Life Update

#157 went out last week, almost on time.

Apparently, I scheduled it for 14:00 Boston time instead of 14:00 Israel time 🤦‍♂️.

At 15:15, I was working on something else when I realized: I hadn't received my own newsletter!

I dropped everything, ran to my laptop, and found the issue calmly waiting for the American East Coast to catch up.

I'm rusty. Very rusty.

Then came this week.

My schedule was packed more than usual. I found myself running from place to place, barely stopping between one thing and the next.

On Wednesday, I had two surgeries back-to-back. The first one ended at 14:00. The second one started at 14:05.

So there I was, standing in the OR, without lunch or a proper break, wondering:

Is this really how it's supposed to be?

🔵 What If I Just Went to Google?

I'll be honest: I have the fantasy.

Not often. Sometimes.

What if I chose to go for a job in tech instead?

Something at Google, or one of those places with the nice offices and the structured hours and the career ladder that doesn't involve standing in an operating room at midnight.

Less pressure. More sleep. Lunches that actually happen.

Except…

and this is where it gets funny to me…

I know myself well enough to know what would actually happen.

Within a year, I'd be running a large team.

I would have a calendar that looks exactly like this week's calendar.

I'd be working late because there's a product launch, or a board presentation, or a deadline that crept up on the whole department.

And I'd be standing there at midnight, realizing I forgot to eat lunch again, wondering if maybe I should have gone into medicine 😃.

And that brings us to today's topic: Antifragile.

(You're probably wondering - "Anti-who?!")

So let me explain.

Number 158!

Antifragile

I've been reading Nassim Taleb's book "Antifragile".

The book introduces a concept I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

Most of us know two categories: fragile (things that break under pressure) and robust (things that resist it).

A glass is fragile. A rock is robust.

But Taleb argues there's a third category we almost always miss.

Antifragile.

🔵 What Antifragile Actually Means

Something is antifragile when it doesn't just survive stress — it BENEFITS from it.

Stress makes it better.

Your immune system is antifragile. Every pathogen it fights makes it sharper.

A muscle is antifragile- tear it slightly, and it rebuilds stronger.

The opposite is just as true.

Remove the stress entirely, protect something from all stress, and it doesn't stay the same.

It becomes weaker.

A surgeon who stops operating loses the touch. A marathoner who takes a year off starts over.

And a retiree at the age of 67, who steps away from challenging problems, can find that the problems get harder. Not because the problems changed, but because the retiree changed.

I think about this often when people romanticize retirement.

The absence of hardship isn't always rest. Sometimes it's just a slower erosion.

🔵 14:05

Here's what I think was actually happening in that OR.

I wasn't suffering. I was training.

Not by design. Nobody scheduled two back-to-back surgeries to build my character. But the effect is the same.

Every time I walk into a second surgery without lunch, every time I stay past midnight and come back the next morning, every time I manage something unexpected mid-case, something accumulates.

It doesn't feel like growth in the moment. It feels like getting through it.

But when I compare who I was five years ago to who I am today - the ability to stay calm when things shift, to keep thinking clearly when it matters, to hold steady when everything is moving - the difference is real.

It doesn't make the missed lunch sting less.

But it changes what "missed lunch" means.

The pressure doesn't live in the job. It lives in me.

And I've made peace with that.

Because the pressure is not the enemy. It's the mechanism.

The missed lunch, the midnight finish, the newsletter that came out late - none of it is breaking me.

If Taleb is right, and I think he is, it's doing the opposite.

Stuff

📚 Book I Read — Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.

The core idea will change how you look at a hard week.

I've been reading it slowly, in stolen minutes between cases.

Maybe that's exactly the right way to read it.

Epilogue

That's it for this issue.

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See you next week!

Shay

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