Friends, I’m traveling to Cape Cod with my family, so we’re on Low Power Mode for a few days. Today’s edition first ran a few years ago, but it’s come up in conversation several times recently, and I just kind of like it. Thanks for reading!
June 6, 2002
On June 6, 2002, a teenager named James was playing baseball on the last day of his sophomore year of high school. As a classmate swung the bat, it came flying out his hands and flew directly towards him, striking James directly between his eyes.
He was badly injured: broken nose, multiple skull fractures, two eye sockets broken.
Classmates and a teacher walked him to the nurse’s office. Nobody realized that every minute counted. The school nurse asked him questions to see how alert he was:
What year is it? Who is the president of the United States? What’s your mother’s name?
1998, James replied -- off by four years.
Bill Clinton (it was George W. Bush).
And, it took 10 seconds for him to recall the first name of the woman who had given birth to him and raised him: Patti.
Shortly after that James lost consciousness. An ambulance raced him to the small local hospital, where doctors said the care he needed was beyond their ability to help. They quickly put him on a helicopter, with his mother by his side, and rushed to the much larger hospital in Cincinnati.
That night, although he needed surgery to repair his broken bones, the more urgent need was to control his brain swelling. Doctors put him into a medically induced coma.
I’m wondering how many people recognize the vignette above. “James” is James Clear, and the story is my paraphrasing of the opening of his book, Atomic Habits.
It was the number-1 book on the New York Times bestseller list in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous category for close to 300 weeks. That’s unheard of.
It’s also the #4 book overall on Amazon, with more than 149,000 reviews and a 4.8 star rating. Keep in mind, it’s been out since 2018.
The theory of the book, if I can summarize the whole thing in a sentence, is that while people aren’t good at setting and achieving goals, they can be taught to adopt good habits.
And adopting good habits can often take you to a better ultimate objective than you might have dreamed of in the first place.
For example, James (I think we can keep calling him that) was a kid who had his eyes set on becoming a professional baseball player.
That didn’t happen, but the habits he taught himself to adopt as he rehabilitated from his injuries and sought to achieve his goals did help him to become a successful college athlete. Moreover, they also put him on the path to being the kind of writer whose book has been a perpetual bestseller for years.
Let’s go to the quote of the day, and then I’ve got one more thing to share. There are a lot to choose from; as I say, James Clear literally wrote a highly quotable 320-page book. But we’ll go with this one:
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
OK, for better or worse, here’s another thing to share. It’s that nowhere in James’s book does he actually say the date of the baseball bat incident that sparks his entire story. But I’m confident that it happened on June 6, 2002.
The reason is that this is one of those dates that I simply determined I was going to decipher, because it fits the theme of the whole Big Optimism project perfectly: a day on which something neutral or even bad happened, but that ultimately led to very positive outcomes.
Figuring it out required me to track down what high school James went to, call the school—and then work with a very patient administrator there to find a 22-year-old academic calendar that was archived only in the far corners of the Internet.
Then, after I met someone at a dinner who mentioned that James was a friend, I asked him to ask James if my research was correct.
Actually, I’d thought it might have been June 7, but James replied that he’s pretty sure it was June 6.
So there you have it: an exclusive!
I feel a bit odd, I admit, to put that much effort into tracking down a specific date like that. But, much as James says in that quote, that kind of attention to detail in my work is part and parcel of who I am.
And I suppose the person I hope to become!
Other things worth knowing …
CNBC: Trump has signaled he’s prepared to let economic pressure take its toll on Iran rather than launching further military strikes, telling Axios he is prepared to wait for economic distress to mount in Tehran. The shift comes as Iranian strikes in Hormuz and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea continue to keep shippers away from both routes, and as the U.S. military redirected 20 more commercial vessels away from Iranian ports last week.
Ars Technica: New surveillance tech links your phone to your license plate. Phone and Bluetooth signals could turn roadside cameras into far richer tracking tools.
Reuters: For McDonald’s and rivals, cheap deals no longer do the trick. Value meals and promotions have been the industry’s most reliable traffic driver for the past two years as consumers squeezed by inflation sought cheaper meals. But results showed the strongest performers paired bargains with menu innovation, quality improvements and a smoother customer experience.
Science News: An experimental antibody reduced lean-mass loss in people taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy in a clinical trial — potentially addressing one of the drugs’ most common side effects, the loss of muscle alongside fat. Whether preserving that muscle mass improves longer-term health outcomes remains unclear.
NYT: Should Letting Children Play Alone Outside Be a Crime? Some parents have been surprised to find themselves in the legal system’s cross hairs.
Wired: The Rise of the 1 A.M. Job Interview. An AI interview is increasingly the first step of a hiring process. Since there’s no human on the other end, candidates are scheduling them whenever — even deep into the night.
CBS News: A lifeguard in Maine said he “started swimming like hell” when a shark grabbed onto his buoy and pulled him underwater off the coast of Scarborough Beach on Saturday. He was pulled about 5 feet underwater before getting free and emerging unharmed. Officials along the East Coast say there are more sharks closer to shore in areas where they don’t usually go.
Thanks for reading. See you in the comments!