The second last week of life or focus concentrates on the finer points and tactics need to tackle tough projects.

This penultimate week began with an Ultralearning cornerstone from Scott, he explored the science of transfer in terms of learning and the difficulties and challenges. He then leads us to the antidote of the transfer problem, directness.

Cal ends the week by describing his method for tackling big and complex projects or challenges. His process ‘Siege the Castle’ is named after medieval castle sieges. It is an iterative process involving planning tractable attacks, unsuccessful attempts then have to be reviewed and new information sought out before repeating. His analogy to a castle siege is particularly helpful as a castle can fall quickly if the correct strategy for a particular strategy is known, otherwise the siege can last months or years.

This week in my parallel study of Ultralearning, Scott explained in depth the different types of feedback (outcome, informational, corrective) and the challenges and opportunities of each. He highlights that feedback is necessary and desired but it is a double edged sword that needs to be handled with care.

This was a bad week for me in terms of deep work, I only managed 6 hours or two days of work.

While time block planning has been very helpful to me, I need more outward accountability and could push myself a little harder.

Life is not hard or complicated. However, we do our best to make it so.

The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by society and other people.

One of the things Naval tried to get rid of is the the word ‘should’. As whenever the word ‘should’ creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming.

Doing something because you should essentially means you don’t want to do it.

Doing things when you don’t want to do them makes you miserable, that’s the reason for eliminating as many ‘shoulds’ as possible.

We are social creatures the same as ants and bees, we are externally programmed and driven. However this puts us at odds with the fact the life is a single player game with an internal scorecard.

You are born and will die alone. You are gone in three generations, and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared.

Warren Buffett know’s this fact of life well. He has a great question he asks to highlight this to people.

Would you want to be the world’s best lover and known as the worst, or the world’s worst lover and known as the best?

Life is a single player game with an internal scorecard.

This is perhaps a reason why yoga and meditation are hard to sustain is they have no extrinsic value. They are purely single player games.

Happiness is being satisfied with what you have.

Success comes from dissatisfaction. Choose.

Most people, myself included think of someone as successful when they win a game, whatever game they play. However that is measuring success and happiness on external circumstances.

As we have no control of external circumstances, true happiness and success are internal.

The real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don’t even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else.

The problem with getting good at a game, especially one with big rewards, is you continue playing it long after you should have outgrown it.

Survival and replication drive put us on the work treadmill. Hedonic adaptation keeps us there. The trick is knowing when to jump off and play instead.

Week 10 of a Life of Focus concentrated on techniques to hone the skill of focus and projects to refine it and live a life worth living.

This weeks lessons were centred on how focus is a skill, and as such it can be trained and improved. To train your focus Cal and Scott advise three main techniques:

1. Productive meditation
2. Cognitive Interval Training
3. Reading hard things

In addition to constructing a focus training routine they highlight that a project-driven life where you emphasis mental strain as much as physical strain. This emphasis on projects and devoting yourself to interesting and important challenges is a rewarding and fulfilled life.

In Scott’s Ultralearning he uses the example of the renowned mathematician Ramanujan as an example of the benefits of retrieval. He also explores at why students are so bad at studying, when simply doing free recall and test exams is the proven best way to learn and study. It may be simply that they are uninformed or that they are choosing the easiest path.

This weeks deep work hours were 10. It wasn’t my best week, I was finding remaining undistracted particularly hard as I was waiting to hear back from a job interview. Which in the end I didn’t get. And thus the rest of the week suffered as I was out drowning my sorrows.

One small win would be I am getting better time block planning as each week passes.

It is Buddhist wisdom that we all suffer from a common fundamental delusion.

The fundamental delusion: There is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.

Our desires validate and reinforce this delusion. Therefore we need to reevaluate how we view desires.

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

Most people Naval argues don’t see desires in this way. We are go about desiring things all day then wonder why we’re unhappy.

It is wise to view desires in this sense and select your ones very carefully. And not too many at a time.

After another failure to get a job, albeit one that is particularly hurtful, as it was an area I was particularly well versed and interested in.

So decided to fuck the lot of them and go out on my own….

How am I going to hire myself though?

I am going to use a Tim Ferriss tactic and do the complete opposite of what I was doing.

What if I did the opposite?

What I was doing:

• Wait for a job posting I like
• Applying for the job (CV & cover letter)
• Complete tasks set by them
• Telling them I can do the job

The opposite:

• Don’t wait around for job postings, start doing the job now
• Don’t apply for jobs have them come to me.
• Complete my own tasks and projects
• Create a portfolio of work

Now, that I have established the opposite actions of what I was doing up until now. I have to determine how I implement this strategy.

1. Since I want to be an analyst or researcher for an investment company, I will have to start writing company summaries as well as reports on the science. I may consider doing guides, e.g. longevity supplements
2. As I won’t be applying for jobs I will have to make sure that I am seen and heard. Therefore, I will have to start making noise and a lot of it. It is probably best I do this on twitter and potentially instagram. I have to be careful not to regress back to my pre digital declutter ways.
3. I will have to select tasks and projects that will play to my advantages by highlighting my strengths and showcasing my abilities. I will need to heavily document them. This ties closely to my current study of ultra-learning. e.g. every company sell NAD+ in Europe
4. My portfolio should be a collection of my blog posts, projects, and potential my investments.

My hope and dream that by doing the opposite of what I am currently doing I will end up in a position that I won’t need to work for anyone but myself.

When we think of a happy person we imagine them as someone who is happy and jolly all the time, but actually Naval argues a happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time.

It is someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.

He goes on to explain that peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion.

The advantage of optimising for peace is that you can convert peace into happiness anytime you want.

But peace is what you want most of the time. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

After a recent job interview with a longevity company with no successful offer I am confounded again as to what to do next.

I always make the same mistake after interviews, I put everything else on pause as I assume I have the job in the bag.

And..

Here I am again, trying to figure out what to do next.

I figure the best place to start is to list my priorities:

• Health – Exercise, Diet, Sleep
• Relationships- Nikki, family, friends
• Learning- Writing, Coding, Longevity, Investing, Metalearning

In my current position some of my priorities have been sliding at the expensive of others. I haven’t found a way to reconcile all of them.

For example, at the moment I am thrive in terms of health and learning, while my relationships are being strained. My wonderful girlfriend and family are being increasingly concerned and worried about my jobless state.

In truth, if I don’t reconcile those priorities as soon as possible I risk doing serious damage to some of my relationships.

Now I have established my priorities I will contrast them against my next steps.

Next steps:

• Continue daily writing and coding practice. (Deliberate practice)
• Continue using twitter to get feedback on my ideas.
• Continue my exercise regime and maintain sleep and diet.
• Start getting serious about longevity and investing by writing company profiles and scientific summaries. (Do the job you wanted by yourself)
• Start applying for locum pharmacy shifts
• Start therapy to work on communication issues.

My personal runway is coming to an end.

My current spending feels more like investing (in myself) to me, however it probably doesn’t come across like that to others.

At any given time, when you’re walking down the road, a very small percentage of your brain is focused on the present. The rest is planning the future or regretting the past.

I have to admit to myself after reading this, that I spend a huge amount of time planning and daydreaming about the future. I play out imaginary conversations and scenarios all the time.

However, the problem with this type of future fantising is that it keeps you from seeing the beauty in everything and for being grateful for where you are.

The same is equally true about our pasts. A lot of unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present.

We crave experiences that will make us present, but the cravings themselves take us from the present moment.

The anticipation for our vices pulls us into the future. Thus eliminating vices makes it easier to be present.

This is perhaps one of the reasons the happiest and most successful people I know rarely drink or take recreational drugs.

To say presence is required for happiness is an understatement. Happiness is built on presence. Without presence there is no happiness.

What if this life is the paradise we were promised, and we’re just squandering it?

The world’s best-funded longevity biotech platform, Juvenescence, positions itself early to capitalise on the biggest and most complex industry in human history.

Juvenescence aims to confront ageing and age-related diseases head on, looking to drive scientific innovation with speed and agility to market. They are building an alliance of the world’s best scientists, physicians and investors to develop these new therapies and products.

Founded in 2016 by billionaire Jim Mellon and Dr Gregory Bailey (of Portage Biotech), Juvenescence aims to close 2021 with an IPO. The company already valued at $500M, finished it’s series C funding last April securing $56.9M, and recently acquired Portage Pharmaceuticals last March.

Juvenescence, lead by a trio of Jim Mellon (Chairman), Dr Gregory Baily (CEO), and Dr Declan Doogan (CMO) have developed a three pillar approach to achieve its goals:

1. Understanding how the body regenerates itself, allowing them to help stimulate your body to regenerate healthier tissues and even organs.
2. Developing therapies that prevent these same pathologies and disease states, shifting away from the sick-treat paradigm for good.
3. Democratising these health breakthroughs for everyone by harnessing clinically-validated but more economically available therapies, such as supplements, and leveraging social media.

Juvenescence may currently be frontrunner, but a pack of well-backed and well-positioned competitors has formed close behind. Life Biosciences ($500M) lead by chairman David Sinclair and CEO Mehmood Khan (previously of PepsiCo) are the main competition, other players such as Sergey Young’s Longevity Vision Fund ($100M) and Google’s Calico are also operating and making waves in this new industry.

As this industry matures, the looming challenges are unprecedented, however so too are the opportunities. Juvenescence is well position to shape to young industry and will be a company to watch as they approach their IPO.

INVEST?

DEFINITELY