Nathan

Finding signal in the noise.
Writing about agency, meaning, and the art of living well.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

@IntegrityAvenue Can’t walk 10,000 miles without taking the first step. 💪

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

To see a man quit on his tribe, his brothers, is gut wrenchimg.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

https://t.co/E8L6UJKZV7

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

https://t.co/HB9JJQFBny

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

Grip it and rip it.

There’s something ridiculously satisfying about pulling a weed out by the roots.

But only if you catch it early.

Wait too long and one weed becomes twenty, stealing water, sunlight, and nutrients from the grass you actually want to grow.

Bad habits work the same way.

Pull them when they’re small.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

@neyosmallz So good. Changing one small thing in your environment can change everything.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

My biggest revelation this year:

I didn’t have a motivation problem.

I had a systems problem.

I was trying to force myself to behave differently while living inside a system that produced the same person every day.

Change the system. The behavior follows.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

https://t.co/2vFBQa56Wb

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

https://t.co/noiumMLWCW

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

https://t.co/mj62UPkBuk

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

@ItsKieranDrew Ambition is an amorphous blob that is shaped by your current life stage.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

@BookswithNimesh This is a solid book. Sugarman is an advert OG. Highly recommended to everyone.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

@Tim_Denning Potential is often masked by busyness. We spend all of our time doing the things we need to do and reserve no time for doing the things that we know would make us great. And we justify it by saying we are "responsible people".

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

If you like this, you may enjoy my long-form newsletter writing as well. Take a look: https://t.co/YcrwvrA76Q

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

You’re not overwhelmed.  You’re over exposed.

“We’re all drowning in the sea of AI Slop.” - Someone very smart

Forever I’ve thought that I was missing that one piece of information.  The one insight that would instantly transform my life. 

I’m still missing it. 

But I’m not actively looking for it anymore. 

For the longest time, I spent hours watching YouTube tutorials, reading book summaries, listening to podcasts, and even reading real, physical books.

I felt productive. 

I felt like I was doing something.  Making progress, even if tiny steps, toward my goal of a better life. 

Here’s an incredible stat:  720,000 hours of video are added to YouTube every year. 

Wait, nevermind.  Scratch that. That’s every day.  

Every day 720,000 hours of content is added to YouTube.  

You could spend your entire life seeking information and never find it.  

Reframe your search.  Find one trusted source of information for the topic you’re interested in. 

One book.  One podcast.  One YouTube creator.  

Consume that.  And only that content.  Until you’ve found what you’re looking for.

The paradox here is simple: reduce the inputs, increase the quality of the outputs. 

Once I took a ruthless approach to pairing down my content consumption, and finding a trusted voice to follow, I finally started to make real progress. 

Not busy work “productivity” progress, but real, life improving, progress.

Here are the easy steps I took to make real progress:

1Laser focus on your goal
2Find a trusted voice
3Outline your system of success
4Execute that system every day 

Once I eliminated all of the distractions I was  amazed at how fast I found success. 

Let me know below if you have any other tips for sorting though the noise to find the signal. 

Be great. Do good. 

-Nathan

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

Failing sucks.

But watching your child fail? That’s a level of emotional hell that is reserved for parents.

And it’s a pain that never relents.

The only way to get through it is to know that every failure will make them a better human.

But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

Consider yourself a good person? Then read and understand this.

You have a dark side no matter how much you repress it.

You can only achieve greatness once you get comfortable with your dark side.

Welcome it. Use it. Let it take you to new heights.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

Success is not the absence of unfinished goals, it's the honest alignment of your life over time.

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

You can win at life on paper and still feel like you’re losing in private. That is the Paradox of Success.

You can build a life that looks successful from the outside but you still feel like you're failing.

It's not because your life is bad.

Thread below...

[Nathan @NathanNotNoise]

That gap deserves attention.

So the move is:

Name what is working.
Name what is unresolved.
Name what is working.
Identify what the gap symbolizes.
Separate the incompletion from failure.
Build the system that makes it compound.