Tyler Cowen asks: “What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales? If you don’t know the answer to that one, maybe you are doing something wrong or not doing enough.” I’m a software engineer, so let’s answer that question for software engineers!

First, we need to figure out why pianists practice scales in the first place.

Why do people have midlife crises? The term itself was only coined in 1965—it appears to be a phenomenon of modern life. Here’s my unfounded hypothesis: midlife crises arise when a person’s self-concept of growth meets the cold water of reality. This model explains some stereotypical midlife-crisis behavior like switching careers and buying expensive things. It explains why quarter-life crises have become increasingly common. It even hints at which sets of people are more likely to experience crises.

Emily and I spent last October in Boise, Idaho. Our first few nights were downtown at The Grove Hotel, then rented an Airbnb close to BSU for the rest of the month. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with Boise’s liveliness, and I had a great time.

After a relaxing holidays, I’m back and at it in 2021! Since I formalized my goals for 2021, my monthly reviews will include goal tracking as well.

Goal Tracking

• 🟢 Get 1% faster. It’s only January, but I feel really good about this goal. The next couple months of training will be about rounding into shape by tweaking form and pushing my speed endurance. It should translate fairly easily into faster 100 and 200m times.
• 🟢 50% less discretionary spending. My discretionary spending in January was actually down 91% compared to 2020. I don’t think this is sustainable (in particular, restaurants reopening means my food spending will probably go up), but it’s a great start to the new year!
• 🔴 One hour of solitary free time a day. I’ve only come close to this goal on weekends. I haven’t done a good job prioritizing free time during the week.
• 🟢 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends. Somewhat surprisingly, I’m 4/4 in January! About half of these were serendipity—I’ll have to make my own serendipity and reach out more to keep this up in future months.

I think that contrary to popular opinion, friendships don’t become deep because of similarities or differences in personality or interests. Rather, in my experience, close bonds are defined by shared vulnerability. This is common across all of my best friends and strong relationships.

Close bonds can spring from different kinds of shared vulnerability. Most obvious is sharing secrets. But there’s plenty of other kinds: