I like puzzles that have solutions. For most of my working life that meant building things: software companies, a champagne bar that made no business sense and somehow worked anyway, and Audiobooks.com, which I founded, grew and sold. Then I became a venture capitalist, and started a foundation to fund mental health research.
It wasn't a straight line. At 30 the business I'd poured myself into imploded, I declared bankruptcy, and my marriage ended. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spent twenty years in therapy. I had a heart attack a few months before my wedding. I'm a real person, with all the flaws you'd expect, and some you wouldn't.
Why Enwaken
By every external measure things were going well, and the life underneath didn't feel like mine. So I did what anyone who solves problems for a living does: I attacked it, with meditation, therapy, psychedelics, philosophy and spreadsheets. Most of it helped for a while. What finally changed things wasn't another tool.
Enwaken.com is the result of what I learned, in three parts that run at the same time: Achieving, getting good at something; Becoming, the person that changes you into; and Enwakening, seeing what all of it is. The essays are the story. The tools are for trying it on your own life.
What's here
- Enwaken Life Book →
- The essays, in order, from a book that's still being written.
- Goalposts, in Logbook →
- Write down what you're sure will make you happy, or what you're dreading, and find out.
- POLAR →
- Luck and skill, separated, for tournament poker players.
- Enwakenment →
- The end of the story, in plain English, for skeptics.
Get in touch
Write to hello@enwaken.com. I read everything; I can't always answer.