james’s posthaven

A dear friend and I watched Yo-Yo Ma perform the solo cello a few weeks ago at the Hollywood Bowl. He walked onto stage alone, armed only with his 300 year old cello on a balmy Los Angeles evening.

He greeted an eager crowd and smiled a smile that only someone who knew the deep secrets of what he was about to play could smile. Then he played. He played, alright. He played 150 minutes straight with no intermission: 6 suites for Violoncello solo by Bach from memory.

My friend is classically trained, master on the violin and drums. I am a mere mortal with no serious musical training, only my two ears. Bach, I learned, is highly technical, common for anybody learning music to train on. Technical, meaning it requires mastery, dexterity, and coordination of fingers and timing. Difficult, to say the least.

Yo-Yo Ma played blindfolded, rarely looking down on his cello during the entire duration of his performance.

It was the most impressive display of musical mastery I have ever witnessed.

That same week, I went to Porter Robinson’s Second Sky festival at the Oakland Arena grounds. It was a curated musical event filled with Porter’s favorite artists and style.

Madeon’s 90 minute performance stood out that day amongst a lineup of 9 artists. More accurately, he blew my mind. I haven’t been able to stop listening to his music, even stalking his website for the next concert in the days following. Madeon is dubbed a child prodigy in the space. There’s a YouTube video of him playing an impressive mash-up, released when he was only 17 years old, amassing 60 million views.

Two artists in fine juxtaposition. One could have played the same instrument 200 years ago, the other could not even exist 20 years ago. One with gray hair, having grown up without regular access to the internet. The other grew up on the internet, becoming famous before he could drink legally.

From the extremists on either side, one might elicit a derisive response of “old school” or “boomer”, the other might hear “that’s computer music” or a snarky “he’s great at pressing buttons”.

Yo-Yo Ma’s technical expertise is easy to appreciate. There are only a handful of people in the world that can repeat what he did on that stage. But technology has lowered the barrier to entry, allowing geniuses like Madeon to blossom and share their creativity from a young age.

Whatever your response, it’s hard to deny the amount of hard work and genius required to generate the following that these two have, even if they seem a world apart. I am sure there are many others, but both elicited a strong emotional response from me in the span of a week.

What a wonderful time to witness the full range of human creativity in music.

Exploration, Wandering, Searching

• Wandering inevitably leads to some dead ends. That’s kind of the point. It may turn out a particular subject is not what you thought or you’re just not that into it. It’s a free signal from your soul. Just turn around and explore something else.
• But, before you drop it entirely, ask yourself “Why were you drawn to it?” and “What pushed you away?” For example, I’ve wanted to learn a musical instrument for a long time. I picked up the guitar to chase girls in college (failed miserably) and recently tried my hand at the harmonica. It’s compact and easy to bring on backpacking trips. I failed to build momentum once again. When I dug into it, I realized I had too many things on my plate.
• Life has a funny way of returning you to things that warrant a second look. This can take years, decades, or you might just need some more time next week. One day, I’ll spend more time with you, harmonica. 
• I know a few people who pick some subject area to explore per month. I thought this was a clever and structured way to do it. Time boxing yourself as a forcing function.
• The social programming is strong. It took me the first few months to get away from the idea that I had to be working on something or getting my next project lined up. We don’t and it’s okay to do some unadulterated wandering.
• Deadlines are great forcing functions. I went from frantically trying to do too much, to doing close to nothing, and finally to reasonably setting guidelines for myself. Deadlines, even if it’s an offhand comment to a close friend who will check up on you goes a long way.

Looking Inwards

• Find out what is applying the pressure and don’t rule yourself out. It’s easy to look at external factors as our sources of stress: jobs, boss, situation, etc. For me, I realized I had imposed ridiculous standards on myself. This is not entirely negative or positive in itself, but if left unchecked or unexamined can lead to some real unhappiness. We are, as they say, our harshest critics.
• Be nice to yourself. I’ve found it helpful to think of yourself as your own good friend. Treat yourself as you would treat a good friend.
• When judging others or introspecting your own actions, the spots that give us the biggest source of agitation or anxiety are the ones that need to be examined deeper. These uncomfortable areas are the growth opportunities. Nobody said it’d be fun, though.

Relationships

• Long term relationships are not projects with a start and end date. There is no autopilot button.
• People love it when you call them out of the blue. Even better, show up with food and drink.
• Everyone is struggling with something. This is not an exaggeration. The easiest way to find out is to ask.
• A better version of ourselves is the best gift to the world. Start there instead of saving the world.

How a gap period concludes: you stumble into something that you are so excited by that even your soul knows. It’s a hell yes. This usually takes years or decades, so don’t forget to enjoy the scenery. But when you stumble into it, what are you waiting for?

There’s still much to learn and I can’t wait to pull on each of these threads further. Hope this helps you.

Dr. Andrew Huberman, a Phd of Neuroscience and Professor at Stanford, started his own podcast video lecture series last year (he also has a great Instagram). This post covers the first 8 podcasts, roughly 12 hours of lectures, into bullet points of actionable learnings. I hope you find it helpful:

1. Sunlight sets our circadian rhythm, but only specific types of light. The type of light that sets our circadian rhythm is only available around sunrise and sunset. Between roughly 9:30am to a few hours before sunset, the light we need to set our circadian rhythm is unavailable. This is where late risers fall into a rhythm of a misaligned schedule, often leading to a cascading effect of negative health consequences. So, take a sunrise and sunset walk!
2. Our phones and overhead lights are a source of light at night, potentially disturbing our circadian rhythm. Rule of thumb: avoid any source of light between 11pm and 4am. If you're using lights after sunset, floor lighting is optimal. Overhead lights mimic the location of the sun (above us!)
3. The earlier you get light, the more you phase advance (wake up earlier the next day) and the later you get light at night the more you phase delay (wake up later the next day). 
   
4. Schedule shifts are adapted about an hour at a time, keep this in mind when adapting to jet lag and consider shifting your schedule before you travel if you are moving multiple timezones to reduce disruption.
5. It’s very hard to control the mind with the mind. Use the body to control the mind, such as breathing protocols and NSDR protocols. See bullets #6, #7, and #9 for specific tools.
6. Sleep anxiety is a real thing — sometimes, we just don’t sleep well. It’s not the end of the world: get up, avoid bright overhead lights, read a book or do a non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) session to fall back asleep.
7. 20–30 minute naps are optimal as a refresher, but if you’re not a nap person, try NSDR protocols like Yoga Nidra or Hypnosis from Reverie Health. These protocols help recover sleep, refresh you, and improve learning. You’ll finish sessions with lasers in your eyes, ready to focus.
8. What you eat dictates how you feel after the meal. Eating too much will result in a food coma, regardless of what you eat. Rules that work well for me: low carb or carb free lunch, whatever-you-want for dinner.
9. Physiological sigh offsets real-time stressors. Two inhales through the nose followed by a long exhale from the mouth. Try it next time you’re in a stressful situation.
10. The amount of sleep and the consistency of it is more important than the total hours of sleep, assuming you’re getting the minimum necessary for you to function. A good rule is to have set hours when you get into bed and when you get out of bed.
11. Take a hot shower at night and it will help you sleep better. The hot shower leads to a cooling of body temperature, which is needed for you to fall asleep and have a good night’s rest. A cold shower gives you increased alertness from the release of epinephrine (and because it's cold!) It also builds stress tolerance.
12. Wait two hours before having caffeine. This prevents the caffeine crash. We have a natural mechanism that suppresses adenosine, which induces sleepiness. By introducing caffeine before this mechanism has a chance to work, our body begins to depend on the adenosine from the caffeine, creating a dependency cycle.
13. Optimal learning states occur when our bodies experiences anxiety and low level stress. That’s how our body and brain recognizes there’s something to take note of and “learn”. You can put yourself in this type of state by throwing your body off balance, i.e. attempting to balance on one foot with your eyes closed for 10 seconds.
14. Another way to put yourself in this “optimal learning state” is pushing into areas of learning that make you a little uncomfortable. Train yourself to go deeper when you feel some discomfort in your learning because this is where growth happens. This will require finding a happy medium: if something is too easy, we won’t learn and if something is far too hard for us to comprehend, then we’ll likely give up entirely.
15. There are only two 90 minute deep focus and work sessions in a day (maybe 3 absolute max). Are you using them and are you using them wisely?

If you want deeper dives, I wrote a few long form posts summarizing learnings into four separate posts: part 1, part 2, and I will eventually get part 3 and part 4.

I joined cross country running for the sole purpose of finishing my Physical Education requirements to graduate high school.

Friday workouts were simple: run for an hour with a few teammates, any route you like. Coach called it the “free run”. The group of athletes I ran with jogged 5 blocks down the street, just out of sight and into a friend’s home to play Super Smash Brothers and eat Popeyes fried chicken. Free indeed. 

Despite slacking, I remember one thing from my cross country coach: how to breathe and especially how to breathe when you have a big cramp but need to keep going (somehow my athletic prowess led to frequent cramping). Running cramps tend to be the side cramp or “stitch”, a signal to the body indicating insufficient deep breathing.

Coach’s tip was simple: two small breaths in through the nose and a larger breath out. It always worked, superior to whatever my face was attempting to do while desperately sucking down air. It turns out my high school coach also gave us a real-time tool to combat stress.

Most advice for combating stress doesn’t help with in the moment stress. You can’t freeze time during an interview, a fit of road rage, or before a big presentation to go take a 20 minute power nap, get a better night of rest, or meditate for 15 minutes.

You need a real-time tool: the physiological sigh.

Discovered in the 1930s with further research by Feldman and Krasnow, it’s something we do unconsciously: prior to falling asleep, during sleep when carbon dioxide levels are too high, or when we’re feeling claustrophobic.

Since we can control our breathing, we can use this mechanism to combat real-time stressors. The technique is simple: One inhale through the nose, followed by a second inhale through the nose and then a long exhale from the mouth. It’s okay if the second inhale is a small one. 

Double inhale followed by a deep exhale.

How does the physiological sigh work? When we are stressed, carbon dioxide builds up in our bloodstream. The second inhale expands the alveoli, the air sacs in our lungs, and allows it to discharge even more carbon dioxide on the exhale. This process of expelling carbon dioxide relaxes us. 

Do the physiological sigh a few times in succession and our heart rate slows down. A useful tool to have in the moment. When life stresses you out: sigh.

My brother’s goal for 2021 is to run one marathon every week for a total of 52 marathons in a year. When he told me, my first thought was what the hell is wrong with you? 

My second thought made me chuckle, bringing back some memories of teenage drama. 

Daniel and I grew up doing WWE moves on each other and fighting over the Gameboy and Nintendo 64. While I grew up with a need for outdoor activity, he loved the computer. The computer lived in Daniel’s room. Daniel also lived in Daniel’s room, quite literally holed up for days at a time.

He ran some cool projects: an anime upload site that generated income from Google (eventually shut down by a cease and desist order) and hosting / administrating his own private Ragnarok Online server, a massive online role playing game.

One weekend, the family planned a nice camping trip. Daniel didn’t want to go outside, given computer related commitments. My dad locked up Daniel’s computer in a fit of rage. Daniel matched Dad’s rage in the only way a high school kid can: he escaped the house on his Target bicycle. We cancelled the camping trip.

My brother now works as a Senior Data Engineer at Strava, the number 1 mobile app for tracking physical activity, from bike rides and ski runs to runs and stand-up paddle boarding.

Daniel went from literally running away from the outdoors to running outdoors at a rate most people would consider crazy. 

At Strava, he’s surrounded by a bunch of other people with extreme fitness goals, bordering addiction (this is actually a thing). Every Wednesday, they do interval runs from their San Francisco office, 20+ Strava people doing a highly intensive workout together. 

Most things look crazy until you find a peer group or a few people that normalize it. This can be making music while juggling a full-time job, training to bike across the lower 48 states, working towards the 1000 pound power lift club, surgeons training for a full ironman, or people who juggle operating and leading two companies.

So, what looks insane but might be something you want to work towards? Find those crazy peers and surround yourself with them. It eventually looks normal to you. 

Daniel is finally rubbing off on me, so I’m attempting my first marathon this year with him. I still think he’s crazy.

You can follow him here, he’s working on number 14 this week.

Note: Unfortunately, this effect works in the negative direction–surrounding yourself with people who have normalized drinking a bottle of whiskey every Thursday might make it seem normal to you.