One of my previous employers loved post-mortems.

Not the dramatic kind. The corporate kind.

You know the script:

Reasonable. Logical. Very adult.

The goal was always the same: find the gap in the holy mantra of 5Ps:

Because if you can locate the missing “P”, you can fix it.

And if you can fix it, you can sleep again.

Except… a lot of the time, there was no missing “P”.

The plan was solid. The team worked hard. The checklist had checkmarks.

And then reality walked in and knocked the plan off the table.

One time an agency shipped the wrong equipment for an event. Not “a little wrong.” Wrong-wrong. Like “this belongs at a children’s birthday party” wrong.

Another time, something tragic happened, and the government announced a national three-day mourning period. Which is a polite way of saying: your campaign is now a bad taste.

Another time, the power went out and the backup generator kicked in… for the emergency lights only.

So we had a fully lit room and absolutely nothing else.

Great vibes. No electricity. Very romantic. Terrible for business.

Besides paranoia?

Honestly, not much.

Because on paper, we did everything right.

But reality had a different opinion. And reality loves being right.

That’s when I learned the uncomfortable truth:

Every plan is basically a bet.

You either bet that the weird, low-probability, high-impact risks won’t show up.

Or you accept they might, and you spend time and money building cushions for things you can’t even name yet.

And then I got lucky enough to see, in person, what “cushions” look like when the stakes are actually high.

Behind the scenes of a top-100 CEO keynote in my home country, it felt less “conference” and more “NASA launch in dress shoes.”

They didn’t rely on local suppliers.

They shipped everything from abroad.

Not just the fancy stuff. Everything.

Nails. Duct tape. Paper. Pens. Bottled water for the crew.

Like they’d been burned before and now trusted nobody.

And the redundancy was insane in the most beautiful way:

So yes, there were two people whose entire job was: “Make sure the boss doesn’t accidentally jump to the final slide and die inside on stage.”

Why all that?

Because risk is what remains after you thought you’d accounted for everything.

The fact that you can’t foresee it is exactly what makes it risky.

And here’s the annoying part: this isn’t just a keynote thing.

This is a life thing.

It turns out we’re not able to “manage risks” as much as we’re doing our best impression of it.

We can’t guarantee anything.

We’re just making bets and playing the odds.

And this is the part that used to mess with my head:

When things don’t go our way, we call the decision “wrong.”

But that’s not always true.

Sometimes the decision was solid. The coin just landed wrong.

Because results don’t hand out medals for effort.

They’re just the final score.

We weigh the odds, choose a path, commit to it, and then reality rolls the dice like it doesn’t know our name.

Decisions are bets on the future.

We can’t judge them as “right” or “wrong” purely by how they turn out.

Even if the outcome is ugly, the decision can still be sound if you did the work upfront:

Which, if we think about it, is both comforting and deeply offensive.

When life steamrolls my plan, I don’t call myself broken.

Sometimes I just lost the hand.

The real skill isn’t seeing the future.

It’s recovering fast and clean.

Till next time.

The One Habit a Neurologist Does Every Day to Protect Her Brain Long-Term - 4 min read.

The tip is not “take this expensive supplement” or “buy a special chair.” It’s “pick a challenging hobby you actually like,” because passive stuff doesn’t count.

“No” is an option - 0 min read.

If it’s not a “hell yeah” - it’s a “nope.”

How to Do Great Work - 52 min read.

This is the rare productivity piece that does not tell you to wake up at 4:30am and “dominate.” Paul Graham basically says: pick work that gets more interesting as you learn, then follow the weird little thread like your life depends on it. Because it depends.

The Alchemist is a short story that sneaks life advice into your brain like it’s candy. A shepherd leaves his safe routine to chase a treasure, and you end up thinking about the dream you keep calling “not practical”. It’s simple, fast, and annoyingly motivating.

There’s a vibe, and then there’s a vibe.

Daily Blog Muscle: He’s said he’s kept a daily blog for 20 years, which is basically “I don’t wait for inspiration, I bully it into showing up.” Consistency becomes the system.

One-Post-a-Day Constraint: Cool Tools started with a simple cadence and evolved into posting one review per day, because the format forces small, finishable work. Big projects survive when they’re cut into daily bites.

Recomendo’s Six-Item Rule: Recomendo is intentionally one page and exactly 6 brief recommendations in a weekly Sunday email. The constraint keeps curation fast, readable, and repeatable.

Life Countdown Clock: He calculated an estimated last day of life as January 1, 2031 (about 8,500 days from when he set it), and keeps a countdown to stay allergic to busywork. It’s a prioritization tool disguised as mild existential comedy.

Deadline as a Weapon: His advice is blunt: “Always demand a deadline.” Deadlines cut the “maybe I’ll perfect this” nonsense and force you to ship something different, not just shinier.

HALT Decision Gate: He avoids important decisions when he’s Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired (HALT). It’s a tiny rule that prevents huge, stupid choices made by a dehydrated gremlin brain.

Two-Year Horizon: For big life choices, he says skip the “what’s my destiny” spiral and decide what you should do in the next 2 years. Smaller horizon, clearer action, less dramatic suffering.

Explore vs Deepen Ratio: He recommends spending about 1/3 of your time exploring and 2/3 deepening/optimizing what works. It’s a practical throttle for curiosity so it doesn’t become procrastination cosplay.

First-Draft Outsourcing: He uses chatbots (including ChatGPT) because the first draft is the hard part for him. The tool’s job is momentum, not perfection - get something on the page, then think like a human again.

The opening challenge is savage: watch this in full screen, 1x speed, no distractions. If that sounds hard, congrats, the video is already working.

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