Monday Dispatch - 2025/03/10
Provide. Protect. Project.
Welcome to Monday Dispatch, a publication with additional notes, deep dives, reading recommendations, and other updates.
This used to be for premium subscribers only, but I paused subscriptions back in June last year while I figure out what I’m actually writing about and what’s a good way to get readers support without artificially hiding what I hope is useful writing.
Provide. Protect. Project.
My 8-year-old son and I were talking about the roles of a man in the house.
We thought of three important roles, and since we like to play around with words, we looked for a nice alliteration.
Provide: A man should work hard and work smart to provide for his family.
Protect: A man should protect his family. This covers a wide spectrum of activities, from being fit and capable of defending the family from direct harm, to ensuring the home is safe and well-maintained, with nothing at risk of breaking.
Project: A man should show, not tell. Transmitting values starts with living up to them. Only then can come discussions and explanations.
Granted, there’s more to being a man and a father than providing, protecting, and projecting. But I find it’s useful to have these little catchy reminders. I see them as handles you can use to grab a hold of a nuanced topic and lift it into your mind.
Besides, having that conversation with my son was more important than identifying a precise model. It showed him — I hope — that I take him seriously, that I strive to improve, and that he can too.
It was also a good excuse to talk about something other than LEGO Ninjago or the latest fart jokes.
Three podcasts worth listening to
Musk, Chalamet, and Real vs. Fake Greatness. Cal Newport joins the Farewell podcast to discuss the pursuit of excellence in the polarized American society. They comment on Elon waving a chainsaw on stage, Timothée Chalamet’s SAG award acceptance speech, and the NYT post Elon Musk Is the World’s Richest Man. Why Is He Sleeping on an Office Floor?. The conversation turned a bit political, which I found took away from the message — that pursuing excellence is worthwhile but the challenge is to do it on your own terms and without conflating quantity of input with quality of output or being distracted by the resentful anti-productivity discourse.
On the Evolution of Reason. Sharp thinker Brett Hall, on creativity, rationality, and finding better ways of thinking.
Learn To Read, Write, And Think. Of all the things I’d expect to learn from the military, how to write better was not one of them. Yet, Professional Writing: The Command and General Staff College Writing Guide does just that. Jocko Willink and Echo Charles unpack some of the tips and dig deeper on the value of writing for thinking better.
Fiction
I’ve been reading Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr. In the past year, I’ve taken up running regularly and dug a bit into how to train for it. I found the description of the training sessions and races fascinating.
I am also liking the character of Bruce Denton as an embodiment of humble consistency:
He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you don’t become a champion by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years.
Thank you for reading.
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