Learn From My Mistakes

Short story of how I break life chaos into small, solvable problems - 2 min read.

One of the best tricks I know for getting great results in life I stole from photographers.

You open a portfolio of a famous, respected artist and you are shocked.

One picture is better than the other.

All stunning. All perfect.

But if you go "behind the scenes" the only normal question is: "Is it really?"

How do I know?

I was lucky enough to watch a guy shoot for Forbes magazine in person.
Not USA Forbes (unfortunately, yet), but a local Eastern European Forbes.

Still counts as bragging rights, do you not agree?

No? Thank you for your honesty.

Anyway.

When he arrived at the location, I was surprised that he had no clear idea how the final shot should look.

He had only two things (besides a pile of expensive gear):

A starting point and curiosity.

It did not start with a detailed, perfect setup.

He did not unpack all the lights he brought according to some master plan.

It was:

• a lot of changes,

• a lot of takes,

• a lot of "what if"s.

"What if we put a light here?" - done, shot.

"What if I shoot from the floor, looking up at you like a defeated opponent?" - another dozen shots.

"What if you grab this pile of papers and throw them at the camera?" - at least three attempts in burst mode.

The readers never see that.

They see just one perfect, edited photograph that tells a whole story about the character of the hero.

99 percent of the takes are deleted and forgotten.

But they are not a waste.

They are the process and the learning tool.

By taking more bad pictures, he learns how to take more good pictures.

The ultimate secret of creative work is simple: make a lot, publish a little.

• Create junk

• Display the good stuff

• Discard the rest

• Repeat

Create, create, create.
Edit, edit, edit.

Oh, you are not a photographer?

Great news. This is the same behind the scenes game for everything.

We watch the Olympics (hypothetical example, I do not watch) and do not see the ridiculous attempts of a 5 year old kid at 5 a.m. on Saturdays.

We watch MrBeast get hundreds of millions of views per video, but we do not remember his early uploads where he counted from 1 to 100,000 on camera or tried to cut a plastic table in half with a plastic knife. No judging.

We land safely on a plane, but we have no idea how many landings ended in a crash in the simulator when the captain was still a student.

If we abstract from art, it is always the same:

Try, try, try.
Improve, improve, improve.

Bragging attempt number two.

My first outdoor 5k loops were around 30 minutes, with sad little walk breaks on the uphills.

Now I average 23 minutes.

Not a world record, but a solid result for a guy who was clearly born not to run, but to enjoy good food and TV shows.

It took about 2 years of running to finish one loop under 22 minutes.

With that said, my Apple Watch has music loaded, my PowerBeats Pro are charged, and I am heading out for a run.

Till next time.

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Learning Is Not Linear: How Personal Growth Works - 2 min read.

I like this one because it quietly lowers the bar without lowering the stakes. Using simple stories and that seed-and-fruit metaphor, Derek reminds you that “no visible progress” is often just the prequel to the part you were waiting for.

3 Reasons Most People Are Never Satisfied - 5 min read.

This is a short, uncomfortable mirror: are you actually unhappy, or just addicted to comparison and approval. The piece makes a solid case that satisfaction is less about fixing your life and more about fixing what you pay attention to.

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Cool Facts About Rory Sutherland

Inbox Snooze As A Safety Valve: He likes using email snooze tools as a "guilt off-switch", forwarding messages to future dates so they resurface only when useful instead of sitting in the inbox generating low-grade anxiety.

Autonomy Over Hours, Not Hustle: He argues that knowledge workers should be judged on results, not arrival time, and prefers cultures where nobody comments if you show up at 11 a.m. as long as the work is excellent.

Commute As Deep-Work Bubble: He often takes a slower, off-peak train so he can get a table and treat the commute as protected "me time", clearing a big chunk of email and thinking work before he even reaches the office.

Tea-Break Incubation: When an idea or crossword clue will not crack, he deliberately walks away to make tea, trusting that the answer often appears after the break once his unconscious has had time to work on it.

Alchemy Rule: Invert The Good Idea: One of his favorite tricks is to take a sensible proposal, flip it, and ask "what if we did the exact opposite?", using inversion to escape narrow, single-track thinking. "The opposite of a good idea is also a good idea"

Test The Weird Stuff: In his behavioral work, he insists on testing counterintuitive ideas precisely because no one else will, treating small, cheap experiments as a faster decision tool than endless logical debate.

Email Boundaries: He has warned that modern email habits quietly added hours of unpaid work to people's weeks, so he pushes for stronger boundaries between work and home instead of treating 24/7 responsiveness as normal.

Fermentation Model For Ideas: He follows a classic five-step idea process: load the mind with material, play with combinations, step away to let it "ferment," wait for the sudden "aha," then deliberately shape the result.

Brands As Decision Shortcuts: In his own choices, he treats strong brands as rational shortcuts, preferring firms with reputations to lose because paying a bit more for someone you can "hurt" is safer than chasing the lowest price.

Complementary Talent As Strategy: One of his favorite career heuristics is "find one or two things your boss is bad at and be quite good at them," because complementary strengths give you more influence over decisions than generic high performance.

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