Happy Monday!

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This week we're discussing the importance of quality time, and why you should take every opportunity possible to spend time with those you care about.

As a brief disclaimer: many links for items, books, etc. are done through affiliate links, which means I may get paid a small pittance of money for anything you purchase using these links.

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Quality Time

When's the last time you've seen your best friend? Your parents? Your siblings? Chances are, for most of you, it's been longer than you'd like. The challenge as we grow older is that our frequency of interactions with people we care about tends to decrease. Time spent with friends is exchanged for time spent with coworkers; our social bubble begins to reflect our pursuits and the activities we spend the most time doing.

When we're young, we spend most of our time at home with parents and siblings (if we are fortunate enough to have them). We make childhood friends and see them oftentimes every day, split between school and neighborhood hangouts. Our circle reflects the people most important to us, and we see the members of that circle often.

Then we head off to college, or we enter the working world. Maybe we travel a bit. Soon enough we fall into our routine and weeks, months, years pass before we see the people that meant the most to us in the previous phase of our lives.

The reality is, our density of interactions with those we care about decreases substantially as we age. By the time we enter adulthood, the majority of our interactions with parents and childhood friends have already happened. There will be other times to see them, sure, but the frequency pales in comparison to before. Life gets in the way, we start raising our own families, people move. There are countless factors that pull us all apart.

For this reason, it is so important to take advantage of every possible opportunity to see the ones you love. Be intentional, plan it, make trips for the hell of it. Every day that passes by is more sand falling through the hourglass. Life moves fast, and we must be deliberate with how we spend our time. Reach out to the people you love, aim to see them more often, create a pact with your friends that you won't let another year go by without meeting up. Life is too short, and the number of interactions we have left is far too small.

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Hit List

The most interesting things I've encountered this week:

What I'm listening to: "Understanding & Controlling Aggression" on Huberman Lab

Huberman Lab makes another appearance this week, as I just listened to this episode the other day. I grew up with a huge anger problem, and sometimes my temper still flares up. It's something I've worked hard to control, but learning about some of the neuroscience behind aggression was fascinating to me.

A great app: Pocket on iOS, Android​

This app lets you save articles, pages, etc. for later (without ads) and syncs across all of your devices. It will even read these articles back to you like an audiobook. Pocket is an incredibly effective way to fight distraction by saving interesting things we find for later instead of being sucked down the proverbial rabbit hole.

Quote(s) of the week:

"The best gift you can give anyone is to spend quality time with them." - Laurence Overmire, American Poet

Tip of the week:

Eliminate blue light prior to bedtime.

Blue light from screens and devices trick our bodies into thinking that it's time to be awake instead of wind down. Wearing blue light blocking glasses can help, but the best way to combat this is to stop doing work or using devices at least an hour before bed time. If you can shut things down earlier, do it!

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That will do it for this week!

If you haven't downloaded your free copy yet, I've distilled all my tips and tricks for learning and retaining information here: Trainedwright Learning Guide.pdf​

Lastly, as always, if you found any value in this week's newsletter, please share it with just one person who might like it!

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