Your Thursday Three Things for July 2, 2026
Mediocrity happens by default. Maximization happens by design.
greg scheinman has a friend on Wall Street. His son graduated college a couple of weeks ago. The friend flew out to be there, which is good. And then he shipped 2 computer monitors and a full financial trading terminal to the hotel room, so he could keep working during the trip. He barely made it to the graduation itself.
Greg paused when he told us this. “That’s a fucking problem.”
He’s right. The guy has done a lot of the other work. He eats well. He doesn’t drink. He’s rebuilt his fitness. But his identity is so tangled up in the job that he couldn’t put the terminal down for his son’s biggest day. He probably would have told you, a week before that trip, that family was his top priority.
The calendar said otherwise.
What it looks like to actually be trapped
Greg turned 47 and realized he was now living a day longer than his father ever had. His dad died in 1992, at 47, when Greg was 17. So Greg at 47 was standing at the exact edge of his father’s whole life. And he had what he describes as a look-in-the-mirror moment: he had the successful business, the beautiful wife and family, the house that kept getting bigger, the schools that went private, the car that got fancier. Two 7-figure exits. A company acquired by Michael Eisner. And he felt kind of mediocre.
Is this it? Do I care about any of this? How did this happen?
He calls it conformity, complacency, redundancy. The CCR. The way it works is subtle: things aren’t bad. Things are okay. And “okay” is where men park themselves and stop moving. The other guys at work are 10 or 15 pounds overweight, so being 10 or 15 pounds overweight is fine. The other guys drink a little after work. The other guys aren’t coaching every season. You absorb the floor around you and call it normal. Misery loves company, and that company is very large and very available.
You can live there your whole life and quote-unquote be fine. You won’t be lonely. You might not be happy, but you won’t be lonely.
Greg’s version of the Wall Street friend was himself, 6 years ago. Something has to crack the shell. For him it was COVID. When everything strips away, you see clearly what you actually want to bring back.
More isn’t better. Better is better.
Here’s what Greg found in every area of his life when he actually asked the question: the answer was less. Curate, minimize, focus. Better wardrobe, not biggest. Sustainable fitness, not most events and competitions. Wealth defined as freedom, not just accumulation. Food that the body responds to, not the most elaborate approach.
He calls it the 6 F’s: Family, Fitness, Finance, Food, Fashion, and Fun. One area at a time, he asked what “better” actually looked like. Specifically for him. Not for his colleagues or his neighbors or the other dads his kids went to school with. For him.
I’ve had a version of this for years, my 8 F’s: Faith, Fitness, Family, Friends, Food, Focus, Finance, and Fun. Greg’s point is that your F’s don’t have to be anyone else’s F’s, including his. The point is knowing what yours are. Rule 1, as he puts it: knowing what’s important is what’s most important. And what was most important in your 30s probably isn’t what’s most important now.
The other thing he’s clear about: once you’ve defined what better looks like in each area, the 6 F’s or 8 F’s or whatever yours are, the answer in almost every area is doing less of the wrong things, more deliberately, rather than doing more of everything.
A question about your calendar
Greg has one line that I keep coming back to, and I want to put it to you plainly: show me your calendar, and I’ll show you your priorities. Your actual priorities, not your stated ones.
Most of us have a version of our values we keep in our head. Family. Health. The relationship. The thing we’re building. And then a calendar that doesn’t reflect any of it, because the calendar gets filled by whatever shows up and feels urgent, and the important things slide.
Greg’s friend on Wall Street probably would have said family is paramount. But he shipped the monitors.
Knowledge doesn’t make you better. Application does. Greg’s been direct about this with the men he coaches: you can listen to every podcast, read every book, build the most comprehensive personal development plan you’ve ever seen, and make no progress. Because consumption isn’t action. “Listening to someone talk about doing push-ups,” he said, “is not the same as doing push-ups.” You have to pick a horse and run it.
His question for himself every single morning: better one or better two? Sleep in or go to the gym? Kiss his wife good morning or roll out of bed and skip it? Coke or water? Small choices. They compound. You make the better one more often than not and your life, slowly, gets better.
What to do about it
Show your calendar to someone who will be honest with you. Not to explain or defend it. Just to see whether it reflects what you say actually matters. The gap between the stated value and the calendar is information.
Define your F’s in one sentence each. Take whatever your version of the framework is, 5, 6, 8 areas, and for each one write 1 sentence about what “better” looks like specifically for you, right now, at this stage. Not a vision. A sentence. Something you could put on a calendar.
Ask “better one or better two?” for the next decision you have to make. Just one. Today. Start there.
Build the 3-year window. Greg says 1 year isn’t long enough to actually change anything that matters, and 10 years is long enough to convince yourself you have time to keep putting it off. 3 years. Where do you want each of your F’s to be? Then reverse engineer it back to this month, this week, today.
Do one thing today, not just plan it. Greg’s clearest rule: you have to produce more than you consume. Knowledge is not the lever. The thing you actually do is the lever. Before the day is over, take one action step toward any one of your F’s. Not a plan to take it. The thing itself.
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness
Will and I sat down with Greg Scheinman: 2 seven-figure exits, a company acquired by Michael Eisner, 100-plus executives coached, HYROX Nationals competitor, and at 53 he’s in the best shape of his life. He’s also been through alcoholism, depression, losing his father at 17, and hitting rock bottom twice. He now runs Midlife Mail, a newsletter for over 50,000 men who are done going through the motions.
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