Hey friends,

Thanks for reading again as always! Let’s stop wasting time and get right into it:

In this week’s issue you will find:

• Actionable Tips to Wake Up Early

• A HistoMap

• A Thread of Useful Razors and Laws

• Parallels Between Biden and JFK

• Amanda Gorman’s incredible Inauguration Poem

Some Actionable Tips For Waking Up Early

I realized that when I talked about getting up early last week, I didn't really give that many actionable tips that you could start doing right away. So here are a few tips that I've been using to get up before 5 am for the past 21 days. A reminder that I will be making a much more comprehensive video detailing my experience as well as learnings on my YouTube channel at the end of the month. Subscribe here if you want to make sure you don't miss out on it (there will be something dropping on that channel very soon 👀)!

• Go analog - The worst thing that you can do is use your cell phone as an alarm clock. The temptation to hit the snooze button on my iPhone is too great for a mere mortal like me to overcome. Even if you do wake up, with your iPhone in your hand, it’s way too easy to start off the day responding to other people’s demands of you or scrolling Twitter. Reach for your journal before you reach for your phone. Get an analog old school alarm clock and make sure that it has a super obnoxious beeping alarm.

• Go a step further - throw your cellphone out of your room all together. I've tried keeping it across the room but this makes it too easy to take it back into bed with you with the snooze on. I plug my phone in to charge down the stairs across the house from me and this has made a massive change in my ability to stay awake after waking up as well as leading to me using my phone less throughout the day.

• Get an accountability partner - I recently implemented this when one of my friends wanted to join in on the challenge and start waking up earlier too. Every morning at 5 am we text each other to make sure that we're both up and about. Having this one other person to whom I’m directly accountable to every morning has been huge in helping me stay motivated even when I’m tired.

• Make your bed as soon as you get up and turn off your alarm. While this is a quite overplayed habit that most normal functioning adults take care off, as a self aware man-child this is something that I've been getting into the habit of doing only after I've started waking up early. An unmade bed is so easy to climb back into, only to find yourself wake up 5 hours later puzzled at the amount of time passed (not that that's happened to me or anything).

• Finally, get out of your room as soon as possible. Unless I'm raring to go after waking up (which happens very rarely), I find that I need to leave my bedroom as soon as possible and go to a new place like my dining room. I'll grab a book or a journal and try to run away from the inviting bed as to not test my weak willpower.

A HistoMap

That’s a history map for those keeping track at home.

Here’s a high resolution image of the Map shown above (you’re going to need it trust me).

I came across this graphic on Twitter from Tim Urban and it really blew my mind. It's basically a map that tracks the relative world power a certain state/nation/empire held at a certain time from 2000 BC to about 1931. It's amazing to see ebbs and flows of fortune for different empires. Some of the largest concentrations of power seen in history: the Romans, Egyptians, Greeks - the usual suspects. It would be really interesting to see how the current domination of the world stage by America compares to the past domination of the Romans. Anyway, a stark reminder of the fragility of power and a warning for the USA that empires usually do fall (according to experts the average number of years it takes an empire to fall is 250. America's age? Almost 245 😬).

A Useful Thread of Razors and Laws

I came across this thread by George Mack over the last week and it’s an absolute treasure trove of mental models, laws, and razors by some of the most influential people in the world.

Some of those people include: Jeff Bezos, Joe Rogan, Naval Ravikant, Nassim Taleb, Elon Musk, and Charlie Munger.

Here were a couple of my favorites but I urge you to go look at the thread and look at all of them:

The Parallels Between JFK and Joe Biden

After watching President Joe Biden get sworn in yesterday, I couldn't help but fall down a rabbit hole of JFK research - seeing as though Biden is the second-ever Catholic to be sworn into office after JFK. I watched JFK: The Making of a President on Netflix - a quick 45-minute documentary about the life of JFK before his presidency and subsequent infamous assassination. Apart from the obvious similarity of religion that both men subscribed to, I found some other similarities as well between the two men. First of all both of them entered the game of politics as young men: JFK was elected to the House of Representatives for Massachusetts at the age of 30 while Biden became the fifth-youngest senator to be elected at the age of 29. For both of them, their family was and is a big part of their lives: JFK with the Kennedy political dynasty and Biden with his very close family as well. Sadly, both of them also experienced the traumatic loss of their families at tender ages as well: JFK losing siblings before he himself was assassinated and Biden losing his daughter and first wife in a car crash, and then his son Beau to brain cancer.

Quote of the Week

A bit different than the regular format of this section I would urge anyone who hasn't to hear the poem by the 23-year-old American poet laureate Amanda Gorman written for yesterday's inauguration. Even if you did hear it yesterday, it's worth listening to this beautiful piece a second time:

You can read the poem here if you prefer.

Thanks as always for reading. Remember, if you liked this issue - you probably have another friend who would enjoy it as well. Don’t be shy - share away with the button below!

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As always stay safe and I’ll see you next week!