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Marcus's Friends and Family Update #5
Welcome to Friends and Family Update #5!
📝TODO
- Special shoutout to Stefi for wardrobe makeover + rep + photo
🌏Life Changes
- Snowboarding in Hakuba: Spent 2 weeks in Japan, 5 days snowboarding where I went from being able to snowboard red runs → black.
- Quit Updoc and turned down my Atlassian return offer: After a year of building and shipping at Updoc, I finished up in February to pursue building projects with Sameer and Darcy.
- 10-Day Meditation Retreat: Spent 10 days at Wat Buddha Dhamma. I spent 5 days there last year after my Atlassian internship and really enjoyed it. This time the first week was a personal and spiritual struggle but the last 3 days were incredibly cathartic and enjoyable.
- Relocated from Sydney: Packed up my life in Surry Hills — sold all our furniture, gave away plenty of books and said goodbye to many awesome friends.
- Currently in Brisbane: Staying until end of March before heading to The Network School near Singapore — a frontier community for builders and remote workers — to lock in on work before the big move.
💡Lessons I've Learned
On my 25th birthday, a friend asked me the most important lessons I'd learned in my life so far. Here they are:
- Things are only as meaningful as you make them.
- Assume positive intent
- Everyone fundamentally wants the same things.
- Life is Asymmetric, Play for the upside.
- You can't take it with you.
- "Perfection and power are overrated."
- Happiness = Reality − Expectations. → Learn to enjoy the little things.
- This is only a test.
🧭Frameworks for Living
Given I have a Product Manager brain, I am very fond of frameworks. I feel like they help solidify how to think about the important things in life. Below I've tried to describe visually how my life system has evolved over the last few years:
V1: framework: pyramid of needs or 4,3,2,1 system
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V3 — Health, Wealth, Relationships are interdependent — the empty middle represents flow
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Health 💪
Health to me means one thing: freedom of movement throughout the world. I often take for granted how lucky I am to even have a body capable of taking me wherever I want to go.
At the same time, this body is impermanent — as the Buddha taught, form is fleeting, we don't own this house we only rent it. Knowing I'll one day be decrepit and immobile makes me want to achieve the highest physical prowess I can while I'm young.
"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable."
"In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection."
Sleep 🛏️
Sleep is the foundation of health — my true goal in life is to be a professional sleeper. I have spent an egregious amount of time and money trying to optimise my sleep. For me the three biggest levers are:
- Waking up and going to sleep at the same time every night (also the one I struggle with the most)
- Eating earlier in the day
- Quiet, cool & dark bedroom
Some people requested my research on sleep — here is my full sleep system. My 8Sleep measurements below: (note the resting heart rate 😉)
Exercise 🥋🏋️
For me, exercise used to consist of really only two activities: going to the gym and playing basketball. I had always enjoyed going to the gym as it reinforced both the Health & Relationships aspects of living, but I wasn't really genuinely curious about it — for the last year I was more going through the motions. As you can see by my workout tracking below, having a full time job provided a solid foundation to build an exercise routine around.
Thankfully, at the end of last year I discovered BJJ and I have fallen madly in love with it. This cross collar choke video I have watched more than 20 times.
Diet
[Description of what Diet means to you]
Sources: Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan
Wealth 💰
Wealth to me means three things: Financial, Time and Location Independence. It's my belief that accumulating enough capital unlocks all three.
Why I'm Quitting Updoc
After deep reflection, I've decided to move on from Updoc. The fundamental reason is simple and pragmatic: I won't be able to buy a house in the next 3-4 years on this path.
Affording a House in Samford Valley
Samford Valley is where I want to build my life. It's a semi-rural suburb 23km northwest of Brisbane CBD—tranquil, picturesque, with acreage properties perfect for the lifestyle I'm working towards.
The reality: median house prices sit around $1.8M. Properties here are primarily owner-occupied (94.5%), mostly couples with families who value space, nature, and community. It's known for beautiful acreage properties popular with families and horse enthusiasts.
This is the goal. Not a mansion—a home with land where I can build the life I envision. A place for family, for friends, for building something meaningful. But at my current trajectory, this stays a dream. That's why I'm making the change.
"If I'm betting on myself, I would easily double down."
Relationships 🌱
If meditation has taught me anything, it's that you can't really own anything material in life. Therefore the things that are truly valuable are my relationships — how I exist and am interdependent in the world.
Key sources: Sue Johnson · The Knowledge Project Podcast · Never Split the Difference · Adam Lane Smith
Sue Johnson — The Knowledge Project
fs.blog · Click to listen
Enlightenment ✨
To me enlightenment is really captured by a pervasive and persistent feeling of flow, of oneness and of wisdom. In terms of how enlightenment manifests day to day I refer to the following koans:
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
"What changes when you become enlightened: less than you hope, but more than you think."
Watch on YouTube
Click to watch
Watch on YouTube
Click to watch
Meditation module from HealthyGamer coaching - great resource for building a meditation practice.
Meditation
I've been deepening my meditation practice, particularly exploring nondual awareness techniques. Michael Taft's guided meditations have been transformative for my practice.
Michael Taft - Nondual Awareness Meditation
Click to watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Click to watch
Watch on YouTube
Click to watch
Religious North Stars
These spiritual frameworks guide how I try to live:
The Sermon on the Mount: Jesus's core teachings on compassion, humility, and love. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The emphasis on inner transformation over external righteousness resonates deeply—it's not about following rules, but about becoming the kind of person who naturally does good.
"If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount, and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'Oh yes, I am a Christian.' But I can tell you that, in my humble opinion, much of what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount."
The Eight Precepts: Buddhist ethical guidelines that extend the five basic precepts with additional practices around eating, entertainment, and comfort. They create a framework for living with mindfulness and restraint, particularly during intensive meditation retreats.
Ashtanga Yoga (Yama and Niyama): The ethical and personal observances that form the foundation of yoga practice. The Yamas (restraints) include non-violence, truthfulness, and non-attachment. The Niyamas (observances) include purity, contentment, and self-study. Together they provide a comprehensive system for ethical living and self-development.
The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley — a synthesis of the mystical traditions across the world's great religions, arguing they all point to the same fundamental truths about the nature of reality and the divine.
These aren't rigid rules—they're guiding principles. Different frameworks emphasize different aspects of the good life, and I find value in all of them.
🚶Transitioning from Brahmacharya to Grihastha
Dr. K from HealthyGamer introduced me to the Hindu concept of Āśrama—the four stages of life. I'm currently experiencing the transition from Brahmacharya (student life) to Grihastha (householder life).
Brahmacharya is the first stage, typically lasting until around age 25. It's characterized by learning, self-discipline, and acquiring knowledge. You're building the foundation—studying, experimenting, figuring out who you are and what you're capable of.
Grihastha is the second stage, the householder phase from roughly 25-50. This is when you transition from learning to doing—getting married, building a career, contributing to society, raising a family. In the Hindu system, this stage is considered vital because householders generate the resources that support all other stages of life.
I'm at that inflection point now. The student phase served its purpose—I've learned, explored, and experimented. Now it's time to build: a home, a family, a life of substance. The skills and knowledge from Brahmacharya become the tools for Grihastha. It's not just about personal growth anymore—it's about creating value, supporting others, and establishing the foundation for the life I want to live.
🔮Looking Ahead
- San Francisco: Flying to SF. Exploring opportunities and reconnecting with the startup ecosystem there.
- Machu Picchu (Late May-June): Family trip to Peru - been wanting to do this for years!
- The rest of the year is intentionally flexible: Might spend time in SF, potentially pass through Southeast Asia, maybe base myself in Sydney for a bit. Keeping options open to see where the opportunities and energy take me.
- Walk and Talk - Northern Thailand (End of Year): I'm putting together a group of 10 people to do a walk and talk in northern Thailand at the end of the year. The concept is simple: walk together, talk deeply, connect meaningfully. Shoutout to Derek Sivers for the idea.
Walk and Talk Resources
Craig Mod on Walking - Beautiful essay on the art of walking and conversation
How to Walk and Talk (PDF) - Kevin Kelly's guide to organizing walk and talks
💼Learnings from Updoc
- Fake Progress - The illusion of forward movement without actual results. Building features nobody uses, optimizing metrics that don't matter, having meetings about meetings. Real progress is revenue, users, and impact.
- Effective, then efficient, then elegant - First make it work, then make it fast, then make it beautiful. Most people skip straight to elegant and build nothing. Ship the ugly thing that works.
- People matter - The right person multiplies your output; the wrong person divides it.
- Revenue covers all sins - You can mess up almost everything, but as long as revenue is growing, nothing else matters. Growth forgives chaos; stagnation magnifies every flaw.
Meta-themes:
- Hire slow, fire fast - Take your time finding the right people. Cut loose the wrong ones immediately.
- Do everything yourself until it hurts - Only delegate when something becomes a genuine bottleneck.
📖Books Read This Year
"If you know it exists, it knows you exist. The more you know about it, the more it knows about you. If you can see it, it can see you. And you can see it. You've been looking right at it all afternoon."
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams
Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No by Henry Cloud
"Remember that a boundary always deals with yourself, not the other person."
The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson
"The rich get the assets, the poor get the debt, and then the poor have to pay their whole salary to the rich every year just to live in a house."
The Wisdom of the Buddha by Anne Bancroft
Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Morning Star by Pierce Brown
Berserk by Kentaro Miura
Breathe: A Life in Flow by Rickson Gracie
"The principles of Jiu Jitsu can be applied to every endeavor in life. You have stay calm when you are in bad situations...You need to prioritize your focus of effort. You need to train until you trust yourself to move intuitively, without having to think. You need to move at the right time. You have to defend critical areas. You should not attack your enemy's strongpoints. You must utilize leverage. You cannot let your emotions drive your decisions. You have to establish a good base foundation to build upon. You cannot be overly aggressive, but you can't just allow things to happen. When you make a move, you have to believe in what you are doing. You have to be mentally strong. You have to keep an open mind. You have to continuously learn new techniques while always reinforcing the fundamentals. You have to adapt your plan if circumstances change."
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
📚Favourite Media
Essential Reading (All-Time Favourites)
🎯Hobbies
- Magic the Gathering - Still playing and enjoying the strategy
- Dungeons & Dragons - Current campaigns and memorable moments
- Raves - The music and community I love
- Jiu Jitsu - Training journey continues
- Argentinian Tango - Learning the craft
🎥Favourite Videos
🎬 Movies
Top Films:
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📺 TV Series
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🎮 Games
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🎵 Favourite Albums
📝 Favourite Articles
- The roadmap to Product/Market Fit (PMF)… maybe — Jason Cohen
- Meditation: Why Bother? — Bhante Gunaratana
- Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Christina Cacioppo
- Nonduality – Defining the Undefinable — Michael W. Taft
That's all for now! Looking forward to sharing more adventures in the next update.
— Marcus
— Marcus