Two weeks ago I was in a half-day workshop on situational awareness, counter-intelligence, and home defense. It was a part of a larger course that included self defense and pistol training. They use the terms permissive, semi-permissive, and non-permissive to describe different environments. Permissive is what most of us live in every day. “Safe”. Semi-permissive…Keep Reading
How I Learned Brazilian Portuguese in a Week
In November of 2016, Adrian (my teacher from the Spanish in a Month documentary, and now my best friend and business partner) and I went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to test out some new language learning strategies. Portuguese was the test piece, and a week was the timeline. Of course, we shot a documentary…Keep Reading
Principles
“Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.” – Ray Dalio These are fundamental principles I’ve found to be true and try to live by. I wrote these out for myself after having used them, some for many years, others just long enough to stress-test. I have…Keep Reading
Controlling Your Environment
The following is a copy/paste of one of the best articles on the internet. So good, in fact, that I am posting it here mainly so that if the original ever gets taken down, I still have a copy. I have made fixes on a few spelling errors, but that is all. This was originally…Keep Reading
Product Market Fit Isn’t Enough: When to Double Down on a Company
The vast majority of my friends are business owners. Like them, I’m a bit of a geek about it, and we spend a lot of time talking about our respective businesses. And thus I hear their issues. What’s going wrong. Minefields they are having to navigate. The sad part is, many of these issues would…Keep Reading
How I Learned Spanish In A Month
In June 2015, I learned Spanish in a month – to a functionally conversational level (~B1). I spent 5 hours a day on average, for a rough total of 150 hours. This included 3 hours a day of one-on-one tutoring, 2 hours a day of pronunciation training for about half the month, and flashcard training…Keep Reading
My Advice for Young People Just Getting Started
Published April 17, 2015 I get a lot of emails from young people who aren’t interested in the standard life script of “go to college, get a good job”, but aren’t sure where to start. I almost always give the same advice, no matter what they want to do, if they want to travel or…Keep Reading
Connor Visits India, Hilarity Ensues
Published Jan 30, 2015 The following is an experience I had in India in January of 2015, and not necessarily representative of India as a country, nor my opinion of India as a whole. I have Indian friends. I have had wonderful trips to India – this is simply a story of one that was…Keep Reading
Geek to Freak 2.0: How I Gained 26lbs of Quality Mass in 4 Weeks
I’ve always been small. That picture on the right? That was me in 9th grade, when I was fifteen. I weighed 92lbs. I didn’t break 100 pounds until my sophomore year of high school. The occasion was so special that my rowing team made a cake and held a party for me. I played football…Keep Reading
The 2 Types of Criticism
Understanding what’s behind the words. There are two types of criticism: constructive criticism and projected criticism. Constructive Criticism Constructive criticism is the type of criticism that every great person seeks out. If you are trying to improve yourself, hearing how good you are at something isn’t helpful. It’s nice to hear, sure, but what the…Keep Reading