Jan 15, 2023 8 min read

Who is Alex Pyatetsky & WTF Is He Doing? Start Here.

Who am I?

I'm Alex, a 36-year-old human, stranded on earth.

My Stat Sheet

Business: I've built a couple companies (#1. acquired 2012 #2. current CEO) that are pretty successful.
Fitness: My first suit size was "Husky," age 6. Despite 20 years of working out from 14-34, I was chubby my whole life. Starting in 2020, I finally lost 40 lbs. I now maintain <10% body fat - a previous teenage dream.
Healthy Lifestyle: After an adulthood of chronic insomnia, going to sleep between 3-5 AM every night, suffering through nearly every weekday, and catatonically "recovering" on the weekends, I now go to sleep at 11PM every night. 11:01 if I'm late. 11:05 if I'm really late. I now wake up early and enjoy mornings, not to mention days.
Happiness: After a melancholy childhood of being fat and bullied, struggling desperately to fit in, followed by an adulthood of working myself into capitol-D Depression, I am now quite "happy." I don't place much emphasis on this word, but others do. What matters most to me is that I'm perpetually grateful. I find gratitude in complete honesty, not mania or self-delusion. I continue to come back to a place of peace. "Everything is as it should be. Everything is already here. Everything is grace. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, god."
Durability: I don't worry about "falling off" in any of the above categories because I've designed my pursuits to only advance and become more durable with time and repetition. I only play long-term games with long-term people pursuing compound growth. Therefore, the way I live my life is effectively antifragile. I grow from adversity. It's a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, I feel too tough for my own good. But, ultimately, I'm grateful for these gifts the life they've given me.

Various people have expressed that the things I've learned are worth sharing, so I'm doing so now.

TL;DR;DC / "Cool Story Bro, But Why do I Give a shit?"

I am not my achievements.

Actually, I think everything above will look very minor in 10-20 years, assuming I maintain my physical, mental and spiritual health.

But you want to know what I've actually achieved to date because your time is precious.

I get it.

People who talk are many.
Those who do are few.
Those who can explain are fewer still.
And those who can do so without making you want to claw your eyes out barely exist.

So you rightly ask, "1) what have you done 2) has it actually worked and 3) has it sustained or are you yet another flash in the pan**?

You need this information, because you have 4,000 weeks on this blue rock, and you've never had more options of who to listen to. So, if you're going to listen to me, I have to prove that your time is worth spending here.

So let me be honest with you -

I don't think you should start with me.
I don't believe I'm your best teacher.
My teachers are probably your best teachers.

If I had my way, you'd study them for months or years, like I have, before coming to me.

But that's not how people learn and that's not how knowledge spreads.

Moreover, since I've already done/do this study, apply these lessons in the real world in an enduring way and can communicate these experiences tolerably, you can now leverage me to download the combined lessons of my teachers without studying them first (although I still hope you will).

So that's the dance we're doing together.

You say, "prove your legitimacy."

I then a) flip you the bird or b) respond with grace, honoring your attention, giving you the best of what I've got with respect to myself and my boundaries.

Alright. So what exactly am I doing?

At this point, I think my purpose in life is to design and communicate Life Operating Systems (aka Life OS).

Another way to say this is that I make the deepest intellectual and spiritual wisdom accessible to normal people through the grotesquely tangible and pragmatic.

Simpler still - life can be worthwhile and meaningful right where you are. You don't have to become an ivory-tower philosturbator or a renunciate monk.

What's an OS?

If you are reading this right now, you're using an operating system, likely iOS or Android on mobile, or Windows/OSX on desktop. But what is this insanely powerful technology that we take for granted, like air, but without which we'd neither be able to shoot Nazis in Call of Duty, nor binge-watch The Great British Bakeoff on Netflix?

An operating system is a base layer technology that unlocks the insane power of an underlying stack of technologies that most of us, even most software engineers, will never interact with directly. Starting with the nanotech of semiconductors, to the binary code that they process, to the infrastructure layer of software that has no graphics at all, the operating system is finally where you and I, the users, come into the picture. This is the layer where most software developers do their work. Without operating systems, we could neither write The Great American Novel in Word, nor crunch The Great American Spreadsheet in Excel.

This is what I'm doing with ideas.

I consider my teachers OS engineers and architects.

They have gone deep into specific areas of the technical stack of human knowledge and wisdom. Without each, a "complete life" would be difficult to achieve.

I come in after their work is done and put the pieces together. I create the middleware. I find where there are technical incompatibilities and patch them (or suggest alternate paths).

I user-test them extensively and see how software lives on top of them.

Most importantly - I take their deep, technical work, and translate it for regular humans to apply to their everyday lives.

Why am I doing it?

You mean what do I get out of this? What's the catch? Where's the grift?

A) Why not?

B) This is most likely what I was put on this earth to do. It feels like play to me, but looks like work to others* - so, why not?

C) I'm playing the longest long game. That means I don't particularly need a reason besides confidence that this is part of the greater trajectory of my life.

Yes, but what is your BIG WHY.

Ah, my BIG WHY. Much better question :)

This starts to get into something akin to "what's the meaning of life?" Without going all the way down the rabbit hole, here are a few of my best answers so far -

To die empty. I have learned a lot from my time on Earth. I have been very lucky that the people who came before me documented their knowledge, that I lived at a time when it was transferrable to me, and that I had the opportunity to validate their ideas in my lifetime. I have a deep sense that it is my purpose to contribute back to that which gave to me, so if I have any desires left (sorry, Buddha)*, it is to die empty.
I'll be ok if I die not completely empty. Still got you, Buddha!
I found something that I love enough to let it kill me.

Bukowski said, "find something you love and let it kill you." Incredibly, this alcoholic, womanizing author-poet who spent most of his life working at the post office may have actually articulated "the meaning of life" better than virtually anybody else. We are all dying, that is not a choice. But what vehicle do we want to take us to the grave?

Giving the very best of myself, to the smartest, most interesting, most admirable people I know and love is a game I want to play until my last day on earth. Putting my learnings into writing/audio/video allows me to connect with my smartest friends (who I have and haven't met yet) at scale. I am so insanely lucky to have met some of the smartest most interesting people on earth, but they are spread too far and wide. Many have kids, spouses and careers. And I am only human - so there are only so many individual phone calls, coffees, hikes and meals I can do. So to the extent that cultivating deep, meaningful relationships with people that I love is a game that I want to play until my last day on earth, I think the work that I'm creating is the best way to do that.

IN SHORT - Read my stuff. Help me die empty :)

Where should I begin -

To say that I'm at the very beginning of my journey, would be an understatement.

Imagine watching MTV in 1988, using the internet in 1996, listening to The Joe Rogan Experience Episode 12.

This is where we are, friend.

We're at Facebook when it was still "The Facebook."

(For the younger readers to whom I may as well be talking about baby Moses floating down the Nile - think 13 year-old Mr Beast, when he was still MrBeast6000).

So hands down, before I tell you, "go read/listen to my best stuff," I must 100x assert - my best stuff is still to come. Therefore - if anything I've said above is of interest - here's how to join me on the journey -

Subscribe to this website/newsletter by email.
Follow me on the social media platform you use most: Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn/TikTok
Subscribe to the podcast: (Link pending)

Things I've Made that I Think You'll Like

How You Can Give Back

If there's anything I've created that moves you, PLEASE LET ME KNOW HOW! There is virtually nothing that gives me more juice to keep creating as hearing how the things I'm creating are helping my smartest, most admirable friends. It also gives me valuable feedback into where to go deeper and where to relax in the future.

If there's anything I've created that you think will help 1 other person, please share it with them.

Let me share a secret -
Most of the stuff I publish is plagiarized.

Usually, I'll have an incredible text exchange with a friend where I say something worthwhile and think "this was clearly valuable to 1 person, what if it could help somebody else?" Then I copy, paste, edit, publish and share hoping that at least 1 other person will benefit. See, I'm a lazy giver. I just take what I've already done, add 15% more effort and make it available to many more people.

Now that I've already done the heavy lifting of plagiarism for you, just copy & paste the URL into a text message and send it to the next person. This is how we keep this world turning and hopefully create something better together.

Pay it forward. Be kind to someone else. Most importantly, love yourself, selflessly. Find your own peace.

*I actually think everything I've said above will look very minor in 10-20 years, assuming I maintain my physical, mental and spiritual health.

** I have "fallen off" many times, and will fall off in the future. The difference is that the way I pursue things now, deviation from the path creates immense growth with near 100% consistency. I will share countless "failures." I have absolutely nothing to hide.