Last night I did something crazy. Becky and the boys were up at her parent’s house for the weekend while I stayed back due to work yesterday. This meant I had the house all to myself for the night. Usually that means I’d watch a few movies, chill out on the couch, listen to some music, and then eventually go to bed sometime around midnight wondering where the hours had gone. Last night I tried something pretty wild… I was in bed before 8pm!

When I got out of bed this morning it was just after 7am. I woke fully rested after a wonderful almost eleven hours of sleep. Over the past few weekends I hadn’t gotten as much sleep as normal and I’d gotten out of my normal weekend rhythm. Last night got me caught right back up with where I should be on a regular basis. I got out of bed with a little extra spring in my step and got to work on what I wanted to accomplish for the day right away in the morning. Amazing what that much sleep can do for my attitude and mindset!

While getting some of my tasks knocked out today I took some advice from Adam Grant and took in a different opinion. During the Democratic primaries I pretty much wrote off Andrew Yang right from the start. His idea of a universal basic income sounded ridiculous to me on the surface. I scoffed at it, laughed at it, and thought it was a horrible idea without giving it any more than a fleeting thought. When people would mention it I would politely move on to the next topic and couldn’t understand why they would ever think that it would be a good idea.

As luck would have it I was looking for something I’d seem a long time ago. It was a graph showing not just the typical “Left v Right” of American politics on the X axis, but it also incorporated a Y axis – Authoritarian at the top, Libertarian at the bottom. I’ve never felt my views really fit either the Democratic or Republican ideals and often find myself voting both sides of the aisle. This chart reminded me that there is another dynamic and maybe I have a bit of a different view than others. When I found the chart it also showed where all of the 2020 presidential candidates fell on the chart. Low and behold, Andrew Yang was the closest to where my personal beliefs are. I hopped online, did a little research on Yang and found that he’d written a book, The War on Normal People. In a matter of minutes I was downloading the audio version.

His book was very interesting and got my head going in many directions at once. To be clear, I’m not in 100% agreement with him on everything, I haven’t decided I would vote for him, or am not sure how I feel about his “Freedom Dividend.” What I do know is that by listening to someone else’s differing thoughts I had to pause and question some of my own ideas. There was information that was a little different than I was expecting. There were interpretations of happenings that were different than I’d heard in the past. All in all, my brain got some wonderful exercise in while listening to the book and it has me thinking more deeply – rather re-thinking more deeply on some of the ideas I’ve had in the past. Reading the book has definitely widened my perspective.

If you’re looking for an interesting take on why labor participation has been dropping I would highly recommend it. If you have a book recommendation for me please let me know in the comments section as well – I’m working on being more and more open minded to books outside of my current personal perspective.

Thanks!!!