There’s a growing tendency to say too much.

Telling people everything we think—about our ideas, plans, actions, goals, views, and feelings—is what’s been normalized.

And there’s good in that. But we’re in an oversharing culture, one that’s drowned by the hum of everyone fighting to be heard. More and more people are exposing every part of themselves to more and more people who are too busy and inundated with other noise to care.

We’re told to be loud. Social media has trained us we need to use caps, emojis, hashtags, big bold captions, and uniform thumbnails that all look the same now on our videos to get people to listen.

Getting people to listen is exhausting, and it’s usually the quiet ones who say very little anyway that we all want to listen to most.

This post is in many ways a self-critique of what I do wrong and a letter of self-motivation for what I want to do better, and it’s about two very interconnected ideas.

• Say less about what you’ll do to protect your focus.

• Say less in general to increase your impact

Saying something isn’t the same as doing something

I’ve often found that one of the surest ways to not follow through with something you want to do is to tell people you’re going to do it.

More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve had an idea followed by a strike of passion and motivation, and decided that I want to go do something new. In the honeymoon phase of the idea, like with someone that you’re just starting to date, it’s tempting to want to show it off and tell everyone this one is for real.

But telling people you want to do something, without having done it, sometimes creates an illusion of having done the thing, giving you a false sense of accomplishment. Like you’ve been given a bit of the social reward—the recognition in a way— for doing the thing without needing to have done it.

When you tell people your plans and get their positive feedback, you can lose something in that process that makes following through on the thing less likely. Because saying it out loud to someone can make it feel faux-real.

Saying you will do something is not the same as doing something. And the people who end up getting the most done and have the most follow through tend not to overshare their plans too soon.

I know someone who said they were going to start a podcast. And I know someone else who did start a podcast.

I know someone who said they were going to lose weight. And I know someone else who did lose weight.

I know someone who said they were going to start a business. And I know someone else who did start a business.

I know someone who said they were going to run a marathon. And I know someone who did run an Iron Man.

And trust me, I’ve been the person who said they were going to do something and the person who did do something many times myself. And they usually were not for the same thing.

Because when you keep things to yourself and just go do what is necessary to get it done, you maintain much more focus and you only stand to gain, because:

1. If you don’t end up doing it, nobody knows…

2. If you do end up doing it, people will only know through the proof of it.

Have some mystery. By no means for the sake of creating mystery or trying to be mysterious, but simply for the sake of protecting the things you want to do. Just a little bit.

There’s sanctity in the privacy of your plans.

The title of this post should not be taken fully at it’s face value…definitely talk to people about things in your life. Bottling up is bad. Sharing, honesty, and being vulnerable is good. And there’s still a lot of value in being transparent about plans and getting feedback—it often opens the door for opportunities. But it’s about timing and about who you tell. Telling the right people at the right time about ideas can help bring them to reality.

But not everything needs to be said.

Not all your views and opinions need to be publicized.

Not all thoughts and feeling said.

Not all ideas and plans shared.

Not all actions and achievements promoted.

It’s okay to not telling people anything.

Say less and and do more, because action and change through silence is the loudest statement you can make.

“Well done is better than well said.” — Benjamin Franklin

The quieter ones are the ones who make you think

There’s another layer to all this: practicing quiet in general.

The loudest voices, despite their best effort, rarely make us think. They often repeat what everyone else is saying, or fill the air and feed just to be noticed. But the people we lean into, the ones who command presence without raising their voices, are usually the quiet ones.

Think of Keanu Reeves. If you’ve ever see him in an interview, you rarely hear him talk about what he’s doing next. You rarely even hear him at all in fact. But when you do, people listen. His long pauses, his restraint, his intentionality—all amplify his words, because silence is the backdrop that makes speech meaningful.

Silence in nature is often what takes our breath away the most. Silence in movies is what keeps us locked to the screen. Silence in music is what makes space for the best melodies. Silence in speeches is what holds our attention and makes a pedestal for what must be remembered.

Noise is normalized. Silence is deeply underrated.

We’re so used to people cramming every opportunity for nothing and silence with something and noise, that a person who listens more, posts less, and who doesn’t feel the urge to fill every gap with chatter, stands out. They help create space in whatever the conversation is about. And in that space, people reflect. People think. People find clarity.

I used to think that the way to be understood was to keep talking (or writing) until I made myself clear. That to show I knew my stuff at work and wasn’t an imposter, I’d just prove it by being the one who could say the most on the matter—always having an answer and always answering first. Or that to make new friends, I’d have to be my most extroverted self and fill all the gaps with conversation.

But I’ve learned the opposite is true.

I’m not smart by talking a lot.

I’m not having an impact by speaking louder or trying to be important. The more I say, the more diluted the meaning becomes and the more unsure I actually look.

The smartest people I’ve worked with, in reflection writing this post, are almost always the quiet people who carry a kind of gravity that brings confidence and authority to any meeting. They don’t waste words, they listen and learn while letting others talk, and when they do speak, it lands heavier. Their restraint builds trust, because you know they’re not talking for the sake of it—they’re talking because it matters.

And that’s what I think is worth practicing—what I wrote this to reminder myself to practice more of— not just protecting the infancy of our plans by saying less, but building the muscle where we don’t need to be the loudest in the room to be felt. Where we don’t need words to make us feel comfortable.

Try it:

• Hold back from offering your opinion right away.

• Let the silence hang a little longer in a conversation; let is breed some curiosity.

• Notice how much you hear when you’re not trying to be heard.

• When you’re asked a question, create a strategic pause first, and reflect before answering. Less umming and ahing our way through pauses, and more intentionally leaving a few.

• Speak a little softer when you do—let people lean in a tad more.

Most of us are uncomfortable with quiet. I am. But leaning into it gives your words and your presence more volume.

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” — Dalai Lama

So, instead of speaking up to break through the noise, choose quiet. Let your silence build things worth hearing about—and when you do speak, make it count.

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More good times :)

Nothing could have prepared me for picking up the phone at 5:23am to hear my little sister crying through the phone to tell me our mom was gone.

I’ve since felt a lot of things I’d never felt before. Floods of disbelief, dark pits of guilt, pain from loss and longing, unsolvable regret, and a deep inner plea to have just one minute to say and do something different, but knowing nothing will allow that to happen. The first feeling of hopelessness in my life—the first time I knew that no amount of effort, money, creativity, luck, grit, or cleverness would give me that chance.

But before coming to write this piece, just a few moments ago, I was sitting outside writing in my journal—thinking about the past year—and truly feeling so much luck and gratitude, while at the exact same time, feeling and reflecting on all the pain and sadness.

Then I felt guilty for feeling grateful and good. How is that right, the day before the 1 year mark of losing my mom?

How is it possible to feel such starkly different feelings all at once?
How is it possible that I’ve had such a good year, while also such a bad one?

It can only be because so often, two opposite things can be true at the same time. As Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

This year was certainly the worst of times. But I also got a great new job, travelled to several places for the first time filled with many incredible shared experiences, spent quality time with my wife and family, made new friends, found two new passions that bring me so much fun and happiness, sold my first newsletter, started my second new one, and feel like I grew into a better and wiser person.

Anyway, this is not a long letter. I’m feeling reflective this morning, and I think what’s on my mind doesn’t need many words. It’s more a list of brief and broad things I’ve learnt since the morning of August 31st 2024. Hopefully you find something useful in them.

1. Life is full of unexpected contradictions and paradoxes.
   Things are rarely ever linear and make complete sense. Good and bad can be interchangeable. Everything we know is just a concept and everything we perceive is pushed through our rationalized understanding of the world. But that understanding is made up—we trained ourselves to say that smiling and laughing when hearing terrible news is a bad thing…but that’s our own rule. Who said it’s right? Maybe it’s not worth resisting contradiction, but instead, just noticing it for what it is.

2. Life isn’t binary with good times and bad times, they exist and happen together and simultaneously.
   If you feel like shit today, that doesn’t mean tomorrow might not be incredible. It doesn’t mean yesterday wasn’t incredible. We tend to think that what we feel in the moment is how we have, or will, always feel. That’s almost never true. So remember that when you’re feeling down, more good always sneaks back in, even when you least expect it.

3. Guilt can be an anchor or a sail.
   The feeling of guilt is a quiet guide if you’re open to listening. What made you feel guilt? What did you or didn’t you do? If you hear what it has to say, you can use that to grow and be better to others going forward.

4. Don’t ever leave things unsaid.
   Because there’s no guarantee you’ll get another chance to say them. Don’t leave on a bad note. Don’t delay saying what someone hopes and needs to hear from you. Don’t go to bed angry with your partner. The regret and longing to get that one chance again is a painful stab.

5. The worst pain always passes despite it feeling like it never will.
   Time heals all wounds is a hallmark cliche until you experience it with a real loss. And that doesn’t mean you’re heal back to how you were, but like a cut that scars, it does mean things get better.

6. Post-pain growth is real, and happiness and peace can come from integrating scars, not hiding them.
   In Buddhism, the lotus flower is a holy symbol of enlightenment, because it grows out of muddy, dirty water yet blossoms clean and beautiful. Like the lotus, transformation in our life often comes through struggle. Hardship is not always the enemy, but the place that allows us to build strength and wisdom.

7. It’s okay to go through periods of zero ambition, no drive, and melancholy.
   I had many weeks and months of not wanting to do anything, and not feeling a pull towards anything. I sometimes lay face down on the couch doing nothing except feeling nothing. The more I pushed to break it and find something that sparked me, the more I spun. It’s normal for all of us to feel depression in our life. Just know that it doesn’t define you. Like hopelessness..

8. Feeling hopeless doesn’t make you hopeless.
   That’s an important distinction. You are not your feelings, and your feelings are not you.

9. If someone doesn’t feel seen or heard, go out of your way to change that.
   You never know what the impact on that person’s day, or life, might be from even just a few words or moments of empathy and validation.

10. You can be more vulnerable thank you think with your partner, friends, and family.
    Being open with the people you love is often harder than being open with a total stranger. It’s normal to feel embarrassed or like you might be judged in your vulnerability, but closeness, understanding, and intimacy come from leaning in vs shying away. Strength isn’t saying you’re always okay.

11. Find a way to tell the truth, no matter how hard or embarrassing it is or feels.
    The truth is never boring, and people often feel when you’re not saying it.

12. Don’t wait until someone is gone to see the best parts of them.
    Think about the people you love and care about. What are their best qualities you love and admire? And don’t be shy to tell them. It feels funny sending a text like that or saying it over a call, but you have no idea what it could mean to that person.

13. No grief is the same.
    There isn’t a right or wrong way to be sad. There’s rarely a right or wrong way to do anything, in fact. Usually, there’s just a way.

14. Quit things that don’t fill you up the way you thought they would.
    It isn’t shameful to stop, it’s wise. The sunk cost fallacy is so powerful and so often ignored. The wiser you get, the faster you stop doing things. Remake decisions frequently, there’s no credit given for sticking to decisions a past version of yourself made with outdated information and context.

15. Braveness is showing off and being proud of your own creativity. Love is seeing and being proud of creativity in others.
    I only found out months after my mom was gone, as I reread text messages from her (many I didn’t fully read), how nervous she felt sharing her art and writing with me and my siblings. How she’d held off showing us for years. She was brilliant, and I found out later from a friend of hers how a message I sent her saying how remarkable I thought her work was made her feel for months; how happy and seen she felt. So, share you creativity in whatever form, and don’t hold back praising it in others.

16. Tell your parents you love them.
    Right now.

This was done in one sitting, and done mostly for myself.

Perhaps it was the best of my writing, it was the worst of my writing.

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More good times :)

We feel happy when we get what we want, or when we want what we have.

Wanting what we have is all about enjoying this vs. chasing that. And that’s obviously important, because if you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more?

But even if we do appreciate everything we have right now, all of us still have ambitions and wants for our life—things we’re still in the process of architecting and working towards. A place, feeling, and ideal situation to reach.

So, I want to talk about getting what we want. But first, do you actually want the things you think you want? The relatively easier part is making a plan to get it, the harder part is figuring out if it’s worth getting in the first place.

Because by default, we’re bad at knowing what we want.

So much so, there’s actually a psychological term for it: Mimetic Desire. And the theory goes that because we're bad at figuring out what we want on our own, we look to others’ to model our desires off—to tell us what’s worth wanting. We're copycats…wanting what we see other people wanting.

Except, we don’t realize we’re doing it.

How many people do you hear telling you what you should care about. How to live. How to build a good career. What to buy. When to have kids. How to invest. Who to follow. How to build your personal brand. What your morning routine should look like.

Models that influence us are everywhere. Our friends. Families. Neighbors. People we follow. Many of us are at the alter of the algorithm, having our desires influenced everyday.

When I was on Instagram, I routinely felt inadequate because I wasn’t running a drop shopping business or day trading in my spare time or building a vending machine empire.

I didn’t actually want any of those things, yet I went and watched videos and made plans to figure out how to do them because I felt I wasn’t “doing enough” if I slept on these “opportunities”.

Silly me being sucked into the media’s mimetic washing machine—rinsing me of my originality, soul, and energy.

That’s why we often end up chasing similar things—the things we think we should want but don’t feel truly satisfied getting. The default path is just this imitation game where we gradually converge around the same abstract desires—the same dog and pony show.

But as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

And it’s easy to fall into The Pretend Trap with the constant noise—pushing us to play the global game of comparison and reaching the next big milestone…the game that keeps us all sprinting on the same hedonic treadmill for the “ just one more” that never ends.

It’s just too easy to lose control of our life or business because we’re trying to make it something that other’s will be impressed by. In retrospect, how and why I ran my first startup was very much about how I wanted to be seen—deeply influenced by all the founder models I looked to, how I wanted the people I knew to think of me, and to make my entrepreneurial dad proud. There was a lot of pretend going on.

But our life shouldn’t be theater for other people. The applause always fades. In reality, nobody actually cares what you do or get. The novelty of every milestone wears off. The only thing that matters is doing what you actually want, because—if you care about what others think—that’s what defines who you are and that’s the only thing people remember.

And what’s worth wanting starts by defining what a wonderful life means for you, because we’re just not here long enough to play the wrong game and get a prize we never actually cared to win.

Here’s what I now want…

I want to work 3 hours per day on my own little business, help hundreds of people, have time to master my hobbies, spend time outdoors, exercise and play Padel, spend quality time everyday with my wife and favorite people, travel whenever we want and scuba dive around world, avoid pointless meetings, and say no to anything I don’t want to do.

That’s it.
That’s the dream.

That’s my idea of the good life, which I genuinely believe has very few essential components that are universal happiness pillars for humans:

• Do good work. Work that challenges me, is interesting, and gives me flexibility to do other things. But mostly, work I can take pride in doing. If you’re doing work that lacks “purpose”, focus on finding meaning in the quality of your outputs, no matter how big or small they are.

• Make some money. Not crazy amounts like I used to want that would require sacrificing my life and obsessing over, but enough to have options and do the things I want. To have stability, comfort, and fun and provide for my family without worry.

• Enjoy hobbies. Having something I love doing that I can keep getting better at over time for no reason other than enjoyment. Building skills for fun that aren’t to get you paid is an awesome thing. Not all of your time needs to be monetized—it’s taken me a long time to realize that and not feel guilt.

• Stay healthy. Nothing else really matters if my body and mind are falling apart. The quality of your life depends on sleeping well, moving your body, eating real food, and protecting your mental space.

• Help people. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the key to life and feeling fulfilled is being useful. I agree, and the scale is irrelevant.

• Love your family. Spend quality time with my wife, friends, and family. Make time for the people you love, and who love you, the most. Don’t estrange people because they believe different things to you—there’s only regret there.

• Travel the world. Try new things. See other ways of life. Learn different customs. It makes you more creative, empathetic, and aware of what actually matters. I always feel inspired after a trip to change or try something.

I used to care a lot more about thin desires—things that are shallower, reactive, and often tied to appearances. I feel I’m getting closer to basing more of what I want on thick desires—the things that are true to me.

A thin desire was wanting to go viral and have a big social presence. Now—besides writing here—I want to leave social media and enjoy the luxury of peace, quiet, and privacy.

A thin desire was wanting to get promoted, have a better title, and get to the top— to be a VP. Now, I want a job that gives me the flexibility, stability, and balance to enjoy my hobbies everyday—happy to be called whatever they want to call me.

A thin desire was wanting to be a founder, raise lots of money and hit a nice valuation and make tons of money in stock if I exited. Now, I want to start a small business selling something fun and meaningful online that requires no staff, has good margins, and is low stress without caring about scale. No meetings.

Now, maybe after reading my wants, you feel this talks to what you want.

And that’s the thing about Mimetic Desire. It’s sneaky; guising itself in recognition and resonance. But often we’re just recognizing the appeal of someone else’s articulation, and we fold that into the idea of what we want.

So, just be curious. Question the things that you want that are the basis for whatever plan you’re working on. You should be asking: “Is this mine? Do I actually want this?” “What would I do differently if I listened to my true desires?”

Not because you’re living the wrong life, or out of existential dread. But out of respect. For your time. Your energy. For your pursuit of wisdom and self discovery. And for your one shot at this.

Living a good life doesn’t require originality—copy and steal desires that resonate with you, and who cares if you chase some thin desires in there too; I do and I am—but it does require ownership.

To leave you with something somewhat tactical here, from my experience, the answer won’t come from thinking harder.

It come from noticing better.

And that comes from developing the taste for what you actually want. Look at all your inputs. What are you consuming? What’s occupying your mental space?

Taste is about curating what you let in…everything you watch and listen to and read and follow. And most of the time, taste is subtractive. It’s not about being a contrarian, but listening to what feels true and right and discarding the rest.

It’s the filtering system for your attention. A way of protecting your bandwidth and sharpening your sense of what resonates with you; what things you keep coming back to; what things you do that need no approval or recognition; what you do when nobody is watching. And just as importantly, tasting shit on your tongue… the stuff that drains you; triggers anxiety or inadequacy; the things you do out of obligation, performance, or inertia.

That’s how you notice your way to what’s worth wanting, because nothing else really is.

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More good times :)

I couldn’t see a thing. Pitch black. Eyes open or closed—no difference.
I couldn’t hear a thing. Absolute silence.
But most oddly, I couldn’t feel a thing either.

I was floating, weightlessly, in a pool of salt water. But there was zero sense of where my body stopped and the water began. The water was heated to perfectly match my skin temperate.

I was in the tank—the tank, that for $100, sold me absolutely nothing.

384 cubic feet of solitude.

And for nothing, it was money well spent. Being deprived of every sense apparently causes the brain to drift into theta-state—the brainwave activity between half-awake and half dreaming. You’d think being in a tank with no sense to latch onto would be boring, and your mind would rescue you by thinking about something.

That’s not what happened.

I left feeling a sense of calm, with a stillness that stuck with me beyond the tank for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I walked home slowly. I didn’t feel an itch to look at my phone when I was alone. And I just did everything slowly for the rest of the day, with no nagging guilt to do something.

It also gave me a kick of creativity, because when distractions and overthinking fall away, clarity stuff comes to the surface….muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

But this isn’t an ad for expensive deprivation tanks.

Because who sells ice to Eskimos. Nothing is free.

The Stoics, Buddhists, modern philosophers like Watts and Harris, and writers like Vonnegut and Whitman—all with wise eyes for the human experience—have been telling us why we should all find time to do nothing…to respect the art of loafing…to simply be…for hundreds of years.

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

— Alan Watts

“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.”

— The Buddha

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

“I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”
– Walt Whitman

After my experience of true nothingness—not that I hadn’t heard the philosophy of it before and didn’t have some practice with it—I wanted to brush up on my thinking and understanding of what it means to actually tap into peace and stillness through little moments of doing nothing. Especially because the practice of it is fucking hard.

Hard to find the time. Hard to do nothing when it seems like nothing in fact requires you do something. And personally, extremely hard to not feel guilty about it thanks to years of conditioning that doing nothing is wrong…and not how you win. We’re told, if you want success, you better be moving and doing the thing.

So, this short letter covers three things:

1. Why nothing is good

2. When to do nothing

3. How to do nothing

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I often have to remind myself that doing nothing isn’t being lazy.

As my favorite Stoic said, “Restlessness is symptomatic of a sick mind”.

Intentional Nothing is the necessary resistance to the urge to always be doing something. A rejection of the tyranny of always needing a reason. A middle finger to the cult of utility. And an invitation to yourself to pause, look around, and be still with yourself and be aware of the good. To enjoy the simplest of things.

One of the best arguments for doing nothing is this: look at what constant doing is doing to us. Living in New York, I feel this all the time. The need to be in motion. More goals, more growth, more grit, more. But similarly to what I wrote last time, in chasing the next thing, we often miss the thing we’re in. The life, right now. And in return get stress and anxiety.

This is what “the present moment is all we ever have” means, because to be lost in distraction is to miss the only thing that’s real. Even 60 seconds of pure awareness—no striving, no commentary—is a return to sanity.

As Watts once said, “The meaning of life is just to be alive.” Not to monetize your passion. Not to optimize your mornings. Not to meditate better. Just to be alive. And yet, we rush around as if that were some kind of trap to escape—guilting ourselves if we take a break. Like we’re not worthy if we’re not creating.

But in doing so, we miss out on the sacredness of the unproductive moment.

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well ordered mind that a man’s ability to just stop where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca

And this isn’t just meditative fluff from poets and stone faces, science backs up the power of the loaf.

Research on mind-wandering, default mode network (DMN) activation, and creative incubation points to something obvious we’ve forgotten: the brain does important work when it’s doing Nothing.

So, there is also a productive benefit to doing nothing. For example…

• The Default Mode Network (DMN), also known as our our brain’s "resting state", lights up when we’re not focused on a task. This is when our brain consolidates memory, clears mental RAM, processes emotions, reflects on identity, and connects unrelated ideas. AKA. pattern spotting and creative thinking.

• Doing nothing improves problem-solving. In one study, people who were given a break and told to rest solved creative problems 40% more effectively than those who worked straight through. Small gaps matter.

• Pausing reduces our cortisol levels. Another study showed that even short mindful breaks (2–3 minutes) helps to lower stress hormones and improves our ability to keep paying attention. Nothing improves flow.

So when your brain wanders while staring at the clouds, it’s not being inefficient and you’re not being lazy—you’re allowing it to access a deeper operating system.

The one that produces creative insight and helps you feel good.

In other words, doing nothing often helps you to doing something better.

You don’t need a float tank.

Do nothing when you feel the itch to do something out of boredom. That impulse to open Instagram, or check and refresh email again (for no reason), or even just open your phone randomly and cycle through apps (is that just me?). Pause. Notice it. Let it pass. That moment is pure power—because every time you resist a compulsion, you’re taking back some ownership of your attention.

Do nothing when you’re overwhelmed. Busyness for me is definitely a form of emotional avoidance. When my brain’s juggling too many tabs, going to the balcony and stopping to do nothing for even a minute or two is a pattern interrupt that time and again have rewired the trajectory of my day.

Do nothing before you speak or reply. Especially when angry, nervous, or uncertain. The space between stimulus and response is where wisdom lives. Let that space grow by doing a little bit of nothing.

Do nothing when you're alone. Instead of instantly filling the silence with podcasts or a show or phone scrolling, just let stillness be there for a few minutes. Hang out with yourself for a few.

Do nothing even when things are good. This is the zen-level move. Most people think of stillness as a means to escape suffering—but it’s just as valuable in the good times. So let the good and happy moments sink in.

The point is to not fret about some perfect schedule. It’s little moments of awareness where you mute the voice that says you’re a bum if you’re not “on”, performing, or visibility productive.

You deserve to feel good. You deserve nothing.

Since the whole point of doing nothing is not to try too hard, here are a 8 low-effort things I do to do Nothing. The paradox of it, I know.

I don’t see them as spiritual or even things to get “right”. They’re just small ways I try to reclaim my biggest asset: my attention.

1. I watch my cats do nothing
   Nobody does nothing like my cats, so I like to learn from the best. I often just sit on the couch and watch them. Their little noses crinkling, or paws twitching as they sleep lost in some dream. Or just as they gaze out the window. I find it very relaxing just being with them. I’m watching Leo now in fact, and oh boy is he cute.

   

2. Stare out the window with coffee
   I romanticize my morning coffee. I like to sip slowly and just look. At birds, trees, clouds, buildings. Whatever’s outside. Usually as the first thing I do when I’m up.

3. Lie in bed with no agenda
   Before sleep, don’t reach for anything. Just let your mind drift and let the silence do its thing. Some tea and a candle, just sitting for a few is often a little doorway into deeper consciousness—if you don’t slam it shut with stimulus.

4. Raw dog the elevator or subway
   I feel like a tool when I remember to stand in the elevator and resist the discomfort and awkwardness that my phone would save me from, but it’s good practice. Same thing with trains…great opportunity to just buckle up and raw dog it with your thoughts.

5. Gaze at the ceiling
   Lie down (bed, couch, floor, or grass) and look up. Let your eyes softly gaze at the texture of your ceiling, or the sky if you're outside. Let your thoughts drift and notice whatever comes up. And if you have a cool idea or feel motivated (often what comes from doing nothing), try not rush off to do it. Respect the loaf.

6. Free flow word dump, but with no purpose
   This isn’t doing “nothing” per se, but I feel like it’s in a similar camp. It’s something I learned from Matthew Dicks’ Storyworthy. It’s not art and it’s not journaling. Just pen on paper and you spitballing words. Start with a single word or memory—any random word, place, or object that pops into your mind—and free-write for a few minutes about it. The exercise helps unlock forgotten memories, and trains your brain to see story potential in everyday life…from seemingly nothing moments. It taps into the idea that “We don’t lead uninteresting lives. We just fail to notice.”

7. Take a pointless walk
   No step goals. No errands along the way. No music. Just wander around the block like a curious dog sniffing the world. Let whatever come to you.

8. Do something slowly
   Chores suck and I hate cooking. I usually want to rush through them to get on with my evening. But sometimes, if I remember, I try do it like meditation. Watering the plants. Doing the laundry. Cleaning. Whatever it is, try move at half-speed on purpose and without something to occupy you like a podcast. Sounds psycho, but see how weird and good it feels.

Wait…am I becoming my cat?
Good.

This week sometime, or today, or maybe even right after reading this, try to find one moment—just one—where you’re about to fill space with some stimulation.

And don’t.

Don’t read the next newsletter in your inbox. Don’t open the app to check. Don’t passively scroll. Don’t multitask. Don’t push for progress. Just pause and break through the restlessness.

Let the moment be empty, and notice what fills it.

Respect the loaf.

That’s the practice of nothing.
That’s the point of nothing.
And sometimes…that moment of nothing is everything.

If you enjoyed reading about nothing today, the best compliment I could receive would be hitting like, or if you shared it with one person or restacked it.

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More good times :)

It’s free.
It’s easy to take.
It feels euphoric.
And like most, it leaves you with a come down.

I took some Nostalgia last night before bed after going through some pics of the last New Years Eve I spent with my mom and her cat. We stayed in and watched a movie.

It felt good.
And then I cried a bit.

Nostalgia.

Or said differently, choosing to go back in time and hangout in the past—some fond moment or good memory—for a bit.

It’s comforting to reminisce about “better days”. When things felt simpler. When we were younger. When there was a sense of adventure. When your career or life felt like a blank canvas. When you walked the isles of the video store finding a DVD for the weekend—elated when that movie you missed in theater was suddenly on the shelf.

We all have moments that feel warm and cozy and a little sad (in a good way) to revisit. Sad because we know that experience is gone. Finito. And we won’t get it back. Yet we’ve cocooned and preserved it—knowing with a single dose of Nostalgia we can go to those good old “better days”.

I often go back and think about my family Friday night dinners growing up. Breaking bread together. Laughing with each other. Teasing. Being teased. My little brother being sent to the corner—or sending himself to the corner in defiance. My dad telling me to stop worrying about my body and to just eat another scoop of ice cream. Vanilla with sprinkles on top.

Or my friends all coming over to my house every weekend while in school. Cars packed in the driveway. Going out. Being hungover together and negotiating if we could even afford KFC after a night out.

Good times. And there’s many more of them in the memory bank.

And from many visits to the vault, there’s three things I’ve come to believe.

I was bad at recognizing those good times while they were happening.

In the moments I think back to, I had problems and grievances and stress and plenty I was complaining about. Plenty of time then, in those moments, was spent thinking about the future. Time spent sitting at that dinner table looking forward and thinking about the moment when everything falls perfectly into place. Where I’ve finished the exams. When I have the job and money. And where, at last, I’ve got a girlfriend. In those now preciously remembered moments at the table, much of the real time in them wasn’t spent getting the richest experience I could from them, nope, they were spent thinking about the problems I had and what it would be like when they’re fixed—when the goals of the time are achieved.

When I moved to New York, me and my co-founder lived in a seriously shitty apartment. A real doozy. We had no friends and knew nobody and had a lot of pressure to make something of our time and investment coming here. We had little spending money for ourselves and counted every single penny in a Google Sheet. Everyone investor said no to us, and we had no idea how we’d actually stay in America past our 6 months. But we had energy, possibility, and little at stake if we failed.

I now live 2 streets up from that first apartment. I can see the roof of the building, and I often look down at it through eyes that have now seen everything I wanted back then. It was just a few years ago but feels like a different lifetime.

Yet I still look back at this period so fondly. Not because being broke was fun. It wasn’t. But because I was on an adventure with my friend, meeting and falling in love with the women I got to marry, finding a home in a new place, learning about startups, figuring out how to be an adult, and doing all the things to grow in my life and career.

Many of the things I complained about then and kept me up, are now the stories I love telling and thinking about.

Same thing with COVID. How many of us look back on being stuck at home and miss it a bit?

And across all these good times…

I had no idea when those periods or times or moments I now reminisce on were ending.

I think that’s why we feel sad sometimes, because we didn’t know how good that moment was until we look back on it, and because we didn’t know it was over until somewhere later in life.

Every experience and chapter of life has a last time. A closing credit. There was that last time on New Years I got to watch a movie with my mom. The last time my friends and I all lived in the same hometown. The last family Shabbas we had when my parents were together and we all lived at home.

Except, the universe gets a kick for making sure we never ever know it. We don’t know the last time, because in the moment, we usually don’t care. Why? Because we’re not noticing the extent of it. We’re not being present for those good old days or that good moment while we’re in them.

Because if we were…if we knew that was the last time…we’d definitely live it a little differently. Which is why when we look back on them, we usually romanticize them and iron away all the little crinkles that actually took us away from enjoying that moment fully. Memory is often, kindly, selective.

Which takes me to my last and most powerful belief.

I’m living in a time right now that I’ll certainly romanticize about later.

Do we have problems and stresses and creases in today’s story? Of course. Things Julia and I want to achieve? Of course. And I know that will be true of any time because it’s been true of every time. So I also know in a few years, I’ll look back on this version of life and know how good the times were. That the problems I have right now will someday be problems I’d gladly trade back for.

This is because our present circumstances, however imperfect they might be with how we want or imagine things to be, have so many pieces to it that our “future selves” will desperately miss.

I love my life right now and it’s full of good. It’s the best version of my life I’ve been lucky enough to live, and despite still being in the unpredictable shadow of grief, I have so much that makes me happy. A beautiful, smart, and creative wife. Our sleepy and healthy cats. A plant-filled home with a corner chair that gets washed in morning sun—my coffee corner—and the story we’re making together in our favorite neighborhood. Near friends and family—and the means to be able to see the ones far away, too. This newsletter. All of it.

I have so much to be grateful for.

Yet, sometimes (often in fact) I lose perspective of that. The game keeps being played and I often hear myself saying things like “When we have…”.

So, with these three beliefs, there’s a few small things I’m trying to do better.

• Try my damndest to be present. Which means less thinking backwards, less thinking forwards, and more enjoying whatever I’m doing and wherever I am, because…

• I must remember that I’m living in the good old days right now. And the best way to live them is to just fucking enjoy living them. Enjoy the hardships and don’t over sweat the goals. To frame today like it’s the good old days—because I know someday soon I’ll say they will be—means a new found appreciation for all of it. No rushing through days or chapters necessary.

• And this doesn’t mean to live with rose-colored glasses—tough shit will still happen and it shouldn’t be ignored. But it means seeing the hard things slightly differently and witnessing all the things as they are. When I catch myself entangled in strong emotions or reactions, before getting swept away in them, to try notice them and allow myself to experience them. So, it’s actually less about distancing myself from the bad, but to give both the good and bad all my attention. Leaning in to all experiences.

• Also, to try my best to experience moments through the lens of “If this was the last time, what would I do? How would I be here, now?”. Maybe you stay out for one more song; put the phone down; have one more scoop of ice cream that you don’t rush though just to leave the table sooner; or stop thinking about what your friends are doing that night and just fully enjoy the movie.

• And if it seems sad to say “These are the good old days”, don’t let it be. Just remember, if “back then” was the good old days, and “now” is also the good old days, that also means there’s more many more good old days yet to come.

So yes, Nostalgia may make it feel like the good old days are behind you.
But the truth is, they’re also right now.

And while they’re also still ahead of you, the surest way to rob yourself of these good times is overthinking and projecting yourself to the next one.

The good times are now—we just need to notice that and be here for them.

Take that dose of Nostalgia responsibly, I hope you have a good day.

—Jaryd

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“It’s not what you don’t know that will get you into trouble. It’s what you do know for sure, that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain

Today’s letter is short. I had a very different (longer) version of this post that my wife told me on the cusp of proudly publishing, needed to be taken out back and shot. Well, okay then! Shocked and a tad offended; I felt my defensive mode kicking in as soon as she started answering my “Oh, what, why?”.
Then quite luckily I caught myself in the most ironic moment imaginable…in a letter all about the importance of challenging your beliefs and interrogating your truths…here I was…words I’d written directly in front of me…attempting to defend what I believed to be a great post.

But I was wrong. Thanks to some curiosity and openness, what I was so sure of 10 minutes before, just wasn’t so. And now I knew it.

It was a good little kick that showed me how bad I am, and how bad I think we all are, at handling the trouble with the truth: that the truth is a little trickster that has no problem leading us to false/relative realities and locking us away in belief land.

And to combine the wisdom of Sam Harris and Robert Anton Wilson, belief is the end of thinking and the death of intelligence.

But sometimes, belief can go beyond just keeping us philosophically and mentally quarantined, it can be catastrophic.

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The problem isn’t ignorance

April 14th, 1912, was the night certainty snapped and plunged an icy 12,500 feet. I've watched James Camerons’ “The ship that can’t sink!” sink about 10 times, in part, because Captain Smith chugged her forward without appropriate concern…because he believed. As did many passengers—especially in first class—taking that belief at face value. For a while, a surprising number of people stayed inside playing cards or sipping brandy, certain any danger was exaggerated.

Or the freezing morning of January 28th 1986, when the Challenger Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch because the O-ring seals catastrophically eroded. Why did it happen? Because decision-makers believed that cold launches were safe enough, simply because previous flights had launched with some O‑ring erosion, but without catastrophe—creating a “normalization of deviance.” The untrue but accepted “fact” was that the O‑ring that had sometimes survived cold launches would always do so. Certainty, not ignorance, is what pushed the launch button.

Or what about when, on November 5th 2024, 77 million Americans went to the booths in red hats and believed…

These stories (and there are many more) paint a sad picture that danger isn’t always found in the unknown—it’s often in a version of reality that someone accepts as fact. And that the cost of being sure and wrong can be high.

Because if we don’t know something, and we know we don’t know, we ask and we easily learn. We respect opinions and value expertise. So, we grow. Our mental model of the world improves. We get smarter.

But when we think we know, we’re much more likely to keep our hands down, ears shut, and fingers wagging. So, we go nowhere. We stop growing. We stop connecting with anyone else across differences, and we start isolating ourselves from complexity.

Which is why I plan on reminding myself of this little graph I asked ChatGPT to make for us….

If I have the balls to believe it, I better have the balls to question it too.

The trouble with the truth

I used to believe I was a kind and caring son to my mom.

I used to believe a good job was about how much it paid.

I used to believe happiness meant getting what you want.

All truths to me…at some point.

But the trouble with the truth is we often have incomplete versions of it, and versions that drive realities we protect with lots of biases. Because breaking a truth usually means breaking a belief—which is a part of our identity—and that is damn uncomfortable and sometimes more so, embarrassing to admit. Which is why that uncle of yours doubled down on his crazy beliefs, because finding out they’re wrong…well…makes them seem crazy. So they become more crazy.

We just hate uncomfortable things…I certainly do…so it’s much cozier and more pleasant to not shake the tree and see what comes falling out.

This is why we get stuck in our ways. And it’s why we see older dogs stiffening up when shown new tricks. Nobody likes their reality being fucked with.

We like leaning into the things that affirm our beliefs because it means we’re right and being right is nicer that being wrong.

This is the trouble with the truth. It makes us stiff in our beliefs. It fills us with hubris. It keeps our blindspots up. It makes us close minded and stubborn old farts, and often kills any possible compassion we have towards people who have different realities to us—or different truths to ours.

We hardly ever get anywhere without questioning things.

Every inch of progress we’ve made as a species has come from someone not believing some reality.

It’s true that horses where the best mode of transport until they weren’t. What else is a reality, about the world, our businesses, jobs, relationships, and selves, but also isn’t fully true?

Now I believe I was actually cold and dismissive to my mom when she needed me most; that a good job is about time; and that happiness means wanting what you have and wanting less.

These changes in beliefs have become agents of change in how I act and what I prioritize. Now I can use that guilt, and know I never want to leave someone feeling unseen; I care about a job that gives me freedom to enjoy my relationships and hobbies; and I try my best to be grateful for, and enjoy, what I have vs thinking about what I should aim for next.

If I never broke those beliefs, I’d be the same.
I don’t want to be the same.

So, what might you believe, that just ain’t so?
That answer may help you grow.

Breaking a belief

The smartest people are curious and skeptical and agile and critical—not of others—but of themselves and in their own thinking.

Strong opinions means forming a well-reasoned perspective based on the available evidence and experience.

Loosely held means the willingness to reconsider and change those opinions when confronted with new information or perspectives.

We’re all pretty good at the strong opinions piece, it’s the loosely held part we struggle with.

The thing is we don’t have to throw away everything we believe—just be open to unclenching our grip and allowing ourselves to shake the belief-bush a bit.

There’s a few easy tactics to doing that, but if there’s one thing to remember that acts as a cheat code, it’s this:

“The test of a first‑rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

The trick with that is to simply (although easier said than consistently done) ask yourself, in those moments when you feel strong conviction in your view while engaging with a counter view, “What would the most intelligent version of myself do or say?”.

Then, even if it feels unnatural, act as that person. Push yourself to question even if you hate having to do it. It may feel fake at first, but one day, you may find yourself genuinely more curious.

Okay, a few other things to help loosen a belief…

1. Replace conviction with curiosity

Next time you feel 100% certain about something, ask yourself:

• “What would it take for me to change my mind?”

• “What’s the strongest argument against my position?”

• “Could I argue the opposite view convincingly?”

You don’t have to agree with other views—but understanding them makes your own sharper, and more human.

2. Zoom out

When you feel reactive, try asking:

• “What would someone wiser than me see here?”

• “Am I defending an idea, or trying to prove something about who I am?”

3. Interrupt your assumptions

To challenge the quiet beliefs that run your life, ask:

• “What’s something I believe that might not be true anymore?”

• “Where did this belief come from?”

• “What would I do differently if I believed the opposite?”

Even if you’re feeling too lazy to do anything about it, just noticing your beliefs in real time is a big first step.

4. Listen like you're wrong

In conversation, lead your thinking with:

• “What am I missing?”

• “What’s the experience behind this belief?”

• “What would it look like for us both to be partly right?”

Curiosity is the best way to disarm people. Not just them—also you.

5. When you feel defensive, name it

I can always tell when I’m feeling defensive. I felt it the moment Julia said “We need to talk about your piece”. The instant urge to want to protect my view. I’m trying to get better at catching the moment, pausing, and asking:

• “What am I really protecting here?”

• “Is this about being right… or being heard?”

• “Could I step back and try to understand first?”

6. Catch yourself mid-bias

I’ve invested in a crypto project and oh boy am I a sucker for lapping up news that tells me I’ve made the right investment. But I know that when consuming content, I need to ask:

• “What’s missing here?”

• “Am I learning, or just agreeing?”

• “Would I believe this if the opposite side said it?”

• “What would the opposite side say?”

These little practices aren’t about becoming a soft, indecisive people-pleaser. They’re about becoming a wiser, more grounded, more flexible human who can still stand for what matters to you while not getting locked up in Belief-ville.

Because perhaps most dangerous thing we can believe is that we already know.

Now, ain’t that the truth?

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They believed strongly that to break our dependence on the temporary joys in life that are always outside of our control, real happiness comes from finding a deep sense of fulfillment, and that that comes from living life in alignment with our values and virtues. The stuff inside our control.

To these Stoics, a good life where we’re resilient to all conditions within the grand theater of life is about having an enduring purpose. And until you know your purpose, your current campaign should be about finding it.

But purpose is complicated. And I’ll be honest, I really don’t know anyone who could actually answer the question, “What is your purpose?” with a real answer. My closest group of friends are all successful, but none of them have a true purpose. And I know parents often cop out and say their purpose is all about parenthood, but I think that’s an easy answer for adults to grab from the shelf when they have a kid and still feel a bit lost.

No judgement—I don’t know what my purpose is either.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year, both as I’ve dealt with my mom passing and having gone through the flows of trying to understand why I was unhappy at my old job and thinking about what I wanted next.

As a slightly anxious overthinking, I plowed through pages of my journal. I wrote paragraphs, I made lists, I drew mind maps. Several. Lots of scribbles branching off into startup ideas, personal projects, alternate careers. All little lines and smudges trying desperately to help me “Find my why”.

But none did. Instead of clarity, I got anxiety.

So, annoyed and drained by the fact that (1) the importance of purpose has been put on such a pedestal, (2) it’s unnecessary allusiveness, and of course, mostly that (3) I don’t know mine…I’ve come to see purpose as a paradox: The harder you look for it, the less likely you are to find it.

To which I then pose the question: Then why don’t we look for something else?

Changing where I’ve looked for meaning has been a big unlock, leading me think that purpose, especially an enduring one, is overrated. I even think, having clocked the miles, that jogging the endless treadmill to try find whatever ours is can actually be unhelpful and counterproductive.

So, if the idea of finding your “why” feels more like pressure than liberation, this letter brings some optimistic news: there’s a much easier way to find direction and groundedness than some grand calling.

→ Find and hold a few principles over one purpose.

Principles are much easier for us to find, are more enduring, and are more flexible to all the great, bland, and fucked up situations life will chuck us in—meaning it’s easier to feel aligned and good about ourselves using principles as our proxy for direction than it is using purpose.

Principles > purpose.

That’s why we’re going to spend the next few minutes talking about:

1. The two problems with purpose

2. The two pros to principles

3. The simple path to creating yours

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The fragility & susceptibility of purpose

To be clear, I’m not waging war on Aristotle here saying that purpose is bad. Not at all. If you feel you know yours, great. You’re almost certainly happier for it and will probably live longer. What I am saying though is that the reality most people live with is they don’t know know theirs, and they deal with a lot of Purpose Anxiety (PA). Meaning lots of stress, worry, and frustration when seeking this apparent golden bullet for life fulfillment. The low‑grade dread that we should already have our “why,” and that we’re failing as adults if we don’t. Or is that just me?

For everyone in that camp, my question to you is whether all that purpose-related anxiety is even worth it when purpose changes?

Purpose is often said to be enduring. A True North. But that can’t be true.

At 21, I wanted to build something big. Startups were my outlet. I had all the young and dumb energy to give everything to it, and enough insanity to do anything to prove something. That gave me some level of purpose, then.

Now at 31, I care far more about how I spend my time, who I spend it with, and whether I’m creating something I feel proud of that is deep in my interest area, even if it's smaller.

My values changed. What I care about today is different from what I cared about ten years ago. And they’ll likely reshuffle again by the time I’m 40.

So how can a life purpose be sticky if the things you value don’t stay fixed? Exactly. As we learn and unlearn things, we need something more bendable.

Beyond fragility, purpose is also easily hijacked.

We’re social sponges. We absorb the expectations of parents, partners, friends, LinkedIn hustle porn, culture. We could easily invest years (and money) chasing a story that isn’t actually ours, and the sunk‑cost siren whispers: Don’t pivot now; look how much you’ve already put in. We easily mistake momentum for meaning, so we cling to a purpose that once made sense—or never did—and wake up playing someone else’s game. The danger isn’t just that purpose is changeable; it’s that it can be misleading, steering us away from the life that actually fits.

That’s why trying to chase a single “life’s calling” is often paralyzing.

But principles, the things I shifted my attention to after being nudged away from hunting purpose, don’t have the same fragility or susceptibility.

The endurance & optionality of principles

If the purpose of purpose is to tell you where you are going, the purpose of principles is to tell you how you get there, and really, how you get anywhere.

They’re like a commitment to how you want to live. And as we’ll see now, that is a much much easier question to answer for yourself.

In some ways, principles are the ultimate purpose. To steal the corny office poster concept of “the journey being more important than the destination”—where you end up is less important than the manner in which you showed up along the way.

Principles are how you live. They are what’s behind your actions based on what you care about.

They’re not situational. They’re not reactive. They don’t bend to what job you’re in or what city you live in or what your latest hobby is or who you’re dating.

Psychologists agree that mental resilience—our ability to handle life’s setbacks and pressure—is deeply tied to our sense of identity and direction.
And not a rigid identity, but clarity in who we are and what we stand for.

When I found these principles for myself (on far fewer pages than I spent trying to ink my purpose into existence), almost everything else—my recent job change, tough conversations with Julia, hard days missing my friends, mom, and family, spouts of boredom—all feels easier to deal with.

Because with principles, you have a better grip on how you’ll respond—a framework that lets you say: “This is who I am. This is what I value. And no matter what happens, I’ll act in line with that.”

In my biased opinion, that’s more strength and power than knowing one purpose.

That’s how you build self-respect. Not necessarily by ticking boxes toward a singular purpose.

Discovering your principles (through values)

Okay, so the opening case for principles is laid. Now, to bring this to the practical level, I’ll start by saying (despite some writing required), that this isn’t about rewriting your life.

When I came up with a handful principles for myself, it’s not like I became someone new. Think of it more so as sculpting a shape from an already-there rock. It’s about a little structured self-reflection.

1. Build your value map

Values are flexible, and by necessity, they represent what’s most important to you right now. And getting some clarity on them can give you real insight into who you are at this point, who you aspire to be, and where you might look for more meaning in life.

Start by writing down everything you think you value. Don’t spend time editing yet, just list. The stakes are low and there’s no mistakes to be made. You’re just getting what’s in your head out on paper.

Just a few examples, values could be things like: freedom, stability, relationships, family, creativity, health, ambition, peace, fun, career, community, thoughtfulness, courage, status, honesty, kindness, loyalty, discipline, learning, growth, wealth, wisdom, spontaneity, structure, balance, creating value, stillness, compassion, etc.

Now, having thought about the universe of things that matters to you, we get to the harder part. You need to rank them. The goal is to get to your top 10 values in order of significance that you already do, or intend to, live by.

Having done this myself I’ll tell you that everything you’ve written down will seem worthwhile, but their importance, deep down and truthfully to you, is what matters. One tip to keep yourself honest is to make sure this is a private list just for you. Nobody has to see it and nobody can judge it, so really push yourself to prioritize what motivates you most from that list. If money is a big value now, don’t feel shame if it means something more altruistic doesn’t make the list. This exercise is for you.

Once I did this, I realized three values at the top of my list where getting almost no attention. It’s been a bit of a wake-up call, and I’m shifting how I spend my time to give more to those things I do very much care about.

In other words, I used this curated list of 10 to check for blind spots. Once you’ve done it, ask: Which of these are getting energy from me? Which aren’t?

2. Shape your principles

Your value map is an artifact of mostly 1-word things that help you see what matters now and has mattered before. Now you can use it to craft a handful of timeless principles that show what is fundamentally important to you, and to drive how you act going forward.

To define them, start by translating each top value into a “Why + How” sentence

“Because I deeply value ______, I commit to ______.”

For example: Because I value Growth, I commit to confronting reality, not my preferences.

You can also tighten that up for the sake of memorability to something like: “Embrace reality and deal with it.”

Two notes on the commit part:

1. It doesn’t have to be something you’ve always done. It can be aspirational for who you want to be and how you want to live going forward. The latter could honestly even be more helpful.

2. Feel free to ask GPT for help—it does a great job getting you a starting point to think from. Take your 10 values, throw them into chat (along with a reference to this post), and ask: “Using the principles framework covered in this Good Times article, convert each of my values into a one‑sentence principle following the ‘Why + How’ structure—keep each short, active, and first‑person. Give me three options for each to help me refine.”

3. Operationalize your principles

At this point, you should have 10 principles drafted.

To turn these tenets to action, for each principle you’ve written, (1) write one small or big thing you already do that lives that principle, and (2) add one small thing (≤ 15 minutes or ≤ $15) that you could do to deepen it.

This second point can start giving you some of the answers that purpose promises…the where to. 👇

Magnetic North (aka purpose light)

The neat thing with principles is that you can use them to drive your Magnetic North(s). Think of this as “purpose light”. Instead of True North which is definite, your Magnetic North does change based on where and when you are.

Just as examples, see how from values we get principles which give us a malleable North Star. If we get over or achieve the “purpose”, the sturdier principle behind it will always give us a new path to meaningful action: i.e another Magnetic North.

Work & Craft

• Principle: “Create things that delight and help others, never putting low-craft work into the world I wouldn’t use myself.”

  • MN: “Grow Good Times into the #1 personal‑growth newsletter on Substack, helping 300 k readers by 2030.”

Health & Fitness

• Principle: “Push my body with focused and intense daily movement and progressive challenge.”

  • MN: “Play Padel for fun, but competitively, and reach a 4.5 score in the next 2 years so I can play in an advanced level tournament.”

Learning & Growth

• Principle: “Always seek evidence‑based ways to improve and challenge my understanding of the world, approaching counter views with an open mind”

  • MN: “Become an armchair expert in WW2 by reading the best history books.”

Relationship

• Principle: “Invest in experiences, moments, and time being present that deepens connection and shared memories.”

  • MN: “Plan and save for a dream trip to Japan and Hawaii next year.”

Money & Wealth

• Principle: “Spend less than I earn and allocate capital aggressively from multiple income sources in places where it compounds freedom, not ego.”

  • MN: “Reach financial independence with the optionality to retire us by age 40.”

Family & Friends

• Principle: “Show up with presence and curiosity and always make the people I love feel unmistakably seen.””

  • MN: “Phone my siblings and dads every week.”

Principles, values, and purpose are all things we know are important, you probably didn’t need a Ted Talk telling you that. But, we have a knack for putting them on the “To Do Later (i.e Never)” list. There’s always stuff going on in life so this quieter self work get’s lost, but when we’re just doing the stuff in front of us without any of those foundational elements in place—that’s when we can easily feel like what we’re doing is meaningless. That’s when we have purpose anxiety.

So, it is important to find the time to define these things for ourself.

And as I hope I’ve made a decent case for, you don’t need “purpose” to feel fulfilled and resilient. At least I feel I don’t. I think what I really needed was a framework I could trust the aspirational version of myself to try it’s best to live.

A code that helps me navigate the good times and the bad with a quiet confidence.

If that resonates with you, go forth friends and find those principles.

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Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

“If you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself."
— Cheryl Richardson

Last Friday, as my buddy and I sat in the Williamsburg bathhouse catching up on why his recent 7-year relationship didn’t work out, a thought came to me that I felt compelled to share…size does matter.

Meaning that small problems often threaten our quality of life more than big ones.

The why is simple: The problem with small problems is we ignore them. We make excuses for dealing with them. Sometimes, we even gaslight ourselves into questioning whether they’re problems at all.

The bigger the problem, the more we’re motivated to take action to resolve it so that the distress doesn’t last.

If you and your partner have a big and “loud” fight, you likely sit down afterwards, apologize, and talk about it together. Often growing from it and ending up in a better place. But if you don’t have an obvious argument because something your partner is doing doesn’t feel worth bringing up and talking about…something “silly”…,then conflict often gets avoided for the sake of keeping the peace and it often finds it’s way out in more more subtle aggressions. Frustration mounts over time, and one day you wake up and you’re walking away from a long-term relationship without clear words as to why.

Or, say you get fired and lose your income steam—that’s a big problem. So, you focus completely on getting a new job.

But if you’re increasingly unhappy in your current job—could be burnout, a micro manager, not being comped fairly—that’s a smaller problem. At least at face value. You’re still getting paid after all, and your days are still busy working.

That’s why these problems—for the sake of short term comfort—get swept under the rug and avoided. Except they compound, wear us down, build resentment, and eventually, come demanding answers and action from us.

A handy analogy about small problems is that they are like a dangerous and silent plaque building up in the arteries. Nothing happens for years while we make sure to solve the obvious problems, then suddenly one day, that accumulation is the cause of biggest problem imaginable.

If heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, I’d argue that “small problems” are the leading cause of failed relationships and dissatisfaction in life.

That’s why we’re going to spend the next few minutes talking about:

1. Noticing small problems

2. The patterns that camouflage small problems

3. A few easy ways to cut them at the stem

Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. Sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

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Noticing small problems

As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes, ‘The paradoxical consequence is that people may recover more quickly from truly distressing experiences than from slightly distressing ones.”

That’s because the more intense and blatant the distress, the more it prompts a clear protective psychological response or behavior.

This is exactly like the frog in hot water: Problems that start with lower temperatures are the most likely to cook us alive.

In personal relationships, complacency becomes resentment.
In careers, it becomes stagnation.
In teams, it becomes culture rot.
In life, it becomes apathy and regret.

So, what are some clues that a small problem is actually a ticking time bomb?

• It’s the third or fourth time it’s happened, and you still haven’t said anything. If you’re noticing something, be careful not to talk yourself out if mattering.

• You think about it more than you’d like to admit. If you’ve replayed it in your head multiple times, it’s not small.

• It creates tiny moments of dread. If you subtly avoid something because of it—dodging a conversation, procrastinating a task—it’s a sign it’s affecting you more than you think.

The good (and ironic) news is that the smaller the problem, the easier it is to fix. You just have to catch it early.

So, how do we go from “This situation isn’t that bad” to “How the fuck did I end up here?”. Before answering the how, it’s worth asking why.

The patterns that camouflage small problems

We don’t ignore small problems because we’re lazy or careless—we ignore them because we’re wired to fear conflicts, hurting feelings, or just rocking the boat.

Isn’t it always fun when there’s some evidence-based reasons explaining why we do what we do? Here are some answers from psychology.

1. The Comfort Conspiracy

People often struggle to grow because we avoid discomfort at all costs. That avoidance is our default mode. Calling out a small issue feels awkward. So we don’t. But avoiding discomfort now almost always only creates greater discomfort later. Saying “I just let things go.” may sound mature, but it’s worth asking whether you’re actually letting it go. Remember that our instincts to seek safety and security can easily become the greatest barrier to our personal growth, success, and fulfillment.

2. The Perceived Cost of Action

We generally assume fixing small issues requires a lot more effort than it does. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this,” or “Why stir the boat? Things are good now,” we reassure ourselves. But small problems are the easiest to fix when they’re still small. This is decision inertia—the tendency to continue to do nothing because not acting doesn’t incur any immediate costs. For example, assuming that staying at your job or staying in the apartment you don’t like will be less costly than making a more drastic choice.

3. The Region Beta Paradox

This principle describes a common error we make in predicting how long distress will last in response to a scenario. We all put up with mild annoyances, be them at our jobs, with our families, habits, living environments, or our bodies. We like to brush them off, thinking: this isn’t so bad, so it can’t affect me for very long.

The result is we fail to improve our lives simply because things don't get bad enough. The paradox is that these more mild discomforts can end up lasting much longer and cause far more upset or damage than a situation, person, or event that is more acutely upsetting.

4. The Status Quo Bias

We all have a knack for discounting the future and prioritizing the present. Doing something now, such as changing your job or relationship, has an immediate cost, and the benefits of making the change are located far off in the future. The risk of a painful breakup or the discomfort of killing a habit like smoking can act as a powerful deterrent in the moment, compared with the distant promise of a future where you’re in a new, more functional relationship, or don’t rely on nicotine anymore.

5. The Identity Trap

Over time, consistently avoiding these small problems leads us to internalize that behavior as part of our identity. If you don’t speak up about things that bother you, you become someone who tolerates too much. If you skip small workouts, you become someone who doesn’t exercise. So, instead of someone who proactively addresses issues, you slowly become someone who tolerates dissatisfaction, discomfort, or resentment. This is like a bad-habit flywheel for why we end up accepting small annoyances.

How to cut “small problems” at the stem

I’m not suggesting you should jump away from your current situation at the first sign of discomfort. None of us would have relationships or hobbies or jobs if we did. Not every small annoying event will, in the long run, accrue more harm—but there’s wisdom in recognizing that some might and having a mental toolkit for how we can fix small problems early.

Below are some of these tools that don’t require a life overhaul—just some simple-but-not-always-easy habits.

1. Assume the future will make it worse

It’s worth trying to fight the desire to react intuitively, to always respond mildly to mild situations. One way to do this is to try to make the future consequences more explicit to yourself by imagining them to be as important as what’s happening in the present. Ask yourself: If I don’t deal with this now, how bad will it be in a year? What would happen if this problem multiplied? How would that make you feel? Take time to list out the potential benefits of making a change, even if it feels more disruptive than letting things stay as they are.

I’ve found that exaggerating my predictions about what a small problem could become is one of the lowest effort things I can do that pushes me to do something now.

2. If you see something, say something

If you notice something that bothers you, and it’s the second or third time it’s happened, count down from five and bring it up. The goal is to train yourself to not overthink helpful feedback, to lean into discomfort, and to bring the issue up as close to the moment as possible.

My old boss showed me what this looked like and I learned a lot from how he gave me instant feedback. I remember being in a roadmap presentation to the CEO, and right after he called me to give direct personal feedback. He didn’t wait until a 1:1 or a performance review, if he had something constructive to share (even if difficult feedback), it happened fresh. When he first did it, he prefaced by telling me that was his feedback style—that the discomfort of bringing it up is temporary, but the damage of ignoring it could be permanent.

Obviously you need to balance honesty with empathy, respect, and tact. Burying feedback in ambiguity for the sake of trying to be nice isn’t kind, as you don’t get to the crux of the problem. But by being straightforward and timely, it actually builds trust and respect.

And because having difficult conversations sits at the solution of solving so many small problems—often with others but sometimes with ourselves too—I thought I’d share some helpful ways to prevent yourself from talking yourself out of having them. As with many things, it’s an exercise in reframing…

Instead of thinking → Try thinking

1. This will create conflict. → This can lead to understanding.

2. They’ll take it personally. → I can be respectful and clear.

3. It’s not my place. → I have a responsibility to address this.

4. They’re a difficult person. → This is a challenging situation.

5. This will make things worse. → This can improve our relationship.

6. I might say something wrong. → I can prepare and speak thoughtfully.

7. They won’t listen. → I can communicate effectively.

8. It’s too hard to talk about. → Open conversations solve problems.

9. They should know better. → I can help them understand.

3. Simple and frequent check-ins in relationships

My wife and I are trying to build a Sunday habit of asking each other: “Is there anything small that’s been bugging you?”

Almost always it’s something tiny—“I feel like you’ve been on your phone a lot.” “I’d love a little more help with dinner.” “I’d appreciate it if you did the litter box more.”

But asking the question routinely keeps things clean. No festering. No pent-up resentment.

Try do something like this in any important relationship—partners, friends, coworkers. Tiny check-ins let the pressure out of the cooker and prevent a big blowup. Plus you usually get valuable feedback for your own growth.

4. Do it or delete it

Often we let small problems fester because we’re waiting for the perfect solution. As I wrote last time, there’s no such thing.

Fix it at 70%. It doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to be better. And if you can’t fix it quickly and it’s not a priority, see if you can just delete it from your plate. Nothing feels more liberating than just deleting something.

To give you an example, I started a new job 2 weeks ago and as I was ramping up and building context, my list of shit to do or look into was quickly piling up. Within a few days there was so much on the list, just looking at it started overwhelming me. So I scanned it and pretty much deleted all the stuff at the bottom. The goal was to create focus and to cut a growing backlog (a small problem) from accumulating into an always-procrastinated-on-and-source-of-stress task list (a big problem).

And that’s how you stop your future self from waking up one day and wondering how things got so bad—by knowing that small problems seldom stay small.

Our relationships.
Our careers.
Our health.
Our happiness.

They’re all just a collection of small decisions, repeated.
It’s on us to choose wisely.

Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

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As much as we want to, it’s hard to not worry about anything when it feels like everything is happening all at once and accelerating.

Because you read newsletters, including this one about growth, you’re almost certainly smarter than average. And intelligence correlates with more anxiety. Combine that with the fact that half of American adults under the age of 30 report feeling anxious all or most of the time, I think it’s safe to hazard a guess to my opening question…

“How’s your anxiety?!” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s something my wife and I have been feeling more of than usual, and it’s something my mom experienced a lot of.

So, as I sit down with some coffee in hand and start typing up my thoughts for this first edition of this new letter—which was inspired by my mom and my motivation of wanting to write more personally —I can’t think of a better place to start than here.

Whatever your mood, I hope this short letter does two things:

1. Makes a case for why anxiety can be good, and why overreacting is beneficial

2. Gives you some low-effort things to try when it’s too much

Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. Sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

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Feelings vs Moods

It’s easy to see why things that feel good can be bad. Like drugs.
But it’s harder to see why things that feel bad can be good. Like anxiety.

To understand why on earth something that feels as bad as anxiety has a positive side, we need to create a distinction between two very different levels of emotion: Feelings and Moods.

How we label emotions makes a big difference to how those emotions affect us. A feeling is temporary. A mood is more permanent.

“I feel anxious” is okay and can be an agent of change. “I am anxious” is the opposite and can be crippling.

As I run that hypothesis through a few other emotions, I think it holds up. When my mom died I felt a lot of guilt and overwhelm. Fortunately, I’ve found ways to use those feelings—and the corners of thought they pushed me towards—to change my behavior and values, and even start new things like this newsletter. But those useful changes only came outside of being inside the feelings. I know that if I let those feelings slip into identity-defining characteristics—I am a guilty person—then the emotions would be less a tool and more an anchor.

The trick is to use feelings as signals for change rather than letting them define your identity

Don’t remove the smoke detector

A common thought when we feel anxious is wondering whether we’re overreacting.

There’s a spectrum for how much anxiety you might feel. On the one end, there’s existential dread and you’re paralyzed by anxiety—so much so it affects your ability to get things done and enjoy the good times. On the other, you have none at all. The blinders are up, and like an ostrich, your head is buried to the surrounding chaos—the peace and quiet of not reacting at all. Neither are healthy and evolution is the evidence.

The little monkey who never left the tree out of constant fear of getting eaten, or the other one who eagerly climbed right down while the leopard circled below are no longer around.

The surviving monkeys all have sensible levels of concern.

This crappy feeling is a necessary, forward looking, emotion that helps us to stay vigilant to potential threats like suss people on the subway, unfamiliar surroundings, running out of money, rising cholesterol, angry bosses, or more expensive grocery bags.

When we don’t think and worry at all about potential consequences beyond what’s happening right now, there’s a cost. People (and monkeys) who lack sensible concern are far more likely to get hurt or die in preventable accidents. Or more mundanely, to bomb an interview or lose money in economic downturns because they didn’t have the right dose of angst to prepare properly.

The cost on the other side of the scale is more obvious. Outside of the fact that being stressed all the time just sucks, too much leads to overthinking which leads to us often doing nothing about anything. Also, it taxes our physiology to the point where it even damages our bodies and organs.

So, while it’s a helpful tool to keep us prepared and on top of situational changes, most of us are more likely to suffer from too much, and we often feel it unnecessarily when there is no actual danger or looming threat. A reasonable follow up question is why isn’t our regulatory mechanism for anxiety calibrated so that we only feel it when we absolutely need to?

The answer is that in most situations, we don’t know whether or not anxiety is needed, and, if so, how much.

In this way overreacting is just like a smoke detector, setting off an unmistaken alarm when there’s a fire. Except, it doesn’t actually detect fire—it detects smoke, answering its call of duty as loudly as possible at the merest hint of potential danger, including your perfectly searing steak. As annoying as it is—that’s a feature, not a bug. A false positive is much better for you than a false negative.

That’s why, like anxiety, these things are calibrated to be annoyingly over responsive. Under responding once in the face of ambiguous risk is worth a million overreactions.

The result is we all have a version of our “most anxious” self that is ready to hijack our energies and show up at the most inopportune times. And as normal as it is and as much as we need the feeling of anxiety, most of the time we need to tell our smoke detector to just shut the fuck up.

Low-energy habits to turn down the anxiety and improve your mental health

I used to think self-care had to be loud—morning alarms at 5 am, rigid routines, calendars filled with color-coded tasks. But when you’re anxious, you’re often low on energy, and productivity hacks rooted in chasing a version of self-improvement that feels like a second job just doesn’t do it. This is when the self-care stuff that can change the beat is about the small and low-effort things that tune down the anxiety and make life feel easier today.

Here are some habits to help…

1. Focus on the “just one thing” rule

I’ve always believed action is the antidote to anxiety. But, long and ambitious to-do lists, even when you’re not anxious, usually end up being procrastinated on altogether. I’ve often found myself trying to navigate out of feeling down or anxious by writing long lists of plans and goals, thinking that’s how I gain back control. Except the inverse happens and I avoid it. There’s just something paralyzing about seeing twenty unchecked tasks staring back at you. Which only adds to the feeling of things being out of control.

Instead, ask yourself this: What’s the one thing I can do today that will help me with my goals, or just make tomorrow easier?

One thing is doable, and it gives you a small win.

2. Actively try to slow your life down

Quiet mornings. Walks through the neighborhood. Reading in a coffeeshop. Sitting with my cat without a phone. Staring at a nature. Not mindlessly rushing to the next thing.

No one told me how much joy slowing things down would bring.

So this is me telling you. Slow down when you can. You’ll be happier.

3. Acknowledge every single good thing, and get your “full benefit”

I know how terribly cliche it sounds to say focus on gratitude, but things are usually cliche because they are true. And gratitude works because it’s just science. Dopamine and serotonin are the brain's natural resistance to negative and intrusive thoughts. And you can make them on-demand by simply taking a moment to appreciate something. The best way to drown out the bad is to try see more good.

Outside of releasing a good chemicals, it has another benefit: Gratitude helps to reframe our perspective and change something bad into something good.

The Navy Seals have a saying. When something sucks or goes wrong (and a lot does for a Seal), they look at each other and say: "Full benefit”.

Two words that unlock an instant and powerful mindset shift.

Getting fired. Working on a project that fails. Flight gets delayed.

That’s a “full benefit”, because the only way forward—which is a non negotiable direction for an operator under pressure— is realizing that every adversity is an opportunity to grow, learn, or evolve.

The next time you're facing something hard, welcome it. Reframe it. Work through the process. Find the lessons. Get the full benefit.

Always remember, the greatest weapon against stress is to choose one thought over another. Worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles. It takes away today's peace.

4. Do things at 70% effort

One of the falsest (and most harmful) beliefs I used to have was that if I wasn’t doing something perfectly, it wasn’t worth doing at all.

If I couldn’t write the perfect newsletter, why post anything at all? If I didn’t have the time for a full gym session, why bother going?

Perfection is exhausting. Nothing gets done when you’re constantly waiting to do it perfectly. And the thing with perfection anyway, is it’s an infinitely moving goal post.

So, especially when you’re low on energy, allow yourself do things at 70%. Hey, even 50%. Not great, not terrible—just done.

The saying “How you do anything is how you do everything” is nonsense. The best know when to give something their all and when to just get it done.

5. Ritualize (and romanticize) something small

For me it’s my morning coffee.

I used to drink it mindlessly, sipping while scrolling the news, hardly caring for the taste (which I love!).

Now, I’ve made it a sacred start to my day. I take my time grinding the beans and enjoy watching the espresso slowly pull from the machine. I sit on my chair and let it be a quiet moment, slowly sipping and enjoying the smell and taste. I might pair it with a book, some low-fi music, or just time with my cat. It’s 15 minutes of my day where I’m not thinking about what’s next, and just being present.

When I think of travel, I always romanticize having my coffee somewhere new.

The point here is making something mundane and small that you enjoy something meaningful and grounding.

6. Get outside for five minutes a day

“Getting fresh air” doesn’t mean going on an hour-long walk. That’s a big commitment. Make it easy for yourself and just step outside—feel the breeze on your face, get some sun, find a tree to sit under and do nothing. It’s small, but those small moments when I get out the apartment always reset my brain in a way nothing else does. If it’s raining, stand under some cover and listen to it.

It’s quite literally a super low-effort silver bullet to feeling better.

7. Do something for the sake of the thing itself

We have a tendency to turn the things we enjoy into some end pursuit. If you have a hobby, like Chess, just go play it purely for the sake of the playing the game. I’ve found a lot of happiness when I remind myself to do something for the sake of enjoying the thing itself, not for any other reason. Not to win. Not to become something. Just because I like it.

It’s good to have goals, like getting better at something we enjoy. For example I love Padel and I love playing competitively. But when we’re stressed and tired, turning to a hobby to try break the feeling and then getting upset when we don’t perform (and the odds are that we won’t be our best in these cases) just adds to our frustration.

Use your hobbies, but remind yourself they’re hobbies because you like doing them—productive outcomes aside. The by-product is you usually end up doing better anyway.

8. Write something—literally anything—down

Writing has brought me a lot of clarity and confidence. And I don’t mean writing letters like this that I publish, more so the small and scrappy and private and chain-of-thought types of ramblings. Ideally with a real pen and paper.

Before I started writing, there was a lot of noise in my head. Now, I use writing to figure out my messy thoughts, to make sense of my emotions, and to find direction when I feel aimless.

If you’re struggling, and you’re not sure what you think or feel about something, just start writing. You don’t need to have some plan about what you will write, just start putting words to paper and seeing where it takes you. And when you’re writing for you, always be honest with yourself.

9. Avoid filling empty space with your phone

We’re wired to avoid boredom at all costs. If there’s a moment of idleness, we grab our phones. If we’re doing something else like watching a show, we also, often grab our phones. This is a bad habit we’ve all formed.

Our phones are one of the biggest drives of feeling shit or anxious because they plug us into mindlessly scrolling through feeds.

And feeds are machines made by companies to capture our attention and dish us ads, with “connection” as an soft added bonus. The problem is that these platforms only really believe in one thing: growing, endlessly. More is always better: more clicks, more miles scrolled. More.

And they get their More by serving you things that change your emotions. Like stuff that makes you compare your life to other peoples, or get caught in cycles of bad news that makes you angry or anxious.

I wish I could say that I was stronger than a silly little app feed, but I’m not. Each time I jump into the machine, I can feel it changing how I feel.

I hate it. Yet I still do it. Because our phones are designed to be addictive.

I’ve noticed that when I’ve had a good day, it’s often when I barely used my phone.

I really believe that when you remove social media from your life, you’ll realize the only thing you were missing out on was living your own life. Because this is such a big one, here’s 5 ways to cut the phone time down:

• Turn your screen grayscale—colors make apps more addictive.

• Remove all the app icons from your home screen—out of sight, out of mind.

• Turn off your notifications (besides texts)—why allow apps to reach you whenever they want to?

• Use Do Not Disturb—set it to activate in the mornings and evenings

• Delete social media apps and use a browser to access them (and log out after each session)—extra frictions helps with cut mindless opening scrolling.

• Put the phone in another room—especially when working or spending time with others.

10. Consume less news

Imagine a new drug hit the streets. It’s highly-addictive, and in no time everyones hooked.

Scientists investigate and find out that the drug causes, and I quote, “a misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, and desensitization”.

Would you use it?

Yes, because you already do. This drug is a huge and silent modern addiction. Used daily, heavily subsidized, and distributed to us at a massive scale.

That drug is the news.

My dad listened to the news every morning on the radio when driving me to school, and my gran on the way back. I was always told that the news was good for your growth. That if you didn’t care to read it, you weren’t an engaged citizen. That it’s your duty to be informed.

This is a very popular narrative, but more and more studies are telling us it’s a mental health hazard. The news makes us cynical and pessimistic by shouting loudly in our faces about how bad things are.

You are what you consume. So, mind your information diet—especially in this new age of America ruled by gangsters.

These low-lift habits aren’t about changing or fixing yourself, they’re about meeting yourself where you are, making the hard days a bit easier, and remembering that even in chaos, there’s good times to be found.

If you have any other little tricks that work for you, feel free to share in the comments. Also, since this is the first Good Times post and it’s quite different to How They Grow—I welcome your feedback!

Otherwise, see you next time.

Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

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