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about richard meadows: journalism, and pizza

Hi. I’m Richard. I started this blog to document my experiments, and help others who are interested in taking a few steps off the beaten path.

If you want to read more about me, head on over to the ‘About’ page. For a distillation of my work to date, check out my book Optionality.

Most people follow along through my email newsletter. I try to write high-quality posts, which means you’ll only hear from me once or twice a month (three times if I’m on fire).

When you sign up, I’ll also give you some free tools and resources, including the custom net worth tracking spreadsheet I used to hit my savings goal.


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Where to Start?

The underlying theme of the Deep Dish is generating high-quality options through simple living and exploration. Here’s a taste of the most-used tags:

word cloud of the most used tags on the deep dish

Feel free to jump into the archives and work your way through all of the posts in order. If you prefer a hand-picked selection, here are my most popular and/or useful pieces in each topic area:

Financial Freedom

  • How to Save $100,000 by Age 25 – My viral ‘coming out’ essay on the benefits of simple living, which set the stage for everything that followed
  • The Joy of Fuck-You Money – How to improve your life with a relatively small sum of money, rather than eat shit sandwiches for years while grinding toward ‘early retirement’
  • Net Worth Tracking – Cutting through the smoke and mirrors of financial success, and measuring the only number that matters (includes spreadsheet)

Optionality

the art and science of mental time-travel: cover image

Spending

Investing

Minimalism

Health and Fitness

Goals and Vaulting Ambitions

Work

The 4 Hour Work Week Review: How Tim Ferriss Created a Monster

Reading

Travel

himalayas hiking

Misc

  • Meditations on Momentum – Unmasking the force of nature that creates ‘compound interest’ in every domain of life, and its terrifying implications
  • The Brave New World of Wireheading – Why pure hedonism is dystopian, and the difficulty of resisting primitive forms of wireheading

Anything Else?

I love hearing from like-minded people, and I try to reply to every email (it sometimes takes me a little while to clear my inbox, so give me a few days’ grace).

If there’s anything I can help you with, feel free to get in touch using the Contact form. I’m pretty inactive on social media but you can also hit me up on Instagram (mostly travel pics and calisthenics stuff), Twitter (occasional hot takes), or come be my friend on Goodreads (book reviews and recommendations).

Hope you enjoy exploring the site.

– Rich