On top of all that, generous behavior has been show to be contagious. If you start, it’s very likely to enable that behavior in others, a self-reinforcing circle of kindness. So let’s start that feedback loop:

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Give within your limits

Cultivate generosity

Generosity is a muscle, a habit, and like everything, it needs to be trained to make it an easy, natural behavior. According to research, the best way of doing this is by combining intentional actions with close connections.

• Give intentionally: A bit like a gratitude journal trains you to see things to be grateful for, a giving habit trains you to see opportunities to give. Make it a habit to give something to somebody every day. It can be just a word, a hug, a flower.

• Focus on real connections: When giving, give directly to people you see and can interact with. Seeing the reactions on their faces will have the largest effects on both your happiness and your habit formation.

• Contribute in your community: Most communities run on volunteering. Give your time, and as an added bonus you’ll meet new people and form new bonds. Not sure where you can help? Just offer and ask. There is always a need.

The place where this principle really shines is Burning Man: A festival where you can’t buy anything, only gift things to others. There is no bartering, you gift to strangers and never see them again. When I first saw this working in real life I was thinking: If as humanity we are able to pull this off, just by gifting, I think we’ll be fine.

Christoph

Stay with yourself

Giving is a great thing, as long as you don’t give more than you can. Especially in friendships this can be hard, when seeing people close to you in need. But they don’t benefit from you eventually running out of steam and silently turning cynical.

• Avoid being used: There is always a risk that if you give generously, somebody will take without feeling inspired to give. Protect yourself by playing generous tid for tat: Give often but if you notice pure taking in the other person, exclude them.

• Set boundaries: A very simple forumla for communicating these is “What I need + What I will do to protect that”. E.g., “I can’t take calls after 9pm because I need to wind down. I won’t answer but text you in the morning.”

• Ask for support: People love to give and help. You are offering them an opportunity to do that by asking for help. By articulating your needs. The more comfortable you feel doing this, the more people feel they can trust you.

Give repair

None of us is perfect, we all make mistakes. Sometimes we don’t even know we did, or who did, and a misunderstanding explodes sepctacularly. Sometimes we just drift apart. Assuming this isn’t a pattern and you trust and value them, give the first step:

• Reach out: Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you didn’t. The important thing is: You still value your friend. You want to be in their live and them to be in yours. Swallow your pride, reach out, tell them you value them, offer to talk it through.

• Listen: No matter what your perception of the situation is, really try to understand their point. Don’t defend yourself, just repeat back to them what you understood they said. Make them feel seen

• Apologize: Own your specific actions. Don’t say “I’m sorry you felt that way” but focus on your actions and what you can do. Something like: “I’m sorry I did x and that it caused y. I will do z to prevent this from happening again.”

One of the most satisfying things from last year was reconnecting with an old school friend who used to be one of my closest friends. We never fell out, we just drifted apart over time, which made catching up feel especially meaningful.

There was something genuinely uplifting about revisiting old memories, feeling that shared history come back so naturally, and realising the friendship was still there.

Since then, we have started seeing each other fairly often again, and it has left me feeling grateful that some connections can be picked back up even after years apart.

Cameron

Some ideas to get started

• Think of one thing you could do this week to make somebody smile. Commit to doing it on your change

• Is there a friendship you’d like to repair? Take a few minutes to reflect on this.

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

This didn’t used to be a problem because we’d just run into each other in tight-knit communities, but now we live more isolated and alone, and things don’t just happen automatically anymore

But no need to despair. You don’t have to wait for friends to reach out. You can be the change you want to see in the world. You can reach out. You can be the spark. And people will love you for it.

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How to deepen relationships

Reach out

Sounds so simple and yet a lot of us don’t do it. Build a habit to reach out to people intentionally. As a frist step in each good habit, you need triggers. Examples for those triggers coudl be

• When you think of them: Maybe you listen to a song or read something that reminds you of them, or they’re simply on your mind because of something they said or a story they told. Tell them. They’ll appreciate it.

• When you feel a need: Wanting connection or feeling lonely is not something to be ashamed of. You also don’t feel ashamed when you’re hungry. You just eat. In the same way, just reach out when you feel a need for connection.

• When your list says so: Takes little work and is super useful: A list of people you know with a few tags. Travelling to a city? Reach out. Planning a dinner? Check the list. Their birthday? Check. Bonus points for the date you next want to reach out to them.

Practice rituals

Coming up with reasons to reach out and meeting people is draining. Luckily, culture has solved this for us. It came up with lots of reasons to celebrate and have people around.

• Celebrate your birthday: Start here. See it as a gift you gift to others, not something self indulgent. A lot of us got scarred as teenagers where birthday parties were status games. Good news: They don’t have to be. Do what you like.

• Follow your communities rituals: Religious holidays, New Years, a sports game finale, Eurovision Song Contest, work events, anniversaries of any kind, national holidays, there is always a reson to meet, just look for them.

• Create rituals: Hosted something once and people liked it? Make it a recurring thing. Thursday after-work drinks. Monthly book club. Board game nights. Cowork Tuesday. Annual winter vacation with the crew, …

Host

When should you host? When you wish more people would be hosting things. If you get less social interactions than you’d like to have, start hosting, and once you get too much, because people are inviting you back to too many things, just stop again.

• Scrappy is vulnerable: By hosting people at your home you’re letting them see your more vulnerable self. It shouldn’t be perfect. Embrace scrappyness, don’t polish up, lower the bar, they’ll love it.

• Start comfortable: No need to throw a massive dinner party alone. Team up with a friend to host. Order pizza or cook a simple dish. Do something that you’d love to do even if nobody or just a few people showed up.

• Focus on activities: Doing something together bonds and takes the pressure off the socializing. My recent favorites: a “sideproject saturday” where we’d meet at a coworking space and vibe-code. A “donation dinner” where we would order pizza and do donation admin together. A “protest brunch” where we made our own portest signs over croissants and coffee.

How to get started

• Bet money on reaching out to people regularly

• What kind of event would you love to attend? Plan a small version of it.

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

They all came up with the same word: Empathy.

While this book is from the 30s and sounds like the 101 in deception, the core stayed true for a century: What follows is all obvious, and yet we often forget. Take it as a reminder in your next social interactions.

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Curiosity 101

Listen actively

Every person you meet has a lifetime of stories, experiences, and learnings they are carrying with them. Everybody’s life is just as complex as yours. See it as a treasure trove to dive into when having your next conversation.

• Be fully present: Focus on them and their story. Don’t think about a smart reply, or that story of yours you could continue with. Just listen and encourage them to keep going.

• Paraphrase back: Communication is hard. The best way to make sure you understand somebody is to just repeat it back to them. It also shows them you listened.

• Ask questions: Something in their story probably sparked your curiosity. Why did they do that? How did they feel? What happened next? Keep going down that rabbit hole.

See people

I was having drinks with a therapist the other day and she complained “it’s always the same, everybody just wants to be seen.” We all love attention, you can see it best in children, at some point we just manage to hide it better. Give it. It’s a great gift.

• Smile with your eyes: When talking about seeing people, start with eye contact. Allow to show your true happiness about meeting somebody on your face, your curiosity in your eyes. Not happy to see somebody? Don’t fake it.

• Learn names: It’s hard, that’s why it’s so valuable. It shows you care about the other person and you’re making an effort to see them. The basics: Just try to repeat the name a lot in the beginning, weave it back into the conversation.

• Make compliments: It’s so easy to give them and everybody loves getting compliments. Maybe something about their outfit, how they make you smile, how they care for others, something that makes them unique.

Allow yourself to be seen

This only works both ways. If you show a lot of curiosity in others but don’t allow any towards you, you won’t build meaningful connections. Sharing parts of you you are uncertain about, and seeing them validated by others, is how connection gets built.

• Share feelings: How are you doing? Next time somebody asks that, and they have some time, take the risk and answer the question honestly. By taking the first step in vulnerability, you signal that it’s safe to be vulnerable as well.

• Show imperfections: It’s easy to carry a mask where everything is perfect. But it also costs effort. Friendships are best when you can be yourself fully, let go of any masks. Let go early to test if you’ll be accepted for the person you are.

• Express needs: What do you need when being with others? From them, or just for yourself? Sometimes it’s easy to fall into a people-pleasing mode and asking for something feels risky. Take the risk, dare to speak up for yourself.

Build your empathy muscle

Want to go further in building your empathy skills? This won’t be a one-and-done journey but takes significant effort over longer periods of time. Research is also still quite sparse here, so see it as experimenting yourself.

• Metta meditation: Also called loving-kindness or Compassion Cultivation Training. You just sit and repeat “May I be safe. May I be healthy. May I be happy” and then expand slowly to people you like, don’t like, the world.

• Dyadic meditation and circling: Both are structured formats for sharing vulnerably, listening actively, paying attention to one’s own reaction and acceptance.

• Taking perspectives: Empathy is synonym for “perspective taking ability”, both emotional and cognitive. You can build that by reading a lot of fiction, watching documentaries, and engaging with people with backgrounds different from yours.

Some things to try now

• Next time you have a conversation, don’t talk about yourself unless asked.

• Send somebody a message about what you appreciate about them.

• Build a habit to learn names. Bet money on your success.

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

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How to make friends as an adult

Be yourself

While quantity seems to matter a bit, the depth of friendships seems to be much more important. You want people to like you for who you are, the best way to find those is to just be yourself, no masks, when meeting new people. If somebody doesn’t like you for who you are, you probably shouldn’t be friends anyway.

• Follow your interests: An extension of being yourself is doing things you like doing. Try to find the intersection of things you like and things where there is opportunity to socialise. For example a group class over alone gym time.

• Explore your area: Building friendships will take time. It’ll be much easier when they are living close to you. Prioritize activities in your local neighborhood. Find third places and existing communities. Become a regular at events you like.

• Get referrals: Ask your friends to introduce you to friends they think you might like. This is especially powerful when moving to a new city or introductions that you wouldn’t otherwise meet at group events like dinners.

I recently made a new friend, and I think a few things made it possible and successful: A mutual friend introduced us because they noticed we had a lot in common and seemed quite similar. We also live only an eight minute bike ride away from each other, which made it easy to meet up. On top of that, we started going to the gym together regularly, every couple of days, which gave the friendship a natural rhythm and helped it grow quickly.

Cameron

Put in the time

Building relationships takes time, 60-160 hours per friendship. Combine this with the fact as a society we tend to make less time for friends and you see why this will be a long game.

• Get out there: There is a natural dyanmic where when you have few friends you have more time to go to social events and the more friends you have the less time you have for this. Think of putting in a fixed amount of time per week in “social life” and it’ll slowly shift from “friend-finding” to “hanging out”.

• Approach: Approaching people takes courage. That’s why people reward it if you do. Strike up a conversation about something in the environment, something you notice about them. Like anything, this takes practice. Make it a habit.

• Do the dance: Just like in dating, you want to figure out how much time to spend together without embarassing the other person. Play generous tit for tad: Take turns reaching out and inviting them, foregive them if they forget. If they start taking longer and longer to reply, they are either too busy or not interested.

Be intentional

You probably heard the “you are the average of the five people you hang out most with” meme. Befriend the people whom you want to be the average of. This isn’t “using people” this is being intentional with your time, the same way you are being intentional when dating people.

• Status: Every group will have status dynamics, you won’t get around it. What you can have an influence on is what gives status. This is huge. If you can build a friend group where status aligns with your values, your life will be much easier.

• Feeling: This might be obvious but: How do they make you feel? Are you at ease around them or on guard? Are you laughing or performing? Are you excited when they reach out or only replying to avoid hurting them? Would you rather be alone?

• Lifestyle: Trying to break a bad habit is hard. If the whole group has that habit, it’s next to impossible. Think drinking, smoking, eating out. The opposite holds for good habits. Think meditation groups, running buddies, volunteer friends.

I have a pattern of being conflict avoidant. In my social life, this meant hanging out with people purely because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by saying no. But this of course is not helping anybody, it just makes things worse because now you’re not enjoying yourself and you are implicitly lying to somebody. Don’t be like me, be honest with your friends about your boundaries, and embrace the necessary discomfort.

Christoph

Some ideas to get started

• Are you happy with your circle of friends? What would 10/10 look like?

• What gives status in your circle of friends? “Nothing” doesn’t count.

• Make it a habit to approach a stranger. One per week. Get accountability.

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Also, just to be clear, this is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

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Three different lenses

The rent lens

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t buy if the rent-equivalent yield (yearly equivalent rent / house price) on your house is low (<5%). If that’s the case, you’re probably better off just investing your money elsewhere and paying the rent. The more detailed view:

• Estimate your mortgage: You care about three numbers: How much you have to put down, how much you get, and your interest rate. This takes a few minutes in an online calculator of your local bank.

• Plug it into a calculator: We won’t cover everything in one blogpost. Luckily other people did. Try this one as a good comprehensive one or these ones for country-specific calculations.

• Understand sensitivities: Calculators give a false sense of certainty. Play with the assumptions and see how it changes. Which factors have the largest implications? As you’ll probably see, home appreciation is a very large factor. Because leverage.

When using the calculators, it’s important to check if they use local inventive schemes. In the UK, one option is the Lifetime ISA, where the government adds a 25% bonus to your savings, up to £1,000 per year, which can be used towards your first home or later life. It’s easy to miss, but it could save you a significant amount of money.

Cameron

The leverage lens

Buying a house is this weird exception where most people can get loans vastly larger than they would otherwise have access to. This means you take a large financial bet that probably has larger implications than any other factor in the calculations.

• Create scenarios: Which factors would lead to your house price to grow beyond today? Migration? Local regulation? A conflict? Change in desirability of your location? More or fewer houses being built? Demographic change?

• Diversify: The best hedge to the downside is diversification. Do you have enough capital or income to diversify away from “just” your house? This lowers the implications of your bet going sideways. If not, it’s probably not worth it.

• Mortgagemaxx: Instead of optimizing for the highest absolute mortgage and being undiversified, try optimizing for high loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. Get high leverage for little input, and use your remaining capital to diversify.

The lifestyle lens

This might be a lazy way out but ask yourself: In your price segment, do you value the idea of homeownership more or less than the average person? If less and you can assume a somewhat efficient market, it’s probably not worth it for you. What determines that preference?

• Loss aversion: The happiness you gain from increasing your net worth by 50% is much smaller than the pain of losing that same amount.

• Move: How likely are you to move in the next 1-5 years? For a job? For love? For family? For children? The one-off transaction costs (both in money and in your time) are often not worth it if this is a serious possibility.

• Emotions: What comes up with this topic? Anxiety for financial commitment? FOMO when all of your friends get high returns on their house? Being aware of the driving factor can help you assess the situation more calmly.

For me the biggest emotion driving this is some kind of fear of missing out. Working hard to make money and then just seeing some friends making tons of money on their house because it went up in market value always feels rough.

Christoph

Things to get started

• Try one of those house calculators, they’re easy and fun

• If you’re actually thinking of buying a house, book a call with an advisor

• Commit to doing these things by betting money on it

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Also, just to be clear, this is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

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The 80/20 of investing

Maximize happiness, not wealth

Default investment advice is to maximize your wealth. At Euzia, we want to maximize your happiness, not your wealth. That means you want to get your spending up early to a level you can sustain long, instead of spending little early to then spend a lot later.

• Careful with FIRE: You might be a bit happier when you retire early in 20 years. But for sure you are less happy now grinding and saving. Instead, invest so much that you can retire late at your current lifestyle. If you start early, that’s about 15%.

• Automate and forget: One failure mode for investing is all the anxiety that can come with it, continually tracking your stocks, etc. Set it up in a different bank, don’t have an app, have an automated plan and only look at it once a year.

• Don’t gamble: No prediction markets, poker, stock picking. In all those cases you are not playing against the average but against the smartest player in the room. Unless you have good reason to believe you are that person, don’t play.

The boring and proven tactics

This is a reminder of best practices. We stay somewhat vague here because the specifics will depend on your situation. Do your own research, treat this as a reminder.

• Buy ETFs: The stock market on average has high returns but average is the key here. Even though single stocks outperform, you probably won’t be able to beat the market consistently. The ETF you pick depends on your situation: Global for biggest diversification, local for biggest link to local consumption prices.

• Hedge against stocks: ETFs diversify your stock portfolio but what if the whole stock market tanks? You want an asset that are uncorrelated to stocks. Historically those are gold, real estate, or bonds.

• Local incentives & taxes: All countries are different. Spend time to really understand them. How can you get the most out of your retirement subsidies (eg 401k), housing subsidies (eg mortgage benefits), tax cuts?

In the UK you can currently invest up to £20,000 a year into an ISA, where your gains are generally tax free. Other countries may offer similar benefits through retirement accounts, first time buyer schemes, government bonuses, or long term savings incentives.

A good first step is to search: “best tax advantaged investment accounts in [your country]” or ask AI to explain the options. Then verify with an official source or qualified adviser. It’s not the most exciting part of investing, but it can be one of the easiest ways to avoid leaving free money on the table

Cameron

Place bets only if you can afford it

If you have an average salary in an average country, investing in ETFs and some bonds is not going to get you rich. That’s ok because being rich won’t make you happy anyway. In the off-chance that you still want to try, start looking in these directions:

• Take high-risk bets: This could be anything from starting or investing in a business, picking stock, or marrying a promising person. It’s high risk because you’ll likely lose the money or time. Only gamble what you can afford to lose.

• Leverage: Placing bets with your own time and money only has limited upsides. Leverage other’s capital as well: Investors to your business, managing other’s money, getting cuts for transactions. Most self-made millionaires are either entrepreneurs or work in finance.

• Have Access: Your bets are more likely to work if the number of people betting is small. This could be access to knowledge, deals, jobs, people, ideas, etc. The best jobs, dates, ideas aren’t in the public, they are in niche communities. Find those.

Right now I’m taking a high-risk bet: Investing my time and money into starting a startup (https://donethat.ai, Euzoia is just for fun).

Initially I was very wary of taking investment, it felt like losing control, but now that I thought about leverage for a while I actually think that was the wrong call.

Both this opportunity, and my previous one, emerged from unique access: Access to a startup incubation program through the EA community, and access to the previous startup job through a friend.

Christoph

Do this now

• Use AI to project your current investment rate and age. If you would “die with zero” at age 100, how much would you live off per month, in today-dollars?

• Use AI to understand all the tax incentives and regulations in your state/country. Are you using all of them?

• Do you have access to something the majority doesn’t have access to? Can you afford placing a bet on it?

• Bet money (the kind you can afford to lose) on doing these actions

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Also, just to be clear, this is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

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How to minimize regret

Build a buffer for small financial shocks

Your car breaking down, an ER visit, an unexpected tax bill. About half of all Americans would have to go into debt to cover a $1000 unexpected bill. Being able to cover these creates significant peace of mind.

• Pay off your credit card: Before anything else, pay off your short-term debt. The high interest of credit cards creates a spiral that’s difficult to get out of. If you have a history of struggling with this, seek financial advice.

• Understand social security: What would happen if you would get sick or lose your job? A lot of financial advice ignores this because it’s written for low-social-security countries.

• Aim for 3-6 months of buffer: This depends on your social security. You want to be able to have enough time to find a new job or bridge a long sick leave, while paying for unexpected damage to your car. No high-risk investments with this.

Get insurance for big financial shocks

As a rule of thumb, you should insure anything that you can’t comfortably cover with your personal buffer. Your holiday flight? Probably don’t need to insure that. By accident setting a forest on fire on your holiday? Probably need an insurance for that. And yes, I know somebody who managed to do that, his insurance paid. The basics:

• Health insurance: If you can afford it and you are healthy: Aim for a high deductible and good inpatient cover. Inpatient is where the costs explode typically. Make sure you also have one for travel, often covered by credit cards.

• Liability insurance: Usually pretty cheap and mandatory in many countries. This makes sure you are covered for breaking stuff by accident. Make sure you actually have high covers and not just “state minimums”. For personal, car, professional.

• Life insurance: If people depend on your income, you want to make sure they can maintain their lifestyle in the case that you pass away. Best to get a term insurance for the next 20 years while building up savings for after.

• Disability insurance: You are far more likely to become disabled than to pass away early. Yet most get a life insurance and not a disability insurance. Make sure they cover “own occupation”, otherwise you can be forced into any job.

• Home insurance: Didn’t listen to our advice and didn’t get a water sensor? This insurance makes sure you won’t be in ruin. Bonus points for getting cover for natural events like earthquakes, hurricanes, or fires.

When I started working in health insurance I was surprised that the theory of change was focused on preventing people from falling into poverty, not increasing their health. In the end people often find money to pay for healthcare, but after their treatment they are in debt for life.

Christoph

Protect yourself from non-insurable risks

We’ll cover some more ways to lose your money in next week’s post on investing but apart from betting and investing, these are the most common things people regret later

• No prenups: Marriage is a financial contract with default terms most people never read. A prenup lets you pick the rules instead. Especially matters for business owners, cross-border couples, and asymmetric wealth.

• Scams and identity theft: It takes five minutes to clone your voice with AI. Set bank limits, agree a family safe phrase, verify on a second channel. Freeze your credit or check your report yearly.

• Loans to friends: This can be regular loans, co-signing on a mortgage, personal guarantees. Sometimes when friends and family are involved, thinking rationally gets harder. Only take the risks you are comfortable with.

Let’s get started

• Set up automated savings

• Create a blocker in your calendar to make an inventory of your insurances

• Educate your parents about AI scams

• Bet money on actually doing these things

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

So: What’s actually worth spending money on and where can you cut?

This is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

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The 80/20 of spending advice

Optimize the “big three”

More than 60% of the average budget goes into these categories, and they are all key suspects of hedonic adaptation and lifestyle creep. A better house, car, or food will make you happier only briefly, and most are driven by your peers and your status.

• Housing: Most people spend 30% or more of their income on housing. Question it: What alteratives could you use? My favorite hack: Live with roommates. Less cost and a free social life. We’ll look into buying a house separately later.

• Transport: Do you really need that shiny car? Take an uber everywhere? Book all your flights only a few days prior? Try this: Who of your friends spends the least you think? Could you do the same?

• Food: Eating out and ordering takeaway can consistently eat into your budget but it’s a difficult habit to crack. Experiment with bulk-cooking, ordering groceries online to avoid impulse buys, or hosting potlucks instead of going out.

What actually buys happiness

There are some exceptions to hedonic adaptation. Most notably investing in experiences almost always pays off higher than investing in material goods. Overall, the evidence suggest to spend on the following categories

• Charitable giving: Seems to buy the most lasting happiness. Consider splitting those in “in-the-moment happiness” like gifts to a friend or a local charity and “content happiness” like gifts to charities that have high impact.

• Buy yourself time: The classic example of this is getting a cleaner but there are many opportunities to trade money for time. Maybe do a test to estimate the value of your time, make sure to account for tax etc. Then brainstorm with AI.

• Euzoia-approved: The kind of things we suggest here at Euzoia: A gym membership, an air purifier, and in future posts spending on your education, your friends, and novel experiences. So much to come!

I still remember when I first started donating money to effective charities. It felt like shifting from a feeling of helplessness about the global issues to “doing my part” and the peace of mind that came with it. Donations alone are of course not everything, but for most people probably the best way to have impact. Love the 10% pledge for building a community around that idea.

Christoph

Follow three simple rules

Making the right decisions is hard, building habits even harder. The great thing about financial decisions is that you can automate a lot of them.

• Automate budgeting: When your money comes in, directly send it where it should go: A “bills” acount, a “spending” account, a “savings” account. Then never spend more than you have. Check out YNAB for a more advanced version.

• Wait before you spend: Whenever you get excited about a purchase: Wait. For larger purchases, wait longer. In almost all cases, that waffle toaster looks a lot less exciting a day later. If you still love it, get it then.

• Budget for large expenses: What can you already see on the horizon? Elderly care? Your children’s education? Retirement? A sabbattical? Starting a business? Use AI to help you estimate how much you need to save now to reach these.

Starting points

• Set up some budgets, takes five minutes.

• Try giving to charity. Maybe check out the life you can save.

• Start with one of housing, transport and food. Any obvious gains there?

• Learn how to change

• Bet money on your change

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

This is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

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Understand your finances in under one hour

Review your cash flows

This used to be a drag to do, I tried a bunch of apps, most of their integrations were not great and they classified stuff wrong. Now we have AI. Give it a try: Export your account history, feed it into Claude, and ask it the following questions:

• How much goes in? In most cases this is just your salary maybe investment income. In a financial partnership? Then do this analysis for your partnership.

• Where does it go? Don’t focus on every cent. Most people spend most of their money on three things: Housing, transportation, food. What’s your spending on each of those categories? Any surprising outliers?

• Build a habit: Doing this once a year is work, but just checking your cashflows every week takes two minutes. This allows you to find fraud, find recurring subscriptions, and get a feeling for what’s worth it and what isn’t.

A lot of us have subscriptions that renew monthly, or even yearly, and then we forget about them until a random £50 to £100 charge appears on our statement.

I use AI to scan my statements, spot recurring subscriptions, and calculate my current subscription burn rate. It is a simple way to get more awareness of where your money is going.

Cameron

Project your trends

Next, get a feeling for where this will develop towards. Focus on the timeframe that is right for you. Stable job and family? Project years and decades. Starting an AI startup? Plan for the next months. Again, Claude can help you figure it out.

• What are you expecting to get? Will you stay in your job? Until when? Expecting an inheritance? How will your savings develop? Again, focus on the 80/20, make a few crude assumptions and feed them to Claude.

• What are you planning to spend? Planning on getting a house? Care responsibilities? Big life events? What’s your “burn rate”?

• Try a few scenarios: Predictions are hard, life will surprise you. Try a few different scenarios depending on your personal life and the macroeconomic trends around you.

I have this weekly review where I ask myself the question if I have any lingering feelings I am not checking in with. For the last few weeks that was financial anxiety. Now, while writing this article, I analyzed and projected my finances with Claude, took ten minutes, and that anxiety is gone. Not because I suddenly found money, but because I feel less in the dark about how long it’ll last me.

Christoph

Explore your beliefs

You can spend a lot of time crunching the numbers but that won’t help much if your decision making around money is driven by deep-rooted beliefs that work against you. Take a few minutes to start exploring those as part of your financial audit:

• Explore your upbringing: What were the conversations at home about money? Were there any? What was ok and not ok to spend money on? Was there a feeling of scarcity or abundance?

• Explore money scripts: Research has identified four unhealthy ones: Worship (“money solves everything”), Status (“net worth is self worth”), Avoidance (“money is the source of evil”), Vigilance (“question all purchases”). Check them here.

• Start conversations: Money can be taboo but if you frame it right, having a conversation about it can be liberating. Start a conversation with your partner, friend, or parent. Consider a therapist if you scored high on money scripts.

Growing up, there wasn’t a lot of financial stability at home. Both of my parents were self-employed with fluctuating incomes. Somehow I took away from this a deep belief that “it always works out” but I could’ve just as well learned that I really want a stable government job.

Christoph

Give it a go

In the next weeks, we will explore how you can optimize your spending, investing, and other topics. You’ll be able to take most from those posts when you have a clear understanding of your status quo:

• Block one hour in your calendar to feed your finances to Claude. Bet money on actually doing it.

• Journal or grab a friend to reflect on your beliefs around money.

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

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What’s causing you stress

Fake stressors

When I said I’d write an article about stressors at home, lots of suggestions came up. Some didn’t make it past the evidence bar but clearly many people are worried. Let’s start here:

• Microplastics: There is lots of evidence that microplastics can accumulate in human organs: through air (from laundry), through water (from bottled water), from food (wrapped in plastic). However, we feel that the weak evidence for actual health impact doesn’t justify the massive work it would be to avoid all these.

• WiFi radiation: There is no good evidence for health effects from WiFi radiation, including cancer and fertility. The signal is much weaker than holding your phone next to your ear when on a call, and that is also fine.

• Tap water: Most tap water is generally safe to drink. Fluoride is good for your teeth. Check it for your city but keep in mind that the alternatives have issues: Water filters grow bacteria when you don’t replace filters. Bottled water often has worse levels of heavy metals than tap water.

Microplastics is a hard one. There seems to be something there but then evidence on actual effects seems to be inconclusive. And it’s so hard to actually avoid them. For me personally, I decided it’s not worth the effort caring about this for now and revisit next year. Let me know in the comments if you feel differently!

Christoph

Hidden stressors

Unfortunately there are some real risks still out there. These are the top-three toxins still present in many houses.

• Flame retardants: Flame retardants have long been added to furniture and other products and have been shown to have an impact on hormone levels, brain development, and fertility. Fix: Don’t let dust accumulate, get an air filter, use a HEPA vacuum. Replace furniture with “crumbling” yellow foam, look for certificates that apply in your country (TB117-2013 US, EN 1021 EU, UK is tricky)

• Mold: Grows wherever things get damp. It has been shown to cause persistent asthma in children, and can cause respiratory and mental health issues in adults. Act on signs like peeling wallpaper and earthy “basement smells”; check the underside of your roof and the base of your walls. Always fix the water source first.

• Lead: Lead is highly toxic for children’s brain development. Yet it’s still found in old piping and use in paint is unregulated in 50% of countries. To figure out if you are at risk, check your house and infrastructure age and region with an AI, then if you are suspicious, you can often request a test with your local water provider.

Stress from clutter

Turns out it’s not just the hidden stuff that’s causing stress. The stuff you buy has been shown to cause stress as well. Voluntary minimalism has been shown across over 20 studies to increase life satisfaction and lower depression, most likely through lower clutter and less decision fatigue. Minimalism 101:

• The bar: For each item in your house, check if it serves a functional purpose or cause genuine joy. No on either? Get rid of it.

• The box: Letting go is hard. Start by just putting things in a box. If you didn’t miss them after three months, you’ll find it easier to let go.

• The cycle: Instead of throwing things out, bring them to a charity shop or put them on a local marketplace app. There will be plenty of people who still have a use for it.

For every new nonperishable item I bring into the house, I have to get rid of two existing items. That means whenever something new comes in, my overall clutter still goes down. This applies to clothes, furniture, books, and similar items.

To make it more challenging, I sometimes try to remove items of the same type. Of course, you have to be reasonable with it. If you followed this rule forever, you would eventually end up with nothing, so sometimes a one to one ratio makes more sense. But aiming for a two to one ratio whenever possible is a great way to declutter.

Cameron

Things to get started

• A lot of these were specific to the location you live in. Do a quick double-check on flame retardants, mold, and lead in your household. Any obvious risk items?

• Try minimalism for a small space in your house. Take ten minutes and identify two items that might go. How did you feel after?

• Learn how to change

• Bet money on your change

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Everything that follows highly depends on your living situation, so take it as inspiration to start thinking with, not a set-in-stone checklist.

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How not to die

Your basic home setup

Don’t skip the boring stuff. Fire, water, and accidents are still pretty frequent and all easy to manage if you take the right precautions.

• Fire: Have working alarms in and outside of each bedroom and floor. Test them monthly, replace them every ten years. You can also get self-testing alarms. Also get CO alarms. Check your fire extinguishers. Have an escape plan.

• Water: Water won’t kill you but can drown you financially. Best way to prevent this is to get an in-line shut-off sensor. These monitor the total water flow in the house and shut off if there is a leak. At minimum, know your shutoff valve.

• Accidents: The most frequent accident at home is falling. Prevent by having non-slip mats and something to hold on to in bathroom, low clutter, nightlights. Second is cuts. Make sure you have a first-aid kit and know how to use it.

Some friends of mine rented out a cabin in the mountains and wanted to smoke there, so they took down all fire alarms. Luckily they overlooked one because when that one got off during the night they barely managed to escape before the whole cabin burnt down. The fireplace had somehow caught fire. Don’t be them. Get fire alarms.

Christoph

Security that works

This section highly depends on where you live. I am lucky to live in Amsterdam where the biggest worry is getting your bike stolen. I also used to live in Chicago and Nairobi where the stories were a bit different. These basics should always hold:

• Build community: When your neighbors know you, they can double-check with you if a moving truck shows up without you having ever told them that you’ll move. Neighborhood chats also work, however might make you more stressed.

• Make it hard: Just be more difficult to break in than the next guy. The basics: Decent locks, a bolted down safe, landscaping that doesn’t allow for hiding. At night, lock doors and windows, turn on exterior lights.

• Digital security: Don’t re-use passwords. Use passkeys if supported, after that a password manager, multi-factor authentication, printed backup codes. Keep your email account extra safe. Have an offline backup of your key files. Don’t trust anybody calling you, AI can now imitate any voice.

Trump’s twitter got hacked twice. How did it happen? The first time, somebody used the publicly available password from a large-scale LinkedIn breach: yourefired - turns out Trump had re-used his password and didn’t rotate it after the breach. The second time somebody just randomly guessed maga2020!, which could’ve been prevented by having set up two-factor authentication. Don’t be like Trump, follow the rules above.

Christoph

Prep for the worst case

The Netherlands recently sent a flyer to every household asking them to prep for emergencies with specific instructions. Prepping isn’t a weird thing weird people do but a reasonable thing you should also do.

• Three-day stock: That’s 9 liters of water per person, non-perishable and high-calorie food. Water purification tablets. Fuel if you have a car. If you have the space for it, stock for two weeks incl. sanitization bags/litter & camp stove.

• Backpack: First aid kit, IDs and insurance docs, cash in small bills, 1 week of prescription medication, battery-powered radio, N95 masks, charged! power banks, pocket knife, map. Consider having a version of this in your car/office.

• A plan: Some emergencies come fast, like a power outage, others slow, like a war. Get some friends over, think through a few scenarios, and make a plan what to do in which case, including which events will trigger action.

A simple way I have handled prepping is by focusing on the bare essentials first: food and water. I already had a Huel subscription, so every few months I added one extra bag to my order. Over time, that built up a small surplus in case of an emergency. I also picked up multipacks of large bottled water. There is plenty more you can do, but covering basic food and water is a great 80/20 move that gives you resilience without much complexity.

Cameron

Let’s get started

Perfect is the enemy of good here, just get started with something. Better to have a fire alarm than having spent one week researching the best and given up.

• Block some time in your calendar to prep

• Subscribe to the newsletter to get a reminder to review in a year.

• Already did the basics? Go down this rabbit hole

• Learn how to change

• Bet money on your change

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version.

That could lead to the conclusion that you should just not invest in any worldly pleasures at all. We think that’s a bit too far. Here we assembled all the things in your living space that can make a lasting impact on your wellbeing.

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Your shopping list

Get the basics right

Air, light, and sound are omnipresent, yet often overlooked. Start here for the potentially largest effect.

• Air: Air pollution and CO2 levels can have a large effect on cognitive function. Fix those separately: For air pollution, just get a good HEPA filter. For CO2 levels, get a CO2 monitor, and open your windows when it goes too high.

• Light: Create a setup that you can adapt to the day: Very bright (~1k lux at eye) blue indirect top lighting to mimic “walls of light” similar to the sun, low orange/red “campfire” lighting in the evening. Get CRI 95+ for low strain.

• Sound: Ambient sound adds to your stress levels. But how to lower it? Get heavy rugs, heavy sound-dampening curtains, or acoustic panels, and consider adding soundproofing panels under your table or in other hidden areas.

Indoor air quality is a low-effort, high-impact thing to improve, but as with most things, it starts with noticing the problem. I borrowed a friend’s CO2 monitor and was surprised to see how quickly levels built up indoors. Research suggests that elevated CO2 can meaningfully impair cognitive performance. The easiest fix is also the simplest: once an hour or so, open a window wide for five minutes to let fresh air in.

Create a nature oasis

New research in environmental psychology and neuroarchitecture (yes those are scientific fields) found that your environment can have a large effect on your your stress levels. The best setup? Making your house look like a yoga studio.

• Plants: Viewing natural fractals, the scientific term for houseplants, can reduce physiological stress markers significantly. Gardening the plants gives an additional boost.

• Wood: Direct contact with wood reliably lowers sympathetic nervous system activation. Try to work and eat from a wooden table, swapping out your floor for wood might be a bit more difficult.

• Smell: Stay with me on this one. It turns out there is evidence for small effects of smell on mood and performance but it is highly variable. Best thing to give it a try for yourself. Citrus for performance, lavender for chill.

I’ve always been a fan of houseplants and now I finally know why. Natural fractals!

Christoph

Posture support

Permanent back pain seems like the thing that permanently reduces your wellbeing. I am already feeling my back writing this from my couch and should really embrace this one.

• Your bed: Get a medium-firm hybrid mattress. Those have been shown to double the likelihood to improve back pain.

• Your work: Get a setup that supports your natural spine. We won’t be able to explain it all in two sentences but check this. Advanced: Get a split keyboard and a vertical mouse.

• The other 8h: In general the key to posture seems to be: Variation. Don’t eat, read, work, sleep on your couch. Maybe have a reading chair, a dining table, and if you do end up on your couch, try to get one that is again medium-firm with a shallow seat depth.

Let’s make it actionable

• Go through all of these - what stands out most to you?

• Regularly open your windows, unless you live in a highly polluted city.

• Measure your light levels with a good app.

• Learn how to change.

• Bet money on your change.

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The key insights

To start a new habit, plan ahead

Most people, me included, just resolve to “I’ll do more of x” without thinking much about how. This time, try to sit down for thirty minutes and make a game plan, following these steps

1. Want the change: What does success look like? Why are you doing this?

2. Start fresh: At the beginning of a week, or any other restart moment.

3. Set realistic goals: If you aim too high you won’t believe it’s possible

4. Automate: Some things you don’t even have to do. Does this apply here?

5. Make it easy: How can you already now remove barriers?

6. Make the opposite hard: What will you most likely do instead? Make it hard.

7. Remember: With your calendar, a notification, anything else.

8. Involve others: Learn from others trying to do the same. Do it together.

9. Experiment: Plan a time to check in and see if you want to change things.

This is a quick summary of our in-depth guide on behavior change.

For me the first point is actually the most important one. If I have a strong motivation, the rest is much easier. Starting with motivation first also sometimes leads me to realize that I actually want other things more right now, saving me the effort to guilt myself for not doing things I anyway don’t want to do.

Christoph

Stake your money to test your plan

It’s easy to convince yourself you have a good plan while at the same time deep down knowing that it won’t work. How can you find that deep down knowledge? Bet money on it.

• Test your commitment: How much would you stake for doing the thing? If you’re really sure about it, $50 shouldn’t be a problem. Feels like a lot? Why is that? Why do you think your plan will fail? Can you change that?

• Get extra motivation: Monetary commitment contracts increase your goal achievement by 60 percentage points. That’s unheard of for behavior change interventions. Give it a try.

• You can finally support effective charities: Many people skipped on staking their money because you either had to support random SF startups or charities that aren’t as effective as the gold standard. We fixed this. Don’t worry: if you set the money high enough, it’ll work just as well as donating to your political enemy.

Try it now

Learn more about our app on our commitment page.

One of the most effective study periods of my life was when I made a bet with a friend that I would study for at least two hours a day. If either of us failed to post evidence, including a screenshot from a tracking app showing we had studied that long, we had to pay the other a £100 penalty. You can adjust the amount up or down depending on what would most effectively change your behaviour. And I can tell you this worked: apart from one or two exceptions, I studied for two hours every day during that period, and passed my modules with flying colours!

Cameron

To get better, practice deliberately

I have been cooking for many years, somehow I don’t get better. Same for my ability to remember names. Once we reach a “good enough” plateau, our brain gets lazy. So how can you make sure you get the most “bang for your habit-buck”?

• Have a clear measurable goal: Think “remember 5 names at a party”, not “get better with names”

• Learn from experts: Coaches, youtube videos, people who are best at what they are doing and good at teaching

• Move outside your comfort zone: Focus on action, not knowledge.

• Have clear feedback: This can be from a coach, an AI, a friend, or yourself

• Schedule dedicated time: Practice makes perfect. Use the habit guide.

This is a quick summary of our in-depth guide on growth.

Invest five minutes now

• What’s something you wanted to start or get better at, but it never quite worked?

• Visualize: How will it look like and feel like when I achieved this? Take a minute.

• Feeling hyped? Block time in your calendar to go through this full process.

• Already now stake some money to make sure future you will follow through.

• Want to go deeper? Check our in-depth guide on habit building and skill building.

  Thanks for reading Euzoia! Subscribe for free to receive weekly posts about what makes a good life.

Also think of the time you spend traveling for work. Those “one-off commutes” can be even more disrupting to your health and relationships and in some jobs take more time than the commute itself.

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How to fix it

Rethink your trade-off

In theory, we should be rational people who trade off commute time for higher salary so that in the end happiness is roughly the same. However it seems like that’s not true, and we’re consistently making bad trades, probably because we misjudge the costs of commuting.

• Cost of your time: If you value your time at $50 per hour, and you commute for one hour each day, you spend more than $1k on commute per month assuming you commute ever day.

• Time displacement: Your day only has 24 hours. If you spend 1-2 of those commuting, what else is getting cut? Sleep? Exercise? Seeing your friends? Time with your spouse?

• Alternatives: Are there jobs closer to your home that might pay less but not as much as your commute cost? Can you move closer to your job? Travel less for work? Get paid more for the travel?

I travel to conferences a lot for work (marketing my startup). I’m realizing more and more that if I add up all the travel time around the events it’s probably not worth it. I’ll try doing the counterfactual math for the next one: What could I have done if I just worked all this time?

Christoph

Work remotely

For those with jobs that can be done remotely, often just cutting the commute entirely is easier. There is a perception that people working remotely are unhappier. People are happier working remote, as long as there are clear work-life boundaries and you have a social life outside of work.

• Start small: I forgot the exact details but Tim Ferris had a manual for how to start working remotely in his 4-Hour Workweek book. It started by agreeing to a short remote work trial. In those trials, perform at your best, show that it works.

• Build trust: By continuously showing that you get just as much or even more done from home, slowly build trust with your manager. You might even want to consider using tracking tools. It’s not about all-or-nothing, every day you save commuting you win back some of your time.

• Consider a mini-commute: Commute is not all bad, it helps us shift gears mentally between work and life. If you work from home, consider going for a brief walk around the block or getting a co-working spot close to your house.

Make it better

Ok, so we tried to reduce commute as much as possible, what to do now about the commute that remains?

• Bike: If you are lucky enough that the distance isn’t massive, consider taking your bike - you’ll get your daily exercise in without too much time lost. Win-win. Consider getting an e-bike for longer distances and less sweat.

• Reduce stress: No matter how you are commuting, if you can take a route that’s slightly longer while much less stressful (e.g., less dangerous roads for cyclists, more predictable time for cars) that’s probably worth it.

• Use the time: On your way to work, already think through your goals, structure your day mentally. On the way back, disengage from work by e.g., doing mindfulness exercises, listening to a podcast or calling a friend.

I try to take roads that are less busy for my commute. Reduces the risk from accidents and I arrive less stressed. Totally worth the few extra minutes it takes

Cameron

Small things to try

• Do the math: How much time do you spend commuting? Include work travel.

• Take one small step towards working more remotely

• Think of one thing you could do to improve your commute

• Try our new habit-building app

• Share this article

The people who are best at achieving their goals and score highest on self control actually design their environment to minimize opportunities for temptation. They don’t have to push through because there is nothing to push against.

How can you implement this in your daily life? How can you minimize temptations so that you don’t need to exert any willpower?

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Top three things to do

Live close to friends

We will get into this in a later post but your social life is the biggest predictor of your happiness and wellbeing, much more than your daily gym routine. Living close to friends means you’ll hang out with them more, easy as that. Some ideas:

• Live with friends: Once you solve the issue who is doing the dishes, living with friends, or family, can give you more happiness for less money. Effortless socializing, meeting new friends of friends, shared chores, so less work.

• Move to friends: If the thought of somebody else’s hair in the shower is something you find hard to accept, then at least try moving close to your friends. If you live within 1 km of a happy friend, you are 40% more likely to be happy. More than 3km and the effect disappears. Walking distance.

• Befriend your neighbors: Moving is a lot of work and reading a random Substack post is probably not what’s going to make you move. So why not go the other way? Befriend your neighbors instead. Talk to people at your local gym, grocery shop, community event.

I used to live alone for something like ten years, because somehow that’s what I felt was the adult thing to do when you’re not living with a partner (I was in a long long-distance relationship). Then one day I realized you could live with friends even as an adult and never looked back. So much better.

Christoph

Remove temptations

Not sure about you but if I have chocolate in the house, I’ll eat it. Less so for alcohol but I know friends who have this habit with alcohol. So: Just don’t have it in the house. Some more ideas

• Buy groceries online: Ideally when you’re not hungry. This way you remove all the temptations you’d see in the supermarket, save some time, and only have healthy food or the allowed temptations in the house.

• Restrict device usage: You could just say “don’t buy a TV” but that doesn’t work anymore. The modern equivalent of this is: Use good apps to block your device usage. Our favorites: Parental control device settings, set by your partner or friend, removing feeds and recommendations from apps with browser plugins.

• Make things hard to access: Chocolate far out of reach, TVs by default unplugged, drugs in a time-locked safe to only open on weekends - I’ve seen some creative things. Get creative!

I have moved my phone to charge in a different location than my bed while I sleep, as per the previous post have blocked all algorithmic apps and social media, and I also use my partner as portion control for any unhealthy foods I indulge in (candy)

Cameron

Lower the barriers

Removing temptations is one part of architecting your choices. Making good habits easier is the flipside of that

• Place things where you’ll use them: Your journal, guitar, meditation cushion, pull-up bar, gym bag. If it’s within easy reach and in your visual field, it’ll be easier to start doing it.

• Create dedicated zones: A clear work space, chill space, and a bedroom where you don’t have devices can help your brain get “into the zone” better without getting distracted.

• Have a boredom-list: A simple visible list of ideas when you feel low-energy or low-willpower to help you when you’re tempted to just default to start swiping. Make sure it’s things you’ll enjoy in the moment, otherwise it’ll be hard to stick with.

Have a story to share? We’d love to hear it. Our next topic will be on “Commute”. Just reach out to christoph@euzoia.org

Try something now

All these ideas can feel overwhelming to implement, but don’t worry. In exactly one year, we will post an updated version of this, so if you don’t get to try something now, try again a year from now!

• Look around your house: What’s most tempting?

• Befriend a neighbor.

• Journal about living in a shared house.

• Write your boredom-list

• Try our new habit-building app

• Share this article

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It’s almost the same as our food, that slowly morphed to ultra processed foods designed to never quite satiate for long and always keep us longing for more. Pretty analogous to food, the same rules of thumb apply to feeding your brain:

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Top three things to try

Mental fasting

When you eat you have breaks in between, some people do fasts, but we rarely take breaks in our mental stimulation. But similar to digesting food, we need to process what comes in. If we just keep stimulating ourselves, we suppress the need to process, and get stressed, anxious, depressed.

• 0-inbox brain: I try to make time every day where I don’t do any mental work to allow thoughts to bubble up. Most of the time that’s when I’m commuting on my bike, sometimes I go for a walk. If I don’t do this, especially when working long, my brain will do the processing work when I lie in bed and then I can’t sleep. When something important comes up, I simply write it in my notes app so my brain doesn’t have to try to remember it.

• Quiet weekends: Processing works on different time-scales. Give yourself some rest at least one of the weekend days to recoup energy for the next week. I’ve had some friends, and for a while been there myself, who went from work hard to play hard on the weekends, and it was never long-term sustainable.

• Retreats: If you want to take the idea of a 0-inbox brain to the next level, go on a silent retreat. You can watch in real-time how your brain first processes the last days, then weeks, and then goes back to older memories that still need some of your attentions.

I used to work as part of a Kenyan company and whenever I would ask my colleagues what they did that weekend, they would say “chilling”, “resting”, or something similar. I was always baffled by this. I felt this need to do something exciting, even more stimulating, so I could report back on Monday about something exciting I did. They just couldn’t be bothered haha.

Christoph

Outsmart addictions

Almost everybody I know spends more time on addictive content than they want to - news, social media, short- and long-form videos, shows, porn. All of these were designed to be addictive, so don’t blame yourself if you somehow can’t build up the willpower to resist them. Instead

• Block apps: Easier said than done but what I’ve seen work is: Using parental control modes on your phone and making your partner your parent. For cross-platform blocking, Freedom is supposed to be a good choice, I haven’t tried it.

• Make it boring: This will depend on your content but some ways I found helpful: I use economist espresso - a news app that only updates once a day. I read wikipedia summaries of shows I don’t want to keep watching.

• Disable notifications: On all apps that aren’t time-critical. Which is probably just all. If your friends or colleagues really need to reach you, they can always pick up the phone and call.

I have personally set up my digital environment to minimise algorithmic social media as much as is possible, realistically it's hard to rely on sheer willpower, as the designers of these apps are paid millions so you spend as much time on them as possible, the following apps may help you this endeavor and I'd also recommend using Firefox on mobile and the same add on's there! These add ons will block social media feeds, YT Shorts, Homepage, recommended, IG Reels and one sec you can configure to set a reminder based on opening certain apps!

News feed eradicator extension, Unhook, for Youtube, IGPlus, For Instagram, One sec app, rethink opening apps

Cameron

Practice discomfort

As the Germans say: Life is no pony farm. And most things we covered aren’t exactly fun. But you can train your mind to be less dependent on dopamine hits and more able to do the work in a similar way we can rebalance our cravings for fast food. These counter-hedonic practices have roots in wisdom traditions and has evidence in modern psychology:

• Urge surfing: Recognize your urges but just as with everything else observe how it comes and goes. This needs some willpower, so maybe don’t rely on this all the time, but if you manage to do this you slowly build agency over your urges.

• Impulse delay: When you want something - be it short-term consumption or larger purchases, add a delay. Tell yourself you can get the thing in 5min, two days, … Often the need will vanish by that time.

• Voluntary hardship: Take cold showers, fasting, monotask on boring work, meditate, have difficult conversations, walk the stairs, finish what you start, to practice your tolerance for discomfort.

We’d love to hear stories from you! Have one for our next topic “Design for lazy”? Reply to this email!

Try something now

• Go for a walk later today, don’t listen to anything.

• Disable all your notifications now. It takes 5min.

• Delay your next impulse, see what happens.

• Want to build a habit? Give our new app a try!

• Share this post with a friend

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Top three things you can do

Cultivate a “beginner’s mind”

The beginner’s mind is a concept from Buddhism and it maps well on recent research in cognitive science about three core factors that make for a resilient mind. As with most factors, they are partly determined by genetics and early environment but remain highly malleable throughout your life:

• Cognitive Flexibility: Allows you to dynamically adapt to changing environments and is correlated with superior performance and less sick days. Practice this by learning new skills regularly. For example by trying something from this newsletter every week.

• Openness to Experience: Reduces your prejudice and increases social skills. Practice this by exposing yourself to new things regularly, for example by travel, different social circles, a movie you wouldn’t watch otherwise, a political gathering you otherwise wouldn’t visit. When you come across ideas you don’t agree with, try to “steel-man” them - try to make the best case for them.

• Intellectual humility: Leads to better decision making and is necessary for continuous learning. Practice this with engaging in self-transcendent experiences where you feel small, e.g., visiting a planetarium, hiking through mountains, exploring a new field of knowledge. Search for "disconfirmation” - evidence against your beliefs and celebrate when you change them. You are not your beliefs.

Good news: one of the most effective ways to influence these traits is something you’re probably doing already: physical exercise and mindfulness exercises.

Shape your input

So how to apply this beginner’s mind? We have a tendency to seek out what we know, it’s comfortable, we don’t have to engage with difficult or annoying views. But that’s where we expand our mind the most. Some ideas:

• Media: Listen to podcasts, read news, or watch shows from the opposite political spectrum. Tell an AI what you’re currently consuming and ask it to suggest “the opposite” that you’d still enjoy.

• Friends: “We don’t discuss politics and religion here” is a bit boring. Try to have open conversations by genuinely trying to understand the other person. Attend social events outside of your comfort zone. Try to picture in your mind the person who is most different from you and try to seek them out. Make some new friends.

• Experiences: What are things other people seem to enjoy that you never tried? Going hiking maybe? Watching a sports game? Babysitting children? Playing Dungeons & Dragons? Farming? Try some with the mind of a child. What’s exciting about them?

I personally have taken up a habit here of obsessively assimilating people’s reading lists on Goodreads, because often they will have a completely different subset of interests or areas they are looking into or reading about, and I often find something I really enjoy but would never normally read, the last example being Annapurna, which an excellent!

Cameron

Learn continuously

You can passively consume content and never change. Save yourself the time, watch Netflix instead. If you actually want to expand your mind, follow these heuristics:

• Active consumption: When reading start by scanning table of contents and conclusion, build a map before you dive in. Before you read, have a hypothesis of what they will say and watch out for evidence against your hypothesis. Go deep in that. When listening, try to predict what people will say and put speed at maybe 1.2-1.5x to keep your brain focused.

• Active recall: The best way to learn: Once you consumed content, try to explain to to others. Either your imaginary friend, or your journal, or an actual friend. You’ll notice that you forgot half of it. Go back and revise.

• Spaced repetition: This has been originally developed for vocabulary and flashcards but it applies to any knowledge. The idea is to regularly go back to things you learnt and practice active recall. If you were good at it - come back to it at a longer time. If bad, come back to it soon.

I used to be the guy who read nonfiction books cover to cover and would feel guilty skipping chapters or not finishing a book. I remember my dad telling me “one day you’ll learn that that’s not how you read books” I thought he was wrong hahaha.

These days I scan and skip chapters in books, use the chapter marks in podcasts to skip around. I’ll try giving the active prediction and recall more focus with the next book and podcast.

Christoph

Do something now

• Go through the section on inputs and see what speaks to you the most. Make a plan for that right now.

• Who is the friend you have that is furthest away from your usual circle? Ask them for suggestions on what you’d enjoy reading/doing.

• Ask yourself: What did you change your mind about recently? It’s surprisingly hard to answer.

• Want to learn something new? Check out our guide on change.

• Want to start doing something? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

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The world is a complex mess. So to make sense of it, you learnt over time to filter reality through different lenses to make it easier to navigate. Those lenses, or mental frameworks, can be a huge boost to your life, boosting your agency, resilience or flourishing. However, if maladaptive, for example, because something you learnt in the past isn’t serving you anymore, they can hold you back and cause chronic stress, emotional dysregulation, and a sense of helplessness.

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Top three things to do

You can shape which thoughts you’ll think. Your thoughts are associations to the input you get, and associations are built over time and strengthened by how useful or emotional they are. You can retrain those associations and apply lenses that serve you without any effort, just as associations that come up.

A note of caution: What follows works in average-ish situations. Don’t blame yourself when you can’t find positive aspects of an abusive relationship, or can’t create slack while you’re working two jobs as a single mom, or don’t become the president by applying a growth mindset.

Agency

One of the largest returns on investment in terms of mindset is probably agency. Once you start realising that you can do things and change things, everything else will become easier.

• Practice agency: The best way to get out of a victim mindset where you feel things are just happening to you and you are helpless, is to do things and see the outcome. Every day, do a task that is in the zone of difficult-but-not-impossible. Consistently achieving those will build a mindset of agency. This is called “building mastery” or “active coping”.

• Growth mindset: When applying agency to yourself, you get the growth mindset: A sense that you can change, you can grow. Building this follows exactly the same path: Build a consistent practice of doing small things that change you, grow you. For example, studying a skill, working on overcoming a fear, or helping others grow. Check out our guide on change to get ideas.

• Effortless action: High-agency can lead to a toxic SF-like view that if you just apply enough grit and control, you can achieve anything. Taoist culture has the view that action should be effortless and in harmony with your environment. This heuristic works because if you have to consistently apply too much effor,t that’s probably a sign that it’s not a match to your skills, an unrealistic goal, unnecessary, etc. To practice this, make a habit of asking yourself: “What might this look like if it were easy?”

One of the beautiful things about agency is that it creates runaway effects on your life. Once you realise you can take action and do so on a particular problem, suddenly all of your other problems become easier to deal with and move forward on. You can also stack this by solving your highest leverage problems first, e.g., sleep, diet and exercise and consequently have more energy and willpower to solve everything else. Here is one of my favourite posts by Cate Hall on agency”

Cameron

Outlook

Now that you have belief that you can change, apply it to your thoughts. It is possible to change how you see the world:

• Gratitude: Probably the easiest hack for happiness: Build a habit to look for things to be grateful for, for example, every night before going to sleep. This will train your brain to look for things to be grateful for during the day, improving your outlook on life. FYI: Gratitude mostly works for individualist cultures; in more collectivist cultures, it can create a feeling of indebtedness.

• Positivity: If you’re like us, you probably learnt that outlook on life is somehow genetically determined. Not so! Genetic factors only account for about 30%. So, how to train it? Similar to gratitude, just practice imagining your “best positive self” and focusing on things that went well today or positive aspects of difficult situations.

• Abundance: We often focus on everything that isn’t enough, especially money and time, thereby arriving in a state of scarcity. This has been shown to impact your IQ as much as skipping a night of sleep, because you can’t stop thinking about it. The best way to move to an abundance mindset is to create abundance: Deliberately create slack by cutting time or money spending. You can also practice focusing on how these constraints enable creativity and solutions you otherwise wouldn’t have considered.

I had an on-off relationship with gratitude journaling. Did it when I first heard about it for a while, dropped it, tried to weave it into my weekly reviews, but it never quite felt right. Then I learnt from a friend that he always does gratitude sharing with his partner before bed. I thought that was so wholesome and am now doing the same. Feels great!

Christoph

Epistemics

What is real? What thoughts are real? What do they mean?

• Scout mindset: A drive to see things as they are, not like we want them to be. This is, of course, helpful because things are as they are, and the more we see them like this, the better we can act on that information. Practice it by making predictions and learning from results, thinking in confidence probabilities, not in black-and-white beliefs, seek out people with opposite beliefs and try to see what evidence would change yours or theirs.

• Restructuring: When you apply a scout mindset to your thoughts, you quickly see that a lot of thoughts have very little evidence for them. To practice challenging your thoughts, learn about cognitive distortions or cognitive biases and use CBT-style journaling from our article on awareness.

• Reframing: Even if something objectively bad happened, there is always the question of what subjective meaning we give it, the story that we tell ourselves. Try the following three: 1. Reframing something in a neutral story, not emotionally charged (e.g., I am failing > I am learning). 2. Try to see the positive aspects 3. Look at it from an older you’s perspective.

Your story here. Our next topic will be about “Broaden the Mind”. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Reply to this email or email us at christoph@euzoia.org.

Do something now

• Pick your favorite framework: How could you apply it even more?

• Pick your least favorite: Why don’t you like it? What’s there?

• Start an evening reflection habit and weave in some of these prompts.

• Want some accountability from us? Reply to this post, and we will check in next week.

• Reply to this email with your thoughts on “Broaden your mind” our next topic

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

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Your state changes your story. Change your state, and you change what your brain thinks is true. Just compare how you’re thinking about the same topic when you can’t sleep at 3 am in the morning, after your morning coffee, during your afternoon slump, and after two beers. “State Influences Story” is regularly preached by Tony Robbins, and it works.

There is also plenty of science to back this up: Learning emotional regulation reduces the likelihood of developing anxiety, depression, or aggression. It seems to be a teachable skill across age groups and is linked to less inflammation, better heart health, less burnout, and better relationships.

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Top things to do

High intensity interventions

Sometimes we are just overwhelmed by emotion, and a peaceful meditation just won’t cut it. Most of these interventions were developed for high-intensity emotions, but they work just as well to get you in a calmer emotional state quickly, no matter where you are.

• Stop: Stop doing anything in the moment. Try to remove yourself from the situation. Breathe. Observe. And then proceed mindfully.

• Work with your body: Cold water (splash on your face or shower), intense exercise like jumping jacks for one minute, progressive muscle relaxation (focus on each muscle, contract, let go, next muscle)

• Grounding: Most useful when you feel floaty or dissociated: Notice 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste

• Breathwork: There is a whole world to explore here but try boxed breathing (4 in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold, repeat) to clear your head, paced breathing (4 in, 8 out, repeat) to calm yourself, physiological sigh (breath in to the max, then one more sharp inhale, slow exhale) to “dump” stress

• Self-soothing: When you feel lonely/sad or just need some peace and pleasure. Focus on all your senses by, e.g. looking at photos, smelling and feeling a cup of tea, hearing lo-fi beats, and so on.

• Distraction: Not forever, but until it’s easier to deal with by e.g., doing activities, listening to podcasts or music, contributing somewhere, and setting a time when you will deal with this.

I was once dealing with an intense dysregulation of my nervous system for weeks, and three independent therapists I worked with on this all said the same thing: Whatever you do, don’t meditate, and just treat yourself like a child. Distract yourself. Sooth yourself. Meet Friends. Go on nature walks. And then as your nervous system slowly gets back to normal, then you can start working on the actual topics.

Christoph

Moderate intensity interventions

Most emotions aren’t an emergency but need attention to cease and will re-surface when just ignored. Try these behaviors for those.

• Naming: Just putting a word to what you are feeling can be as effective as more complex reframing exercises we will be covering in the next post. It works best for in-the-moment negative emotions by putting space between the emotion and the reaction, and less well for more lingering ones because it’ll just draw more attention to them. This ties back to our last post on awareness and acceptance. Practicing non-judgmental acceptance alone can often lead to better emotional regulation.

• Matching: This also follows our article on awareness and acceptance. If your investigation revealed a need, is there something small you can do to nurture that need? If the emotion is telling you something, what can you do to act on this? The easiest is probably to simply act on “HALT” states (hungry-eat / angry-breathe / lonely-socialise / tired-sleep). For others, it depends on the state. Explore and see what happens.

• Opposite action: But what happens if the action implied by the emotion is unhelpful or not serving your goals? Like hiding in your bedroom because it’s rainy or punching your boss in the face? In that case, do the exact opposite. Go outside, talk to your boss. Here are our common emotions from the last post and the urges/opposites

  • Anger: Urge: Attack, Opposite: Gentle avoidance / Kindness

  • Fear: Urge: Escape, Opposite: Approach / Stay present

  • Sadness: Urge: Isolate, Opposite: Get active / Engage

  • Shame: Urge: Hide, Opposite: Transparency / Eye contact

  • Disgust: Urge: Reject, Opposite: Push through / Compassion

  • Joy: Urge: Celebrate, Opposite: Stillness / Modulate

The ability to name emotions as they emerge— the first step to managing them—is probably the single most important tool I draw on to build healthy relations with other people. Naming defensiveness in my romantic relationship and guilt in family relationships feels especially like comic book-level superpowers.

Joshua

Prepare yourself

Chance favours the prepared mind. All of the above is easy in theory but hard in practice. It’s easy to forget things in the moment. So let’s prepare!

• Self-soothe box: The self-soothing in the first section is much easier when you already have material to soothe yourself with. Prepare a box with different things for each of your senses. This could include pictures of happy memories, nice messages people sent you, your favourite music, or incense sticks.

• A coping card: How does boxed breathing work again? Whom will I call when I feel down? What worked for me last time? Write a few simple notes and have them where you’ll find them, probably on your phone.

• Plan situations: For any situation that you expect to be difficult, make a plan by following these steps: 1. Describe it, objectively 2. Identify emotions. What do you expect to feel? 3. Choose the tools you’ll use 4. Visualise the scene, watch it unfolding 5. Plan out worst-case scenarios and setbacks. How will you recover?

Personally, I have my own prepared set of activities I do when I am feeling emotionally unregulated and stressed. Mine is as follows: Box breathing or meditation for 5-10 minutes, any form of exercise (usually I go to the gym), treating myself to some sparkling water (my favoyrite) and finally taking a long session in the Sauna or bath, 95% of the time after this set of activities I usually feel mentally better, and then can move forward and tackle any challenges from a stronger mental space. As per usual, I’ll caveat and say that different things work for different people; many people will prefer to talk it through with someone else, for example.

Cameron

Do something now

Many of these suggestions read like manuals for intense states that you might not feel often. However, all of these can be applied work just as well in less intense situations. A cup of warm tea under a blanket feels good no matter how intense the emotion. As always, try some things, see what works for you.

• Ask yourself: What will be the emotionally most difficult situation this coming week? How can I prepare for it?

• Try some breathwork exercises. They take one minute, and are always available.

• Prepare your soothing kit. And use it.

• Experiment with music: Different songs can have vastly different effects on your emotions.

• Our next topic will be about cognitive frameworks and reframing. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Reply to this post or email us at christoph@euzoia.org.

• Want to start doing something? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

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You are your mind. The world you interact with, your feelings, and your thoughts are all part of your conscious experience. And you can change it. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions aren’t just happening to you but are a learnt response to your experiences, recursively influencing each other in a chaotic dance. Somehow, as part of this dance, you stumbled on this article, and what you learn in this article and the following posts will influence how your mind reacts in the future.

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Top three things to do

The first step in taking care of your mind is to become aware of what’s actually happening. And accepting this as is. In the following posts, we will then dive into how you can shape your experience.

Become aware of your thoughts and feelings

Start with a curious and non-judgmental mindset. Thoughts come and go and are not the truth. Your feelings, both positive and negative, will pass. As always, different practices work for different people. Here are a few well-established approaches

• Sit: The simplest of them all. Find a quiet place, sit down, and do nothing. Your brain will produce thoughts. Acknowledge them and let them pass. You can focus your mind back to your breath, your heartbeat, or another point of focus whenever thoughts pop up.

• Name: A variation on the sitting meditation where you name an emotion or a thought whenever something comes up. Giving it a label often makes it smaller and more manageable. Often, when we start out we are missing the emotional vocabulary for this. Give the app How We Feel a try if you are curious to broaden yours.

• Scan: Move your awareness slowly throughout your body, one part at a time. Notice any discomfort and how that often fades as you focus more on it. Over time you will recognize patterns - how for example different emotions lead to different reactions in your body - helping you recognize them easier in the future.

• Pause: Establish a way to take a pause and see what comes up. Maybe you have a note stuck to your doorframe, or an app that pings you every few hours.

• Write: Journal to surface your thinking patterns. A common approach is CBT’s “Thought Record”: 1) What happened? 2) How are you feeling? 3) Automatic thought 4) Evidence for 5) Evidence against 6) Balanced thought 7) Outcome. Others like a “morning pages” approach where you just write a stream of consciousness and see what comes up.

The eventual goal of all of these practices is that you can move from noticing your thoughts in the “practice space” to the real world. Building this muscle will help you pause between stimulus and response, allowing you to take a more active role in how you react to your environment.

I often heard about CBT and respective reflections, but didn’t deliberately take time out of my day to apply it further. That is until a friend recommended the “Unstuck: CBT Therapy Journal” app to me. You can choose what you would like to reflect upon, and it guides you step by step through the process, not blindly, but while explaining what the steps are about too! It’s simple and thought provoking. You can set daily reminders, and it also shows a little streak display within the app to make sure the habit sticks!

Sophie

Accept yourself

Noticing is the first step. Accepting those thoughts and feelings is the second. We live in a world where we are made to believe we can do anything; the world is our oyster. Then, when we can’t get the oyster, we blame ourselves. We try to push ourselves for higher performance and optimisation, and we suffer from things we can’t change.

Try the following practices to learn to accept what is.

• Allow: Acknowledge reality as it is. You cannot change the facts. Accept your current situation, without fighting it. Only then focus on action and what you can change.

• Explore: Acceptance poses that you are here now because of a chain of events in the past. Recognise those as unchangeable, but explore the chain. Be curious, not judgmental.

• Pray: Prayer acknowledges your own limitations and shifts responsibility to a higher power. Not religious? Try the serenity prayer based on stoicism: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

• Release: Use rituals to release things you can’t change. For example, writing down things and burning them

Your story here. We’d love to hear more from you. Reply to this email or join our community if you want to share a story about emotional regulation, next week’s topic.

Investigate your thoughts and feelings

Often, when you start noticing your thoughts and feelings more, you will notice patterns, things that come back. Notice that, too. Accept it. Only then start investigating it. The following angles can be useful in investigating:

• Body: Where is the thought or feeling in your body? How does it feel? This is a great framework because it is in the present, objective and grounded. And it might remind you of similar sensations in your body in similar situations.

• Mind: What is the script? Can I try visualising the feeling and talk to it? What would it say? Notice that it’s a story, not the truth. Avoid over-analysing or intellectualising - it’s the failure mode for most of us. Journaling can help here again.

• Emotion: What’s the need? If we reduce our emotions to six basic ones, they each represent a core need:

  • Anger: Crossed boundary, blocked goal: Need for justice, safety, autonomy

  • Fear: Something isn’t faced, not safe: Need for safety, predictability

  • Sadness: Something needs to be honored: Need for connection, meaning

  • Shame: Something is threatening belonging: Need for acceptance, worthiness

  • Disgust: Something is toxic, wrong: Need for integrity, boundaries, health

  • Joy: Something needs to be celebrated, is good: Need for growth, contribution

One emotion that comes up a lot for me is background anxiety. One way to explain that is fear that just wasn’t properly dealt with and instead of facing the thing that fear was warning me about, I decided to ignore it and it transformed into background anxiety.

One recent example of this: Listening to our podcast. I feared that it would be bad, never listened to it, and as a result had some background anxiety around it. While writing this article this became clear to me, I listened to the episodes, was relieved that they weren’t terrible, and boom, less anxiety. Notice that even if they would’ve been terrible, anxiety would be gone, because I would then know about it and could act on it.

Christoph

Do something now

• Want to try just one thing? Give RAIN meditation a try, which combines all three of these, plus a bonus one, “Nurture” that’ll be part of next week’s post.

• What’s an emotion you’ve been feeling recently? What is it trying to tell you?

• Schedule some time in your calendar to meditate or journal.

• Curious to go deeper? Consider working with a therapist.

• Want accountability? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

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