Week 13 of 2024 has arrived. You are so lucky. Do you feel it in your bones?

Time to walk over to your 4K Weeks poster and fill in another square. Done?

Words are wind. But often they are all that we have.

I want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and hug you and stutter and fall over all the words, to breathe into you how amazing and beautiful and lucky this all is.

The purpose of all of this memento mori talk is to remember to focus on living.  It's Da BEST! 

It's hard, and that's why it's special. Everywhere, in every way, the Universe is telling you to love the struggle.

Three things that are helping me feel human today:

First, the two songs linked in "read time". I can't listen to them without tearily loving humanity.

Second, a friend of a friend lost his wife and baby in childbirth this week. I can't imagine how lost I would feel if that were me.  Tell the people you love that you love them a few times today.  That will be one less thing to worry about if someone makes an early exit.

Third, last week my friend's kids found a squirrel writhing around on the ground, with some sort of spine injury that had immobilized its hind legs... It had been like that for 2 hours when they asked the adults for help. Mercy is hard to mete out, but part of making the most of life is pulling up your big boy pants.

Thanks for being here and reading. These emails help me "Sharpen The Saw" and hopefully help you to sharpen yours!

The 4K Weeks Brightsider... For the colorful among us.

The 4K Weeks Fade to Black - Memento Mori, Anyone?

The Original 4K Weeks... A Striking Visual of Your Life

Remarkable Weeks

Week  13 of 1961, Nelson Mandela was acquitted of treason in Pretoria following a 4.5-year trial. He was then arrested again for treason in 1961, and then for sabotage in 1964. He was convicted and then spent 27 years in jail. He was freed in 1990, and became his country's first black president. Imagine being in jail for 27 years. You can't. You can't even imagine it. He was 2,227.86 weeks old. (42.72 yrs) 

Week  13 of 1967, Jimi Hendrix, legendary electric rock guitarist, famously set his guitar (and his fingers) on fire at Finsbury Park Astoria theater in London. The guitar later sold at auction for almost $500,000. He was 1,270 weeks old. (24.35 yrs)

Week  13 of 2023,  Elon Musk, along with other important figures in Artificial Intelligence such as Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter cautioning that the competition to develop AI systems is getting out of hand. They requested a suspension of at least 6 months. The cat is out of the bag, The horse has left the barn... Rarely does the world get less complicated. He was 2,700.43 weeks old (51.78 yrs).

This Week's Quote

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you won't do anything with it. -M. Scott Peck

... and we are all counting on you to do something with it, so we are all counting on you to value yourself!

What I am Consuming This Week

Tim Ferriss Show, "#726 Hugh Howey"  The coolest part of this interview is when he talks about committing to writing for 10 years before he worried about publishing a book. Thats a plan.

Tim Ferriss Show, "#722 Cal Newport" Some pretty good tactics in here.

The Daily,  "It Sucks to be 33" The interesting part about this podcast isn't the "peak Millenial" talk... it's thinking about how each generation moves through their time span, expanding and/or contracting the economy.

The Daily, "The Miseducation of Google's A.I." There are choices that need to be made... hard choices.Not making them is also a choice.

Insta Nuggets:

• It's exhilarating... and essential.
• I don't know how I feel about this... but it is a fascinating and terrifying proposition.
• I want "walk the turtle" amounts of time.
• You are a standard of one.
• You are always becoming... 

What I am Thinking About This Week

Earnestness.

I am back to earnestness this week.  I have been thinking about it alot... like, why wouldn't you be unabashedly earnest about the things that really matter to you? If was going to write a book, it would be about this.

I played in a 3 on 3 basketball tournament this week.  It was a benefit for a group that helps inner city kids build character.

The founder is ALL in.  I mean 100% focused all the time on being excited about the mission and recruiting people to his cause. He's got a BIG smile, and can't wait to talk to you. It's a bit disarming.

I think the cynical exoskeleton that most of us had to develop to get through our teenage years makes us recoil a bit when face to face with a guy like that.

We don't love the reflection of us in the mirror of someone who unabashedly CARES so much... It's cool not to care...

Be earnest!  It's more vulnerable, but infinitely better for all of us, and one of the best ways to make the most of your 4000 weeks.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Have a great week!

Thanks for being a part of the journey with us! Please tell me if you liked/disliked the blog this week. Ask my wife... those are the only emails I like to get!

Spencer, Owner of 4KWeeks.com

Dad Joke O' The Week

Two this week!

Why can't you keep secrets in a bank?

There are too many tellers!

Dogs can’t operate MRI machines,

but cats-can.