Interesting people do interesting things

I’ve been thinking recently about the (obvious) idea that the quality of our outputs is entirely dependent on the quality of our inputs. It’s irrational to think our outputs will be extraordinary if our inputs are ordinary. From the quality of our sleep to the food we eat to those we follow on our Instagram feed to the diversity of news sources we consume, nothing dictates what we produce and how we see the world like what we put into our minds and bodies. I am struck by how many different years existed in 2020: the year of COVID, another year of police brutality and systemic racism, an election year rife with division, a year of crazy tech (gargantuan IPOs, antitrust lawsuits, and streaming wars), a year of surging Bitcoin and bullish public markets, a year of historic forest fires, a year of less travel and more home time. The stories we believe are the stories we’re close to. Our outlook is more a function of our input choices than it is a function of what’s actually going on externally. And if this is true, then maybe the path out of the deep divisions and disunity we’re experiencing is less focused on endpoints and more focused on starting points. It’s less focused on changing minds and more focused on changing inputs. It’s less focused on big goals and more focused on daily choices.