Matthew Armstrong

Senior Site Manager at Wates Construction

[Toon Polls @ToonPolls]

This clip will never get old. Love it. #NUFC

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

Nice spot to end the week

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

I'm fundraising for PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide. Check out my @JustGiving page and please donate if you can. Thank you! #JustGiving https://t.co/dLk6lExg8Y

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

Productivity is more the product of focus than time.

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@thewalters54 One for you next year mate, stunning course 👍🏻

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

Worth the 0330am start. Amsterdam Marathon tomorrow 🏃🇳🇱

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

The Newcastle fans reaction when they see a good tackle. 😳🔉

Inject it. 💉🫶

[Russ Cook @hardestgeezer]

138 days ago I began my attempt to become the first person ever to run the entire length of Africa.

Here is a list of some of the problems I’ve had to overcome to get to this point (I’m not even halfway):

• Day 1- Started the mission with less than 10% funding

• Day 5- Support van breakdown

• Day 14- Attempted robbery

• Day 17- Support van couldn’t cross the border. Solo into the desert

• Day 26- Food poisoning (multiple days)

• Day 35- Another attempted robbery

• Day 42- Started pissing blood (lasted 6 days)

• Day 64- Got robbed at gunpoint (passports, cameras, phones, money got taken)

• Day 74- Visas issues (had to travel 2000km backwards & pay a load of bribes to get it sorted)

• Day 89- Leg injury

• Day 103- Got stuck in a rural Congo village. Thought I was going to die.

• Day 107- Van needed fixing (10 days)

• Day 112- Restructure of the support team. Made 2 new hires.

• Day 120- Arranged purchase of new support vehicle

• Day 128- Foot injury

• Day 136- Support van crashed. Potentially a write off.

Throw in running daily ultra marathons and it has been quite the party out here so far. The message stays the same as always.

WE KEEP MOVING FORWARD. TILL THE END🫡

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@LNER can you please advise on situation from LDS to London KC? Trains keep delaying and then cancelling. Update says issue resolved between Retford & Doncaster?

[Vitality T20 Blast @VitalityBlast]

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING

BRAD CURRIE HAS JUST TAKEN THE BEST CATCH OF ALL TIME 🤯

#Blast23

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@OL 3-0 win at home vs Reims 💪🏻🇫🇷

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@OL 3-0 win at home 🇫🇷

[Callum Wilson @CallumWilson]

Can’t thank you all enough for the support at St James Park this season, through the ups & the downs!!

No better way to celebrate my 200th Premier League game than with Champions League qualification 🤩🤝🏽

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@fgenterria_9 ¡Guau!

He doesn’t back his boys to win it all 😉

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

@fgenterria_9 Don’t speak too soon, you have to beat Barca yet….

[John Amaechi OBE @JohnAmaechi]

I thoughts sports hated me. And worse, I thought you thought I hated sport.

But I don’t.

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay ("Good Will Hunting").

After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, & looked at the award.

As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought.

"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life...It can't fill you up. If that's a hole that you have, that won't fill it."

"My heart broke," Damon said. "I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, 'oh my god. where did my life go? What have I done?' And then it's over."

Takeaway 1:

Many successful, rich, famous, etc. people talk about chasing success, money, fame, etc., getting it, and realizing that it didn't feel like they thought it would. That it didn't, as Damon said, fill the hole they had.

One of my favorite analogies for this pattern comes from Sam Hinkie.

Hinkie was asked about what he's learned from reading Robert Caro's books—about some very successful, rich, famous, etc. people.

"I think of it like the Pacific Salmon," Hinkie said. "They spend their whole life making this journey upstream to spawn in this one spot. And as soon as they do, they die. That's largely what Caro shows you."

Takeaway 2:

Before he was a big-time comedian, Hasan Minhaj was asked if he thought he was going to become a big-time comedian.

“I don’t like that question,” he said. “I fundamentally don’t like that question.”

Because that question implies that he is only doing comedy as a means to some end (success, money, fame, etc.).

“No, no, no,” he said, “The set I get to do tonight at 7:20 PM is the win. I get to do comedy—I won. It being predicated on doing X or being bigger than Y—no, no, no. To me, it’s always just been about the work."

"The work is the win," as Ryan Holiday once told me.

- - -

"It's such a gift to be able to [do] something and to love it for the sake of it...I see people with talent, with all those things. But the one thing they don't have is just that love for doing it for the sake of it...So if there's anything, just find joy in what you do for the sake of it." — Rodney Mullen

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Newcastle United @NUFC]

Comfortable in possession. 👌

[Matthew Armstrong @MatthewA090]

All set for @Mallorca312 tomorrow 💪🏻