## Notes eagle is the highest order view dress sensibly consistent sleep routine primes you his criticalness of everyones behavior can come off as egotistical ## Highlights Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8qch1x8eejqnbdzdh63ks3)) Instead, when I need to make a decision, I try to look to the future. I look to the one-hundred-year-old version of myself. The version of myself near the end of his life. The person who understands what it’s like to be on the doorstep of death. I look to the Matthew Dicks who is still lying on that greasy tile floor in a Brockton restaurant, and I ask that version of myself to make the decision for me. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8r54dy8ptpqn53h402qy49)) The problem is that we don’t play the long game. We don’t plan for the future. We think the future is a day, a week, a month, a year. We think the future is ten years. The one-hundred-year-old version of yourself will tell you that a decade goes by in the blink of an eye. It’s nothing. Making decisions based solely on the next ten years is ludicrous when given the expanse of a lifetime. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8r78gz4nn8h1hddh3drz34)) When we are facing the last seconds of our lives, minutes become precious. The key is to understand their preciousness *today* when there is still time to make those minutes matter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8r9azm2pwkcfgw39r28xfd)) Are these ideal times to write? Of course not. But unless you’re blessed with a patron who is willing to support your every earthly desire, you need to make the time to write. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8rf3axt79xpdtrdf0sef4r)) unless you have a patron or a trust fund, you’ll probably need to carve out time among life’s many other demands in order to pursue your creative passions. At least for a while. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8rfyta09cker2xb4nn44kh)) know. This sounds crazy. But I empty that dishwasher about five times per week. That’s 260 times per year and 3,120 times in the twelve years we’ve lived in our home. If I could shave even one minute off the process, I could save more than four hours per year. Two full days over the span of twelve years. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8rxbxeqegbxb9k778sagw4)) know. This all makes me sound like a crazy person. Elysha loves me, but she, too, finds all this a bit much. But the one-hundred-year-old version of me — who will have spent fewer hours of his life engaged in mundane chores so that he could spend more time making things, playing with his kids, exercising, playing golf, and reading — won’t think it’s crazy at all. He’ll be thankful that I was the lunatic who used a stopwatch to maximize dishwasher-emptying procedures. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8ry9ze7gntkq5edzdbbbqn)) The reasons why people cannot or will not delegate are varied and unfortunate, but I believe that they come down to the following: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hn8s6j0mabfttraz39jm1fa5)) ### New highlights added January 30, 2024 at 10:06 AM She had such a small, empty, unambitious life that it had somehow made swapping out meaningless giraffe images a worthy, well-lived activity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndnt57ge9chvej2tcpxt6my)) In the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Stephen Vincent Benét, whom I quoted at the beginning of [chapter 2](private://read/01hj7pjys9207z4xz5t7mvvhqp#ch2), “[Life is not lost by dying](private://read/01hj7pjys9207z4xz5t7mvvhqp#nt12); life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand, small, uncaring ways.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndntv20ngh202dsbw12tnna)) Eagles understand that the small things that often consume other people are irrelevant because no one is paying much attention to you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndnwbcfj4n1ch2mkwsnva2p)) The eagle reminds us to clear our march of needless things. Spend as little time, energy, and bandwidth as possible on the nonsense of life so that we can spend more time on the things we wish to see, do, build, make, and learn. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndp5yn9eh9sh90xd1syeqtj)) Your time can be accounted for in dollars, but the way you spend your time should also mean something to you. Ideally, it should be something that will always mean something to you, even decades later. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpar5k9cnsj9bfaata64bk)) odds of a human being existing are infinitesimal. One tiny sperm cell must outrace hundreds of millions of other tiny sperm cells in order to fertilize an egg to create a human life. Then that human spends fourteen hours of that precious, unlikely life waiting for a cheeseburger. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpc87qvrppx1ckem20a48z)) - 💭 how i feel for other common modern distractions But fourteen hours for a cheeseburger strikes me as lunacy. A complete and total disregard for all that could have been accomplished or enjoyed in that time. An overvaluing of an experience that could just as easily be had a week later for a tiny fraction of the time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpd5g46p8209zpayn73vpv)) - 💭 i think this might be because hes very rational about his life because of this long-term view, which prevents him from finding subjective meaning aside from the things that are universally important. is not doing so self-deception? ### New highlights added January 30, 2024 at 10:06 AM She had such a small, empty, unambitious life that it had somehow made swapping out meaningless giraffe images a worthy, well-lived activity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndnt57ge9chvej2tcpxt6my)) In the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Stephen Vincent Benét, whom I quoted at the beginning of [chapter 2](private://read/01hj7pjys9207z4xz5t7mvvhqp#ch2), “[Life is not lost by dying](private://read/01hj7pjys9207z4xz5t7mvvhqp#nt12); life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand, small, uncaring ways.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndntv20ngh202dsbw12tnna)) Eagles understand that the small things that often consume other people are irrelevant because no one is paying much attention to you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndnwbcfj4n1ch2mkwsnva2p)) The eagle reminds us to clear our march of needless things. Spend as little time, energy, and bandwidth as possible on the nonsense of life so that we can spend more time on the things we wish to see, do, build, make, and learn. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndp5yn9eh9sh90xd1syeqtj)) Your time can be accounted for in dollars, but the way you spend your time should also mean something to you. Ideally, it should be something that will always mean something to you, even decades later. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpar5k9cnsj9bfaata64bk)) odds of a human being existing are infinitesimal. One tiny sperm cell must outrace hundreds of millions of other tiny sperm cells in order to fertilize an egg to create a human life. Then that human spends fourteen hours of that precious, unlikely life waiting for a cheeseburger. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpc87qvrppx1ckem20a48z)) - 💭 how i feel for other common modern distractions But fourteen hours for a cheeseburger strikes me as lunacy. A complete and total disregard for all that could have been accomplished or enjoyed in that time. An overvaluing of an experience that could just as easily be had a week later for a tiny fraction of the time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hndpd5g46p8209zpayn73vpv)) - 💭 i think this might be because hes very rational about his life because of this long-term view, which prevents him from finding subjective meaning aside from the things that are universally important. is not doing so self-deception?