Hi hi,

Over on Instagram, you told me you wanted to see a more detailed review of what I read last month. March was full of long flights and layovers, the perfect conditions to dive into a few good books.

Let's get into it!

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1) Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell.

The premise of Dan's book is that entrepreneurs need to be optimizing for their time. It's NOT about hiring people to grow the business, but instead, hiring people to buy back time on your own personal calendar.

This was a key distinction for me, as I like the flexible structure of my business, and I like keeping my teams small and nimble, so I've always struggled with hiring for "growth." Hiring for time was such a good reframe, and it's been transforming how I think about my professional and personal time.

The Buy Back Rate:

Dan introduces the concept of the BUYBACK RATE, which is the rate that you can afford to purchase back your time. You take your annual salary and divided by 2000 working hours. If you take home $1,000,000 a year, your hourly rate is $500/hr.

Dan says that nobody should perform any task that can be outsourced for 25% of your hourly fee. If my hourly fee is $500/hr, then I can afford to pay up to $125/hr on task delegation. And, here's the key part: if you don't hire this out, you're actually costing your business $375/hr by doing low value tasks instead of investing in revenue making activities.

I made a list of all the revenue generating activities for my business. Then, I made a list of all the activities that I do in an average week that could be done by someone else. There were a lot. It was clear that I was not effectively buying back my time.

My executive assistant already manages my calendar, but she's now handling my inbox too. She'll flag anything I need to handle and can manage the bulk of it by herself. No more pressure to check emails and respond quickly. I'm also bringing on more remote assistants to take on a chunk of promotion, marketing, and other activities that I don't love, but need to do.

I'm currently interviewing for a "House Manager", another suggestion from Dan, to expand on regular housekeeping that we have done and to start including more tasks like grocery shopping, house admin, dry cleaning, logistics and coordination, and other random tasks. For example, every year, we have to bring someone to inspect the boiler and someone else to inspect the fireplaces in our house (both for insurance purposes). A house manager would make sure that those appointments are scheduled, they'd be here, they'd manage the whole process and I wouldn't have to think about other than seeing it complete on our house project board.

The DRIP Matrix:

The other helpful idea was the DRIP matrix which looks at the financial and energetic cost of a task.

Delegation - Low Earning, Low Energy (Admin/Calendar)

Replacement - High Earning, Low Energy (Marketing)

Investment - Low Earning, High Energy (Relationships, Hobbies)

Production - High Earning, High Energy (The Money Makers)

The production quadrant is where you find the sweet spot: the activities that make you money and that light you up. This lines up with Quadrant II work.

For me, Production is writing, speaking, and consulting. You know what doesn't light me up? Sales. Social Media. Accounting. This was very clarifying, especially when paired with the buyback rate because I could see that I COULD afford to hire out more of those tasks.

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The ONE thing I didn't like:

Dan tweeted this a few days ago, and it rubbed me the wrong way.

Here's the thing: not every second of your bought back time has to be spent on high-brow shit like personal development or going to the gym. You are perfectly entitled to binge watch a show on Netflix if that's what you want.

The idea that even our free time has to meet some sort of optimization standard, is something that I wholeheartedly reject. As always, it's about context and moderation.

​As I wrote in the last dispatch, we don't have to be self-optimizing ALL THE TIME. I think I'm pretty successful and I spent last weekend watching Below Decks season seven. NO REGRETS IT WAS DELIGHTFUL. ​

Hustle culture has crept into our persona lives as well, and we don't need to be constantly "self-developing." Can we just amble? frolic? day dream? Just be a human?

I did really like this book though, so with that in mind, I would highly recommend it.

2) How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger

This was a fascinating read into the latest research on nutrition and well-being. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, each chapter focuses on a particular disease (Cancer, Diabetes, etc) and Dr. Greger shares specific research on how certain food impact the progression of the disease. Did you know that radishes are particularly good at eradicating cancer cells? Or that eating a whole foods, plant-based diet could actually reverse some of the aging process? It's incredible.

The second part of the book focuses on what Dr. G calls Super Foods, and we learn just how powerful some foods are in healing and helping us to live healthier and longer lives.

What I liked most about this book is that Dr. G has an additive philosophy to food. Meaning, he doesn't shame you or lecture you into giving up certain foods, instead, he encourages you to add in healthy ingredients whenever you can. Throw some nuts on your salad, add some chickpeas to your dinner, enjoy some berries as a snack.

It's sad that we turn to pills to manage aspects of our lives that we could address with food.

Should you read it?

If you're a science nerd like me, you'll enjoy this book a lot, but if you just want to implement the practices, the TL/DR is that there is a list of 12 foods that we should try to incorporate daily into our diets. The foods are summarized on the chart below, please pay attention to serving sizes.

In my own life, I've modified a Syrian bean salad to include onions, sautéed tomatoes, greens, ground flaxseed cumin and turmeric. One bowl (which is actually the full three servings of beans) knocks off almost nine of the items off this list in a single meal. A piece of whole grain toast with nut butter, cinnamon, bananas and some berries, knocks off a bunch more.

I'm not striving for perfection, just upping the nutritional value of what I'm eating, whenever I can.

We really need to get our food intake under control. Researchers are starting to think that conditions like Dementia and Alzheimers could be partly caused by insulin resistance, which is caused by a diet with too much junk. Considering obesity is on the rise, this doesn't bode well for our longevity. I've previously written about our very small zone of control, and throwing in a handful of greens whenever we can seems like an easy way to give health a fighting chance.​

Radically Content by Jamie Varon

I absolutely adored this book. Jaime takes you along her personal journey of healing and deprogramming from the unhelpful narratives so many of us our bombarded with on a daily basis: we're not good enough, successful enough, thin enough, beautiful enough. If only we had the right lipstick, more money, a new shirt, a new course, the right body, the perfect diet than everything would be easier, right? (RIGHT?!)

In a previous dispatch, I wrote that Jamie's book was instrumental in helping me crack a very difficult creative block that had been plaguing me for months.

I loved the gentle wisdom and kindness Jamie extends to herself and to the readers. She reminds us that regardless of what messaging we encounter, whether it's internally generated or externally pushed as us, we can ALWAYS choose to reclaim our own agency. We can dare to be satisfied and content with exactly who we are. We can be accepting of ourselves. We can strive from a place of self-love and not self-punishment. We can choose to be content.

This was a big revelation for me. How much of my striving was rooted in feeling like I wasn't good enough or worthy enough? How freeing it is to pursue my goals, to challenge myself to do bigger things but from a place of worthiness and self-love. Same ambitious engine, only it's powered by love and not shame.

I loved Jamie's chapter on living an intentional life (a key tenet of Humane Productivity) but also her chapter on Shame, where she encourages us to explore a different emotion to motivate ourselves towards our goals. I often felt like I was chatting with an old friend.

A lovely read. I recommend.

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

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As someone who has struggled with health anxiety, reading this book was difficult. I've been trying to face my fear of illness, a subject many of us avoid at all costs. In this memoir, Suleika chronicles her battle against a rare form of Leukemia that upended her entire life.

The title of the book comes from a Susan Sontag quote:

Suleika struggles to reconcile her own identity from "healthy person" to "person with an illness" to "being in remission." What does it mean to be sick? What does it mean to live? How do we grapple with our own mortality? Suleika tackles these questions with an optimistic curiosity that is vulnerable and wise at the same time.

This was a haunting and beautiful read that perfectly captures the raw truths of how illness can devastate entire families. I was impressed by Suleika's determination over the course of her several-year ordeal. I don't think I would have handled it with nearly as much grace. She was able to turn a devastating experience into a conduit of creative expression: painting and writing from hospital beds and committing to being present for every moment -- even when forced to spend weeks isolated in a hospital room.

She was brutally honest about the emotional havoc illness wreaks on relationships of all kinds: resentment, anger, fear, sadness, loneliness, rage. How it changes care dynamics and power dynamics and friendships. How our discomfort with illness and death result in abandoning people in our lives when they need us the most.

The biggest takeaway from this book was that the states of "illness" and "health" aren't binary, but exist on a vast spectrum. Life is a constant negotiation within those boundaries, and we should appreciate every minute we get to be alive and somewhat healthy. Life is so precious. Take advantage of every single moment and don't hesitate to make things or put your creativity out into the world.

I was deeply saddened to learn that after several years of remission, Suleika's leukemia returned in 2022, after the publication of her book. I'm wishing her a speedy and gentle recovery, a permanent remission, and many, many, more years to continue shining her light in the world.

Foushy Updates

Currently:

I'm on the Farm grappling with the living nightmare that is the French "Driving Road Regulations" because I missed the deadline to switch my Canadian license to a French one by like EIGHT YEARS (oops?) so I have to take the written and driving test. I'm hoping to take the written test by the end of the month and the driving test at some point before the fall. To bribe myself into studying, I've decided to reward myself with one of these adorable little baby electric cars when I succeed.

Up Next:

I'm at home for the next two weeks, so I've got some intensive writing and research days booked (and a ton of practice driving tests). I'm re-organizing my writing office and have ordered an adjustable standing desk. I'm debating ordering one of those desk treadmills but can't decide if it's an efficient life-hack, or a reflection of the dystopian late-stage capitalistic Hellscape we're currently living in, a symbol of expending effort but never getting anywhere. (GET THOSE STEPS THO!)