Curiosity Chronicle

Sahil Bloom
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Delivering curiosity-inducing content every single week. This is the audio version of my newsletter. Sign up at the bottom of the page!

  1. 6h ago

    The Stories You Tell Yourself

    When I was 13 years old, a single story changed the course of my life. But to understand it, I need to take you back in time to a strange experiment from decades ago. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga was studying patients who had their corpus callosum surgically severed. His experiments led him to hypothesize that the left hemisphere has a specialized system he called The Interpreter, whose responsibility is to find clear cause and effect. Its job is simple: To take scattered, seemingly random data and facts about the world in front of you and stitch them into a coherent story that feels true. The problem is that we’d rather have a story that’s wrong than no story at all. For me, The Interpreter began telling a story when I was young: I wasn’t very smart. My sister was the smart one. I had to be something else. And then, confirmation bias kicked in. The story determined what “counted” as evidence. Eventually, the story itself constrained my world. In this video, I talk about the stories we tell ourselves and the empowering truth that allowed me to confront my own: You wrote the stories. Which means you can rewrite them. The most important story in life is the one you tell yourself. Make sure it’s true. ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  2. 5d ago

    My 90 -10 Rule for Routines

    Confession: I'm a routine guy. I thrive on structure. I think of routines as a way to ensure execution against the daily action that contributes to long-term, compounding progress. But there's a dark side to routines that nobody talks about. When your routines become too rigid and complicated, they become a source of stress rather than strength. The routines meant to serve you can start to own you. This is where my 90-10 Rule comes in: 90% disciplined compliance.10% open flexibility. 90% of the time, I'm locked in with my structure, but 10% of the time, I give myself the space to let life happen freely. In this piece, I talk about the Paradox of Routine: The best routine is the one you can break. The 10% is what enables the 90% to be so effective. Your routine should serve your life, not own it. ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  3. Sep 30

    The Middle Path to Happiness

    In the 3rd century BCE, King Pyrrhus was preparing for an aggressive military campaign in Italy when a trusted advisor named Cineas asked him a simple question: After conquering Italy, what would they do next? Then Sicily. Then Libya and Carthage. And then? King Pyrrhus replied, "Then we will live a life of ease. Drink all day and have pleasant conversation with our friends." Cineas paused and spoke: "But what's stopping us from doing that today?" The story is one of the oldest documented cases of the Arrival Fallacy: the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create durable feelings of satisfaction and contentment in our lives. But life is rarely so black and white. Ambition isn't the mortal enemy. And presence isn't the perfect hero. In this piece, I wrote about choosing the middle path. Rejecting the or and embracing the and. Remember: You can conquer your Carthage if you want to. Just don't make the wine wait for it. ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  4. Sep 25

    The Protégé Effect: A Powerful Model for the AI Era

    AI is quite clearly the biggest buzzword of the year. But one thing I don't see anyone talking about is just how much AI is shifting how rewards are earned. Things are changing so rapidly that the frontier of accurate prediction has been pulled closer and closer to the present. In this new world, the rewards will be earned by those who are willing to be beginners over and over again. The value seems likely to accrue to those who can combine curiosity and a beginner's mindset with bias for action. This means that learning has become a core meta-skill. Perhaps even THE core meta-skill. On Friday, I wrote about the Protégé Effect: the psychological phenomenon where teaching, preparing to teach, or pretending to teach information to someone else helps you learn and retain that information better yourself. The new world will place an emphasis on adaptation. Rapid iteration. Learning and unlearning. It sounds scary. It shouldn't. If you're willing to be a beginner again, the future is brighter than ever... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  5. Sep 23

    7 Lessons From My 2:49 Marathon (That Have Nothing To Do With Running)

    Last week I wrote about failing a marathon. Six days later, at 5am, I drove back to the course alone and ran 26.25 miles in 2:48:47. Not because I needed the official result. Because when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. In this piece, I talk about seven lessons from that solo marathon that have nothing to do with running — how to stack slow progress, how to stay in the long game, and why showing up through the valley is the whole game... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  6. Sep 18

    Jevons Paradox: The Perils of Efficiency

    In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons studied the impact of the increased efficiency of coal use. The common economic intuition said that as efficiency improved, people would use less coal. Jevons argued that the economic reality was different: As technology improved the efficiency of coal use, demand for coal would increase as people created and justified new uses. It became known as Jevons Paradox: technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a given resource lead to a rise in the consumption of that resource. I think the most interesting application of Jevons Paradox is in your life.  When you optimize for efficiency, you may find yourself doing more, not less, of the thing you tried to become more efficient at. In this piece, I share a simple reminder: Efficiency is great. But only when it gets you more of what you actually want... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  7. Sep 16

    I Think I Need to Talk About Failure

    Last Sunday, I was scheduled to run a marathon with a goal of completing the race in 2:49:59. I trained all summer for the race, building up to 70+ mile weeks. I tapered. I carb loaded. I meticulously prepared for every detail. And honestly, I was certain I’d do it. But…I failed. After 21.45 miles at a 6:24 average pace, I stopped and walked off the course. I didn’t finish. DNF. That’s not something you read in newsletters or see on social media every day. It’s all about wins. Successes. Achievements. On Wednesday, I wrote about why failure is a good thing. It means you had the courage to go all-in. To try. To do something. To step into the arena. You may not always get it done. But you’ll win at life along the way... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

  8. Sep 11

    Be a Ford, Then a Sloan

    The engineer took out an axe and slammed it into the brick wall. It was June 1896. The young man had spent months working in a small brick shed behind his rented house, only to realize, at 4am, that the door wasn't big enough for what he'd built. His name was Henry Ford. His creation, the Ford Quadricycle. His atomic insight was simple: He began viewing the factory itself as the product. While others obsessed over the car, he obsessed over the factory. By the early 1920s, Ford owned an extraordinary 60% of the U.S. automobile market. But around 1921, the ground began to shift. And while Ford was destroying new prototypes and rejecting changes, Alfred Sloan was building General Motors with adaptation as its core principle. Sloan had a different atomic insight: He began viewing the company itself as the product. Under Sloan's management, while Ford sputtered, GM's market share doubled, from around 10% at the start of the decade to around 20% by 1925. The lesson isn't Don't be a Ford or Be a Sloan. Rather, it's Be a Ford, then a Sloan. In this piece, I explored why the skill set that gets you to your first million isn't the same as the one that gets you from one to ten. And why, above all, adaptability is the key to life... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

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About

Delivering curiosity-inducing content every single week. This is the audio version of my newsletter. Sign up at the bottom of the page!

Information

  • Creator
    Sahil Bloom
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    480
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sahil Bloom
  • Show Website
    Curiosity Chronicle

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