Even my wife started noticing me changing.

Usually we do not notice our parents aging, kids growing, or our spouses getting better.

Worse - yes. That part is easy to spot.

But apparently I have been, somehow, improving.

Which is impressive, because I had assumed I was already operating near my natural peak.

Still, according to her:

So naturally I had to ask myself the obvious question: what exactly is going on here?

The only suspicious variable I could think of was Mondays.

Most Mondays (and I say most because I am trying to be honest here, not audition for the role of Man With A System) I sit down to write the next edition of this newsletter.

That is where the trouble starts.

Because the worst thing that can happen is not a bad draft.

It is a blank page.

A blank page creates a very specific kind of fake emergency.

Suddenly reading other people’s newsletters feels productive.

Then “just looking for inspiration” quietly turns into YouTube.

This is, more or less, the standard collapse.

So instead, I force myself into my Obsidian vault.

Over the years, I have collected a deeply unreasonable number of notes in there. Quotes, ideas, fragments, half-thoughts, things I once found smart and outsourced to my future-self to wonder.

My current system is very simple:

That is it.

Nothing sophisticated. No ritual. No second-brain incense ceremony. Only coffee and words.

And yet, even as the vault gets bigger, I keep running into the same notes again and again.

And every time, without really meaning to, I run them through the same filter:

If this is true, then what?

So yes, it probably sounds like this is going to be about spaced repetition.

Fair.

But not really.

The real point is something I wish I had understood much sooner: learning can become a very expensive form of procrastination.

Buying courses.

Saving threads.

Organizing notes.

Researching better tools to organize the notes about the tools that were supposed to improve your life.

A lot of motion. Not much change.

What I started noticing was this: the more I revisited ideas I had already collected, the more tiny changes started showing up in real life.

Not because I forced them.

Not because I suddenly got my life together.

Just because certain thoughts had repeated enough times to be available when I actually needed them.

The note stopped being a note.

It became a response.

Just in normal life. In the same old stupid situations I usually handle badly.

That part surprised me.

A few examples.

One note said: “when you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others. It is a gift to ourselves”.

My version is less noble, but more practical: I get less annoyed when people behave terribly.

Not always. Let us stay realistic.

But more often than before.

Another note said: “envy is uniquely stupid among the deadly sins because the others at least let you enjoy yourself for a minute”.

That one stayed with me.

So now, when a teammate does something brilliantly and my first instinct is to feel vaguely bad about myself like a proud member of society, I try to study what they are doing right instead.

Hard and annoying annoying.

Bad not too bad, actually. I think I have managed it twice already.

Another note: “suffering gets worse when we argue with reality”.

My interpretation: life is so short, we will not suffer long...

And one more: “in a lowered emotional state, we see problems, not solutions”.

My interpretation: do not make decisions when hungry.

Also maybe do not talk to anyone.

So no, I do not think writing a newsletter every Monday turned me into some upgraded life form (I wish there was still some room to grow).

But it did something sneakier.

It forced me to revisit old ideas until a few of them finally stopped being interesting and started being useful.

And apparently that was enough for my wife to notice that I have become slightly less unbearable.

Which, in this household, counts as growth.

Till next time.

Want to Learn How to Think? Read Fiction - 2 min read.

To keep the mild complaining going from the last “Digital Find” above, this article is a nice reminder that fiction trains something useful - the ability to sit with uncertainty instead of lunging at the first dumb conclusion.

The Wrong Questions You’re Asking AI - 1 min read.

Worth a look for the line alone: stop optimizing prompts for clarity and start optimizing for inescapability.

What They Copied - 25 min read (worth it).

This article uses Ferrari and Jony Ive as the setup for a very satisfying argument about physical controls, better thinking, and the apparently controversial idea that a car should work like a car, not like a badly designed tablet. God, I hate touch buttons in cars.

Do not let the title fool you into expecting a cozy guide to engines and weekend rides. It is really a deep, slightly chaotic book about values, attention, and why doing things well matters more than most of us want to admit.

Cat on one side, mouse on the other. A rare moment of workplace balance.

Sunlight as a Wake-Up Cue: In a 2017 routine she said she slept with the drapes open so she would rise with the sun, a very low-tech system for someone running a tech company. She was usually up by 5:15 a.m.

Water and Yoga Mat by the Bed: She kept a bottle of water and a yoga mat next to her bed so the first move of the day was hydration and movement, not doom-scrolling like the rest of civilization. She also said she worked out before going on her phone.

Protected First 30 Minutes: Wolfe Herd said she tried to keep the first 30 minutes for family and her dog before “madness and work mode” kicked in. That is less a wellness cliché and more a preplanned buffer before the inbox starts chewing on your soul.

Sequenced School-Run Calls: She deliberately kept her preschool drop-off free of calls, then stacked a call on the drive back home so it lined up with the next Zoom block. It is a very founder way to turn a car ride into calendar Tetris.

Saturday Email Drafting: She has said she liked answering email on Saturdays because she had more time to respond thoughtfully, then saved the drafts and sent them Monday morning. Smart move if you want clear replies without training your team to panic every weekend.

Thoughtful Over Instant: That Saturday-draft habit hints at one of her defaults: write when you have space, send when the timing is useful for the team. Not every message needs to arrive the second it enters your head, despite what Slack has done to people.

Cooking as Forced Focus: She has described cooking as a way to unwind because “you only have two hands,” so chopping vegetables forces her off the phone and away from the computer. Very basic, very effective, and harder to monetize than another productivity app.

Hour-by-Hour Thinking: During the toddler years she said that instead of “one day at a time,” she preferred “one hour at a time.” That is a useful operating unit when sleep is broken.

Risk Filter: She described a simple risk test: what do you actually have to lose, and is that downside greater than the reward. It is basically a brutal little decision memo in one sentence.

Anti-Catastrophe Question: She also pushed a second heuristic: “Is it really the end of the world if this thing doesn’t work?”

Instincts Over Approval: In 2025 she said external validation had gotten so loud that she stopped following her instincts. Her fix was: stop optimizing for being liked.

Ego as a Bottleneck: She said that when she returned as CEO in 2025, her ego had been “stripped away” and she no longer cared if people liked her. Not warm and fuzzy, but probably cheaper than another year of second-guessing.

Policy as Postmortem: After feeling she did not have enough leave herself, she backed a six-month paid family leave policy at Bumble. That is a useful leadership pattern: turn your own bad operating experience into a company default so fewer people repeat it.

Structured Even When Life Wasn’t: Her schedule around 2019 was messy - strategy meetings, product calls, board meetings, public appearances - but she still kept a stable morning routine because the day itself was unpredictable. That is a classic founder move: when the outside world is chaos, standardize the first hour.

You do not need to know anything about art for this one. It is a short guided exercise on how your body reacts to what you are seeing, not just what you think you are supposed to say about it.

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