Can Feel - Nat Eliason
📜 How to Be (Reasonably) Hard on Yourself - Nat Eliason
📜 The Case Against Morning Yoga &Daily Routines - Andrew Chen
📜 Conquering The Mind - Naval Ravikant & Kapil Gupta
📜 The Trouble With Optionality - Mihir Desai
🎙️ 24 Controversial Truths - Modern Wisdom #830 | Alex Hormozi
🎙️The Ultimate Guide to 10x Delegation - Tim Ferriss #694 | Sam Corcos
🎥 How to Live an Asymmetric Life - Graham Weaver
🐦 Grows Along The Way - James Clear
The Next Stop (Maybe)
8 months without boarding a plane! For someone who used to measure years by passport stamps, this might be a personal record (outside of COVID). I skipped my November plans to focus on writing more, building relationships, training harder, and exploring some business ideas.
But I'm finally breaking free at the end of February. 🥳
First stop is Singapore for 5 days (my annual pilgrimage to convince them to adopt me). The Longevity Founder's Forum is happening there, and I've made some new friends I want to catch up with.
I've also updated my fancy KPI charts to show the Singaporean government exactly how I could make their population age backwards. They can't ignore me forever, right?
My terms remain simple: one honorary citizenship and maybe some seed funding in exchange for my brilliant ideas. Who could resist a PowerPoint with this many colourful graphs? 🤓
Then I'm heading to Bali for 2 weeks of what I'm calling "strategic relaxation." My mind (and schedule) are overdue a reset — mornings in Ubud by an infinity pool, bike rides through Sidemen's countryside, and sunset-watching from Uluwatu's cliffs and beaches.
It's a lot of flying to find some peace and quiet, but between my ongoing campaign for Singaporean adoption and Bali's promise of quiet mornings by the infinity pool, my jet lag will have to understand.
Inspiring year you’ve had! I love the variety of your updates and musings. This stuck out to me:
“Some talk about ambition but flinch at the real work: the boring hours of deep work, the uncomfortable self-examination, the ruthless culling of comfortable distractions. They chase the exciting parts of success while avoiding the unglamorous foundation it requires.”
I’m finding the same with my friends, older and newer. I find myself not desiring being around the ones who have what I consider problematic habits despite their ambition. This could be something like endless scrolling or not seriously examining their beliefs as they hit middle age. This could just be a lack of critical thinking. But I don’t want to coddle them anymore and keep my mouth shut. It is better, imo, to distance from someone who doesn’t inspire me to live in a disciplined way to achieve lasting success. Most people are actually allergic to what it takes to cultivate a life of depth. But then I ask, isn’t it my responsibility to set a positive example?
Finally, I would question the need to publish on twitter or LinkedIn. I don’t think you need those platforms for an audience and they will serve as a distraction from producing longform content. But just my rambling thoughts. I would recommend Cal Newport to you given what you discuss. He also talks about writing and audience building and advises against thinking you need a large Twitter presence because short form content is bad for creators like us.
Your pictures are so stunning!
Also, wow at your meditations. I can barely do 10 minutes. Would love to read about your journey with it some day.