Learn From My Mistakes

Short story of how I break life chaos into small, solvable problems - 3 min read.

I have been sipping this book for weeks.

It is so good, so on point, so uncomfortably accurate.

I read it like a fancy dessert: slowly, small bites, full attention.

And when something hits a nerve, I pause.

Some people reflect for a day. Some for a week. Some for a year.

I reflect for, apparently, my entire life.

That quote did exactly that: forced a little life audit.

What did I actually change my mind about?

Besides the hard stuff, like olives being "not that bad actually", a few bigger beliefs got a full software update.

This isn’t a deep reflection on 2025.

It’s more like a highlight reel of my last few decades.

Let’s goooo….

Changing my mind about a person

Old belief: "I know what kind of person he/she/they is".

You meet, you judge, you file them under a label, and that is it. Done. Next.

New reality: People grow, suffer, get therapy, change jobs, get tired, get better.

They also can go the other way, by the way.

It is very hard to predict how a new stress, success, or crisis will bend someone's moral principles.

Including mine.

Especially mine.

Volume vs depth in content

Old belief: More content means more knowledge.

Ten podcasts on 2x speed. More books. More documentaries.

If my ears are not bleeding, I am not learning.

New reality: Depth beats volume. Every time.

One idea I actually apply is worth twenty I half-hear while batch cooking.

Life-changing example: if it repeats, it lives in the calendar, not in my head.

Bills, workouts, check-ins.

Future me appreciates not being relied on.

Good work speaks for itself

Old belief: If I just work hard, people will notice and reward me.

I imagined some Career Santa tracking my effort and sending promotions.

New reality: People are busy, distracted, and mostly thinking about themselves (and we both know which of those is the strongest force, don’t we?)

Solution is to gently market your work.

Not brag. Not spam. Just make your results visible.

Otherwise, you end up quietly waiting for applause that never arrives.

I am either disciplined or I am not

Old belief: Some people are naturally consistent robots. I am not one of them.

Therefore, I am doomed to chaos, snacks, and half-finished projects.

New reality: Most consistency is tiny friction hacks, reminders, and environment tweaks.

Update this and you stop blaming "willpower" and start rearranging your kitchen and calendar.

Put your most important app on the first screen of your phone and bury the time-wasters in a folder called “Are you sure???”

Put your “scroll time” in one fixed chair in the house. If you are not in that chair, no scrolling.

Put your Amazon password on paper in another room so you have to stand up to buy stuff.

Suddenly, you look a lot more "disciplined".

Still human, but future you complains less.

Sunk cost equals commitment

Old belief: I already put so much time and money into this. I have to keep going.
To quit is to fail.

New reality: Continuing a bad path just because of past effort or expenses is not loyalty. It is a longer, more expensive mistake.

Changing your mind here gives you permission to stop, cut losses, and quietly pretend it was a "learning experience".

I am still confronting my wife about our bad furniture choice.

Apparently, her sunk cost is "but it is only 8 years old", and she is not yet ready to change her mind.

Work in progress.

Both the recliner sofa and us.

Till next time.

Our favorite digital finds

Tools, apps, and services that actually deliver

Short & Sweet

Short articles worth your attention

The One-Month Knowledge Sprint: How to Read Books, Take Action, and Change Your Life - 10 min read.

If “I’m still learning about it” is your favorite way to avoid doing it, hi, welcome. This breaks down a month-long plan that forces you to start messy, then upgrade your approach as the books correct your delusions.

Can the “Flow State” Save Us From Distraction? - 18 min read.

What if the cure for “I can’t focus” isn’t a new app… it’s doing one thing long enough to forget you own a phone? It explains flow (the “nothing else seems to matter” zone) and why it’s basically sacred in 2025.

I Deleted My Second Brain - 6 min read.

What if your “second brain” is actually just a museum of past versions of you… with worse lighting? She deleted years of saved ideas and argues the system didn’t help her think, it replaced thinking with filing.

Add this to your shelf

If you're looking for something to read, this book's worth considering

Purple Cow teaches you how to make your work (projects, emails, presentations, even your “I do stuff” job title) worth noticing, so people actually talk about it instead of politely forgetting you exist.

A Workspace I Envy

A handpicked desk setup that caught my eye this week

Simple, minimal, and complete. Everything you need to get things done. Want this wallpaper?

Behind the Persona

A deep dive into the quirks, habits, and backstories that shape icons

Cool Facts About Sam Walton

Tape Recorder Capture: He carried a small tape recorder on trips to capture ideas from conversations with associates, because memory is a liar with confidence.

The “10 or 15 Things” Pad: He kept a yellow legal pad with a running list of “ten or fifteen” company priorities, and it drove executives crazy - which is usually how you know it’s working.

4:30 a.m. Head Start: He often came into the office around 4:30 a.m. to get thinking and writing done before the day turned into a meeting-shaped avalanche.

Study, Then Copy Fast: Before Walmart took off, he traveled to study discount retail, visiting every store and headquarters he could find to steal learnings.

Parking-Lot Reality Check: On store visits, he’d literally count cars in parking lots as a quick-and-dirty demand signal.

Saturday Morning Meeting Machine: He started the Saturday Morning Meeting in 1962, and it became a weekly control room to review performance and push decisions into stores fast. His logic was blunt: if you don’t want to work weekends, don’t pick retail, and yes, management should be there too.

Friday Decision, Saturday Action: He hated “let’s think about it” - once a decision was made on Friday, he expected stores to act on it Saturday.

Computers = Tools, Not Leadership: He called computers “necessary overhead” and warned they’d never replace getting out into stores to learn what’s really happening.

Sundown Rule for Speed: The Sundown Rule pushed same-day responses - answer requests by sundown instead of letting them rot into next week’s problem.

Listen Until Ideas Bubble Up: The people closest to customers are the only ones who actually know what’s happening, so leaders should pull signal up from the front lines instead of pushing decisions down from the top.

Expense Control as an Advantage: He believed controlling expenses better than competitors was the most reliable place to find a real edge.

Watch-worthy clips

One video that got us thinking, and we think you'll like it too

This short video explains the Anti-Social Century in plain English, plus the tech shifts that quietly trained us into it.

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