I recently spent 7 minutes looking for my AirPods.

Not “casually checking a few places.”

Full detective mode. Pockets. Desk. Backpack. Couch.

Desk again, my brain is seeking the way out .

Because AirPods cost money.

That part my brain understood immediately.

Then, after finding them in the most insulting place possible (my desk), I went right back to staring at a screen with dry eyes, hunched shoulders, and the posture of a shrimp.

Beautiful.

I protect my AirPods because I know what they cost (got ‘em on sale for $189).

My eyesight, attention, posture, mood, and peace of mind came free with the body.

Unfortunately, we often understand the value of things with price tags only (art is no exception).

Phone: expensive.

Car: expensive.

Laptop: expensive.

House: terrifyingly expensive.

So we insure them, cover them, lock them, track them, update them, clean them.

But the really valuable stuff usually comes without a sticker.

No one hands us a receipt for our vision (The U.S. healthcare system is trying its best, but the metaphor still holds).

No one says, “Congratulations, here is your marriage. Replacement cost: good luck.”

No one puts a number on our freedom, our posture, our knees, or our peace of mind.

So we discount them.

Not because they are cheap.

Because they are invisible.

I am not a relationship counselor or happiness coach. Mostly because you deserve better.

But health is different.

There, you can absolutely learn from my mistakes. The bar is low, but the material is rich.

I have been trying one “innovative” health practice for over a week, and I feel weirdly good about it.

I go outside between work sessions.

That’s it.

When I finish something - a meeting, a spreadsheet brain-frying session, an email sprint - I try to plug in a 5-7 minute “touch grass” break.

I go outside.

Stand in the sun.

Sometimes I bring green tea or decaf coffee.

And I hold the cup with one hand, because no adult man is allowed to hold a hot drink with two hands. (I am not sure if this is in the Constitution of the USA, but I am not taking risks - my neighbors do not need evidence.)

As simple as this sounds, there is real friction every time.

Try it for a week. For THE WHOLE week.

The first few times it feels nice.

Fresh air. Sunlight. New hostile environment.

But by the second half of the second day, it starts feeling boring, unnecessary, and “non-productive”.

I do not want to go outside.

There is always something less boring in my little office.

Mostly the monitor.

The monitor has YouTube.

YouTube has infinite people explaining things I do not need to know.

So my brain says:

“Why stand outside doing nothing when we could watch one quick video?”

One quick video. A sentence nobody has ever said honestly.

Anyway, the lifehack is simple:

There is no lifehack.

At least I have not found one.

Every time it is time, I just say:

“Ok, dude. Let’s go.”

And I go.

So far, the results are not dramatic:

The only real change is this strange feeling of progress.

Every time I come back inside, I ask myself: “What do I do next?”

And somehow, that tiny question helps. It stops the break from turning into a content swamp.

No video.

No “quick check”.

No news.

Just a slightly confused man standing outside with one hand in his pocket, knowing his to-do list is waiting for him.

Till next time!

So What if They Have My Data? - 18 min read.

Your data is not just your name, email, and the shoes you looked at once. The real issue is context: information you gave to one app can quietly wander off and become part of decisions about prices, credit, insurance, jobs, or housing.

Face it: you're a crazy person - 14 min read.

This is career advice for people who are tired of being told to “follow your passion”. This piece calmly ruins that fantasy in the best way by unpacking what those lives require hour by hour. It is not saying “don’t try”. It is saying, first check whether you like the grind.

On Bottlenecks and Productivity - 3 min read.

Newport’s essay is a useful antidote to the workplace belief that faster communication automatically means better work.

This book is about why great ideas usually look stupid right before they become obvious. He explains how companies, governments, and teams can protect “loonshots” - weird ideas that sound unrealistic at first but later change everything.

Clutter can be productive, as long as it comes with a vibe. I enjoy spending time examining all the little objects. And now I am about to Google what that weather-displaying device on the shelf is.

Protected Focus Window: Williams moved workouts away from early morning because that was his best focus time. He shifted gym time to mid-morning or late afternoon instead of spending his sharpest hours on exercise.

Lunch Gym Reset: He has taken about two hours around lunch for the gym, arguing that the total workday does not really shrink if energy improves.

No Grand Master Plan: He recommends Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned and has said he recommended it to about 100 people. The useful idea is simple: you can plan execution, but discovery usually comes from following interesting signals.

Product as Editing: Williams describes product building as a creative process, closer to writing than construction. You try something, react to it, cut what does not work, and keep narrowing until the useful thing becomes visible.

Do Less Earlier: After Twitter, Williams founded Medium and tried to rethink online publishing. He later said the company scaled too early, hired too many people, and tried to build too much before the product’s center was obvious.

Reading Time Metric: At Medium, Williams focused on TTR, or total time reading, instead of raw visitor counts. One week with fewer visitors could still be better if people spent much more time actually reading.

Efficient Audience: In 2015, Medium had 25 million monthly unique visitors and 1.5 million hours of reading, but Williams still argued that unique visitors were too volatile. He wanted the “maximum efficient audience,” not the biggest possible audience.

Product Before Revenue: As Twitter CEO, he said almost all effort belonged on product improvement, because monetization was a bad tradeoff if the core experience still needed work.

Writing as Thinking: Williams still encourages his kids to read and write because writing forces clarity. His concern with AI writing is not just bad prose - it is that outsourcing the sentence can also outsource the thinking.

The internet has trained us to trust stars, photos, and glowing reviews. Then the package arrives and reality kicks in. This clip explains why that keeps happening.

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