2025 was a year of bad habits for me. Having a newborn will do that. Nothing humbles a carefully curated “morning routine” quite like a small human whose survival is entirely dependent on you.

But it woke me up to something I didn’t quite know about myself. If I don’t own the morning (with a workout, time to myself, a long walk), my day doesn’t just gently drift off track; it goes full speed into the woods and lights itself on fire.

I sleep through my alarm, wake up groggy, and by the time I open up my laptop, I look like Adam Sandler after a game of pick-up hoops.

And once that first domino falls, the rest follow fast:

I’m sure you’re familiar with this bad habit loop. We’ve all been there. What’s tricky is that we now live in a world that’s perfectly engineered to help us avoid feeling what we’re supposed to feel: boredom, resistance, uncertainty, effort.

So instead of trying to “power through” with discipline, I’ve started using a simpler framework whenever I catch myself reaching for a donut instead of Greek yogurt:

Reset is a pause. A timeout. A moment to ask what’s really happening.
Am I actually hungry? Or am I just trying to avoid the thing that feels mildly uncomfortable right now? Most bad habits are about escape rather than desire.

Recalibrate is the pivot.
Okay, this approach isn’t working. Why? What assumption am I clinging to that’s clearly wrong? If Reset is halftime, Recalibrate is the adjustment. You stop running plays that require strengths you don’t have and start designing around the ones you do.

Re-engage is the hard part.
Your nervous system will beg you not to go back in. “Remember last time? You failed. That sucked. Let’s just… not.” Fair point. You might fail again.

Are you organizing your life around avoiding discomfort? Or around becoming someone who can handle it? Most bad habits aren’t broken by willpower. They’re broken the moment you stop running from the feeling that created them.

I’m a big fan of short stories — particularly science fiction-y types a la Black Mirror. I first got introduced to the genre via Ted Chiang’s collection, Exhalation, from which the movie Arrival was inspired. A co-worker of mine recommended The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. Many readers may know him from his translation of Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem. I had a Barnes & Noble gift card, so I took a shot.

This collection was really cool and unique. It’s smart, well-researched, hard-hitting, and made me cry several times, which isn't an easy feat. It makes brilliant use of science fiction and fantasy elements, but also pulls in real-world technology and history, while never losing a sense of humanity. Liu does an impressive job creating a pervasive sense of inventiveness. The fifteen stories, some sketches, and others novella-sized, range from cool sci-fi to wildly imaginative fantasy and everything in between.

It felt like reading Asian folklore passed down from one generation to the next, and even cast forward imaginative ideas for future folklore in the space age.

Every December, writer Tom Whitwell publishes an eclectic list of 52 surprising things Whitwell learned over the year. It’s one of my favorite year-end reads. A few samples:

Browse his previous lists here.

h/t Recomendo newsletter

This year, I read 27 books. Here were my absolute favorites:

Last month, Netflix released a four-part documentary series called MARINES, offering an inside, first-person look at the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in the Pacific, detailing their intense training, readiness operations, personal growth, and the challenges of being America's "force in readiness".

As you may know, I love a good docu-series. Having had several friends in the Marine Corps, this series offers an awesome glimpse into the realities of military life, focusing on the human element and stressful preparations for potential conflict, not just combat. It’s wild to think that while I was commuting on the LIRR to an office job, my friends were overseas running training missions in sub-optimal conditions while maneuvering lethal weapons amongst hundreds of 19-year-old kids.

This lady is an angel. Alison Armstrong is a relationship coach, speaker, and author. Never before have I heard someone articulate so clearly the difference between how men and women communicate their needs. She speaks in such a caring, yet blunt manner, that tons of wisdom would have gone over my head had I not paused the episode multiple times. I learned more about relationships in this podcast than in every other book I’ve read on the subject combined.

A must-listen for anyone in a serious heterosexual relationship.

Keith and Kyle sit down to discuss the life of Frantz Schmidt, a sixteenth-century executioner in ⁠Nuremberg, Germany⁠. Based on Schmidt's unique journal, the book explores his public role in executing and punishing people, his private struggles with his profession and religious faith, and his attempt to gain honor and avoid the social stigma of being an executioner.  A rare, detailed look into the era's criminal justice, social customs, and even medical practices, challenging the common perception of executioners as monsters. 

📚 Books discussed in this episode:

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