OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

As we’ve discussed, Alan Cohen is one of my favorite teachers. I fell in love with him and his storytelling after watching him kick off Finding Joe years ago.

The other day I was flipping through a jumbo, 3-inch wide, 3-ring binder of my very first 100 PhilosophersNotes.

In our last +1, we talked about A World Without Heroes and the fact that “A hero sacrifices for the greater good. A hero is true to his or her conscience. In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences.”

As we've discussed many times, one of my greatest joys is reading with Emerson. Especially these days as we get to engage in deeper and deeper micro-chats about life, virtue, and being a hero.

Ryan is one of my absolute favorite writers and I'm excited to sit down with him to chat about his latest book, Stillness is the Key.

Alzheimer’s. Even just thinking about that dreaded disease freaks you out a bit, eh? Over 5 million people in the US alone have Alzheimer’s. 1 in 9 people over 65. 

In our last +1, we briefly chatted about John Harrison’s decades-long (!!!) quest to bring the world precision timekeeping. At the time (1714) the British government offered their huge reward ($5 million dollars), the best clocks would lose as much as a minute or three a day. Then, when you put them out on the ocean, they’d get even worse. 

Not too long ago we talked about the fact that the word prosperity literally means “to go forward with hope.” 

My wife Alexandra has been a huge fan of Marie’s for a long time. I knew she was awesome. But... As I told Alexandra: “I had no idea Marie was THAT awesome!!!”

In our last +1, we had fun hopping in the Optimizing River of Flexibility for a little CANOE-ing fun. (Constant And Never-ending Optimizing Experimentation for the (joyful!) win!!)

One of the core themes of our work together (in these +1s and in our Coach program, etc.) is the power of constantly (!) experimenting as we find little ways to Optimize. 

In our last +1, we revisited our Spiritual Economics dictionary to redefine some key terms. Specifically: Affluence + Security + Prosperity.

In our last couple +1s, we took a quick look at some of my recent attempts to cool-ify and kid-ify the idea that delaying gratification via saving/investing money is awesome. 

In our last +1, we talked about how I’m attempting to make the idea of saving and investing money much cooler than constantly spending money. 

Not too long ago, we started giving Emerson $10 every week. It was Alexandra’s idea to start giving him some money that he could use as he pleased. Problem was, he basically immediately spent it on snacks and/or little things from the local toy store.