While this article is my own perspective, I am super happy I got to talk with Sofia Balderson, founder of Hive, about agency. In the podcast (youtube link) we talked about the book You Can Just Do Things, posts from her substack on accountability, emotions at work, and language learning, and her coaching business. She also posted her own take on agency on her blog. Check it out.

Subscribe now

How to navigate your career

Agency in selecting your work

Performance differences within a field of work are high: A few people bring most of the results. The best way to find which work this is for you is to explore a lot, especially early in your career, to see what fits best. Then double-down later.

• Aim high: Early in your career you typically have little to lose. Use that to shoot for the stars, you can always do safer things later. How do you know you aimed high enough? If you failed or got rejected a lot. This also helps to minimize regret.

• Act like a scientist: Make a list of your best guesses for what would fit you best, then add more out-there options. Next, identify uncertainties you have on each, and resolve those by talking with people, doing work trials, doing internships.

• Do ABZ planning: Exploring and aiming high means taking risk and taking risk can feel uncomfortable. What helped me was ABZ planning: What’s my plan A. What’s plan B if that doesn’t work? What can I fall back to (Z) if nothing works?

Agency within your work

People are busy and overwhelmed. That doesn’t just apply to me but also to every manager I ever had. By acting agentically you save them the energy of having to manage you and at the same time buy yourself tons of freedom.

• Deliver impact: You are hired with a job description but at the end of the day what counts is: How much impact did you have on the success of the organization. Continuously find the best ways to do that. Look for leverage.

• Be autonomous: When impact is the “plus” on your internal balance sheet, the headspace required by others to get you there is the “minus”. This is why seniors are getting paid more then juniors. “They just get things done”.

• Ask for grease: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” - be that wheel. Ask for support, feedback, resources, responsibility. You know your job better than your manager, and they’ll be grateful if you make sure you can do it.

Become ambitious

Nobody is born agentic, Turns out people are born agentic. 75% of variance in self-efficacy is explained by genes, according to twin studies. The same holds for grit, and the genetic factor increases with age. Nevertheless, you can still practice it:

• Track achievable goals: They should be at the sweet spot of achievable but still matter. To show you that you can make a difference through your actions. Tracking them helps build an evidence base you can look back on.

• Coaching and mentoring: Ideally from people in the domain you are practicing in. This could be a more senior person in your organization. They must be a) agentic and b) relatable to you. A role model for agency.

• Be ambitious: Once you built a solid level of agency, set ambitious goals you still believe are achievable. Think you are doing this already? Challenge yourself to be more ambitious. Picture your favorite celebrity: They also once set crazy goals.

Three starting points to become more agentic

• Journal / discuss with a friend: Is what you are doing right now the most ambitious thing you could be doing? How could you easily test options?

• Practice agency: Set one small goal that is achievable but a bit outside your usual zone. Track it.

• Want to dive deeper? A lot of this content is inspired by the 80,000 Hours guide.

About 15 years later, my thinking on this has completely changed. Maybe it’s my biology, maybe I got tired of living that exciting life, maybe it’s because I’ve been living with a child for the last year, or maybe it’s a result of the voices I heard on the topic over the years. I summarised them below, I hope they are helpful.

As with all decisions, it’s good to remind ourselves that there isn’t a right or wrong here. There are many great lifes to live - some with and and some without children.

While this article is my own perspective, I am super happy I got to talk with Julia Wise about the topic of children and parenting. She has her own substack where she writes about parenting, leads community health at the Center for Effective Altruism, and is portraied in the book Strangers Drowning - one of the best pieces of writing on the question how far we should go when focusing our lives on a greater good.

Subscribe now

How to think about a life-changing event

Your own perspective

Would you want a child, from a purely selfish perspective? If you feel a clear no to that question then you probably don’t need to keep reading, but in my experience most of us like the idea but are worried about the impact it will have. Some thoughts on this:

• No happiness, but meaning: The research on this seems to be pretty clear: Children are on average neutral for wellbeing, but they will add meaning. You can get meaning through other ways, but children seem to hit differently.

• What will you say no to?: Economist Bryan Caplan argues in his book “Seflish Reasons to Have More Kids” that you can invest less time than the average, a lot is influenced by genes anyway. While this might be partly true, your time has to come from somewhere. What would you say no to? Try to map out days.

• What support you can count on: While your wellbeing won’t change on average, your support network is the strongest predictor of changes. Think partner, parents, policies. Your overall health and money going in. Is it worth waiting for?

The world’s perspective

Let’s start with the obvious point: We are below replacement rates. This leads to collapse of safety nets, the economy, research, progress. If you are reading this, your kids have a good chance having a positive effect on socity. We’d love to have them.

• Highly impactful people had children: If you are doing impactful work and are worried children will eat away from your time, here is a fun fact: Nine of the 10 most impactful people them had children. You can’t be 24/7 productive anyway.

• Role modelling: A movement that would celebrates self-sacrifice to not have children to e.g., use their members saved time to save “more lives” asks too much of it’s members, thereby won’t grow, thereby will limit it’s potential impact.

• Biodiversity and resources: You can take two perspectives here: a) more humans = more destruction or b) more humans = more invention and solutions. If you are worried about this, you and your children are exactly the people needed in b)

Your child’s perspective

Not sure about you, but I’m pretty grateful for my parents for having made the decision to gift me this life.

• It’s a gift: It’s hard to compare not being alive to being alive, it’s philosophically murky territory. And yet. Giving the gift of life is the biggest gift you can give. Can you get it cheaper by donating malaria nets somewhere? Probably.

• What world it will grow up in: We live in a highly unpredictable world. AI, climate change, risks everywhere. But even in some of the less good scenarios, I personally would prefer to be alive, to live through it. Would you?

• You don’t have to be perfect: I sometimes hear people say they don’t want to pass on their genes to avoid the pain they suffered. This of course is a highly personal decision. But we all have faults, and maybe you, having gone through this, are especially well placed to help your child growing up.

Start with one thing

• What points evoke the strongest emotions for you? Talk about it with a friend.

• Are you a parent? We’d love to hear your story in the comments!

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

Up until that point love just kind of happened to me. I fell in love, acted lovingly towards my partners but almost like a child would act towards their friends. When something came natural I’d do it, otherwise I’d just kind of drift somewhere else.

Since then, I try to be more conscious about how I act towards people I love. I want the best for them, after all, so spending some time thinking about it is the least i can do. So: How do you love?

Subscribe now

How to love

Love languages with evidence

You might have heard about the “five love languages” from a pastor in the 90s. Turns out there is little evidence to back those up. While the theory doesn’t hold, there is evidence for specific actions you can take:

• Date nights: Meaningful quality time, not just time, is linked to better conflict resolution through perceived perspective taking. Bonus points for doing novel activites together for added excitement and shared growth.

• Small gestures: Think affectionate messages, nicknames, small acts of care, small gifts or favors. All these help signal thoughtfulness, support, and care.

• Check-ins: I love these, and there is some evidence for them: Make time (we do it every two weeks) for taking turns just sharing everything that’s on your mind. I feel it’s a natural vent to any “bottled up” thoughts and if you build a nice ritual around it it is a much better place to have a difficult conversation than right before you go to sleep.

Get good at intimacy

For most people, their partner is the person they’ll get most physical intimacy from. So it’s only natural that physical intimacy is associated with relationship satisfaction. But physical intimacy doesn’t necessarily mean sex:

• Loving touch: Kissing, hugging, cuddling, touch: They all lead to happier relationships and especially in couples who are beyond their first years have a higher impact than the sex alone.

• Talk about it: The single thing that predicts sexual satisfaction most is quality of sexual communication. This beats the more commonly assumed predictors: intercourse frequency or scheduling time.

• Explicit consent: The second most powerful factor is strong internal willingness expressed as active, enthusiastic consent vs assuming passive assumed consent. This predicts satisfaction for both partners.

Take action when things don’t go well

Loving actively also means not avoiding difficult times. Address issues when you see them, otherwise they will build up to an insurmountable pile of emotions.

• Breakup predictors: Verbal aggression, ongoing negative interactions, low commitment, satisfaction, and support all predict breakups. The question is: Will it get better? Give yourself a dedicated time to work on these and quit if it doesn’t.

• Therapy works: Not perfectly, but about 70% of couples do get better and half of those can maintain the improvements even after two years. That’s worth the shot if you are in a place where you feel like you could use some help.

• Online couple programs: Seem to work pretty well and might be more accessible than traditional therapy. They work mainly through reducing negative communication and increasing emotional support.

Start small

• Plan a check-in with your partner, consider making it a recurring one

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

In one way, the relationship with your partner is like just another friendship. The same ideas apply: Be curious, be the spark, give. But it doesn’t stop there.

Step one for a strong foundation: Build safety. And yes, all of this of course also applies to other relationships in your life. It just fits best here.

Subscribe now

How to build a strong relationship

Understand attachment styles

Attachment styles are a simplified framework that predict how people emotionally connect, behave, and regulate their emotions in relationships. There is both plenty of evidence and it’s simple enough to work with, which makes it so popular.

• Avoidant (25%): You highly value independence and sometimes struggle with emotional vulnerability and tend to pull away when relationships get too deep. This is me in my relationships. I once dated another avoidant person - we didn’t get very far.

• Anxious (20%): You constantly seek closeness and reassurance. You often worry about your parnter leaving you.

• Disorganized (<5%): You can be both avoidant and anxious. Craving commitment and closeness but also fearing it, which leads to unpredictable behavior.

• Securely (>50%): If you are both anxious and avoidant you’re chaotic. But if you’re neither then you are securely attached. You can allow emotional intimacy without fear of abandonment.

Build safe attachment

Anxious and avoidant styels have been linked to lower well-being. So, the million dollar question: How do you become securely attached? And how can you help your partner.

• Understand your patterns: While the attachment types seem quite simple, recognising your patterns is much harder. They often mask as unrelated thoughts. Read up about it and maybe try therapy if it’s affecting your relationships.

• Demonstrate safety: The best way to build trust and safety is to just demonstrate over and over again that we are available when needed and are committed. This can come in many shapes and forms, talk about what would help.

• Dare to go deep: For the avoidant among us, practice opening up more and more, experiment with co-dependence instead of in-dependence. Try to predict reactions of your partner to sharing things that scare you and see what happens.

Repair trust

Trust takes long to build and short to break. What to do when that happens? This framework is based on Emotionally Focused Therapy, where ruptured trust is framed as an attachment injury.

• Get to the rupture: Escape the tendency to accuse and defend. Try to stay calm and feel into what actually happened in the moment the trust was broken. What was the hurt’s person’s fear, helplessness, or pain of abandonment?

• Stay with them: For the partner who broke the trust, stay fully present with that emotion, “hold their pain”, without excuses. Allow yourself to feel genuine remorse for hurting them. Take full ownership and offer an apology.

• Create a new narrative: Don’t “forget about it” but instead reframe it as something that shaped your relationship and helped you grow together. A rupture that will stay with you but something that helped you attach even more securely.

Get started

• What is something small you could do today to practice building safety?

• Are you afraid of sharing something? Bet money on doing it.

• Is there a rupture in any of your relationships that might need repair?

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

The evidence seems to be clear on one thing: Cohabiting with a life partner seems to have a causal effect on your life satisfaction. This effect is stronger for men, probably because they have a weaker social network. It gets even stronger as you get older, and having a partner in later life stages predicts longer lives. As always, all on average!

We’re experimenting with podcast guests! These are complimentary to the articles - we discuss the same topic but focus more on the guest’s view vs the write-up here. Let us know what you think!

Subscribe now

How to find a great partner

Approach

To find a partner you’ll have to talk to some. While you can find ways to get around approaching people, like matchmakers, most of us will need to work up that courage. And in most cultures that’ll be the men. Just accept this, your partner will thank you.

• Look for signals: It’s easier to start a conversation when you feel there is some interest already: Maybe a look, smile, eye contact. On dating apps it’s simply their like. But don’t make this a blocker, it might be hard to spot these at first.

• Strike up a conversation: Don’t worry about the perfect opener, this is about getting a conversation going. Comment on something in your shared environment, something you noticed about them, a random thought you just had.

• Ask for the number: Did you enjoy the conversation and are you curious to get to know the other person better? Are you getting signals that they feel the same way (eg open body language, asking you questions, …)? Ask to stay in touch.

Look for the right things

What predicts a good relationship? We’ll get into the details but a heads up already: It’s not the “prom date” the hot, high-status, exciting person. Science’s best guess is that it comes down to the following traits:

• Do you feel good: Can you be yourself around them or do you feel you have to “perform”? We probably all perform in the first dates but how does that change as you progress? Do you feel safe and seen? Can you trust them?

• Can you communicate: Can both of you share your needs and set boundaries? Can both of you own your emotions? Can you deal well with conflict? Low neuroticism in your partner (tendency to experience negative emotions) helps.

• Is the sex good: It takes time to get to know each other’s preferences and bodies but you usually know pretty soon if this has potential or not. That doesn’t mean you should have sex on the first date. It is negatively correlated with satisfaction.

Get out of your head

All credit for this to the great book How not to die alone by Logan Ury. She already termed the prom date vs life partner in the section above and also came up with a good segmentation of reasons we might procrastinate settling down.

• Don’t romanticize: Disney put this thought into our head that the perfect partner should just “show up”. A chance encounter. This will work better if you enhance the surface area for chance and put yourself out there.

• Don’t maximize: If you have a list of ten criteria, this is you. Make it three and allow yourself to be open to be surprised. Even if you assume the probability for each criteria is a coinflip, 10 coinflips give you 0.1%, or 1 in 1000 people.

• Don’t hesitate: “I’ll start dating once I lost ten pounds, have a better job, and am ready for children”. If you think others maximize, then you maximize yourself before trying. Life happens while you are busy making plans. Don’t miss it.

Do this now

• If you’re not in a relationship: Approach people. It’s hard. Bet money on it.

• If you are in a relationship: Send this article to a friend who isn’t.

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

And if you’re in a relationship already: No harm in reviewing this and making sure you put in the effort to stay an attractive partner for your partner.

Subscribe now

How to be datable

Develop core traits

Sorry, no easy wins here. We are all primed by evolution to find traits attractive that predict healthy children. Even if you and your future partner don’t want children, you are primed to judge on those traits. Accept this situation and develop them.

• Women: Youth, meternal investment capability, intelligence, health. Youth is frustrating because even though living healthy can prolong it, you are running against the clock. “Just” accept it and factor it in when dating.

• Men: Fitness, mental health, intelligence, willpower, tenderness, status. How do you develop these? Follow Euzoia and do the work. Just as for women, some of these are predetermined. Accept that. Nobody wants a perfect partner..

• Personal: What do you value in others that’s not part of this list? Can you offer that yourself? Chances are that if you are looking for this in others, they might look for the same in you. How can you work on that (and signal it later)?

Signal those traits

“I am looking for somebody who is funny, good-looking, and cares about his friends” Said everybody, ever. Why is this? These are all signals that are both hard to fake and easy to see. Signals are how you show your traits. Focus on the hard-to-fake ones.

• How you look: Your looks signal youth and health (skin, hair, …), mental health (tidyness), intelligence (style and situational awareness), wealth (can afford nice clothes), willpower (can go to the gym), fitness, etc.

• How you speak: Signals intelligence (humor, breadth of topics), tenderness (how you treat others), mental health (vulnerability), tenderness (empathy, understanding), etc.

• What you do: Signals status (having friends around you, your job), wealth (your clothes, your house, paying for dinner), tenderness (donating money, your job), mental health (how you deal with stress), etc.

Be in the right markets

You can signal all you want; if nobody is there to see it it won’t go very far. Put yourself out there and allow yourself to be seen. We’ll cover what to then do in the next post.

• Dating apps: Terrible dynamics: Women swipe on most attractive men. Those men don’t commit because they get a lot of likes. Everybody loses. Signalling here is an art: Show off all signals without seeming to show-offy.

• Social activities: Be where you think the people you are interested in will be. Step 1 is to just do the things you like doing. Step 2 is to think a bit harder about which of these activities allow for easy socializing and have a lot of your type.

• Location: Some markets are just terribly skewed. SF as a man is a nightmare, same for NYC as a woman. If you are single and dating, you want to be in a place with enough options: Universities, cities, not your hometown.

Get started

• Subscribe to Euzoia to build those habits! Bet money on doing them.

• Check with friends: What do you signal right now? How could you change?

• Review your markets: Where are you fishing and is there a better pond?

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

In the same way that we can embrace proactive giving on a small scale, we can experiment with extending those circles. Just as in loving kindness meditation we wish everybody happiness, we can take steps to bring everybody happiness.

Subscribe now

Your social contracts

Remember what you received

Think of all the people who showed up for you. Some did it out of love, some out of obligation, some because they hoped to get something back. But they all helped you to get where you are. Take a moment to recognize that.

• Family: The love and care from your parents and siblings, the support from extended family. This won’t be only happy memories, but they put in a lot of effort to get you where you are if you managed to read this blog post.

• Community: Teachers, mentors, doctors, that other family that took you on vacation, lovers, friends, investors, people who prayed for you, people who gave you a hug when you needed one, your first employer.

• Expanding circles: Who else supported you? Maybe authors, your country with schools and roads, the citizens of other countries through global trade and exploitation, chickens through their lives, the world. That got dark quickly.

Reflecting on what others have done for us can be a powerful way to motivate us to help others. None of us get through life alone. At different points, we have all been supported, guided, forgiven, encouraged, or carried by someone else.

Recognising this can shift us from seeing help as a burden to seeing it as a continuation of the care we have already received. Parents are often the clearest example: for many of us, they gave years of time, energy, patience, and sacrifice before we were able to give anything back. When we remember that, it becomes easier to show up for others now and to pass that care forward.

Cameron

Understand your position

What’s your ability and responsibility to care? Recognizing this doesn’t mean you have to automatically act on it. It’s meant as a framework to help you gain awareness, not to induce guilt or obligation.

• Privilege: We all like to believe that our success is down to our genius and hard work but not everybody has the same start. How lucky did you get? Gender? Race? Sexuality? Family? Passport? Physical and mental health? IQ? Grit?

• Power: How dependent are others on you? Can they safely voice their needs? Would you in their position? Power could come from you earning more, them not having others to depend on, social status, formal power like guardian/employer.

• Resources: What resource do you have to give? Time? Money? Maybe you are very privileged and are close to many people but you just can’t do much right now. That’s ok. Stay aware of your own limits and needs.

Writing this as a white man in his thirties living in Europe with some wealth, good health, and a loving relationship I feel pretty high on the privilege, power, and resources scale. In my day-to-day I just forget about that. For me it takes active effort to bring this back. What helps me: Talking with people who got less lucky, reading fiction, watching documentaries.

Christoph

Give it forward

You have two main resources: Time and money. Use some of both to honor your social contracts. To get an intuition for what’s reasonable, try falling back to the golden rule that exists in all main cultures: “Treat others as you would like to be treated”.

• Make time: Based on all of this, who would benefit from your time the most right now? Start there and start small. Experiment with how it feels, how much you can give, and where it becomes too much.

• Pay up: In Western society we have a shift from implicit social contracts to explicit ones: Pay your taxes. In more implicit societies that could be remittance payments and community fundraisers. Donate to support your expanding circles.

• Team up: Thinking through the above can feel overwhelming and suffocating. So many people, so many needs, so much responsibility. Luckily, you don’t have to do this alone. Find people to join you, switch from overwhelm to excitement.

Start small

• Block an hour in your calendar to journal on your position in this world.

• Make an effort to talk to people living in different realities. Try to see the world from their perspective.

• Identify one specific thing you can do to support. Bet money on doing that.

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

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:

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.