Rethinking Success, Hidden Trends, and AI's Impact on Coding

Hello friends and welcome back to Life Reimagined, a free weekly elixir designed to make you and 5,700 curious people feel good and live better.

If you’re enjoying the newsletter, don’t forget to spread the love by forwarding it to a friend or sharing this link for them to sign up.

🏄‍♂️ I. Rethinking Success

On Thursday, I shared a silly tweet about what I accomplished during the first quarter of 2023. The responses made me think more deeply about how I’m defining success these days.

If I had to boil it down, my current definition of success is something like this:

1. Spend as little time as possible looking at screens.

2. Spend as much time as possible outdoors (ideally surfing), with friends, and following my curiosities.

3. Doing (1) and (2) while being financially comfortable and healthy.

If you had asked my 18 or even 25-year-old self what he thought of this definition of success, he would have said that I’d lost the plot and needed to stop wasting my life with these simple notions of living.

But that’s the beauty of aging and the different seasons of life. You can choose what you want for a given period, optimize for it, see if you like it, and decide that you want something else when life takes another turn.

I used to think that success meant living a productive, contribution-oriented life that required constant inner and outer growth. But over the years, my definition of success has expanded, and instead of thinking about success as a measurable destination somewhere in the future, I now see it as an unfolding and evolving inner story about how I live today.

That probably sounds like new-age, babbling guru speak. And while it probably is, I still think there is something valuable to it.

The most important part of adopting this expanded, more flexible definition of success is to view success as an internal story, not an externally driven one. That means that you, not other people, define what it means.

If you rely on other people to validate your success, you’re going to be confined to a narrow set of paths. In capitalist, achievement-obsessed places like where I live, for example, the most common metrics for success are how much money, power, or status you’ve accumulated.

And while there is nothing wrong with pursuing these things, the reality is that there will always be someone richer, more powerful, or more famous than you. And unless you know what “enough” is for you, you’ll always be wanting more of something to feel like you’ve made the most of your life.

An alternative way to live is to think of success as something you define without the need for validation from the broader culture or other people. This internal-driven approach leaves you with more control and options.

For example, you could conclude that the prevailing societal view of success is the best way to live and pursue it with relentless fervor. Or you could decide something else, like that your version of success is being an awesome parent, the world’s greatest friend, or having the freedom to do whatever you want every day of the week. There is no right answer.

And the beauty of adopting an internally-driven idea of success is that you have the freedom to change what you’re optimizing for over time as your desires, needs, and life unfolds. You’re not constrained by the opinions of others, what’s popular in the broader culture, the views of your parents, or what the younger you believed.

The end result is that you have a wider and more varied playing field for life, which increases the odds that you’ll find a path that works for you.

👩‍💻 II. AI’s Impact on Coding

AI is getting a lot of hype these days, and I’m ignoring nearly all of it.

That said, I’ve become somewhat interested in the AI-powered transformation of coding, which is odd because I’m not all that technical. I’ve learned basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript in the past, but only to make small tweaks to my website. If I need any serious code, I hire someone.

From what I’ve seen with OpenAI’s products and GitHub’s Copilot, it’s become clear that AI will dramatically reduce the cost of code and the accessibility of software development more generally. In fact, it already has.

That’s not good news for low-skilled developers, but it’s potentially great news for internet tinkerers like me who want to expand their building capabilities.

While it’s already quite easy to spin up a website, e-commerce store, and other types of fun-focused or revenue-driving online endeavors, AI-powered tools will make it even easier to do far more than what’s possible today.

To capitalize on these opportunities, I think it’s more important than ever to build a stronger technical foundation. That’s because AI tools provide technical leverage, and your technical foundation is the base for how much leverage you can get. That’s a hunch, not a well-reasoned thesis.

There are many great entry points for building a stronger technical foundation, and this week, I got started with Replit’s free 100-Day Python Course. I’m 13 lessons in, and so far, it’s pretty snackable, accessible, and fun.

I’m not sure whether I’ll finish the course or go on to do anything beyond it, but I’m enjoying it for now and seeing where it takes me.

📈 III. Trends Ignored by the Media

I stumbled upon this thread by George Mack. In it, he asks a very interesting question: What is ignored by the media — but will be studied by historians?

He mentions 3 trends that stood out to me:

1. Overdoses have replaced suicide as the leading cause of death in people under the age of 45. The large spike in overdoses is largely caused by the increased prevalence of fentanyl.

2. Male testosterone levels dropped 20% in the last 20 years, and sperm counts have plummeted by 59% since 1973. We don’t really know why this is happening. In the last two years, I’ve started to measure my testosterone levels every 6 months to see how I’m tracking.

3. There are swaths of young people making million dollars of year as online creators. One of the leaders of the pack is Ryan Kaji, an 11-year old who reviews toys on Youtube and made $26 million dollars in 2020!

I recommend giving the full thread a quick read.

🧠 VI. Something I’m Thinking About

That's all for now. See you next Sunday.

— Cal

🌎️ Three other things you might enjoy

1. Doing Time Right: Everyone wants to get more done in less time. This course will show you exactly how to do that with the eliminate, automate, delegate, and iterate framework.

2. Foundations. Looking for good books to read? Check out Foundations, a growing digital notebook with notes & lessons from 100+ timeless books.

3. Listen to the Podcast: Feel like school didn't prepare you for adulthood? The Sh*t You Don't Learn in School podcast exists to help make up for this societal failure.