Matthew McDowell-Sweet | In Motion

Hi there. I'm Matt.

Current activities and projects.

Salient past activities, projects, milestones.

Much of the goodness in my life has and continues to emerge from reading.

Active reading tracks

I read continuously and in parallel. I'm a moody reader and reading multiple texts simply increases the probability that there's always something I'm excited to read at a particular moment. I accomplish this by having defined tracks that act as attentional braces, and it's a stance that applies to both fiction and non-fiction.

The current tracks for non-fiction are:

For fiction, I am splitting my reading between trad. high fantasy series and what the SoP gang call "protocol fiction". That is, stories hingeing on strange rules, instead of special people.


Quake books

A "quake book" is a text that radically perturbs how one thinks about and acts within the world. The shift is experienced, individually and ideally societally, as positive (as opposed to the negative shifts associated with ideological or epistemological info hazards).

A quake book may make an existing belief, value or stance especially legible to oneself, or provide irrefutable evidence for something felt at a deep level. It may catalyse a novel perspective or insight, or provoke new questions because it's wrong in a particularly interesting or sacrilegious way. No matter how it happens, a quake book terraforms one's existence upon engagement.

I first heard of them via Ryan Holiday sometime in the mid-2010s. He heard of them via Tyler Cowen. These are mine:


Pilgrimages

Whereas "quake books" instantly and irrevocably alter one's inner landscape, "pilgrimages" are long and toilsome initiatives undertaken mostly on faith in the transformative power of the journey itself.

Below are the unreasonably long texts (or, more commonly, series of texts) that had a disproportionate impact on me, and that I will tirelessly shill given the opportunity.


Top rated books of 2025

In comparison to previous years, 2025 was an abysmal reading year for me. This was due to a chronic inability to focus for sustained periods, more frugality concerning my reading spend, and the prioritisation of math skill development.

Nevertheless, I still managed to read 32 books, start but quit 5 more, and flâneur through 3 texts I've read before.

Below are all my reads from 2025, sorted into fiction vs. non-fiction and listed in chronological order. The top rated reads are prefixed with a star, those I quit are prefixed with an exclamation mark, and the flâneured are prefixed with a plus.

All non-fiction reads, 2025
All fiction reads, 2025
Top rated books of 2024

All lists are based on the "Read" section of my 2024 annual review. A mega-thread of all of 2024's reads can be found here.

Top rated non-fiction, 2024
Top rated fiction, 2024
Honourable mentions, 2024
Top rated books of 2023

All lists are based on the "Read" section of my 2023 annual review. A mega-thread of all of 2023's reads can be found here.

Top rated non-fiction, 2023
Top rated fiction, 2023
Honourable mentions, 2023
Top rated books of 2022

All lists are based on the "Read" section of my 2022 annual review.

Top rated non-fiction, 2022
Top rated fiction, 2022
Honourable mentions, 2022
Top rated books of 2021 (April to December)

Both lists are based, in part, on the "Read" section of my 2021 annual review.

Top rated non-fiction, 2021
Top rated fiction, 2021

Much of the goodness in my life has and continues to emerge from movement.

Ageing wild

Standards for my 30-60y.o. arc, from my original blog post.


High leverage interventions

Accessible but transformational interventions.


Influence clusters
Traditional sport science and strength training

At a job interview, the interviewer (later my boss, and then my friend) recommended I check out Dan John. He also recommended some of the classic S&C literature from figures like Mel Siff, Tudor Bompa and Zatsiorsky. That served as a gateway to people like Mark Rippetoe and sources like T-Nation and EliteFTS. From there? A deeper dive into anatomy, kinesiology, biomechanics, physical therapy and fascia.


Functional training and performance

The texts around physical therapy and fascia directed me towards GOAT'd figures like Stuart McGill as well as people like Kelly Starrett. In between these sat an array of people systematising and scaling functional training and performance: Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Gray Cook, and individual coaches like Ben Bruno and Tony Gentilcore.


Movement-as-a-way-of-being

Further down the line, I was enamoured with the sometimes purist, sometimes pragmatic approach of Ido Portal. Later, Erwan Le Corre's Movnat became an interest, Tim Andersen's Original Strength hooked me, and I drank up the ideas of a movement-rich life as described by Katy Bowman.


Combatives, martial arts, and survivalist operators

In and around this exposure to functional and philosophical movement, other influences began to seep in. This was a mash-up of movement hardliners like Gym Jones (and later Michael Blevin's Grit and Teeth) and Strong First, as well as more combatives and survivalist-orientated approaches. This was catalysed by my Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice, and grew to include the wider sphere of MMA, movement practices like Budokon, and more brutal survival and SERE-teachers such as Ed Calderon and Shivworks.


Soft acrobatics and expression

The final cluster swirling around the above concerned itself with soft acrobatics and movement-as-expression. Mostly, this was driven by people like Tom Weksler, Karimu Samuels, Nils Teisner, Fighting Monkey and Cat Meffan, but it also included more randomised exposures to dance, athletics and extreme sports of various kinds via YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.


30-60 y.o. arc

Currently, I'm trying to age wild. This means exploring new skills (e.g. clubs, ropes) and deepening existing ones (e.g. BJJ, climbing, kettlebells) whilst still adhering to a custom set of movement standards. The influences driving this are personal OGs, like Dan John, Tim Andersen and Katy Bowman, as well as some figures newer to me, like Peter Attia and Nsima Inyang.


Design and influences.