Hey Reader, greetings from Burning Man!

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What do you want to do before you die?

In 2018, I published a list of 110 things I want to do before I die. It was incredibly energizing to get creative and dream up all of the awesome activities that I could do across different domains in life.

I did a mini version of this exercise a few weeks ago by spending 20 minutes answering the question: What are some fun things I want to do over the next 5 years? Here's some of what emerged:

• Spend 30 days at a monastery
• Drink wine in the French countryside
• Hike in Patagonia
• Publish a good book (or two)
• Volunteer regularly to support disadvantaged youth
• Visit the Bolivian salt flats
• Surf in Hawaii, Brazil, South Africa, Costa Rica + more places
• Do a 7-day silent meditation
• Work on a farm for 30 days
• Spend a month in Japan
• Visit more of Asia (Vietnam, Taiwan) + revisit Thailand + Bali
• Live van life up the Cali coast
• Get a dog

If you're feeling stuck or just want to get dreamy when you have some free time, take a few minutes to create your own list. It's especially fun if you do it with a partner or a friend who can join you for some of the activities.

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Expanding Your World of Friends

College is a particularly ripe time for making lifelong friends. Friendship is formed in shared experiences, and in college, you have lots of free time to hang out, try new things, and explore life with new people.

But once you graduate, life gets busy, and you're forced to deal with the tradeoff between meeting new people and spending time with the people you know that you enjoy. At this stage, many people opt into a "no new friends" mindset and stay within the comfortable bounds of the friends they made early in life.

There's certainly nothing wrong with maximizing time with the good friends you already have, but I've always felt that the "no new friends" strategy is a suboptimal way of thinking about relationships. Life is long, and as your interests, goals, and needs change, it's often beneficial to expand your group of friends to align with "the new you."

The problem is that making new friends as an adult is not so easy. You have to really put yourself out there and be willing to invest time in the shared experiences that create friendships. This process also requires you to spend time with many people who may not ultimately make it into your inner circle, which means less time for the people you do like.

There are many ways to make new friends, but the best ones often involve meeting people with shared interests, problems, or goals. When you're a new parent, you'll likely find a lot of common ground with other people who also just had babies. If you enjoy playing soccer, joining a recreational league may be a great place to make friends. Or if you're starting a business, perhaps you'll find people in an entrepreneurship group.

Over the last few years, I was surprised to discover that attending conferences is another great way to make friends. An earlier version of me stayed away from conferences, as I thought they were boring networking events for adults who wanted to escape their lives for a few days and get drunk or for scheming people who wanted to have trite networking conversations.

But that earlier version of me was misguided. I've found that if you choose the right conferences and invest time in making a few deeper connections (instead of trying to meet everyone), you can pretty easily form new friendships with great people who you would not have met otherwise.

By spending time at events focused on connecting creators, writers, and founders (my general career focus), I've added a few good friends to my roster and many other people who I would happily spend time with if we found ourselves in the same place. These friendships have certainly enhanced my life and have not required me to spend less time with my longer-term friends from college and other places.

These experiences have also made me much more optimistic that conferences and other in-person events are a reliable way to make new friends, and I'll continue looking for these types of events as life unfolds.

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Using Money to Say No

On the My First Million Podcast, hosts Sam and Shaan had an interesting discussion about how having more money is particularly valuable for giving you the freedom to say no to things you may not want to do.

What you can say no to changes as you reach various levels of wealth. For example, when you have $5k in savings, you may be able to say no to making coffee at home and instead buy $6 lattes at good coffee shops whenever you want. When you have $100k in savings, you may be able to leave a job with a manager you don't like and take a few months off to find a job that's a better fit for you.

While I'm not particularly interested in chasing wealth, I think this is a good way to think about the value of increasing your net worth. It's not so that you can buy fancy things that don't improve the quality of your life, but rather so that you can say no to the things that really drain you.

From their discussion, here's a sample of what various ladders of wealth may give you the freedom to say no to:

• $5k: Say no to cooking every meal at home.
• $25k: Say no to taking a job you don't want.
• $100k: Say no to a manager you don't like.
• $500k: Say no to working for a few years.
• $3M: Say no to living in only one place.
• $10M: Say no to working at all.
• $50M: Say no to any inconvenience that money can solve.
• $100M+: Say no to the established norms of society.

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Thanks for tuning in, and see you in two weeks.

Cheers,

Cal