Have you noticed how often we start wanting something only after seeing someone else already has it?

Not because we needed it.

Not because life felt incomplete without it.

Just because someone else made it look “interesting” to want.

A few examples from my own ongoing battle with borrowed desire:

Same old story: first you want it, then you start coming up with reasons.

That is probably why, in recent weeks, about 90% of what comes out of my 3D printer has been gifts for my wife’s friends.

My wife is working hard to make this purchase look practical instead of like another gadget just sitting there and collecting dust.

Sadly, “outrageous_filament_usage” is not an effective stop-word in our household.

That is also why influencer marketing works so well.

It does not really sell us an object.

It sells us a level of life.

A better body.

A hobby that makes us look interesting.

A version of us that seems to know what the hell is going on.

And when we do not have a real reason, we use the same excuse every time: “I work hard. I deserve it.”

Which usually means: “Please let me enjoy this purchase before common sense catches up.”

There is no end to this game.

No point where you finally feel done.

No winners, really.

Just people wanting the next thing.

That got me thinking.

And I am not just guilty of this. I am very good at it.

Over the years, I picked up a lot that were not really mine.

But they got in.

And somehow they stayed.

The strange part is that we do not just borrow objects. We borrow expectations.

Even on Saturdays and Sundays, I usually do not let myself open YouTube or Netflix until around 8 p.m.

Because apparently I need a few signs of life before the weekend feels justified:

Not just clean. Controlled.

Extra points if everything is organized.

Bonus points if your bookshelf looks arranged by color and nobody actually reads the books.

Extra bonus points if you are a minimalist and own no bookshelf, no bed frame, no visible clutter, just a mattress, a spoon, and a fork you never use.

I used to think I wanted to be a minimalist.

Now I am slowly drifting toward something closer to a well-organized hoarder.

Turns out I enjoy having tools.

I enjoy projects.

I enjoy figuring things out for no reason other than the fact that I can.

So “doing house projects myself” quietly moved down from need-to-have to nice-to-have.

Still, I managed to:

Of course, every project leaves behind leftovers I keep for future use.

My own small anti-minimalist movement.

And that pattern of borrowed standards shows up in more respectable places too.

Which comes with its own status game.

This one is at least partly real.

I genuinely enjoy noticing how writers use words, how long they take to get to the point, and whether getting there was worth it.

But even here, it is easy to borrow standards.

Not just reading for pleasure.

I do not enjoy classic literature as much as I used to (at one point I had more patience for adventures, suffering, and social troubles).

These days, I lean more toward business, marketing, and behavioral books. Books where people try to explain why we do weird things.

My problem is that I often pick books from the same or adjacent domains.

So the same ideas keep showing up.

Different covers, same lesson. And each extra book starts bringing a smaller return.

That is what keeps pushing me toward books from unrelated fields.

Biology. Physics. Engineering.

Something far enough from my usual shelf to surprise me.

I am not there yet, though I am still proud to brag I made it through “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking.

For now, I am just thinking about that direction.

Maybe that is the healthier way to look at most of this stuff too.

Not as proof that I am living right.

Just things I picked up over time. Some still fit. Some do not.

A lot of my standards and tastes have changed over time.

And yes, sometimes it is fine to go grocery shopping hungry, buy random emotional food, and then explain to my wife why it made perfect sense for ten seconds.

Maybe the real skill is seeing which standards are mine and which ones I borrowed without noticing.

Till next time.

Does Work-Life Balance Make You Mediocre? - 3 min read.

What makes this worth a few minutes is how cleanly it pokes a hole in a lot of founder brain. If the whole pitch is basically “I work nonstop,” that may be less a strategy and more a pretty dumb way to measure value.

The Most Powerful Asymmetries in Life - 10 min read.

The hook is simple: some moves cost almost nothing if they fail, but pay off nicely if they work. Sahil Bloom turns that into a long list of low-risk bets you can actually steal.

Why Being Weird Is Often a Sign of Psychological Health - 3 min read.

It avoids the cheesy “be weird!” angle. The point is simpler: people suffer when they spend too much time sanding themselves down for other people.

It is useful because it helps you read people at work better. Good on collaboration, leadership, and spotting taker behavior before someone starts making a mess.

A cozy corner full of watches and lenses. Basically, “seize the day”.

Failure Dinner: Growing up, Blakely's father regularly asked at dinner, “What did you fail at this week?” If she had nothing to report, that was the disappointing answer. Not exactly a soft parenting strategy, but it trained her to see failure as evidence she was trying.

Fax-Machine Reps: Before Spanx, she sold fax machines door-to-door for Danka. A very glamorous warm-up act. The job taught her how to hear no, recover, and knock on the next door anyway.

Nights-And-Weekends Phase: She kept her fax-sales day job while building Spanx at night and on weekends for about two years. No cinematic leap into entrepreneurship, just tired little chunks of progress.

Patent Book Method: Blakely could not afford a lawyer, so she bought patent books and taught herself enough to write her own patent. Not elegant, not ideal, very effective.

Mill-Rejection Loop: She called hosiery mills herself and got rejected again and again before one finally agreed to make the product. She did not treat each no like fate, which already puts her ahead of most people with a half-baked idea and hurt feelings.

Daughters Closed The Deal: The manufacturer who finally said yes was partly persuaded by his daughters, who thought the idea made sense. She could not control that part, but she did get the product in front of people who understood it.

Bathroom Demo: When words were not enough, she physically demonstrated the product for a Neiman Marcus buyer in a bathroom. Which is objectively unhinged behavior, but also a good sales tactic when the product needs to be seen to make sense.

No-Research Rule: Early on, she avoided traditional market research because she did not want cautious people gently explaining why her idea should stay dead.

Red-Packaging Bet: She chose red packaging in a category full of beige and white because she wanted it to stand out immediately.

Embarrassment Immunity: She often says embarrassment is survivable, and her career backs that up. Calling strangers, pitching shapewear, demoing products in weird places, none of that works if you treat secondhand cringe like a fatal condition.

Resourcefulness Over Credentials: She built Spanx without formal fashion training or the usual panel of experts. That pushed her toward a simple rule: being resourceful beats waiting around to feel officially qualified.

Naivete Edge: Blakely has said not knowing too much can help, because experts usually know every reason something will not work. Sometimes ignorance is not a flaw.

One-Annoyance Strategy: Spanx started with one narrow wardrobe problem, not a giant plan to reinvent apparel. That gave her a clean filter: fix one obvious annoyance first, save the empire talk for later.

This is worth watching for one simple reason: it explains why some competent people still feel impossible to work with. The point is not performance alone.

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