Here’s what this newsletter is all about

In short:

  • This started out as a fitness blog, and there’s still a heavy health and fitness focus. In general though, I write about a wide range of subjects including productivity, technology, economics, travel, and even my personal hobbies.

  • Owing to my initial start as a fitness writer, my focus is on providing actionable information. Even when I write about societal issues, I try to offer you something you personally can do, as opposed to “look at this problem that’s somebody else’s fault.”

  • I am a techno-optimist. I believe that technology mostly makes life better, and will continue to do so.

  • Rationality and honesty are both extremely important to me. I think people should base their beliefs (not their personal tastes, but their factual beliefs) on logic and evidence, not gut feeling. I also think that it is almost always unethical to lie to or mislead people, even if it is “for a good cause.”

Okay, so who is John Fawkes?

Well, I’m kind of a weird guy. Weird in an interesting way. Or at least that’s what my girlfriend tells me.

First off, if the subject matter of my Substack sounds like a real grab bag of different topics, that’s because I have a rather eclectic background. I got my bachelor’s in criminal justice, which is a sub-discipline of political science. I minored in psychology, and came very close to getting a PhD in either psychology or economics, but instead I got an MBA with a focus on marketing. I’ve worked as a marketing consultant, BizDev director at an ad agency, freelance writer, and personal trainer and health coach. I also spent a year traveling the world as a digital nomad while running my fitness business.

I currently live in Los Angeles. My main sources of income are freelance writing and marketing consulting, mostly for tech startups and companies in the health industry, but I hope that someday this blog can be more than just a side project. In my spare time I go to concerts, visit my parents and girlfriend in San Francisco, read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi novels, hang out at the beach, and play sports– mainly volleyball, medieval combat with foam swords, and jugger, which is sort of like Mad Max football.

You can email me at johnmfawkes@gmail.com

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I write about health, technology, public policy and self-improvement from an evidence-based perspective.

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I write about health, science, AI, public policy, and self-improvement. But mostly I write about the places where those things intersect.