Welcome back to another letter. Sorry this ones late. Been a long / active day and had to get out early.
This morning I went to this thing called a Bris - which is a Jewish ceremony for the circumcision of a baby.
Honestly, yes, it's really quite bizarre.
I've never to one, and it’s pretty shocking.
I grew up Jewish, but there were only like 4 Jewish people in my whole grade at school, and obviously when I was a kid, people weren't really having a lot of babies.
But now I'm out in LA, there’s a lot more jews out here, and my girlfriend Chloe has like 22 cousins all in marriage / baby making age.
The idea of this ceremony is “the first mitzvah”, where you basically merge the soul of the baby with God… or something like that. Some kind of honoring and cleansing of sorts.
But anyway, it's Sunday.
I'm sitting here next to Chloe as I write this, and we were just looking at a bunch of the testimonials that have come through over the years from Maxi-which is now the 8AM app.
It's pretty cool to see the impact that this tool has had.
And I'm just very much looking forward to bringing this impact to more and more people.
A few hours ago when we got home from the ceremony thing, it was one of those late afternoons where I was feeling a bit tired.
The type of tired feeling where you sort of think you're physically exhausted, but it's more of a lethargy where you're not actually tired. It's almost like you've tricked yourself into being tired just because you've had a lot of mental stimulus.
Like this morning, I met a lot of people and had a new experience.
One mental note that I always tell myself in situations like this: you always feel better after you exercise.
The rush of endorphins takes you out of that lethargic state-pushing past your mental tiredness. So instead of letting the feeling get the best of me I decided to go on a hike. And sure enough I came back way more energized.
The main topic I want to go into today is the idea of becoming a polymath - aka a person with a wide range of knowledge… and what that does for you.
When I was in college, I was very obsessed with learning. Of course, that’s why people send their kids to college - toget a well-rounded education-life, philosophy, religion, politics.
Most people hate on college because you aren’t learning ‘direct’ make money skills. But you do learn a little about a lot of things, an you learn how to critically think.
And you know, there’s a reason if you think about it, why the wealthy people of the world send their kids to college - despite so many guru’s claiming to you that college is a scam.
Will come back to that point.
Anyway - in the last several months, I've really taken back the reins again on my personal education.
I think from maybe 24 to 28, I wasn't as diligent about widening my intellectual capacities.
But in the past several months, I've really made a huge effort.
I made a book list - About 100 books comprised of basically the best, most notable books of all time.
I did the same thing a few years back with movies, where I decided to make a list and watch the hundred most critically acclaimed films of all time.
And if you really look at your life on a time horizon-you see how much time you have to spend reading books or watching films-it makes you value a lot more what you actually give your time to.
Because you don't have that much time compared to how much has been written.
So you might as well spend it reading and consuming the most high-IQ, high-level, mastery-level works that exist.
That's something I make an effort to do.
And what I've been noticing is this:
In comparison to phases in my life where I've read purely business books or self-development, when you take a more well-rounded approach to reading, I have found that you actually get better results in the macro.
Right now, I'm reading a lot of history, statistics, political ideology, design ideology.
These have nothing to do with making money directly.
But what I've found is that in my business, I'm getting a lot more well-developed ideas.
That's the term: well-developed.
We get lost thinking we can just buy an online course that tells us a formula for what to say in a video, how to dress, what should lead to conversions...
But we forget that being overall educated as a thinker-understanding principles of design as a meta-frame for approaching any work project-leads to a well-developed way of doing things in business.
This is something I'm leading all the guys in my 8AM World community on.
We meet every Monday, and I've shared my book list with all the members.
We're aiming to read at least 50 books each from this list across the next year.
So that when we get to Uluwatu in October 2026 (a week long experience i’m hosting on a 200ft cliff with monks & 70+ creatives & entrepreneurs), we'll all have well-developed stances on various topics and be able to debate with each other across a range of sophisticated subjects.
If you'd like to check out what I'm putting together in Uluwatu in 2026, go to www.8amapp.com/uluwatu.
You can apply at that link, and then just shoot me a message on Instagram once you've done that.
That's my message for today.
I hope you enjoyed.
Go get out into nature this week…
I'll see you tomorrow!
- Arlin
ps - stream the new track this week
