A few weeks ago I finished reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!.

(Yes, I’m back in reading mode. Another spiral of history, folks. Now I’m finishing What Do You Care What Other People Think? by the same author. The man is enjoyably readable)

It’s one of those books I probably should’ve read when I was 15.

Not because it would have changed my life overnight.

But because the dude lived such an eventful life and kept picking up new skills, no matter his age. (Here, I can only blame the absence of YouTube, Instagram, and Netflix).

A lot to learn about how life should be lived.

What struck me most was not even the Nobel Prize.

Just to name a few:

Inconvenient example for the rest of us.

In that sense, Mr. Feynman and I do have one thing in common.

I also collected a few completely work-unrelated achievements.

Including a midlife crisis in my thirties when I started hip-hop classes and even got selected to perform in a showcase with other schools.

A decent little underdog story.

Right until I realized I’d be on stage with teenagers and got embarrassed enough to turn it down.

To this day, I choose to believe this is the only reason I’m not a widely recognized genius without a Nobel Prize.

But that part also made me think.

The more I read about Feynman, the more I realized I was often right about things.

I just learned to doubt myself too quickly.

That is the part I regret.

Feynman wrote that his father taught him not to respect authority blindly - forget who said it, look at the reasoning, and ask if it is reasonable.

That felt especially true to me, growing up in the post-Soviet school system.

It did not exactly reward students who challenged the teacher.

You were supposed to sit quietly, listen carefully, and repeat things back in the approved format.

Thinking for yourself was not forbidden exactly.

Just deeply inconvenient.

Fun fact: I was born left-handed.

That lasted until first grade, when I was forced to write with my right hand so I could be like everyone else.

My wife thinks this rewired my brain a bit, which would explain both my weird attitude to life and my love of dark humor.

Honestly, she might be right.

You learn fast that fitting in matters more than making sense.

Later, that turns into doubting your own judgment.

Another Feynman idea I liked was simple: listen to other people’s views, consider them, but if they are unreasonable and you think they are wrong, that should be the end of it.

This is exactly where I wobble more often than I’d like.

Because I try to stay open-minded.

Lovely in theory.

But in practice, it often means I let other people’s confidence knock my own judgment sideways.

Somebody says something with enough confidence, and suddenly I start doubting my own take.

At that point, openness stops being a virtue and turns into self-doubt.

And this is why, against all logic, I sometimes envy people who are absolutely sure they are right even when they are obviously not.

Must be nice to have no internal editor.

Then there’s the Feynman-champagne moment.

A waitress comes over. He orders water. The woman next to him asks if it is all right if she gets champagne. “You can have whatever you want,” he replied “’cause you’re payin’ for it.”

Clean answer. No urge to impress.

Everyone wants to be liked.

Fine.

But once you want it too much, you start doing dumb little things.

Saying yes when you mean no.

Paying for nonsense.

Shrinking your real opinion so everybody stays comfortable.

That was the point for me.

Not be rude.

Just stop performing for approval.

You can be decent without becoming soft furniture.

That was the part I liked most.

Not the genius.

Not the safes, samba, or side quests.

Just the reminder to keep a few edges.

Till next time.

How to be less awkward - 16 min read.

I clicked for the title and stayed because it explains awkwardness in a way that is actually useful. Also mildly offensive, because parts of it felt a little too familiar.

In Favor of Reading Aloud - 6 min read.

My attention span is not always what it used to be, so this one felt relevant. It makes a good case that reading aloud, while slower, can actually help you stay with the text.

What Do Social Media Companies Fear? Time Management - 1 min read.

A funny little reversal: instead of asking how social media wrecks your focus, Cal asks whether a decent planner might wreck social media’s business model.

Think of it as a calm, intelligent explanation of why the future might get very weird. Harari connects history, technology, and human ambition in a way that is simple to follow and hard to stop thinking about.

I’ve never seen this setup before. I hope it’s legal.

Cold-Call School: Early in his career at Xerox, Howard Schultz had a sales territory in Manhattan and a quota of 50 in-person cold calls a day. That kind of volume taught him how to sell, but it also taught him something less glamorous: how much rejection a person can survive before lunch and still keep going.

Store-As-Pitch Deck: Before Starbucks looked like Starbucks, Howard Schultz left Starbucks because the founders only wanted to sell beans, not build coffee shops. So he started his own company, Il Giornale, to prove his idea would work. When he needed money, he did not rely on slides or projections. He brought investors into the actual stores. Let them stand there. Watch people linger. Feel the pace of the room. The pitch was simple: if you spend 10 minutes inside, you understand the business better than any deck could explain it.

Third-Place Filter: After visiting coffee bars in Italy, Schultz came back with a bigger idea than just selling drinks. He became convinced that the real business was creating a place people wanted to spend time in - not home, not work, but a third place in between.

Math Before Romance: Schultz could talk passionately about coffee culture, but he was not running a poetry club. Early store expansion had hard rules: roughly a 2-to-1 sales-to-investment ratio and more than 20 percent operating profit.

Five-Hundred Sites: Schultz has said he personally selected the first 500 Starbucks locations. That is an unusually hands-on way to build a chain, but it shows how seriously he took location, neighborhood feel, and the physical experience of the brand. He did not think those choices were minor details to hand off casually.

Monday-Night Ritual: In the early years, Schultz and the founders reportedly had dinner together every Monday night for about a decade. It sounds simple, almost boring, which is probably why it worked. Regular time together gave the relationship structure and kept trust from being left to chance.

Lowercase Titles: Schultz has said that, early on, job titles at Starbucks were written in lowercase out of respect for everyone. It was a tiny cultural choice - he wanted to send the message that hierarchy should not become the most important thing in the room.

If you think coaching is just for athletes, watch this. Atul Gawande shows why even very skilled people (including surgeons) can get better faster when someone else is paying attention and pointing out what they miss.

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