Second Life

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise.

Benjamin Franklin — Poor Richard's Almanack
Errol Tan

Life beyond your 40s doesn't have to mean conforming to body aches and pains, uncertainty about your career and personal life, and feeling left behind.

Entries
05
Reading
33 min
Updated
Oct 2026

01Healthy

Your body answers to what you feed it and how you move it, on a timescale of months rather than days. Most of what follows is me testing that on myself and writing down what happened.

An open tin of sardines, a fork and a glass of water, seen from above.
  1. Meditation Meditation didn’t calm me down by emptying my head. It calmed me down by teaching me to come back, over and over. That one skill has done more for my temper and my stress levels than anything else I’ve tried.
  2. Cardio training How four minutes of controlled suffering, a lot of slow miles and a handful of treadmill sprints rebuilt my engine.
  3. Sardines The evidence for the fish is strong and the evidence for the fast is almost nonexistent, which are two very different claims that almost nobody bothers to separate.

Everything in Healthy

Entries
03
Reading
21 min
Updated
Jul 2026

02Wealthy

I started late and I started small, which has turned out to matter far less than the fact that I never stopped.

A paper aeroplane on a bare floor, its shadow stretched long by low sun.
  1. Angel investing Somebody has to go first, you get to choose who, and thirty years of asking what breaks first has to be worth something.
  2. Fractional art Thirteen positions, seventeen thousand dollars, down 1.3 per cent in three and a half years, and the honest reason I have not sold.
  3. Precious metals Money printing, crowded central bank vaults, and a very hard-working metal called silver. Plus the one rule that keeps me honest.

Everything in Wealthy

Entries
04
Reading
27 min
Updated
Sep 2026

03Wise

The question underneath this section is what am I still wrong about, and it has never once had a tidy answer.

Knowing more got easy. Thinking better did not, and only one of the two compounds.
A pair of reading glasses lying open on a pale surface.
  1. AI design taste Pinterest for the eye, Claude for the thinking, Canva and Figma for the testing, Higgsfield for the pictures. How I stop AI handing me the same purple website as everybody else.
  2. Learning Arabic I have learned languages before and enjoyed the process. This one, however, broke my confidence in a way nothing else has.
  3. Learning about AI Learning AI in middle age — from writing wishes to writing context.

Everything in Wise

A letter, most Sundays

What I tried during the week, what it cost me, and whether it turned out to be worth doing. Usually a page. Occasionally two.