Field notes

The Test You Set by Going Quiet

Sometimes I get lonely during the holidays, no matter how many loving friends or family that I have around me. That loneliness…

The Trap Door Ambitious Engineers Fall Through

There is a secret trapdoor that ambitious engineers fall through that ends up ruining their year. I want to explain it through…

Planning Next Year From the Hot Tub

There is no such thing as a clean slate. I could theoretically start an entirely new life in a new place with new people, and I…

Keeping Every Promise Except the Ones to Yourself

I could not believe my ability to honor commitments to other people, but make next to no progress on my own goals. There is no…

Sacrifice the Exciting Day to Actually Have One

One of my greatest feelings of disappointment in myself came from moments at the end of the day when I would look back. I would…

The Last Blow Is Always Your Own

I had just pulled money out of my savings account to pay my rent. My relationship was ending. I was overweight, half from fat and…

Trying Harder Doesn't Work When You're Overwhelmed

Stop trying to force yourself to work harder when you are struggling. Here is how to end the year with excellence instead. Many…

Building in the Shadows Until You're Worthy

The reason that I fell behind in life was because I was ashamed and insecure about how much I had actually accomplished. So I…

Your Best Focus Isn't at the Coffee Shop

Hot take: If you think that your greatest focus comes from being at a coffee shop, it's either because You're lying to yourself…

Sick in Bed and Still Feeling Behind

My New Year's kiss a couple years ago was with a bottle of NyQuil. It was the beginning of January and I was extremely sick. 🤒…

You Feel Behind Because Your Tabs Are Open

My failed or unfinished project number 477… I started this basically failed blog in university. It was called Trying to Tech, and…

Trying Really Hard Is Not a System

Trying really hard is what led me to fail my first organic chemistry test in university. And also what led me to spin my wheels…

The Books You Tell People You're Reading

I used to lie to people about the books I was reading. Because I didn't want to tell people I was wasting my time. Now… I…

A Free Afternoon in the Lab, Spent Scrolling

I was in my work laboratory in my full regalia… goggles, full lab coat, booties, double gloves, making this solution called…

Not Moving Fast Enough to Trust Yourself

I used to scroll my life away playing video games and on social media… and now I spend 10 to 12 hours a day pursuing my dreams…

Why You're Not Back To Baseline Yet

I ended up drawing this one on camera because it's easier to see than to say. You have a baseline of acting in a way you're proud…

Staying Consistent When Your Capacity Drops

The past six weeks have been one of the deeper emotional holes I've been in in five or six years, a handful of areas of my life…

Six Moves For The Day You Scrolled Again

I figure I lost around 10,000 hours to doom scrolling in my teen years, and the math isn't exotic, two to two and a half hours a…

The Fear Under Every Project You Never Shipped

I sat on my front stoop in San Diego for about an hour and a half watching the palm trees turn into silhouettes, drinking a…

The Tab You Open When It Gets Quiet

Airbnb is blocked on all my devices, and not because there's anything wrong with Airbnb. The first time I remember being uneasy…

Your Scrolling Is Protecting You From Choosing

My scrolling was protecting me from something, and it took me a long time to see what. I studied electrical engineering, worked…

Overwhelm Isn't Something You Wait Out

I can still see the study hall down the hall from my freshman dorm, sun coming up, Bound 2 by Kanye in my ears, a physics exam…

Stop Avoiding And You Earn Real Anxiety

For years I sucked my stomach in so I'd look thinner, even as a competitive soccer player at low teens body fat, and I spent…

Small Silly Actions Beat Your Endless Research

I've got a cup here with the iAlign filter drawn on it in sharpie. I made it in a cafe in 2023 when a friend asked what I was…

Ask For Help Years Before You Think You Should

I wish I learned this lesson at an earlier age, ' cause I think it would've saved me so much more time. Not even just so much…

That Best Years Line Is Just Giving Up

A friend of mine looked me in the eyes in our fraternity house in college and told me these are going to be the best years of our…

Abandon The Circle You're Standing In

It was a Sunday night and I was reading Circles, one of my favorite essays by my favorite philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I…

Helping 1 Billion People Make One Value-Based Decision a Day

I was having a cozy Friday morning reading my 2030 vision statement for iAlign, and instead of just reading it to myself I put it…

You Didn't Regress, You Changed Lanes

Is up. Flint from iAlign here. Kind of a late night Kind of a late night, uh, kind of a late night post here wrapping up work. I…

Why Is It So Hard To Quit Procrastination and Overthinking?

You know exactly what you should be doing. You could probably explain the path out better than the people who study it. And…

Is It A Character Flaw Or Missing Tools?

The reframe that changed my life was this one. Procrastinating, overthinking, scrolling my phone, those aren't character flaws…

Why Ambitious, Competent Engineers Keep Starting Over And How To Start Actually Following Through

one of the main reasons why you choose consumptive behaviors like scrolling your phone or shiny new objects instead of finishing…

You Never Gave Them the Chance to Say No

A guy I coach was telling me he feels isolated. Not fitting in, not really heard, a little alone in it. And as we pulled the…

Don't Waste Your Life

Good morning. Flint from iAlign. I'm actually just A little morning walk And I wanted to talk about an experience I had recently…

You Don't Deserve Shit Because You're Smart

You don't deserve shit because you're smart. This is a trap I fell into plenty of times in my life. I've constantly had people…

I'd Feel Overwhelmed Too If I Told Myself I Was

I told a mentor that I look up to that I was overwhelmed, and he said the most annoying possible thing back, which was, "yeah…

The iAlign Filter and the Prioritization Protocol

I remember when I first started building iAlign, which is my company. It's a combination of performance and personal-development…

The Printer in the Corner

If you're an engineer or a scientist or a founder, and there's one meaningful thing you've been trying to finish for longer than…

This Is Your World Cup

I read a lot of biographies, mostly of people I find kind of inspiring, and athletes come up a lot, because the way the great…

Would a Billion Dollars Fix Your Turkey Sandwich?

I was driving down Highway 29 in Napa, and I stopped off the side of the road on a small countryside road that split through a…

The Physics Teacher Who Quit

Alignment Discipline. You've tried being more disciplined. It doesn't really work, does it? It's Thursday-you versus Monday-you…

The Habit Never Dies, It Just Gets Quieter

You're not going to like the first point of this, I promise. So stick around for the second half, because I promise it will come…

Discipline Doesn't Work [Here's What Does]

Alignment will always over power discipline

Nobody is waiting for your work (and thank god)

I was doing some research the other day on Instagram, because for the life of me I still can't figure out how to get my message…

Why Your Hard Work Is Making You Feel More Behind [Challenge Your Priorities]

Why was it that I could spend so much energy trying to progress in my life and yet still feel behind? I’ll tell you. If you feel…

Switching Cafes Will Not Fix Your Focus

Unconscious wishing can be one of the most dangerous things you do. It’s why I couldn’t be satisfied with my current state of…

Large goals are accomplished with small decisive uncomfortable actions

The reality is that any large goal or dream is really just the consequence of thousands of small actions. Many of those actions…

The Inertia Moment

I failed the shit out of my first organic chemistry II test my senior year of college. I saw my score while I was in my power…

Why your big ambitions lead to your horrible sleep

There I am again, lying in bed with my laptop on my stomach, watching a Veritasium video on YouTube. (If you’re not in the know…

Strong Feelings Do Not Mean It Matters More

Years ago I went through a break-up with a woman I loved dearly. It sucked. It was an extremely emotional time for me trying to…

Admit The Mess And Climb The Curve Faster

Precision is created through iteration I had a friend ask me recently about some advice and details of the advertising side of my…

Gratitude Flowers

“Don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers” Spring is usually characterized by a bit of chaos… Coming out of winter there’s more…

You Get To Decide This Is Rock Bottom

When I was 23 I got fat and found myself questioning my life while huffing and puffing on the side of a volcano in Northern…

Rejection Is Proof You Stopped Hesitating

Several years back I got rejected from MIT. It was for a spot in a lab deeply aligned with my passion for studying the human…

I mistook being hard on myself for accountability

I was on the coast of Chile and while I was in the water surfing, I was thinking about one of the greatest pains I have…

It Is 5:53, You Will Stop At Six

I would tell you that I remember when I realized I was addicted to my electronics But transparently I had that realization so…

Saying Yes Feels Too Much Like Doing

One of the reasons why I had difficulty following through with projects or responsibilities that I was committing to in my past…

Locking in

If locking in is all you think you need to do in order to achieve your goals, you're probably screwed. I've seen this. I've seen…

The Trap Hiding Inside Good Job

I take bioinformatics and data science contracts on the side of the coaching and software business to keep my programming skills…

The Week You Overcommit Is A Pop Quiz

I am currently over committed as far as the number of work hours that I'm capable of putting in are concerned. This puts me in an…

Compulsive Phone Scrolling in 30 Seconds

Just wanted to drop a little personal development snack for you. Here is a high level overview of elimination of the compulsive…

Your Mind Says Scroll. Ask For Another Thought.

It's Sunday at two in the afternoon, the espresso I drank didn't hit, and the back of my mind just suggested we sit down and…

Stop overthinking by starting to design a filter

How Many Backup Laptops Is Too Many

I am writing this on my potato of an old ass laptop because I just spilled water all over my new laptop in a remote town in…

Stop Making Excuses

I was just talking to one of my clients on their last calls as they were graduating. In the call he was asking me about some…

The Decision Took Two Seconds And Two Years

Smart, systems minded people like engineers and scientists think their greatest asset is their ability to think and that exact…

Giving Up Your Life

100,000 hours is the amount of time you might press pause on your life while doom scrolling on social media If you are just…

What is evidence based living?

I'm a big believer in practicing what I preach, I just recorded a video on evidence-based living, which is my philosophy for…

Potential is a Trap

The feeling of having lots of potential is a massive trap For let’s just use me right now as an example for this… I believe I…

You Will Choose Wrong. Start Anyway.

Large goals are accomplished with small decisive uncomfortable actions A while ago now, I left a job as an engineer and research…

Cafe

This is not some white-washed United States gringo-bashing of South American infrastructure, just to be clear – I’m currently…

How to find freedom

If freedom is important to you, if you value it, but it constantly feels like it’s evading you, you are probably seeking it in…

Epstein Files

Let's talk about the Epstein files that just dropped. I think that this is a super important topic to talk about right now, but…

Prioritization Question Response

Recently I was asked about prioritization and a 70 hour work week: “How are you deciding where those 70 hours should be…

Prioritization Wrong

I was sitting and watching the ocean break and people walk by beneath my airbnb here in South America with some semi-shitty…

Mad Therapist

I was at a sushi restaurant and this therapist started to basically yell at me. I mean… she didn't actually yell at me, but she…

Nine Thousand Hours Of Practice You Skipped

I have a pretty hot take on the current state of relationships in the world, There is a large discrepancy between what people…

Learning To Crave The Moments That Break You

The people you admire most feel the same anxiety and embarrassment you do. They've just learned to keep moving through it. The…

You Dont Have to Engage

I was just feeling pretty down about myself. And when I get down on myself based on my conditioning, I have this tendency to want…

Unexpected Doomscrolling Triggers

The Chilean brown recluse is apparently a very dangerous spider, and last night I got the worst sleep of my entire life because I…

Your phone isn’t winning your environment is

The meaning of willpower quite literally demonstrates why it is not an effective methodology for creating lasting change. The…

The 10:43 PM Decision That's Stealing Your Future

I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit in the 'fuck it' moment… That specific moment where your brain just stops fighting…

Don't lose your soul

Just some late night thoughts

Your Phone or Your Legacy

If you don’t exert your God-given freedom and resilience, you’ll leave no legacy I’m sitting in a cool little cafe in the surf…

Split Your Attention, Lose The Only Good Part

It is currently 11:52 PM on Friday in a small coastal surf town in Chile, and something just happened that I wanted to speak to…

The Pit In Your Stomach Is Not Regression

You will never fully escape the emotions that have torn you down and sent you into periods of compulsive scrolling or lack of…

The Catch 22 Keeping You Isolated And Behind

This one's for the men in my email list… As men we are assessed by society by what we create and how we provide. As we get to the…

Trapped by Our Phones

You are shutting your brain down and literally giving away your fucking soul. The more time you spend on your phone, the more…

3 Metrics For a Better 2026

The point is to identify lead metrics that are associated with improving skills that will give you a higher likelihood of…

Go Embarass Yourself

Psych. That full video was unbelievably cringey. I had this monologue that I had thought about that morning while I was moving…

Permission to Feel Success

You have multiple important projects in life right now, each with their own seemingly limitless set of responsibilities. When you…

Beating Yourself Up Doesnt Work

Beating yourself up has never been the thing that made you consistent. If shame worked, it would have worked by now. But it’s…

Environmental Optimization

I have this picture of the grandfather I was named after in front of the DC-3 plane he flew into the northern Yukon and landed on…

Nothing Exciting Happened Today

What if nothing exciting happened today? What if today was just relatively boring as you slowly got all your work and…

Stuck Because Standards

Right now, you are not stuck because you lack motivation. You are stuck because you do not have a standard for what deserves your…

Your Focus Is Fine. You Never Start.

Your capacity to focus is failing you. However, and you know this already, you’re actually quite good at focusing once you get…

There is Another Way

Disclaimer: This post is only available for you on my email right now. You won’t find it anywhere else because it’s only for the…

The Sixty Seconds You Keep Scrolling Past

I sat with people as they were dying when I was 22 years old. I was a volunteer in hospice, which if you don’t know is end of…

You think “giving it your all” is going to take you far in life.

You think “giving it your all” is going to take you far in life. And you’re both right… and wrong. Because your concept of…

Actions Matter

When it comes to getting your work done, there are: 1. Things that don’t matter 2. Things that matter Let me help you break this…

Current Programming

You think “giving it your all” is going to take you far in life. And you’re both right and wrong. Below is an excerpt from an…

Hearing Your Programming

The way you’ve programmed your mind is the reason you're going to waste years of your life. Here’s how you identify your mind’s…

Stop Wavering. Set A Three Minute Timer.

This is how you assess your current priorities in life through action. Without this practice, you may continue to just waver…

Observer Seat

What’s your first impression of the following series of thoughts?: "discomfort" "that tiktok i just watched" "insecurity"…

Compulsive Phone Usage

The reason why you can’t stop scrolling your phone is because you’re arrogant. You think for some reason that your little animal…

No Pity for Anything Ever

This mantra was actually born out of a personal fear when I was younger. You know that quiet voice that says, “I wish something…

Coping Mechanisms

Without fail, within an hour or two of you waking up, some shit hits the fan. Something just doesn’t go as you’d like. Sometimes…

Reframing Setbacks as Opportunities

I was lying on the ground on the blue rug my dad passed down to me from my grandmother next to my bed. I’d tell you I was feeling…

When Youre 60

This is going to be embarrassing to share… When I was in middle school and early high school I would actually suck my cheeks in a…