Healthy Goals Can Compete, More Money Is A Terrible Tiebreaker, Advice Is Autobiography | FRLN 138

There is a difference between something being good and something being right for your life right now.

Strength training is good.

Pickleball is good.

But trying to maximize both at the same time can run my body into the ground.

A fascinating job in AI could be good.

Making another metric fuck ton of money could be good.

But not if the price is the freedom I spent years building.

Advice from brilliant friends and mentors is good.

But nobody else has to wake up and live with my decision.

Good things can still compete.

The question is not simply:

Is this good?

The better question is:

Does this fit the body, life, and season I am in right now?

That is the whole issue this week.

Let's dive in.

FIT — Healthy Goals Can Compete

I love strength training.

I also love pickleball.

The problem is that my body does not care that both are “healthy.”

Stress is stress.

5-6 hard strength sessions plus 5-7 days of pickleball does not automatically create 11 days' worth of progress. At some point, one healthy pursuit starts stealing from the other.

I have spent roughly the last 16 months learning that lesson through trial, error, exhaustion, soreness, poor performance, injury, and the many days when I did way too much and wondered why I felt like shit the next morning.

I think I have finally found my balance.

For more than a decade, I followed a 6-day push-pull-legs split:

Push.

Pull.

Legs.

Then repeat.

That worked when strength training was my primary athletic pursuit. But pickleball is no longer a casual side activity for me. I am usually on the court 5-7 days a week for a combined 11 to 20 hours, including 2-4 deliberate drilling sessions.

I cannot train like a full-time bodybuilder and play pickleball like a competitive athlete while pretending recovery is somebody else's problem.

So I changed the plan.

I now use a four-workout rotation:

• Two upper-body push days.

• Two upper-body pull days.

• One to three leg exercises inside each workout, with an emphasis on unilateral strength and durability — Bulgarian split squats, lateral lunges, calf raises, tibialis raises, and movements that strengthen my feet, ankles, Achilles tendons, and knees.

The biggest change is that I no longer force those four workouts into a 7-day calendar.

Sometimes I complete the rotation in 7 days.

Sometimes it takes 9-10.

The program serves my body. My body does not serve the calendar.

My new rule is simple:

Three strength sessions are the floor. The fourth is earned through recovery.

If I feel strong, energized, and coordinated, I do the fourth. If I played especially hard, slept poorly, or have a trail run or vigorous hike planned with my wife, I let the rotation breathe.

That felt crazy at first.

Going from 6 strength sessions to 3-4 triggered the part of me that still believes more work should produce more results. But right now I am maintaining a lean, muscular physique at around 159 pounds and roughly 7% body fat. My strength is continuing to improve. My pickleball game is getting better every week. And most importantly, I feel energetic instead of chronically depleted.

The goal is not to win the weekly workout-count competition.

The goal is to build a body that looks, feels, and performs the way I want.

I have also learned that training order matters.

If I am lifting and playing pickleball on the same day, I strength train first. If I play first, I will keep saying “one more game” until I have been on the court for three hours and the gym is no longer happening.

But even that rule needed a rule.

Heavy upper-body pull workouts involve weighted pull-ups, rows, and other demanding pulling movements. When I do one of those workouts and then immediately play competitive pickleball, my coordination and reflexes are just slightly off.

Slightly off is enough.

I miss shots I normally make. I lose games I believe I should win. Then I get frustrated because my brain expects my normal skill level while my nervous system is trying to tell me it has already done enough for the day.

So on heavy pull days, I can drill after lifting, but I do not play competitive games.

Drilling lets me work on shots, strategy, and weaknesses without needing cat-like reflexes on every point. A miss becomes useful feedback instead of something that pisses me off.

I have a similar rule for time with my wife.

I can strength train and go for a trail run or hard hike with her.

I can strength train and play pickleball.

But if I strength train, play several hours of pickleball, and then try to trail run with my wife, I am usually wrecked the next day. And I do not want to be the guy whining that he is too exhausted to run with his wife because he already spent four hours chasing a plastic ball around a concrete court.

That is not balance.

That is poor planning disguised as enthusiasm.

The final piece has been using the right equipment for the actual movement I am doing.

When I first started playing pickleball, I wore Nike running shoes. Running shoes are designed primarily for forward movement. Pickleball is full of lateral push-offs, sudden stops, pivots, and changes of direction.

My feet, ankles, knees, and lower back paid the price. My body was seriously fucked up playing pickleball in running shoes.

Switching to court shoes helped. But the first pair I used had a thick sole and a noticeable heel lift. Every time I pushed laterally, I could feel a tiny ankle roll. Nothing dramatic enough to cause an immediate injury, but enough to leave my ankles sore and eventually lead to me hurting my lower back twice and multiple ankle/achillies injuries over the span of 12 months.

I have now landed on the Xero X1 Low, a zero-drop basketball shoe with a wide toe box and a low-to-the-court feel. It gives me enough protection that I do not feel like I am bruising the bottoms of my feet, but it is thin and stable enough that I can feel the court underneath me.

My ankles feel dramatically better. My lower back has been golden.

The outsole has worn faster than I hoped, so the durability verdict is still out. But in terms of how my body feels and moves on the court, it has been the best match I have found so far.

I've been wearing Vivo Barefoot shoes for strength training for many years and now the X1s for pickleball. I wear Nike running shoes for road, trail, and hiking. Different activities. Different movement demands. Different tools.

Gear will never replace strength, skill, or intelligent programming.

But the wrong gear can create unnecessary friction, pain, and injury risk. The right gear lets the work you are already doing express itself.

If you fall in love with a sport, keep strength training.

Strength is one of the best forms of armor you can build. It can make you more powerful, durable, and resilient in almost every athletic pursuit.

Just remember: you cannot maximize everything at once.

Your motivation may be unlimited.

Your recovery capacity is not.

RICH — More Money Is A Terrible Tiebreaker

I wrote recently about defining enough.

Here is the uncomfortable sequel:

Even after you have enough, more can still be incredibly seductive.

I am still noodling on whether I should accept a sales opportunity at a new AI and blockchain company started by a close friend and Founder/CEO I worked with for a decade.

The opportunity checks a lot of boxes.

I am fascinated by AI. I have loved technology since I was a kid building computers. I use multiple AI models every day to create content, think through ideas, improve my newsletter, produce my podcast, and work on personal projects.

I am a techno-optimist. I believe technology has improved billions of lives and that AI will create extraordinary new tools, companies, and possibilities for humankind.

There is also a part of me that misses being in the mix.

During my decade in tech sales, I had a front-row seat to some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. I visited OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) when it had fewer than 30 employees. I watched Lyft grow from roughly 200 employees when we first signed them to more than 10,000. I loved helping emerging companies grow, being the top salesperson, and seeing what was being built before the rest of the world knew it existed.

This new opportunity could put me back inside that energy.

It could also pay me somewhere between a few hundred thousand dollars and potentially more than $1 million a year if everything goes well.

And yet, more money would not meaningfully change the way I live.

Yes, I could buy a nicer house.

I could easily replace my 2012 Toyota Prius with a fancy new Tesla without a second thought.

I could watch my net worth climb faster.

But none of that would improve my Tuesday afternoon more than the freedom I already have.

For the last 2.5 years, I have had an enormous amount of white space on my calendar. I write this newsletter. I host my podcast. I create content. I work with a small group of coaching clients. Most weeks, that adds up to roughly 5-15 hours of work.

The rest of my time belongs to me.

I strength train.

I play pickleball.

I spend time with my wife and friends.

I commune with nature.

I follow my curiosity.

I leave room for life to happen without first checking whether it fits between meetings.

That white space may be the most valuable thing I own.

So I have been asking myself a dramatic question:

If I knew I were going to die in 5 years, would I take the job?

The answer is no.

If I knew I had one year, the answer would be even more obvious. I would keep writing. I would keep podcasting. I would keep creating. I would play pickleball, lift weights, spend time with the people I love, and protect as much open space as possible.

But the deathbed test has a flaw.

I probably do not have only one year or five years.

I am 44, healthy, and statistically likely to have decades ahead of me. A decision that makes no sense inside a 5-year life could still create skills, relationships, experiences, and opportunities that make the next 30 years more interesting.

If you used the one-year test for everything, you might never build a business, write a book, master a difficult skill, or plant a tree whose shade you will not enjoy for a long time.

Urgency clarifies.

But it can also distort.

The more useful questions for me are becoming:

• If the compensation were merely good instead of extraordinary, would I still want the work?

• Does this opportunity expand my life, or does it mostly expand my net worth?

• What parts of my current life would have to shrink to make room for it?

• Can I protect the newsletter, podcast, health, marriage, friendships, and white space that matter most to me?

• Would I regret trying it more than I would regret never finding out?

That last question matters.

I may need to try the job for a defined season before I can know whether it fits this version of my life. Financial independence gives me the freedom to experiment without becoming trapped. I can say yes without signing away the next decade. If the work energizes me, challenges me, and fits alongside the life I love, amazing. If it begins consuming the very freedom it was supposed to complement, I can leave.

Of course, that is easier to say than do.

I am loyal. I care deeply about performing. If I commit, I will want to win. I know how quickly “I can leave whenever I want” can become “I cannot leave until I finish this launch, close this deal, or hit this target.”

That is why I cannot let the money make the decision for me.

Money mattered enormously when I was $80,000 in debt, behind on taxes, and had ruined my credit.

Money mattered when I was trying to become a millionaire and buy back my time.

Money still matters now.

But after enough, money should become one factor in the decision — not the tiebreaker.

The privilege of financial independence is not that I never have to work again.

It is that work has to earn its place in my life.

LIFE — Advice Is Autobiography

I am an external processor.

Sometimes I do not know exactly what I think until I hear myself say it out loud.

I sound out and triangulate my thoughts by weighing them against the ideas of people I respect and admire. And because this job decision sits at the intersection of money, purpose, identity, freedom, friendship, and ambition, I have been talking about it with some of the brightest friends and mentors I know.

What has fascinated me is not merely how different their advice has been.

It is how perfectly their advice reflects the lives they have lived.

JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth and one of my closest mentors, spent most of his career in sales. He enjoyed working, navigated multiple periods of unemployment, and returned to his career even after one stretch of roughly five years away.

His advice was clear:

Take the job. Make it your number-one priority for a year and see what happens.

My immediate reaction was equally clear:

There is no realistic scenario where the job becomes a higher priority than my newsletter and podcast. These are not side projects I tolerate until something better comes along. They are my passion. They are the work I would pay to do.

Then I spoke with Tim (another one of my closest friends & mentors), a highly successful real estate entrepreneur who just turned 60.

His first response was immediate:

“You should absolutely take it. AI is an incredible opportunity.”

So I turned the question around.

“Tim, if this required you to work for somebody else instead of building your own business, would you take it?”

He answered just as quickly:

“No.”

Then there is my good friend Chad Carson, author of The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor. Chad understands how much I value the life I have built because he has designed his life around many of the same principles: financial independence, entrepreneurship, mini-retirements, family, and control over his time.

Chad once received an opportunity to help a successful entrepreneur build high-end hotels across the country. The money was almost too good to turn down. The project was exciting. Part of him wanted it.

He turned it down.

He realized he would be dedicating some of the best years of his life to building somebody else's dream instead of his own.

JL is not wrong.

Tim is not wrong.

Chad is not wrong.

They are each giving me a view from the road they traveled.

That is what advice is.

Advice is autobiography disguised as instruction.

Our guidance is shaped by the era we grew up in, the risks we took, the opportunities we missed, the pain we survived, the choices we are proud of, and the life we built as a result.

Older generations were often taught that work was a central pillar of identity, duty, and meaning. Many people in my generation were taught to question the corporation, prioritize flexibility, and design life around freedom. The financial independence movement pushed that idea even further: build enough wealth that paid employment becomes optional, then use that freedom deliberately.

None of those frameworks is universally right.

They are lenses.

The danger is mistaking somebody else's lens for your answer.

There is one person I have almost been afraid to ask about the job: my dad.

Part of me worries he will tell me to take it.

And part of me knows how hard it can still be, even at 44 years old, to resist doing something that might impress my father.

That is uncomfortable to admit.

But it is also useful information.

Wanting my dad to feel proud of me does not automatically make taking the job wrong. Wanting to make more money does not make it wrong. Missing the excitement and status I had in tech does not make it wrong.

I just need to know which part of me is voting.

Is it curiosity?

Service?

Growth?

Friendship?

Ambition?

Fear of missing out?

The old identity that still wants to prove something?

The kid who wants his dad to be impressed?

The purpose of seeking advice is not to collect enough votes that somebody else makes the decision for you.

It is to uncover the questions, assumptions, blind spots, and desires that you could not see alone.

Borrow people's wisdom.

Do not borrow their life.

Eventually, you have to stop polling the room and decide what fits the person you are becoming.

I am still in the middle of that process.

And apparently, I am now externally processing it with several thousand of you.

So if you see an angle I am missing, reply and tell me. I genuinely want to hear it.

ACTION — Run The Fit Test

Do not try to maximize everything.

Make the pieces fit.

FIT — Set a floor and let recovery earn the bonus.

Choose the minimum weekly dose that reliably moves you forward. Then make every additional session dependent on your energy, performance, sleep, soreness, and the rest of your life. Your plan should be strong enough to create progress and flexible enough to survive reality.

RICH — Calculate the opportunity cost in life, not only money.

Finish these sentences:

• More money would meaningfully improve my life by ______.

• Saying yes would require me to give up or reduce ______.

• This opportunity would still interest me if it paid less because ______.

• I could test it without becoming trapped by ______.

LIFE — Ask what shaped the advice.

The next time somebody tells you what you “should” do, ask:

What about their life makes this answer make sense to them?

Then ask yourself:

Whose approval am I hoping this decision will earn?

Something can be healthy and still be too much.

Something can be lucrative and still make your life poorer.

Somebody can be brilliant and still not know what is right for you.

Do not build the most impressive life on paper.

Build the life that fits.

Your body.

Your values.

Your season.

To your health, wealth, and happiness,

— Justin David Carl

P.S. I really mean it: What would you do with this job opportunity, and what do you think I am not seeing? Hit reply and tell me. Some of my best ideas begin as conversations with smart people who see the world differently.