Who am I?
I love systems. I love self-growth. I'm fascinated by what happens at the intersection of those two — using technology to be the person I want to be, not just to do more things faster.
That sounds abstract until you see how it plays out in my actual life. So let me show you.
The brain I built for myself
I run an operating system on myself. In Notion. It has four layers:
Values — audited from scratch in February 2026 over a silent retreat in Karekare, New Zealand. Ten of them, ranked in real hierarchy order: Growth, Excellence, Stillness, Status, Reputation, Relationships, Order, Health, Legacy, Adventure. I revisit and re-audit every two months. The hierarchy is what I actually live by, not what I claim. The gap between the two is where the real work happens.
Beliefs — nine operating principles I've been refining for years. The first is "I am the luckiest man alive." I genuinely believe this. If I look at it through the lens of probability, the chance of any of this — being born, being conscious, being here on a Tuesday afternoon writing this — is so vanishingly small that the only honest response is gratitude. The mind isn't built to grasp numbers that large. So instead of trying, I just say thank you.
Mission statement — what I'm orienting toward and what I'm not. Updated quarterly. Forces me to name what I'm trying to drop, not just what I'm trying to add.
Personality assessments — Big Five, MBTI (INTJ), Enneagram (5w4), DISC, Kolbe. Not because I think the labels are the truth, but because triangulating across five different lenses helps surface blind spots no single test would catch.
The point of all of this: I have a feedback loop on myself. The system mirrors my behaviour back in raw numbers — time tracked in 15-minute increments, weekly reflections, monthly accountability synthesis — and asks the hardest question it can ask, grounded in my values and beliefs. The system doesn't ask why. The system reports what.
I cannot hide from it. That's the point.
This is the same architecture I install in companies. The names change — business summary, decision-making process, departmental dashboards, Decision Engine — but the principle is identical: externalise the pattern recognition, log every decision, run a feedback loop, let truth compound.
If I believe in the system, I run it on myself first. If I won't bet on it for me, I won't bet on it for you.
How I actually spend my time
"Habits change into character." — Ovid
Every day, I log:
- Whether I worked out
- Steps walked
- Minutes still (meditation)
- Whether I listened to my audiobook
- Whether I read my book
- Flashcards done
- Caffeine intake
- Caloric intake
- Weight
- Mood (1–10)
- Journal entry
Plus weekly: one long run up to 18 miles, three books in progress (usually one spiritual, one business, one science), every working hour tracked in 15-minute increments.
The dashboard mirrors all of it back to me weekly — rolling 7-day and 30-day averages, mood graphs, weight trends, percentage adherence on each habit. Last 7 days: 83.3% stillness adherence, 8.2 mood average, 172.4 lbs. Last 30 days: 92.9% stillness, 8.1 mood, 171.5 lbs.
I track these because what doesn't get reviewed degrades. Drift gets named. Patterns get surfaced. The system reports what. It doesn't ask why. That's my job.
The system carries me — there is no choice, because it's the system.
What I'm orienting toward
To drop the self — honestly, continuously, through stillness and inner work — so that what grows in its place is the real me: the awareness behind the eyes, not the story.
To exercise my gifts fully in the process: building systems, building teams, growing internally. To transmit what I learn by being it, not by teaching it.
To do all of this in service of reducing suffering and elevating others — because self-referential effort burns up, but growth in pursuit of meaning lights me the fuck up.
High involvement. Low attachment. Truth over ego. Walk by faith, not by sight.
I'm here to help the good guys win.
And on a lighter note
I love being outside. Trail runs in the Santa Monica Mountains, long walks at sunset, getting into the ocean as often as I can. The nature time isn't part of the system — it's the thing the system makes room for.
If I'm not at my desk, I'm probably moving through somewhere green. That's where most of the actual thinking happens anyway.
History — Still Life
My first business was Still Life, which I ran for six years.
A purpose-driven community using Stillness to learn, evolve, and build a better world together. We had a beautiful space on Abbot Kinney in Venice centred around the practice of Stillness. We hosted 600+ events, ran 6-month programs, launched a clinically-validated app, worked with executive teams.
We never fully recovered from signing a five-year lease three weeks before COVID. The space is closed. The work continues — I still co-host the podcast with my co-founder Jim, who's the closest thing to a real teacher I've had.
What I took from Still Life: stillness is not decorative. Anyone who's spent 10,000 hours meditating will probably tell you the same thing. For me, introspection and ruthless self-enquiry has released me from my frailties, instilled a burning sense of passion, and made me feel like the luckiest man alive.
Everything I do downstream — the systems work, the AI infrastructure, the operator engagements — runs on that substrate.
Before Still Life
Rugby School, England (graduated 2013). The sport is named after the school. The school is named after the town. Met some of the best people in my life there.
UCLA, Psychobiology (graduated 2017). Started pre-med, switched paths to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience as it dawned on me that the deep experiences I was having with meditation helped me identify the destructive patterns that lead to illness in the first place.
Healthy Mind Lab, Washington University School of Medicine (2018). Conducted research analysis. Then decided not to pursue the PhD at USC Dornsife, because I realised people don't change their minds from reading white papers — they change from direct experience. Teaming up with Spencer and Jim meant I could help people feel stillness instead of just read about it. That was the genesis of Still Life.
What you should know about how I work
"Self-referential effort burns up, but growth in pursuit of meaning lights me the fuck up."
I commit fully or not at all. I think in frameworks and have low tolerance for inefficiency. I push back when I disagree, including with the people who hire me — especially with the people who hire me. I don't optimise for being liked; I optimise for being useful.
I'm INTJ, 5w4. If you want to know what that actually means in practice rather than in personality-test terms: I'll go deep before I go wide, I'll trust logic over consensus, I'll work alone in long stretches, and I'll show up specifically when the work demands it.
The thing I'm most allergic to is performed humility. The thing I'm most committed to is truth.
I'm here to help the good guys win.