As the clock resets and 2025 begins its orbit, I’m drawn to reflect on the science of decision-making and its profound influence—not just on my personal life, but also on the strategic trajectory of my company.
This past year was a crucible of learning and evolution, defined by a deliberate focus on frameworks that challenge conventional approaches to setting and achieving goals, both personally and professionally.
In 2024, I approached goal-setting with the precision of a meticulously crafted battle plan. Yet, as any seasoned strategist knows, the map is not the territory.
The journey revealed both endogenous and exogenous variability, shaped by improbability and catastrophic tail risks, but also brought forth unexpected insights and critical opportunities for recalibration.
And that is precisely where 2025 begins: at the intersection of reflection and recalibration.
The big lesson from last year was simple yet profound—writing down goals isn’t just about declaring intent. It’s a mechanism for sharpening focus, mapping possibilities, and creating flexibility for adaptation.
In this way, goal-setting becomes more than a plan; it evolves into a tool for charting potential paths and navigating uncertainty while staying ready to pivot as challenges and opportunities arise.
But looking back on the progress and lessons of 2024, I realized something even more important: success isn’t just about clarity or adaptability—it’s about courage.
Specifically, the courage to escape the gravitational pull of mediocrity and push toward the extremes.
True breakthroughs don’t happen in the middle where it’s safe; they’re forged at the edges, where bold decisions clash with calculated risks. It’s at the extremes that success truly thrives.
And while clarity in decision-making sets the foundation, it’s the choices we make—the crazy ones that push boundaries—that determine whether we live a life of meaning or sink into mediocrity.
If 2024 taught me anything, it’s this: playing it safe is a trap.
In every dimension of life—love, happiness, socializing, investing, diet, exercise, etcetera—the extremes are where the magic happens.
The middle? That’s where dreams go to die. It’s the domain of predictability and comfort masquerading as progress.
The middle is thinking Audi and Rolex are nice.
It’s waiting in line to get into the Centurion lounge, or flexing a Ritz-Carlton stay on your Instagram story as “luxury goals”.
It’s all very tedious, predictable, and painfully ordinary.
I’ve seen this play out in my own life.
I grew up in a tiny Maryland crab town but have traveled and lived in many places all over the world.
A Michelin-starred meal at my favorite restaurant in Italy can be an experience that is, by definition, worth traveling out of your way for. But so can a $2 dinner at a street market in Thailand with your best bros.
Walking through Rome’s ancient ruins or standing under the Northern Lights can change your life, but so can camping in the woods. The trees don’t give a shit about your résumé or your verified checkmark.
So, skip the pretense and poser bullshit. Drink your whiskey from a mason jar. Take a spontaneous trip to a new city with no plan, take just your phone and an open mind.
You can obsess over biohacking, analyzing charts, meticulously monitoring every molecule in your body with the latest tech gizmo—and at the same time, you can lean into the basic primal habits that have sustained our species for millennia: walking barefoot on the earth, breathing fresh air, and watching the sunrise in the morning.
The same goes for the gym. You don’t need high-tech equipment or a towel drenched in eucalyptus to get jacked and tan. A set of dumbbells, a sandbag, or even chopping wood will build your strength (and your character) better than any trendy workout at a fancy gym.
The modern fitness industry is full of pretenders and fluff.
Equinox? Mid.
Socializing follows the same principle. A brunch with Ivy League VCs or techno CEOs is often vapid and self-serving compared to beer and wings at a Clemson tailgate with roughnecks and rednecks.
Investing is no different. Keep it simple with a handful of long-term, high-conviction bets you actually know, understand, and believe in. Then, at the other extreme, take calculated risks on a few 10-50x moonshots: real estate, metals, startups, crypto, derivatives, whatever. These don’t just offer potential outsized returns, they can put you in rooms where the conversations expand your thinking and open doors you never saw coming.
Life doesn’t happen in the overly engineered middle.
The real opportunities—the asymmetric returns—are found at the edges, where bold simplicity and thoughtful risk converge.
This isn’t just a personal philosophy—it’s universal—and I’m using it as a guiding principle for the goals I’m setting for myself and Deimos-One in 2025. Success, whether personal or organizational, demands that we seek out the edges and avoid the comfort of the center. The edges are where asymmetric returns hide, in business and in life.
So, if 2024 was about clearing the fog of war, 2025 is about pressing forward with conviction. It’s not just about setting goals—it’s about making them real.
This year, I’m fully leaning into the transformative chaos and raw beauty that only the edges can offer.
This is where the leaders and winners operate, and it’s exactly where I intend to be.
In this context, here are my resolutions/goals for 2025:
- Less theory, more application.
- Attack discomfort (more than ever before).
- Reject normality.
- Continue the relentless pursuit of truth.
- Pursue noble adventures and generational missions.
- Build a hedge of protection against everyday fads and viruses of the mind.
- Keep building habits based on courage and inventive reason.
- Spread knowledge in a humble way, avoid appearing arrogant/superior/rigid.
- No online arguments. No arguing with idiots.
- Maintain intellectual flexibility/keep an open mind: In 2024, I adopted life-altering positions previously thought absurd, like “reality is a consciousness-driven simulation, guided by higher-dimensional beings who maintain its structure and flow.”
- Prioritize the exception: abstraction, reasoning, and deduction (skills that transcend routine tasks and data synthesis).
- Work hard on the core (data, facts, figures, equations) so I can be exceptional at the exception.
- Experiment with extreme simplicity: spend a month in a minimalist environment, a cabin in the woods, a single bag, and no “comfort clutter.” Focus on essentials only.
- Keep exercise simple: Sweat daily. Walk. Sprint. Lift heavy. Play games.
- Keep life simple: Live off the land. Sit by fires. Build things with my hands. Grow/preserve my own food.
- Keep optimization simple: Get sunlight. Stargaze. Deep sleep. Meditate.
- Keep nutrition simple: Eat steak. Eat veggies. Don’t eat fake shit.
- Minimize/eliminate consumption of sugar, alcohol, seed oils, processed food, sodium nitrates, factory farmed proteins, and exposure to toxic air, heavy metals, and microplastics.
- Minimize/eliminate the consumption of all mainstream media, limited to only a surface-level awareness of the themes driving conversations in echo chambers.
- Get prepared for political, social, and economic turmoil, even if it is a low probability event. Buy land and guns.
- Diversify cash flow with hard assets (gold/silver/etc.) and brick and mortar—the anti-fiat hedge fund.
- Embody the warrior-scholar ideal: Study the combat arts, engage in meaningful intellectual and creative pursuits, and live a life guided by moral excellence and artistic appreciation.
- Be kinder, even when a situation calls for anger or brashness—just not all the time; never shy away from truth; calling it as it is remains a moral duty.
- Be a better person to a smaller group of true friends. It’s so obvious, but people seem to forget: your friends are your choice.
- Rediscover handwritten communication: Write letters to a few close friends. Analog helps build stronger connections.
- Test the limits of my comfort zone: Try something I’m convinced I’ll hate—spend a month living off-grid with no modern conveniences, sourcing food and water entirely from the environment, a multi-day polar trek in extreme cold with minimal gear, or fasting for 72 hours. I’ll find out who I really am when it gets hard.
- Master a new skill that will last a lifetime: (this will likely be a combo of advanced mathematics, quantum computing, AI/ML, and energy).
- Optimize my temporal discounting horizon and shift my perspective beyond immediate concerns to a multi-century mindset.
- Embrace the role of a futurist architect, designing systems that advance technology and society that transcend human lifespans.
- Recalibrate/adapt/adjust when needed. Never cling to theory and ideas that no longer work.
So, what are your edges for 2025? Let me know on X. Let’s push the boundaries together.