Personal Board Update: Q2 & Q3 2021

Hey Personal Board, this update is a special one :). I crammed Q2 + Q3 into one email and tried to keep it short!

Asks:

• Read the reflection below on fulfillment. Curious if you think this is a good or bad way to go about life.
• What book or article do I need to read next? You can only rec. one here - I will read it.
• (ignore if you're not in startup world) Kicked off fundraising for Intros.ai 2 weeks ago. Would love a suggestion of 1-2 investors who could be a good fit. Already have Sriram at A16z in with a personal check + an offer for the lead.

Q2 Highlights:

1. I moved to Brooklyn (Greenpoint) at the start of March.
2. I began hosting founder brunches and got fairly deep in the NYC founder scene.
   
3. Intros started to pick up some momentum and we got a handful of cool communities to use our product (ie. Morning Brew + University of Chicago)

Lowlights:

1. There was quite a bit of uncertainty around the vision for Intros. Rob and I knew we'd figure it out, but it took quite a few weeks (months) of thought and experiments to get a stronger grasp on where the company was headed.
2. I went on a few dates, no one particularly special.
3. My first house in Brooklyn had a cockroach problem and was up 6 flights of stairs. My second house had a crazy landlord that made me frequently clean the windows for some reason. Life goes on.

~Fulfillment reflection~

I've decided to optimize for my level of fulfillment at the end of each day.

It's hard to define this, but I know it's not moment to moment happiness you feel when hanging out with fun people. It's closer to looking back at the end of the day and saying, "That was tough to get through, but I improved a lot."

One way of looking at this is minimizing regret - it's easy to to hangout with close friends, but if there was work you wanted to get done, you'll likely regret hanging with friends instead.

Another way to think of this is short term vs. long term thinking. Sometimes being social is long-term thinking in which case it improves your fulfillment score. You could say "wow, what a meaningful experience with those good people. I'm so grateful to have them in my life." This would boost, not take away from the fulfillment score.

I also think "end of day fulfillment" is very different than fulfillment at end of weeks / months / or even hours. The longer the time span, the less the present moment matters.

This framework around fulfillment is something I sorta pulled out of my ass over the last year to give me something to strive for each day. I now think, "Will doing this action boost or lower that feeling at the end of the day?" As mentioned in the ask, curious if you like this approach as the "guiding light" of sorts.

There's a lot of factors that lead to high-fulfillment days, but I wanted to tease out what factors mattered most. The five factors I considered were:

1. Length of Sleep
2. Level of Focus
3. Time Working out
4. Time Journaling
5. Time Meditating

Based on the data, staying focused on task (doing what I say I'll do at the beginning of the day) has the highest impact on my fulfillment score.

The relationship between fulfillment and focus is higher than meditation, journaling, workout out and time spent with friends (although I'm notoriously bad at tracking personal data with friends).

~Q2 Stats~

Average Fulfillment Score: 7.81 / 10 (-2.375% from Q1)

Average Focus Score: 7.38 / 10 (-1.6% from Q1)

Average time working out: 23.33 minutes/ day (+55.5% from Q1)

Average time meditating: 5.15 minutes/ day (+3% from Q1)

Average time journaling: 7.17 minutes / day (-14.65% from Q1)

Q3 Highlights:

1. July - I ended up starting a secret society with my friends Devin (newest member of the personal board) and Kyle.
2. August - Moved back to Boston and biked with my brother from Boston to Provincetown Cape Cod one weekend. We couldn't find somewhere to sleep, so bought trash bags and slept outside + got first angel checks in for Intros.
3. September - started prepping for our fundraise and went to a founder house with some friends in Costa Rica + released new version of Intros with a full redesign.

Lowlights:

1. Lotta movement was tough to get in a routine. Aside from this, hard to complain.

Reflection:

Lotta excitement these past few months. I had a good balance of work and play with ~70 hour work weeks. Usually got most of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday to meet up with friends and what not. These coming couple of months will be closer to 80 (recently kicked off fundraise).

Q3 Stats:

Average Fulfillment Score: 8.18 up from 7.81 (+4.74%)

Average Focus Score: 7.55 up from 7.38 (+2.3%)

Average time spent working out: 22.95 minutes / day down from 23.33 minutes/ day (-1.63%)

Average time journaling: 5.086 / day down from 7.17 minutes / day (-29.1%)

Average time meditating: 6.08 minutes / day up from 5.15 minutes/ day (+18.06%)

Focus + Fulfillment still highest correlation out of any other metrics.

Thank you for reading through!