Hi friend,

Happy new year.

I hope you’re ready to do some damage to 2024.

“New year new me” is a hyper-cringe tagline but I made the most personal growth progress of my twenties every year between January and April.

Some of the highest ROI resolutions I ever made:

No phone in the bedroom ever, charge it outside.

Read for 10 minutes a day.

No alcohol for 6 months.

Morning walk every day.

Gratitude journal morning and night.

Never miss a habit 2 days in a row.

Most of those are still with me.

Anyway I’ve been thinking about how deranged people are on social media.

“Social media makes more sense when you view it as a place people go to perform rather than a place to communicate.” Morgan Housel

Given that so much of our time is spent online, and it seems unlikely for that to change in 2024, I thought this would be a useful message to end the year on.

So much of our experience of the world is mediated through the internet.

But the internet is not real life.

The internet is a selection mechanism for the most outlandish stories, real, exaggerated and fabricated.

If the world seems deranged, it’s probably because of what you’re seeing on screens, not what you’re seeing in real life.

ChatGPT has started being trained on its own content, making it a recursive creator and victim of its own blind spots.

The same thing is happening online.

Most people get their information from the internet, but the stories which garner the most attention from influencers are preselected to be the most egregious and outlandish, meaning that many influencers’ worldviews are being trained on other influencers’ worldviews, further worsening the way they see the world.

The world isn’t that bad, and don’t hang around with people who say it is.

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MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast which has had 400 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Shawn Stevenson – how to optimise your sleep, the foods you need to eat, habits you should follow and routines you need to have the best sleep of your life.

Thursday.
James Smith – recapping our month on tour together, keys to confidence, the truth about whether you need passion to be successful, fatherhood, business & more.

Saturday.
Gregory Clark – is social status genetically heritable? This might sound insane and judgemental, but the data says otherwise. Amazing episode, don’t miss this one.

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THINGS I’VE LEARNED

1.
​People break their penises more at Christmas.

A study titled “Penile Fractures: The Price of a Merry Christmas.” found that penile fractures spike at Christmas time.

The most common cause of these unfortunate injuries is “wild sex – particularly in positions where you’re not in direct eye contact [with your partner], such as the reverse cowgirl.”

How does this connect with Christmas?

Here’s how the researchers explain it in their paper:

In Germany, Christmas is widely celebrated. ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year, there is always much mistletoeing, and hearts are glowing, when loved ones are near’.

In other words, Christmas might be a risk factor for penile fractures due to the ‘Christmas spirit’ related to the intimacy and euphoria of these holly jolly days.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers looked at data from 3,421 German men who’d experienced penile fractures between 2005 and 2021.

Sure enough, Christmas was associated with an elevated rate of penile fractures.

The authors summed up the implications of their research as follows:

“Our findings do not support Elvis Presley et al. stating that ‘for if every day could be just like Christmas what a wonderful world this would be’, as Christmas was associated with 43% more penile fractures…” — h/t Steve Stewart-Williams

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2.
​Stop complaining about the wealth you don’t have from the job you didn’t take.

Over 1 in 5 people in the UK now are classed as economically inactive – “out of work and not looking for a job”.

Those figures have been driven largely by 16-24 year olds.

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3.
​Violent crime is wild.

1% of the population is responsible for 63% of the violent crimes.

If all violent crime careers came to a stop after a third conviction, more than 50% of all convictions for violent crime in the total population would be prevented.

Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are were it not for medical developments since the 1960s.

Relative to the 1960s, people today are more likely to survive assault and injury as a result of modern advances in medical treatment. — Rob Henderson

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Big love,
Chris x

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