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FIELD & FATHOM — No. 021
Daily Letter · Mindset Operating System · 8:42 PM
TRIVIA: Category | Multi-Sport Athletes
This one is for the lacrosse community specifically.
He is widely regarded as the greatest running back in NFL history. Nine seasons. A first-ballot Hall of Famer. But long before he became a legend on the football field, he was a standout in another sport entirely, one that many of his football admirers have never heard him associated with. He was so accomplished at it that he was inducted into that sport's Hall of Fame as well. Who is he, and what was the sport?
ON BEING GOOD AT SOMETHING
Before anything else tonight, one thought that will not leave me alone.
People need the opportunity to be good at something.
Not great. Not exceptional. Not destined. Just good. The chance to find the thing that lights them up, to develop real competence inside of it, and to feel what it is like to be capable of something worth showing up for.
That opportunity, the open door, the coach who sees something, the mentor who gives the young person their first real responsibility, is one of the most undervalued gifts one human being can give another. It costs almost nothing to extend it. It can change everything for the person who receives it.
Give someone that door this week. Hold it open a little longer than feels necessary. You may never know what walks through it.
FIELD REPORT
Jim Brown is widely considered the greatest running back in NFL history. Nine seasons in Cleveland. A first-ballot Hall of Famer. But most people who know the name do not know that Jim Brown also made the Lacrosse Hall of Fame — a standout at Syracuse in both high school and college, playing the game at an elite level before football claimed him entirely.
One man. Multiple lives. All of them played at full power.
That is the field report tonight. And it is the perfect entry point into what I want to share with you.
MINDSET OS
Ryan Bush wrote a book called Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture. The central idea is one I keep returning to, we are not well suited to navigate the world by default. Developing strategies to manage your emotions, behaviors, and thoughts is the most important work you can ever do. The default human mind is almost inevitably an unpleasant place to be.
In other words, the mind you were born with is version one. What you build from here is entirely up to you.
Much of the pain we experience is caused not by events we wish to avoid, but by the identity we wish to have.
Read that again. The pain is not about what happened. It is about the gap between who you are and who you believe you are supposed to be. Close that gap, not by lowering the standard, but by designing the mind that can carry you toward it, and something fundamental shifts.
That is the operating system underneath everything in this letter tonight.
THE 9 LIVES EXERCISE | Live, In Real Time
Graham Weaver, founder of Alpine Investors, Stanford GSB professor, one of the minds I respect most in the world of building, created an exercise that has stuck with me since the first time I encountered it.
The Nine Lives exercise reduces the pressure of finding your one true calling by exploring multiple exciting life paths. Start with your current life, then imagine eight other lives you would be excited about, all starting from today.
Two rules only. Every life starts from right now. And you have to genuinely be excited about all nine.
I am doing this live tonight, unedited, in real time, on the page. Here are mine.
Kyle's Nine Lives | Written Tonight, May 29, 2026
Life 1 — The life I am living right now. Founder of Harbor Lane Holdings. Building Atticus Lacrosse Company and Harbor Lane Company simultaneously. Writing Field & Fathom every night at 8:42 PM. Husband, father, coach, operator. In the fight. All in. This is the life I chose and I am not looking away from it.
Life 2 — The lacrosse coach and mentor. Head coach at a program with a culture worth building. Not chasing wins, chasing people. Recruiting young men who want to be developed as human beings first and athletes second. Winning games as the byproduct of that standard. Staying on the field until the last player leaves.
Life 3 — The GM. General Manager of an ACC, SEC, or Big Ten athletic program, or a professional franchise. Building rosters, building staff, building culture from the inside out. The operator's version of sport. Drafts, decisions, discipline, and the daily work of assembling something greater than the sum of its parts.
Life 4 — The lead advisor to professional athletes. The person in the room that the best athletes in the world trust most. Not an agent, not a coach, the mentor. The one who helps them design their life after the game ends, navigate the noise during it, and build something that outlasts the career.
Life 5 — The executive chairman. Leading a non-profit built around giving kids in underserved communities the one thing that changes everything, the opportunity to be good at something. Away from violence, away from gangs, away from the gravitational pull of a system that was never designed for them. Sport as the door. Mentorship as what is on the other side of it.
Life 6 — The sponsored alternative athlete. Professional golfer. Sponsored surfer, mountain biker, cyclist, sailor, whatever version of this life exists where I wake up in a new place, compete at something I love, and represent a brand that stands for something real. The Surfer's Journal version of an athletic life. I am not ruling it out.
Life 7 — The CEO of a team of teams. The Alpine Investors model. The Bill Campbell model. A holding company built around people, operators, athletes, leaders, builders, where the investment thesis is human potential and the returns compound over decades, not quarters. Harbor Lane at full scale. This one feels less like a parallel life and more like where Life 1 is already going.
Life 8 — The lead writer. A globally read newsletter, larger than Field & Fathom, or maybe this is exactly what Field & Fathom becomes, where the writing sits at the intersection of sport, capital, leadership, and the human condition. A platform that amplifies brands, small businesses, athletes, young professionals, and executives doing something worth paying attention to. The Surfer's Journal meets Alpine Investors meets Bill Walsh. Nobody owns that lane yet.
Life 9 — The one that took the longest to write down. Traveling the world to grow the game of lacrosse. Coaching clinics in places the sport has never been. Building the infrastructure, youth leagues, school programs, community partnerships, that plants the game in soil it has never touched. Not as a career move. As a calling. This is the life that scares me a little to admit I want. Which means it belongs on the list.
Now it is your turn!
Here are the nine questions. Grab something to write on. Do not filter. Do not edit while you write. You have five minutes, and this exercise will stay with you long after tonight.
1. What is the life you are living right now, described honestly, not aspirationally?
2. If you woke up tomorrow doing something completely different that genuinely excites you, what is it?
3. What did you want to be at age ten before anyone told you to be realistic?
4. What would you pursue if you knew it would take fourteen years but you were guaranteed it would work?
5. What do people consistently ask you for help with that you do not consider a skill because it comes so naturally?
6. What is the version of your life where you traded money for meaning, and what does it look like?
7. What is the version of your life where you went all in on what you have been treating as a side project?
8. What is the life where you are most useful to the people you love most?
9. What is the life that scares you the most to write down, and why does it scare you?
Once you have identified your nine lives, pull things from lives two through nine into your current life. You do not have to blow everything up. You just have to stop leaving the best parts of yourself on a list.
This exercise was created by Graham Weaver, founder of Alpine Investors and Stanford GSB professor. Watch the original in full here:
TRIVIA: Category | Multi-Sport Athletes
Answer: Jim Brown — lacrosse. Brown made the Lacrosse Hall of Fame with standout performances in both high school and at Syracuse University, playing at an elite level before football became his primary pursuit. One of the greatest athletes in American history — and one of the great lacrosse players too.
ON ROTATION | What's Playing
Some songs ask a question the whole way through. The best ones never answer it.
Tonight’s Listen: Would That Not Be Nice — Divine Fits
At night I wonder, how do I swing this, that opening line lands differently when you have just written down nine lives and realized how many of them are already within reach. This track is four minutes of restless, honest yearning. It belongs on tonight's playlist.
OPEN INVITE
If any of this resonates, with you or someone in your life, reply here or reach out directly. Not therapy, not a pitch. Just a real conversation.
Until tomorrow!
Kyle | Founder · Harbor Lane Holdings · Atticus Lacrosse Company
Field & Fathom · Harbor Lane Holdings · Daily
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