Beginnings are hard, but they are key to progress.

My first newsletter, plus I’ve just become a father. So there’s a bit of emotions surfacing here and there.

Apr 14, 2024

📝 Words: 1,272 | 🕰️ Estimated Reading time: about 6 mins

TL;DR

🎀 I’ve just become the father of a beautiful baby, Olivia.
📖 I’m launching a newsletter to help people grow their careers while also getting better at life. Why? Because I wished something like this existed already, and more importantly, I love doing the work to build it.
🔬 For this first issue, I chose the first scientific study I will be sharing with my daughter Olivia: The Harvard Study of Adult Development - the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever conducted.

Premise

This first release carries a personal touch, which I had not planned initially.

It is the first release, and I’ve just become a father. So there’s a bit of emotions surfacing here and there, but I think it’s ok. It will bring even more authenticity to the journey.

💎 “The beginning is the most important part of the work” 💎

A couple of thousands years ago, Plato knew it better.

For me, this beginning was long overdue, and I'll blame it on an old friend - procrastination.

I wanted to launch “Getting Better” a couple of months ago, but then I worked on other projects, got distracted, and put it aside for a bit.

At that time I had just left my corporate job and felt I had all the time in the world 🌍 I was coming from 6 years in which I was giving 120% to a company that I love.

It felt good to rest a bit and let my mind wander freely.

I am sometimes affected by - as my friend Ciccio calls it - D.O.T.E (i.e. Desire Of Trying Everything). Maybe you know how it goes:

You see someone do a podcast - you want to start your own.
You see someone building a Youtube channel - you want to grow yours as well.
You see someone putting his music on Spotify - you want to do it as well.

D.O.T.E. has a sneaky way of diverting your focus from what you really want, letting you ramble on many shiny things that aren't necessarily aligned with your goals.

In the end, you find yourself no differently than where you were before.

So yes, I was distracted by other projects, but I also allowed myself time for - as Ray Dalio puts it - “rest and renovation”, and understood that “Getting Better” was one of the few things that I was really passionate about.

So I told myself - just to buy me more time - it would have been perfect to launch “Getting Better” after the birth of my daughter.

And then Olivia arrived. And there were no more excuses.

So today I’m launching “Getting Better”, keeping my procrastinated promise.

What is “Getting Better”?

📖 I want it to be the go-to newsletter to grow your career and get better at life.
📝 I will write about frameworks, concepts, stories, ideas and academic research to get better at productivity, team management, negotiation, leadership, communication and strategy.
🎙️ I will also interview senior professionals to validate (or challenge) the theories I will write about, or just to get them share their stories.

That’s it.

I do believe beginnings are the hardest part.

However, some might say it’s the lack of consistency that really kills a project. And I also agree. I’ve seen it happening too many times.

But launching a new venture is like climbing a mountain ⛰️

Each step forward brings you closer to the summit, but if you’re stuck at the base and don’t start your climb, you’ll never reach the top.

So I have to begin somehow, otherwise I’ll be stuck at the base of the mountain.

💭 Becoming a father - initial thoughts 💭

My wife and I have forgotten what it's like to sleep for a solid 7-8 hours each night. Now I REALLY get why all the people told me to “sleep now while you can”. Too late 😀
Diaper changes - for me the learning curve was very steep up until the 30th change. After that I couldn’t get much quicker, unless I risk Olivia to slip through my arms and fall. I’m just a few days, I already passed that 30th change.
I’m much more conscious of my time, which has become way more precious.
I felt like someone flipped a switch1 when Olivia was born and I feel this sense of collective love and empathy towards every person, as I see them as someone else’s child. This feeling is counterbalanced by the immane sense of protection I now have for Olivia, which is stronger than any other feeling I have.
Chris Voss said that “when the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion - you fall to your highest level of preparation.” - I’m so glad I spent time learning stuff to be prepared for the birth and the days that followed it.

😃 The world’s longest study on happiness 😃

I have longed pondered over the first insight to share in “Getting Better” first release. I thought about it for quite some time, really.

But when my daughter was born the choice became pretty self-evident.

Given the connection I made between Olivia and this newsletter, I thought that the most immediate thing I wanted for Olivia was to be healthy, and right after that, for the longest time possible, happy (whatever happy means).

Well, there’s an Harvard study - which is the longest study on human lives that has ever been made - that is explaining what keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life.

Perfect. This one.

Started in 1938, the study tracked the lives of 724 men, asking questions about work, home lives, health, years after years.

The study’s fourth director, Robert Waldinger has expanded research also to the wives and children (over 2,000 children) of the original men, and to this day the study is still collecting data after 86 years.

And this is not even the craziest part.

In fact, some of the first participants have even donated their 🧠 brains 🧠 (yes, brains) for the Harvard Medical School to examine.

Joie de Vivre (Antipolis) - Pablo Picasso, 1946 [painted 8 years after the study began]

The study revealed that close relationships* - more than money or fame - are what keep people happy and healthy throughout their lives.

*Close relationships are not necessarily romantic ones. They could be intimate bonds with good friends, a sibling, or someone in your community.

Those relationships protect us from life’s troubles, help us to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.

Wow.

🧠 While waiting for the next set of insights of this multi-generational study, we can really think of 7 key learnings from this:

Relationship is all that matters - not fame, not wealth, not achievements.
Quality > Quantity. Even 1 or 2 deep connections is enough. Everyone should have at least one person to whom they feel securely attached to.
Loneliness slowly kills - health declines earlier, brain functioning declines sooner and lonely people live shorter lives.
Single, married, lots of friends - does not matter. What matters, again, is the quality of the relationship you are surrounded with.
We like a quick fix in life, but good relationships take time to nurture, cannot me measured (vs. wealth or achievements) and they take hard work.
Practice is key. To nurture relationships we must practice, just like a physical activity. Call it ‘social fitness’. We take relationships for granted, so we must force ourselves to be a little bit proactive: ask that friend for a walk, make that phone call, ask for a coffee or lunch with that co-worker.
It’s never too late to improve your happiness. Many people reported increasing their level of happiness late in life after taking concrete actions to improve it. It’s never too late.

Hope you like this first post.

See you next Sunday 🗓️

Thanks,

Giacomo

Research has indeed shown that when a man becomes a father for the first time, his testosterone levels drop and they never return to pre-birth levels. The reason is to motivate men to shift from mating, for which high testosterone is a bonus, to parenting. (source)