Author: notenoughandy

The Check‑List Effect – Turning Overwhelming Projects into Addictive Progress
Why “Willpower” Isn’t the Engine You Need

Chris Williamson has talked about the differences between discipline, motivation, and obsession. Discipline takes high effort. Motivation takes some effort. Obsession takes almost none. The takeaway for me: since discipline is expensive, it helps to stack as many small dopamine hits as possible along the way — which is exactly what a good checklist does. The idea is simple: don’t just write down your big, overarching tasks. Break them into small, manageable steps you can actually knock out.

Willpower is a finite but renewable resource. When I’m handed a very large task, my first instinct is often to see it as too much work — and it’s easy to do nothing instead. Gritting your teeth and forcing it rarely holds up as a long-term strategy.

What works best for me is taking a task and breaking it down into the smallest measurable output, just to get points on the scoreboard. I’ll take a task, put it on a checklist, and split it into small action items. Every time I cross one off, it’s a small dopamine hit — a point on the scoreboard, a nudge toward the end goal. Those points accumulate, and momentum builds.

Where the Idea Comes From

I’d like to say these are my own ideas. They’re not.

Adam Savage, one of the hosts of MythBusters, wrote a book called Every Tool’s a Hammer, with a whole chapter dedicated to to-do lists. He breaks down taking a big task and splitting it into its smaller steps.

Admiral William McRaven has a viral commencement speech where he talks about making your bed each morning. Creating a small, guaranteed win proves to yourself that you can follow through, and that builds momentum.

David Goggins, the retired Navy SEAL, talks a lot about focusing on one task at a time. We’re all easily distracted, and I find the smaller the task, the easier it is to execute. It’s fine to have big dreams and large goals — I just find those are easier to reach once you’ve broken them into small, manageable tasks. Goggins runs a genuinely ridiculous amount, but I’d bet his task list looks something like:
1. Get out of bed.
2. Put on running clothes and shoes.
3. Go outside.
4. Start running.
5. Keep going for another 10 seconds.
6. Repeat step 5 as many times as possible.
It’s a simple list — brutally hard to execute at his level, but every step on it is manageable.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes about small wins compounding into massive results over time. Every small thing crossed off the list is a point on the scoreboard, and every point is one small step closer to the win.

How to Build Your Do-able To-Do List

1. Deconstruct Until It Feels Ridiculous

Take any goal — learning a language, cleaning the garage, writing an article — and keep splitting it until you can say, “I could do that while waiting for my coffee.” If a step still feels big, split it again.

Example — listing an item on eBay:
1. Locate the item.
2. Look up similar sold listings to confirm it’s worth selling.
3. Take pictures of the item.
4. Measure weight and dimensions for shipping.
5. Calculate shipping cost.
6. Pull up the similar sold listing from step 2 and use it as a template for your own listing.
7. Upload pictures of the item.
8. Edit the title and description to fit the item.
9. Enter the shipping cost.
10. List the item.
That’s 10 manageable steps and 10 points on the scoreboard — no “I’m stuck” feeling required.

2. Keep the List Short & Visible

I like writing my lists physically on paper so I can cross items out easily, and I keep the list on my desk, right next to where I work.

You could keep a digital list instead, but for me, a list that’s always physically present beats having to open an app or program to check it. Plus, I like being able to physically cross things off.

3. Cross Off Immediately — The Dopamine Hit

The moment you cross an item off the list, your brain releases dopamine. That tiny reward tells your subconscious, “We’re making progress.” It’s far more reliable than trying to summon motivation out of thin air.

4. Batch Identical Micro-Steps (Avoid Task Switching)

Instead of “weigh item 1 → photograph item 1 → weigh item 2 → photograph item 2,” try “weigh all items” then “photograph all items.” Staying in the same mental mode speeds up each step and cuts down on friction.

Alternatively, you can batch and still get frequent wins: “weigh item 1 → weigh item 2 → photograph item 1 → photograph item 2.” You keep the efficiency of batching while getting the added dopamine hit of crossing off more items, more often.

5. Review & Iterate (The “Margin of Mastery”)

At the end of each day or week, glance at your scoreboard:
- Which steps consistently took longer than five minutes?
- Which steps did you breeze through?
Adjust your future micro-steps accordingly — combine two quick actions into one, or break a stubborn step down further. The data comes from your own progress, not guesswork.

The Psychology Behind the Points
1. Progress Principle — Small wins are one of the most powerful motivators for creativity and performance. Every crossed off item is proof of movement, which keeps you coming back to the list.
2. Compound Effect — Tiny improvements add up exponentially when repeated consistently. A five-minute task today looks trivial, but 20 of them finish a project.
3. Cognitive Load Theory — Writing tasks down frees up working memory, so you can focus on doing the next step instead of trying to remember it.
By turning every micro-action into a visible point, you give your brain exactly the feedback loop it craves.

Final Thought

Getting big things done usually doesn’t happen with a sudden flash of inspiration. It’s a chain reaction of tiny completions you can see, feel, and measure over a long period of time. By turning every micro-action into an item crossed off your list, you stop fighting your brain and start coaching it. That’s the real trick behind Williamson’s obsession/motivation/discipline framing — obsession works because it doesn’t feel like effort. A checklist gets you closer to the same effortless-feeling momentum, on demand, without needing to be obsessed with anything.

The result? Projects that once felt impossible become a series of satisfying, repeatable wins — minimal willpower required.

Give it a try today. Pick one lingering task, slice it into five-minute bites, and watch the scoreboard fill up. Let me know what you think, and if this resonates, feel free to share it with a friend.
August 12, 2026
The $20 Rule: How I Turn Clutter Into Cash on eBay
Most people think you need a fancy side-hustle — dropshipping, coding a SaaS, building a massive personal brand — to make money online. My dad spent over twenty years turning other people’s junk into profit on eBay, and the items gathering dust in your garage right now could be an untapped revenue stream. You don’t need much specialized equipment to get started; you probably already own most of it.

Below is the exact system I use, broken down step by step. It’s built for complete beginners who have never listed anything on eBay before.

1. Decide What Goes

Anything you haven’t used in six months — or that you could easily replace — should go.

Walk through your house and look at everything that’s collecting dust. If it’s taking up space and you haven’t touched it in six months to a few years, it probably isn’t worth keeping. Ultimately it’s your call, but if you’re on the fence, let it go.

Two questions help me decide:
- How easy would this be to replace if I later found out I wanted it back?
- Do I only use this seasonally or rarely — and could I rent it instead of owning it?
I like to make an actual physical pile in a spot I walk past often. It’s a visual reminder that I’ve got work to do.

2. Set Your $20 Threshold

If a comparable item regularly sells for less than $20, I don’t list it.

Once you’ve got your pile, set a price floor. A good rule of thumb: what would you want to be paid for an hour of work? By the time you research, photograph, list, package, and ship an item, you’ve usually spent about an hour on it. For me, that number is $20 — if similar items aren’t selling for at least that much, it’s not worth my time.

How to check: Go to eBay’s advanced search, select “sold items,” and search for what you’re trying to sell. You’ll see everything that’s sold in the last 90 days matching your search. If comparable items are going for $20 or more, it’s worth listing.

3. Bundle When It Makes Sense

Sometimes individual items don’t clear the $20 bar, but bundled together they do. I once inherited a ridiculous number of ties — a few were worth $20+ on their own, but most weren’t. So I sold the rest in bundles of 10, 20, 50, even 100. On eBay, the keyword for this is “lot.”

4. Capture Good Photos with Zero Gear

You don’t need a fancy camera setup — just two things:
- A lens-cleaning cloth, so your phone camera isn’t shooting through smudges.
- A neutral background. I use an oversized black yoga mat in my garage, with the garage door open for indirect natural light.
Photograph the item from every side. If there’s a brand name or text on it, get a clear, readable close-up of that too.

5. Calculate Shipping Up Front

I calculate shipping right after taking photos, rather than waiting until later.

Here’s my process:
1. Find a box the item fits in.
2. Weigh the box, then add 8 oz–1 lb to account for packaging material.
3. Measure the height, length, and width.
4. Plug those numbers into eBay’s shipping calculator.
I always calculate for the longest possible distance — since I’m in Oregon, I use an Oregon ZIP code as the origin and a New York ZIP code as the destination. The calculator will show rates for different services. USPS is usually cheapest for smaller items; FedEx often wins for larger or oddly shaped items.

Whatever the cheapest option costs, I round up to the nearest $2 or $5 interval. So if shipping comes out to $10, I list it as $12. If an item needs to ship FedEx, I make a note of that too — it affects the listing description later (no PO boxes, etc.).

6. Get the Images onto Your Computer

I use Google Photos, since it automatically syncs with my phone. I just log into the Google Photos website on my computer and download the pictures from there — grouped by item, so each item’s photos stay together in their own folder.

7. Write the Listing (Keep It Simple)

You’ve already done most of the legwork. Remember that eBay “sold items” search from Step 2? Find a sold listing that closely matches your item, and look for the “Sell one like this” button. Click it, and you’ll have a template ready to go.

From there:
- Tweak the title if your item has notable differences.
- Avoid ALL CAPS in titles — it reads as obnoxious.
- Drag in your photos, leading with the one that best shows the item as a whole.
- For the description, start by pasting in the title, then add any details the photos might not fully capture (a scratched screen, for example). Even if it’s visible in photos, I like to call it out directly — at minimum, I’ll add “item is as pictured.”
- Note shipping terms clearly: “Buyer pays $X shipping, US sales only.” For large items shipping FedEx, I also add “No Alaska, Hawaii, or PO boxes” — those destinations cost significantly more and FedEx won’t deliver to PO boxes anyway.
8. Schedule Listings for Maximum Visibility

I’m on the West Coast, so I schedule listings to end during buyers’ evening hours nationwide. I start my earliest listings at 4 PM PST (7 PM EST) and stagger new ones every 15 minutes until 6 PM PST (9 PM EST). That way, no matter where a buyer lives, listings tend to close around the time they’re off work.

9. Choose Auction or Buy-It-Now

For a first listing, I always start with an auction. Here’s why: if I have something hard to find and price it at a flat $50, the first buyer willing to pay gets it for $50 — even if others would’ve paid $100 or $120. An auction lets demand set the price instead.

If it doesn’t sell after the auction, I switch to Buy-It-Now at that same price, give it a few weeks, and if it still doesn’t move, I gradually lower the price until it sells.

10. Fulfillment: Ship Fast, Pack Securely

Once an item sells and payment clears, it’s go-time:
1. Use a heat gun to remove any old labels or stickers from the box.
2. Print the listing’s first page (photo + title) as a makeshift packing slip.
3. Fill the box with packing material so nothing rattles around — saved Amazon packaging works great here.
4. Tape the box shut, covering the top seam and the side seams for extra security.
5. Weigh the sealed box and write the rounded-up weight on the side (e.g., 1 lb 6.8 oz becomes “1 lb 7 oz”).
6. Add the box’s rounded-up dimensions.
7. If you’re shipping multiple items that day, jot a quick 1–5 word description on the box so you don’t mix up orders.
8. Enter the final weight and measurements to generate and print your shipping label.
9. Trim the label neatly, tape it over the weight/dimensions notes, and drop it off at the post office or FedEx.
11. Under-Promise, Over-Deliver

eBay’s default handling time is three business days. I leave that setting as-is, but I actually ship out the next business day whenever I can. Buyers love getting things sooner than expected.

TL;DR — Your One-Week Starter Plan
1. Walk your house and pull out stuff you don’t want or use.
2. Search each item in eBay’s Sold Listings and note the median price.
3. Keep only items selling for $20+; bundle low-value multiples into “lots.”
4. Photograph with your phone, natural light, and a neutral background.
5. Weigh and measure, calculate worst-case shipping, round up, and list as “buyer pays shipping.”
6. Sync photos to Google Photos, then download them into folders by item.
7. Copy a proven title and description, then edit for your specific item.
8. Schedule listings from 4–6 PM PST, staggered every 15 minutes.
9. Start with a 7-day auction; switch to Buy-It-Now if it doesn’t sell.
10. Ship the next business day when you can — people love getting things early.
Give this a try and let me know how it works for you — and what you’d do differently.

Happy hunting, and happy selling!
August 11, 2026
Why You Should Build a DIY Flow Rope

If you spend any time on fitness social media, you’ve probably seen people swinging heavy ropes around in fluid, hypnotic patterns. Rope flowing has exploded in popularity, often accompanied by massive promises about unlocking “coordination,” “rotational power,” and “total-body unity.”

I recently put together a video walking through how to build a cheap DIY version of a heavy, braided flow rope. But before you watch it, I want to talk about why you should bother making one — and cut through a bit of the fitness marketing noise while we’re at it.

📺 Watch the full build video below:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0wJu7tkI_0?si=kIMfW131YtNlYT51

Is the Hype Real?

Let’s be real for a second. Flow ropes have a massive amount of hype behind them right now, and if we’re being objective, some of the promised benefits might be a bit blown out of proportion. Swinging a rope isn’t going to magically replace a well-rounded strength or conditioning routine, nor is it a cure-all for every movement flaw.

But just because something is hyped doesn’t mean it’s useless. Overall, I think flow ropes are an incredibly good thing for most people.

Here’s why: at the very least, it gets people moving. It’s a low-effort, low-impact exercise that almost anyone can do. It doesn’t beat up your joints, it doesn’t require a grueling warm-up, and it’s a movement practice you can easily carry with you into your 80s and beyond. In a world where it’s easy to stay sedentary, any tool that makes moving your body accessible and sustainable for a lifetime is a massive win.

The Martial Arts Connection

As a martial artist, I look at the flow rope through a slightly different lens. While the fitness world pitches it as a brand-new training methodology, the mechanics feel deeply familiar to anyone who has spent time training with traditional weapons.

To me, the flow rope is most similar to nunchakus. Just like nunchucks, it demands a certain baseline speed and consistent momentum — the moment your timing is off, the physics break down completely. The fluid, repeating loops also strongly resemble the striking patterns used with Eskrima sticks and the bo staff.

Because it mirrors these movement arts, it forces a level of spatial awareness and rhythm that will carry over even when you aren’t holding the rope. It almost seems like a hidden gateway drug for fitness enthusiasts to cross over into weapons training and martial arts — teaching you how to let an object flow around your body safely before you ever pick up a real training weapon.

Why This Specific DIY Build?

When I decided to build an infinity-style braided rope, I did it because of the specific design mechanics. Standard heavy ropes get incredibly thick, making them clumsy to hold. What I like about this braided design is that it adds significant weight and drag to the center of the rope without adding bulk to the handles. You get the high-momentum feedback of a heavy rope, but your hands still have a thin, manageable cord to grip.

Building a DIY version gives you a cheap entry point to see if you even enjoy this style of movement before dropping premium money on commercial gear. If you have the budget, I always recommend supporting the original innovators like WeckMethod — their engineered quality is going to be top-tier. But if you just want to test the waters, a DIY weekend project is a fantastic first step.

My Favorite Benefit (Has Nothing to Do with Fitness)

If you ask me what the absolute best benefit of a flow rope is, it isn’t the weapon-like coordination or the rotational mechanics.

It’s that it forces you to go outside.

To swing an 8.5-foot rope around without obliterating a lampshade or scuffing a ceiling, you have to step out into the yard, a park, or a driveway. I’m a firm believer that most of us — myself completely included, as I sit inside typing this on a screen — do not spend nearly enough time outdoors. Anything that gives someone a compelling, fun reason to step out into the fresh air is something I can completely get behind.

The Verdict

You don’t need to buy into the idea that a flow rope is a mystical fitness cheat code to enjoy it. It’s a fun, rhythmic, low-stress way to move your body, pick up some martial-arts-adjacent coordination, enjoy the outdoors, and break up the monotony of standard workouts.

If you want a low-cost, satisfying afternoon project that results in a great piece of outdoor movement gear, check out the full build video above.

Enjoyed this? Come find me on YouTube.

I put out videos on movement, DIY gear, martial arts, and whatever else I’m obsessing over. If any of that sounds like your kind of rabbit hole, I’d love to have you along — hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

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Disclaimer: This article and the accompanying video are for educational and entertainment purposes. I am not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to WeckMethod or David Weck. Just a fan of fun DIY projects and movement gear.

May 21, 2026
Never Split the Difference: It’s Not About Negotiation , It’s About Communication

Most people hear “negotiation book” and picture a slick guy in a suit haggling over a car price. That’s not this. Chris Voss spent over two decades as the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator — the person they called when someone’s life was literally on the line. Never Split the Difference is what he learned from that, distilled into something you can actually use at work, at home, and in every conversation where something matters to you.

But here’s the thing: the more I read it, the more I realised this isn’t really a book about getting what you want. It’s a book about becoming someone people actually feel heard by. And that turns out to be the most effective negotiating strategy there is.

The FBI Doesn’t Do “Win-Win”

For years, the gold standard in negotiation was a Harvard framework built on rational problem-solving — separate emotion from the problem, find mutual interests, reach a logical agreement. It’s tidy, sensible, and according to Voss, almost completely wrong.

When FBI negotiators surveyed their own experience, not one of them could recall a situation where calm, rational problem-solving was the right tool. Every single one had dealt with emotionally volatile, high-pressure, deeply irrational situations. Real negotiation — the kind that actually happens between real people — isn’t a logic puzzle. It’s an emotional one.

That’s the foundation the whole book is built on, and once you accept it, everything else follows naturally.

Listening Is the Job

The first and most important tool Voss teaches is something most of us think we already do: listen. We don’t. Not really. What we mostly do is wait for our turn to talk, mentally rehearsing our next point while the other person is still speaking.

Voss calls the alternative tactical empathy — genuinely understanding the feelings and perspective of the other person, and then showing them you understand. Not agreeing with them. Not giving in to them. Just demonstrating that you’ve actually heard what they said. He’s clear that empathy is not sympathy. It’s not about being soft. It’s about being accurate — about understanding the situation as the other person experiences it, so you can actually influence it. It’s about getting the other person to say, “That’s right.” so they know you’re both on the same page.

Psychotherapy research backs this up: when people feel genuinely listened to, they become less defensive, more open, and more willing to consider other points of view. Voss didn’t invent this dynamic — he just figured out how to use it deliberately.

The Tools That Actually Work

The book is full of practical techniques, and a few of them have genuinely stuck with me.

Mirroring is the simplest and probably the most immediately useful. You repeat the last few words of what someone just said back to them. That’s it. It sounds almost too simple to work, but it triggers a natural human instinct to elaborate — people feel heard, they keep talking, and you keep learning. In one study, waiters who mirrored their customers’ orders back to them received 70% more in tips than those who responded with enthusiastic affirmations like “great choice!” Something to think about.

Labelling goes one step further. You name what you think the other person is feeling — “It seems like you’re frustrated with how this has gone” — and let it land. Voss describes this as a shortcut to intimacy. What’s fascinating is the neuroscience behind it: putting a name to an emotion moves brain activity away from the fear-generating amygdala and toward the rational prefrontal cortex. You’re literally calming someone down by acknowledging what they feel, not by telling them not to feel it.

Calibrated questions are open-ended questions — usually starting with “how” or “what” — designed to give the other person the feeling of control while actually guiding the conversation. “How am I supposed to do that?” is Voss’s favourite example. It’s not aggressive. It’s not a demand. But it puts the problem squarely in the other person’s lap and invites them to solve it with you. “How” and “what” do the work. “Why,” Voss warns, almost always sounds like an accusation, in any language.

The “No” Reframe

One of the most counterintuitive ideas in the book is Voss’s argument that “No” is often more valuable than “Yes.” We’ve been conditioned to treat “No” as failure — the door closing, the deal dying. But Voss argues the opposite: “No” gives people a sense of safety and control. It’s a pause, not an ending. It often means “I’m not ready yet” or “I need more information” or “something about this doesn’t feel right.”

Pushing hard for “Yes” makes people defensive. Inviting “No” makes them feel secure enough to actually engage. The negotiation, he says, doesn’t begin until someone says “No.”

And the goal isn’t “Yes” anyway — it’s “That’s right.” That’s the phrase Voss says signals a genuine breakthrough: the moment your counterpart feels so understood that they stop defending their position and start working with you. “You’re right” is what people say to get you to stop talking. “That’s right” is what they say when they actually mean it.

Never Split the Difference (Seriously, Don’t)

The title comes from Voss’s argument against compromise as a default strategy. Splitting the difference sounds fair, but it’s not — it’s lazy. He uses a brilliant image: a woman wants her husband to wear black shoes, he wants to wear brown. They compromise. He wears one of each. Nobody wins. The compromise produced the worst possible outcome.

Real deals, he argues, come from creativity — from understanding what someone actually needs underneath what they’re asking for, and finding a solution that gets you both there. That only happens if you’ve done the work of listening well enough to know what’s really going on.

This Is Really a Book About How to Talk to People

I want to come back to this, because I think it’s easy to pick up Never Split the Difference looking for tactics and miss the bigger point entirely.

What Voss is really teaching is a way of being present with another person. The mirroring, the labelling, the calibrated questions — they only work if you’re genuinely paying attention. You can’t fake tactical empathy any more than you can fake listening. People feel it when you’re not really there.

The skills in this book will make you a better negotiator, yes. But they’ll also make you a better colleague, a better partner, and — honestly — a more interesting person to talk to. Because most people move through conversations focused almost entirely on what they want to say next. Learning to actually hear someone is rarer than it should be, and people notice.

Get the Book

I’ve pulled out the ideas that landed hardest for me, but there’s a lot more in Never Split the Difference that I haven’t touched — the Ackerman bargaining system, Black Swans (the negotiating kind, not the Nassim Taleb kind), how to read liars, and the full framework for preparing for any high-stakes conversation. Voss also tells genuinely gripping stories from his FBI career that make all of this feel real rather than theoretical.

If any of what I’ve covered here resonated with you, the book is absolutely worth your time. It’s one of those rare reads where you finish it and immediately start seeing your conversations differently — not as things that happen to you, but as things you can actually shape. Pick up a copy of Never Split the Difference and see for yourself.

May 20, 2026
If You Want to Be Good at Something, Do it for an Unreasonable Amount of Time

Most people who are genuinely good at something don’t look like they’re working that hard.

The martial artist who casually neutralizes an aggressive attack. The disc golfer who throws 400 feet down a wooded tunnel like it’s nothing. The bartender who runs five tickets at once without breaking a sweat. From the outside, it looks like a gift. From the inside, it’s just a lot of accumulated hours that nobody watched you put in.

That’s the game. And the entry fee is being willing to be bad at something for long enough that you eventually run out of room to stay bad at it.

Feed the Hot Coal

Here’s the thing about passion: it doesn’t wait for you.

When something new lights you up — a skill, a topic, an idea — that energy is a hot coal. It’s bright, it’s intense, and if you feed it, it can sustain a fire for years. But if you set it down and walk away, it cools. And a cold coal is a lot harder to relight than a hot one is to keep burning.

This is why when you’re passionate at the beginning of learning anything is actually the most important window. Not because you’re doing it well — you’re not — but because you’re feeding the fire. The passion is there. The curiosity is alive. The worst thing you can do is wait until you feel “ready” to go all in, because by then the coal may have already cooled.

Embrace the suck while it still excites you. Volume while the fire is burning.

Do It Badly, at First

Every skill I’ve ever built started with the same feeling: slow, heavy, and deeply aware of how much I didn’t know.

In the restaurant, I started as an expeditor on a Friday during the dinner rush. If you’ve never been in a high-volume kitchen mid-service, picture a wall of noise, heat, and tickets — and me just trying not to drown. I wasn’t in any zone. I was just surviving.

In the homebrew shop, I started as the new guy who was useful primarily because he could move heavy kegs. That was my whole value proposition for a while.

In martial arts, I was the awkward white belt who telegraphed every move.

In disc golf, right now, I’m the guy hitting trees on holes I should be navigating cleanly. I record my rounds. I study my form. I throw and it doesn’t look how I want it to look yet.

The temptation at this stage is to either quit or go looking for a shortcut. A hack, a magic technique, the one drill that will skip the uncomfortable part. There is no such thing. The only move that works is to keep showing up while the coal is hot and let the volume do its job.

You Will Notice Patterns

If you stay in the room long enough, the chaos begins to make sense.

The restaurant kitchen that nearly broke me in week one eventually became readable and eventually easy. I went from Expeditor to prep cook to line cook to server to bartender. Not because someone handed me a promotion — because I kept showing up and paying attention until the whole operation became transparent to me. I became the person they called when someone didn’t show. The Swiss Army knife of the place.

The homebrew shop followed the same arc. I came in as muscle. Years later, after employees left for better opportunities — I was the person handling purchasing for both kegs and bottles, doing what had previously been two full-time management roles. I saved the owner real money because by that point I had absorbed the supply chains, the supplier relationships, the purchasing rhythms. The work had become systemic in my brain.

Martial arts did the same thing, just more slowly and more physically. What looks like instinct from the outside is just a brain that has seen the same template — an off-balance hip, a sloppy punch, a telegraphed takedown — enough times that it recognizes the pattern before the conscious mind catches up. I’m not reacting faster. I just know where the movie ends.

This is the compounding return on volume. You don’t feel it happening. And then one day you realize you’re not fighting the current anymore — you’re reading it.

The “He’s a Natural” Illusion

At some point, people start calling you gifted.

It happened in the restaurant. It happens on the mats. It’ll happen in disc golf eventually — some beginner will watch me throw a clean hyzer around a tree and assume I just have a knack for it. I won’t correct them, but I’ll know what it actually was: a few hundred rounds of hitting that same type of tree and figuring out what I did wrong.

The “natural” label is almost always just what accumulated competence looks like from the outside when you weren’t there to watch the boring middle part.

Where I Am Right Now

I’m at the beginning of something new again — working on getting into data analytics.

It has that familiar Phase 1 feeling. A lot of information I don’t have yet. A lot of tools I’m still figuring out. The gap between where I am and where I want to be feels wide. But I’ve been here before — in a kitchen, in a keg room, on a mat, on a disc golf course — and I know what the physics of this process actually looks like. The gap closes. It always closes. Not through luck or some sudden breakthrough, but through showing up enough times that staying bad at it becomes unreasonable.

The coal is hot right now. That’s the whole advantage. So I’m going to feed it.

May 19, 2026
Loneliness is the New Smoking: How to Re-Enter the Physical World

In a world where you can connect with nearly any type of person — from any walk of life, any worldview, any corner of the globe — it sounds almost absurd that loneliness and depression are at an all-time high. If you can find hundreds of like-minded people in an online space in minutes, how could you still feel profoundly alone?

The answer, I think, is this: digital connection is not a sufficient replacement for physical connection. The quantity of connection has never been higher, but the quality is severely lacking — particularly in the things that matter most: body language, tone of voice, and the kind of shared energy that only exists when people are physically present with one another. And yet, the algorithm keeps pulling us deeper in.

Reclaiming the “Third Place”

As a former Starbucks employee, I was introduced early on to one of the core philosophies behind the brand: the concept of the “Third Place.” This idea, popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, defines a vital gathering space that is neither your home nor your workplace — the informal anchor of a healthy community. Whether or not a coffee shop is your ideal version of it, the philosophy behind the third place points directly at what so many of us are missing.

The good news is that third places don’t have to cost much, or anything at all. The question worth asking yourself is: what genuinely interests you? Can that interest become a group activity? And how much time or money are you willing to invest in it?

Low Cost, Low Effort Ways to Meet People in Real Life

The lowest-barrier option is simply going outside. Find a local park and walk there regularly. If you already walk plenty (and there’s a good chance you don’t), try the public library. These are what you might call passive social activities — being alone among others — and they’re a surprisingly low-stress way to re-enter the physical world.

Low Cost, Slightly More Effort

With a bit more initiative, you could join a local walking or running club, which adds the dimension of a shared purpose. Pickup sports at parks — basketball, pickleball, disc golf — offer similar benefits. Community centers often host hobby-based groups for things like knitting, board games, or gardening that are free or low-cost and surprisingly welcoming to newcomers.

Higher Cost, Still More Effort

If you’re willing to invest more, you move into spaces that demand consistency but tend to forge deeper community bonds. Boutique fitness studios — CrossFit, Pilates, Orange Theory — are built around the group experience as much as the workout itself. Skill-based pursuits like martial arts, art classes, or a long-term cooking course create relationships through shared growth. Collaborative groups like theater or improv, or enthusiast clubs around cars, motorcycles, or other specialized interests, develop the kind of tight-knit community that’s hard to find anywhere else.

None of these options is uniquely special. What makes any of them work is simply showing up consistently — a lesson that applies to almost every area of life worth building.

The Ultimate Long-Term Cost

There’s also a deeper cost to a life lived primarily online — beyond the well-documented downsides of algorithmic content and digital tribalism. The ultimate price is your physical and mental health.

Social isolation and chronic loneliness are linked to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke, dementia, and cognitive decline. The body keeps score in ways we often ignore — and loneliness is no exception. Per a 2023 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General, loneliness has become a full-blown public health crisis, with a mortality impact comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Some people say sitting is the new smoking. Maybe loneliness is the new sitting.

Ultimately, the choice is ours. We can let screens redirect our attention toward global digital communities that offer quantity without substance — or we can make the intentional choice to invest in local, tangible spaces that actually nourish us. True wealth, after all, isn’t just financial. Find your third place. Show up regularly. Invest in the human connections that can’t be replicated through a screen.

May 8, 2026
Feel Good Productivity: When Willpower Fades

Most productivity advice is secretly just guilt in a better font. Do more. Wake up earlier. Grind harder. And for a while, it works — until it doesn’t. I’ve had stretches where I was technically “doing everything right” and still felt completely drained, like I was pushing a boulder uphill just to keep up.

That’s what made Ali Abdaal‘s Feel-Good Productivity land differently for me. The argument at its core is disarmingly simple: feeling good isn’t the reward for being productive — it’s the engine of it. When you feel better, you naturally achieve more. Not because you’re trying harder, but because the resistance is lower.

Who is Ali Abdaal?

Ali is a doctor-turned-creator who built a massive online following while still in medical school. He spent years obsessing over productivity tips and tricks before eventually arriving at a conclusion that cuts against most of the advice in that space: discipline-first thinking is fragile, and mood-first thinking is what actually lasts. If you’re more of a visual learner, his YouTube channel is worth bookmarking — he goes deep into the science behind these ideas and has a way of making dense research feel genuinely watchable. I’ve come back to his videos more than once.

1. Energise: Turning Work into Play

The first section of the book is about energy — specifically, how play is one of the most underrated ways to generate it.

The idea that stuck with me most is deceptively simple: ask yourself, what would this look like if it were fun? Not every task can be made exciting, but most can be made slightly more tolerable with a small shift. One idea I use often is when doing a boring task, have good background music, but nothing with lyrics, he recommends Harry Potter movie scores. Abdaal also talks about confidence not as something you either have or don’t, but as a skill you practise — acting as if you’re confident in a task until the belief catches up with the behaviour. I’ve found this more useful than any pep talk.

He also pushes back on the idea that success is zero-sum. Treating the people around you as teammates rather than competition doesn’t just feel better — it creates a support network that keeps you going when motivation runs dry.

2. Unblock: Overcoming Fear and Inertia

Procrastination, Abdaal argues, is rarely laziness. It’s usually an emotional signal — uncertainty, fear, or just the weight of inertia when you haven’t started yet.

His answer to vague, overwhelming goals is what he calls NICE goals: Near-term, Input-based, Controllable, and Energising. The distinction matters because abstract goals (“get fit,” “finish the project”) give you nowhere to put your energy. Concrete, near-term inputs do.

Two other tools I keep coming back to from this section: the Batman Effect, where you adopt an alter ego to distance yourself from anxiety — Beyoncé famously used “Sasha Fierce” for this — and the five-minute rule, where you commit to just five minutes on something you’ve been avoiding. It sounds too simple, but breaking the initial inertia really is most of the battle.

3. Sustain: Preventing Burnout Through Alignment

The third section is the one I think gets overlooked most in conversations about this book, and it might be the most important.

Abdaal’s point here is that burning out isn’t just about doing too much — it’s often about doing too much of the wrong things. The “Hell Yeah or No” rule is essentially a filter: if you’re not genuinely excited about a commitment, the answer is no. Every yes is a no to something else you actually care about. It’s the same insight at the heart of Greg McKeown’s Essentialism — saying no isn’t about being difficult, it’s about protecting what matters.

He also makes a distinction I found genuinely useful about rest. Not all rest is restorative. The activities that actually recharge you tend to make you feel Competent, Autonomous, Liberated, and Mellow — what he calls the CALM framework. Passively scrolling doesn’t meet that bar. A walk, a creative hobby, or time with people you like usually does.

The section closes with a simple daily practice he calls Alignment Quests — each morning, pick one small action for health, one for work, and one for relationships that moves you toward the life you want a year from now. It’s a way of keeping daily effort connected to something larger than the to-do list.

Think Like a Scientist

The throughline of the whole book is this: there’s no single right way to work, and the people who figure out how to work well treat themselves like an ongoing experiment. Try things. Notice what actually makes you feel better. Adjust.

That framing has changed how I approach my own habits more than any specific tip in the book. If you’ve ever felt like the traditional “push through it” approach to productivity just isn’t sustainable for you, this book makes a compelling case that you’re not wrong — and offers a better way forward. If you want to go even deeper on working sustainably, Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity makes a powerful companion read.

If any of this resonates, I’d genuinely recommend picking up a copy of Feel-Good Productivity. And if you want to go deeper on the science behind it, Ali’s YouTube channel is the place to start. It was the reason I picked up the book in the first place.

May 7, 2026
Beyond the Bank Account: Redefining Success Through the 5 Types of Wealth

Most of us are tracking one number — money — while quietly losing ground everywhere else. Time evaporates. Friendships go into maintenance mode. Health gets deprioritized until it forces its way back onto the list. And the money number, even when it goes up, somehow never feels like enough.

Sahil Bloom’s book The 5 Types of Wealth puts a name to this problem and offers a more useful framework. The argument is simple: financial wealth is one piece of a much larger picture, and optimizing only for it is a good way to win the wrong game.

Here’s how he breaks it down.

Time

This is the one you can’t get back. Bloom points out something genuinely uncomfortable: by the time most of us are adults, we’ve already spent the majority of the time we’ll ever have with our parents and siblings. It’s a rough piece of math. The goal isn’t to have more time — it’s to have control over how you use it.

Relationships

The Harvard Study of Adult Development tracked people for decades and landed on a clear finding: the quality of your relationships is the single biggest predictor of health and happiness as you age. Not income, not status — relationships. Bloom’s useful framing here is the “front-row people” — the ones who show up when it actually matters. Those are the relationships worth protecting.

Mental Wealth

This is about staying curious and having a sense of purpose rather than settling into a comfortable but flat routine. High curiosity correlates with better cognitive health, lower anxiety, and higher life satisfaction. It also means having a growth mindset — believing your abilities are something you develop, not something fixed.

Physical Health

Bloom’s line here is worth keeping: treat your body like a house you have to live in for another seventy years. Exercise is the most powerful single thing we have to slow physical decline. You don’t need a complicated protocol — consistent movement, decent food most of the time, and enough sleep covers most of it.

Money

It’s still in the framework, but it’s in its proper place — as an enabler, not the destination. The useful concept here is defining your “enough” — figuring out what level of financial stability actually lets you live the life you want, instead of just chasing more indefinitely. Lifestyle creep is real, compounding is real, and the gap between the two matters a lot.

The point isn’t that money doesn’t matter. It’s that a life where you’re winning financially but losing everywhere else isn’t actually a win. I’ve seen it and I suspect you have too.

The book goes deeper on each of these with practical exercises for figuring out where you actually stand. Worth reading if this framing resonates with you.

May 6, 2026
Undulatory Alternating Leg Plyometric Jumps: A Better Name for Skipping
I was listening to a Huberman Lab episode featuring Stuart McMillan, a movement coach who works with elite sprinters. The conversation was mostly about speed and athleticism, but one small detail stuck with me: skipping — the thing you did at recess — turns out to be a genuinely excellent exercise for adults. It’s easier on the body than sprinting, highly effective, and scaleable.

Andrew Huberman asked the obvious follow-up question: what do you call it so it doesn’t sound ridiculous? He’s done this before — he popularized “non-sleep deep rest” as a more clinical-sounding name for yoga nidra. McMillan offered “plyometrics,” which is accurate but pretty broad. Box jumps, burpees, squat jumps — they’re all plyometrics. The word doesn’t capture what makes skipping specifically interesting.

Which got me thinking about names.

The word “plyometrics” itself isn’t exactly poetic. Fred Wilt, a former US Olympic distance runner, coined it after noticing Soviet athletes doing a lot of jumping and bounding during their warm-ups while American athletes were stretching. He combined the Greek words for “more” and “measure.” Even he acknowledged it wasn’t a great name. It stuck anyway.

So what’s a better name for skipping specifically? I started pulling it apart. What actually makes skipping distinct?
- There’s a wave-like quality to it — your body rises and falls rhythmically as you move forward. That’s the undulatory part.
- You alternate legs with each bound. Alternating leg.
- It’s a jump-based movement. Plyometric jump.
Put it together: undulatory alternating leg plyometric jumps.

It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it earns every word. It describes the motion accurately, it sounds like something an athlete would say, and it sidesteps the “wait, are you talking about recess?” problem entirely.

The exercise itself is worth adding to your routine regardless of what you call it. It’s low-impact relative to sprinting, it trains single-leg power, and it has that rhythmic, full-body quality that makes it feel more like movement than a workout. Give it a try — just maybe wait until you’re away from people who would recognize it as skipping.
May 5, 2026
What Learning a Backflip Taught Me About Learning Anything

Most skills worth having are uncomfortable at first.

I was a kid obsessed with tricking — an aesthetic blend of martial arts, gymnastics, and breakdancing. In pursuit of getting better at tricking, a backflip was essential. My trampoline became the training ground, and eventually I developed something that, resembled one — it was a bit more over the shoulder than straight back but it was a start. After a while and a lot of trial and error I got a pretty good looking backflip on the trampoline.

After building up the courage, the next step was solid ground.

It did not go well at first. My landings were bad — on all fours — it looked more like a poorly executed back hand spring. After my class ended my parents were waiting to pick me up. I showed them my progress, then asked if I could stay for a bit longer to keep working on it. They said yes, which tells you something about how convincing I was or how patient they were. Either way I stayed an extra two hours working with the sole goal of landing on my feet.

What followed was a long morning of bad backflips. By the end of the day, I had landed a few of them on my feet, so it was a great success in my book.

The technique was not textbook. A proper back tuck is about jumping up, tucking, and rotating with your shoulders as the axis. My version involved jumping backward while looking up, throwing my shoulders back, getting minimal height, and rotating around my hips — which works, technically, but is not great. I was young and I was just happy to have landed a few on my feet.

The next day, it felt like every muscle in my body was sore, and that lasted for about a week.

What That Day Actually Taught Me

Almost two decades later, the backflip is still in my muscle memory. So are the lessons from learning it.

You have to believe it’s possible before you can do it. The first barrier wasn’t physical — it was deciding that this was something my body could actually do. That sounds simple, but it’s real. You cannot commit to a back rotation if part of your brain is still negotiating an exit. Whatever you’re trying to learn, the mental piece comes first. Doubt bleeds into execution.

When you have an intense burning desire for something, lean into it. I had this desire to learn a backflip. When you stumble upon something new, a skill, a topic, that ignites that same kind of burning passion within you – lean into it. Fuel that fire as long as you can because desires like that don’t last. I could have called it quits after those initial clumsy attempts. I would have eventually learned the backflip, but not with the same speed and intensity. That day, fueled by pure desire, I landed a backflip.

You have to put in bad reps to get to good ones. There’s a version of “work smarter, not harder” that is actually useful, and a version that is just an excuse not to do the uncomfortable early work. The bad backflips weren’t wasted — they gave me the body awareness to start adjusting. You often need to do the hard work before you know what the smart work looks like.

Feedback accelerates everything. I didn’t have a coach. I figured it out through trial and error, which worked but was slower and harder on my body than it needed to be. When someone who’s already done what you’re trying to do gives you real feedback, it compresses the timeline significantly. That’s worth seeking out, and in later years I did find a group of like-minded individuals that helped me on my tricking journey.

Iterations matter more than hours. Naval Ravikant has a line: “It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations.” That’s what a two-hour backflip session actually is — not two hours of doing the same thing, but dozens of small experiments and small adjustments. Try something, feel what happened, adjust, go again. The feedback loop is the work.

The Bottom Line

The backflip itself wasn’t the point. What stuck with me was the process: identify something you want, accept that the early attempts will be rough, stay in the reps long enough to get real feedback, and keep adjusting until you get it right.

That applies to most things worth learning.

May 4, 2026