Tag: writing

  • Why You Should Build a DIY Flow Rope

    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.

    Subscribe on YouTube

    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.

  • Never Split the Difference: It’s Not About Negotiation , It’s About Communication

    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.

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

    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.

  • Loneliness is the New Smoking: How to Re-Enter the Physical World

    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.

  • Feel Good Productivity: When Willpower Fades

    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.

  • What Learning a Backflip Taught Me About Learning Anything

    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.

  • Clean, Rinse, & Sanitize: The One Process that Keeps Consistent Results

    Clean, Rinse, & Sanitize: The One Process that Keeps Consistent Results

    You can ruin a batch without ever making a mistake with your recipe. Bad sanitation is the silent killer of homebrews — and the frustrating part is that it’s entirely preventable.

    A lot of beginners assume cleaning and sanitizing are the same thing. They’re not. Others think one product can do both jobs. It can’t. If you want to avoid mysterious off-flavors or a batch that turns into something closer to vinegar, you need to understand all three steps — and why you can’t skip or rearrange them.

    1. Clean: Remove What You Can See

    Cleaning is the physical part — scrubbing away old yeast, sediment, and whatever else is clinging to your gear. The goal is simple: if it looks dirty, it is dirty, and no sanitizer in the world can fix that.

    The best tool for this is PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash). It’s the standard for a reason — it breaks down organic residue with minimal effort, usually with just a good soak. Generally 1 TBSP per gallon of hot tap water is recommend.

    A few rules worth knowing:

    • Don’t use dish soap. It leaves a film and a scent that will wreck your beer’s head retention and strip the delicate flavor from a cider or mead.
    • Don’t use abrasive pads on plastic fermenters. Scratches create microscopic hiding spots where bacteria can survive your sanitizer. Use a soft sponge and let a long soak do the heavy lifting instead.

    2. Rinse: Get the Cleaner Out

    Once the cleaner has done its job, rinse everything thoroughly with hot tap water.

    One warning from personal experience: never use boiling water on plastic. I’ve melted a PET fermenter (a Fermonster) by being too aggressive with heat. Hot water is fine. Boiling water is not.

    3. Sanitize: Kill What You Can’t See

    Now that your equipment is physically clean, it’s time to make it microscopically safe. Sanitizing reduces bacteria counts by 99.9% — but only on a clean surface. That’s the whole point of doing steps one and two first.

    My go-to here is Star San. It’s a no-rinse sanitizer, meaning once you’ve soaked your equipment, you’re done — no need to rinse it off before use. The manufacturer recommends a 30 second contact time to effectively sanitize, some homebrewers recommend up to 2 minutes.

    If you’ve heard “don’t fear the foam” — that’s Star San advice. The bubbles are harmless and won’t affect your brew.

    Budget tip: Ask a local restaurant if they have any discarded 5 gallon food-grade pickle buckets. They’re perfect for mixing up 5 gallons of Star San solution (1 oz per 5 gallons of water). As long as the liquid stays clear, it’s still active and effective for sanitizing — once it turns cloudy, mix a fresh batch. Just don’t use a pickle bucket as your primary fermenter unless you want your cider or beer to taste like it came with a dill garnish.

    Why the Order Is Non-Negotiable

    If you try to sanitize a bucket that still has a speck of dried yeast on it, the sanitizer can’t reach the bacteria hiding underneath. Think of it like trying to put on deodorant without showering first — you’re just layering on top of the problem.

    What Needs to Be Cleaned and Sanitized?

    Absolutely everything that come in contact with whatever you’re fermenting should be cleaned and rinsed. It’s good practice to sanitize everything as well. But for beer the boil sanitizes the boil kettle and stabilizers like Potassium Metabisulfite chemically sanitize your primary fermenter.

    So anything that touches your brew after it has cooled (for beer) or after you’ve added stabilizers like Potassium Metabisulfite (for cider or mead) needs the full treatment. That includes but is not limited to fermenters, lids, spoons, airlocks, siphons, hoses, bottles, and caps.

    Get the sanitation right and you’ve already won half the battle. The yeast will handle the rest.

  • The Marketplace Hunter: Why I Stopped Buying Everything New

    The Marketplace Hunter: Why I Stopped Buying Everything New

    We live in a “one-click” world. Want something? Go to a website, hit a button, and it shows up at your door two days later. It’s convenient. It’s also the most expensive way to live.

    I’ve learned that with a little patience and a bit of hunting — on Facebook Marketplace, at garage sales, in the classified ads — you can save thousands of dollars and often end up with better stuff than you could afford new. This isn’t about being cheap. It’s about being smart.

    The $1,000 Mistake That Started It All

    I learned this the hard way.

    I really wanted a Torque Fitness Tank — an elite piece of gym equipment. I paid roughly $1,500 for it brand new. My logic was airtight (I thought): “There’s no way someone would sell this used. It’s too cool. Nobody would ever part with it.”

    Less than six months later, I saw the exact same model on Facebook Marketplace for $500.

    That was a $1,000 lesson in humility. I had assumed that because I valued something, the rest of the world would too. But people move. They lose interest. They need the space. Someone else’s “I need this gone by Saturday” is your golden opportunity.

    The Hunt in Action

    After that wake-up call, I started hunting instead of buying.

    I wanted a functional trainer — the kind of cable machine you see in commercial gyms. My budget was $2,000. Nothing new was in that price range, if I spent a few hundred more dollars I could get something good, but not great. So I waited.

    I didn’t find a deal on day one. But I kept checking. Eventually, a Freemotion Functional Trainer appeared — a commercial-grade unit that belongs in a high-end gym. New price: over $8,500. Asking price: $2,000. It was incredibly heavy and a total pain to move, but I now own a “forever” piece of equipment for less than the price of a budget model.

    The Marketplace also gave me a Cornelius keg for $5 (they sell new for $60+) and a high-end air purifier for $20 (that model retails for over $800). The hunt works for almost anything if you’re willing to look and wait.

    It Scales Up: The Smart Car Buyer

    Here’s where the mindset really proves itself — cars.

    The frugal, financially savvy car buyer doesn’t walk into a dealership and sign up for a five-year loan on a shiny new vehicle. They look for a solid used car, pay cash (or as close to it as possible), and drive off without a monthly payment hanging over them. Some go even further: a car with a reconstructed title — one that was previously declared a total loss but has been repaired — can sell for dramatically less than its market value. Yes, there’s more due diligence required. Yes, you need a good mechanic to inspect it. But for someone who knows what they’re looking at, a reconstructed title car can be one of the best deals on the road.

    The principle is the same whether you’re buying a kettlebell or a car: the market misprices things all the time, and patience is how you take advantage of it.

    Think Like an Investor

    The best way I can describe the Marketplace Hunter mindset is this: think like a good investor.

    When a fundamentally strong company hits a rough patch and its stock drops, inexperienced investors panic and sell. The experienced investor looks at that same drop and sees a sale. The company didn’t get worse — the price just got better. They buy more.

    The Marketplace is the same game. A great piece of equipment doesn’t become worse equipment because someone needs to move it out of their garage. A well-maintained car doesn’t lose its quality because it has some cosmetic damage and a complicated title. The underlying value is still there — the price just dropped. Your job is to recognize the difference between something that got cheaper and something that got worse.

    Most people can’t make that distinction. That’s what creates the opportunity for those who can.

    The Rules of the Hunt

    This isn’t all sunshine and low prices. To hunt well, you need three things:

    1. Inspect before you buy. People sometimes sell things cheap because they’re broken or don’t work quite right. Poke it, plug it in, test it before you hand over any cash. Assume nothing works until you confirm it does.

    2. The handy advantage. If you know how to fix things, or can use YouTube and/or AI to help you know how to fix things, you can unlock deals that are basically steals. A “broken” item is often a five-minute fix for someone who isn’t afraid of getting their hands dirty and a little bit of work. The more capable you are, the cheaper the world gets.

    3. Patience is key. You can’t need it today. If you need something immediately, you will pay full price — that’s the tax on impatience. But if you can wait a week, a month, or longer, the right deal will surface. Every hunter knows: the prey comes to you eventually.

    The Bottom Line

    Buying used isn’t just about saving money — though it does save you a lot of money. It’s a mindset shift. You stop being a passive consumer reacting to whatever’s in your cart and start being an active participant who controls what things cost you.

    The investor buys when others panic. The smart car buyer pays cash for what others overlook. The Marketplace Hunter gets the $8,500 machine for $2,000.

    Next time you’re about to click “Buy it Now,” take a breath. Check the Marketplace first. The best version of what you want might be sitting in a garage five miles away — and the person selling it just wants it gone by the weekend.

    Disclaimer (Please Read): Nothing in this article is financial, legal, or mechanical advice. I am just a person on the internet who bought a large piece of gym equipment and felt good about it. If you get financial, legal, or mechanical advice advice from that kind of person maybe you should reflect on your life choices. If you buy a car with a reconstructed title and it falls apart, a stock and it goes to zero, or a “lightly used” air purifier that turns out to be a humidifier from 2003 — that’s on you. Do your own research, talk to actual professionals, and inspect everything before handing over your hard-earned cash. I am not liable for your decisions. I am, however, rooting for you and wish you the best.

  • The Art of Being Seen: Lessons from Show Your Work!

    The Art of Being Seen: Lessons from Show Your Work!

    In a world where we often feel pressured to be “experts” before we share anything, Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work! offers a liberating alternative. The core message is that creativity isn’t a mysterious talent reserved for a few — it’s a way of operating that requires being open about what you’re learning and doing. Here are the most meaningful takeaways for anyone looking to find their voice and build an audience. This book was also a big reason I made this website.

    Embrace the Amateur Advantage

    One of the most powerful mindset shifts is realizing you don’t have to be a master to contribute. Being an amateur — someone who does things for the love of it — can actually be an advantage. Amateurs are willing to experiment, take risks, and share their mistakes. As Kleon puts it, the real gap isn’t between good and great; it’s between doing nothing and doing something. By learning in public and wearing your amateurism on your sleeve, you invite the right people to find you and grow alongside you.

    Think Process, Not Product

    We’re often so focused on the final result that we hide the most interesting part: the work itself. Kleon encourages us to document our process. Whether you share it or not, recording your progress helps you see your own growth. When you’re ready to share, don’t wait for a masterpiece — share something small every day. Bits of your methods, your influences, even the scraps from the cutting-room floor add up to a substantial body of work over time.

    The Power of “Scenius”

    The myth of the lone genius is just that — a myth. Kleon introduces the concept of “scenius”: an ecology of talent where great ideas emerge from a group of connected minds, not a single visionary. To tap into this, you need to become an open node — someone who listens, notices others, and acts as a connector rather than simply broadcasting your own work. By teaching what you know and sharing your inspirations freely, you build a network that feeds your creativity as much as your own.

    Become a Better Storyteller

    Human beings are wired for stories. Kleon argues that our work doesn’t speak for itself — people want to know where things came from and who made them. You can make your work more compelling by telling the story behind it: where you’ve been, where you are now, and where you’re headed. This doesn’t mean embellishing. Stick to the truth of your journey. Honesty, it turns out, is more than enough.

    Learn to Take a Punch — and Stick Around

    Sharing your work publicly requires vulnerability. But as Kleon notes, compulsively avoiding embarrassment becomes its own kind of defeat. The antidote is volume: put out enough work that no single bad review can define you. More than talent, more than timing, the people who succeed are often simply the ones who stick around long enough. That idea echoes a line from Richard Strozzi-Heckler that has always been particularly meaningful to me: “The path of the Warrior is lifelong, and mastery is often simply staying on the path.”

    The Choice to Be Seen

    Ultimately, showing your work is about reclaiming agency in how you connect with the world. Generosity with your ideas and consistency in your effort create opportunities that secrecy never could.

    There are plenty more gems in this book for anyone who feels stuck or invisible. If these ideas on sharing and creativity resonate with you, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of Show Your Work!

  • You Don’t Need Talent to Learn a Language — You Need a System

    You Don’t Need Talent to Learn a Language — You Need a System

    Most people who try to learn a new language quit within the first few months. Not because they weren’t smart enough. Not because they lacked some mysterious “language gene.” They quit because nobody gave them a real system — just apps, phrasebooks, and the vague advice to “practice every day.”

    This guide is built on two books that changed the way I think about language learning: Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner and Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis. If you’re serious about this, read both. They complement each other well — Wyner gives you the neuroscience-backed methodology, Lewis gives you the confidence to actually use it with real people. For extra credit, look up the Michel Thomas method and listen to his audio courses. Between these three resources, you’ll have everything you need.

    What follows is a plan built from them.

    The Action Plan

    1. Build the Foundation: Pronunciation First

    Before you touch a grammar book, train your ears and mouth. Getting pronunciation right early prevents bad habits from calcifying — and bad pronunciation habits are genuinely hard to break later. Start by listening to your target language daily: songs, podcasts, YouTube videos. Passive exposure at this stage isn’t wasted time; it’s calibrating your brain to the sounds that are coming.

    2. Make Your Own Flashcards

    Do not buy premade flashcards. Make them yourself, using only your target language paired with images — no English translations. Google Image Search is your friend here. The reason this works is that you’re building a direct mental link between the word and the concept it represents, not a detour through your native language.

    Layer this with a Spaced Repetition System (SRS). The idea is simple: you review words at precisely the intervals when you’re about to forget them, which locks them into long-term memory far more efficiently than cramming. The free app Anki does both — flashcard creation and spaced repetition — and it’s worth learning properly.

    3. Focus on High-Leverage Vocabulary

    Don’t try to swallow the dictionary. Start with modal verbs, which give you an outsized ability to communicate with a small amount of material. Focus on:

    • Can (to be able to)
    • Should / Must (obligation)
    • Would like to / Want to (desires)
    • Going to (future intent)

    These few verbs let you construct an enormous range of sentences immediately. From there, move to the most commonly used words in your target language. Search for “[Target Language] frequency dictionary” — these lists exist for most major languages and tell you exactly which words appear most often in everyday speech and writing. Master the top 1,000 and you’ll be able to navigate the vast majority of real conversations.

    4. Practice “Thinking Immersion”

    You don’t need a plane ticket to immerse yourself in a language. The immersion that matters most happens inside your own head.

    The goal is to hijack your inner monologue — the constant stream of thought running through your mind all day — and redirect it into your target language. This sounds difficult, but it starts small. When you see a dog on your walk, you think un perro (or whatever your target language equivalent is). When you’re stuck in traffic, you describe it. When you make coffee, you narrate: I’m making coffee. The coffee is hot. I need milk. These micro-moments add up fast.

    Here’s what this looks like in practice day-to-day:

    • Morning routine: Narrate what you’re doing as you do it. I’m getting dressed. My shirt is blue. I’m going to be late.
    • Commute: Describe what you see out the window. There’s a red car. The road is busy. It’s raining.
    • At work or at home: When you hit a word you don’t know, don’t ignore the gap — find a workaround in your target language or look it up immediately in a dictionary app and move on.
    • Before bed: Run through your day in the language. Even a few sentences. Today I went to the store. I was tired. Tomorrow I have a meeting.

    The gaps in your vocabulary aren’t failures — they’re a to-do list. Every gap you discover is a word you’ll actually remember because you needed it.

    5. Eliminate the Translation Detour

    This is possibly the most important step on the list. Most learners get stuck in a loop: they hear a word, translate it to English, formulate a response in English, then translate it back. By the time they’ve done all that, the conversation has moved on.

    The fix is to stop translating entirely. Build your flashcards with images, not English definitions. Train your inner dialogue as described above. With enough repetition, you stop hearing perro and thinking “that means dog” — you just see the dog. That’s when the language starts to flow.

    Common Ruts — and How to Escape Them

    Even committed learners hit walls. These are the most common ones.

    The “Natural Talent” Myth People quit because they decide they’re not “language people.” Talent is real — some people do pick things up faster early on. But talent only determines your starting position, not your ceiling. Consistent daily work beats natural ability over time, every single time. The fix: Stop measuring yourself against where you think you should be. Measure yourself against where you were last month.

    The Translation Trap Hearing a word → translating to English → forming a thought in English → translating back. This loop makes real-time conversation nearly impossible. The fix: Never use English as the middleman. Associate words directly with what they represent. Build your inner monologue in the target language.

    The Mountain Mindset Looking at the full scope of learning a language — grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, writing — can make it feel impossibly large. So people delay, or go looking for shortcuts, rather than starting. The fix: You don’t need fluency to be useful. Research suggests roughly 20 hours of focused practice is enough to get the fundamentals in place — not fluency, but the foundation. Enough to handle maybe 80% of everyday conversations. You won’t catch every word. You won’t be mistaken for a native. But you’ll be able to order food, ask for directions, hold a basic conversation, and make yourself understood. That’s a real, achievable milestone — and it’s much closer than most people think. The real problem isn’t that learning a language takes years. It’s that most people spend years not starting.

    The Intimidation Barrier The fear of saying something wrong in front of a native speaker can be completely paralyzing. The fix: Reframe mistakes. Every error is a data point, not a verdict. Most native speakers are genuinely delighted when someone is making a real effort to learn their language — they’re not judging your conjugations, they’re rooting for you. Nobody reaches a high level at anything without making hundreds of mistakes along the way.

    The Bottom Line

    Treat language learning as something you do every day for the love of it — not a box to check or a goal to sprint toward. Put in the reps, follow the system, and the progress takes care of itself.

    Pick up Fluent Forever and Fluent in 3 Months. Build your Anki deck. Start narrating your morning. The only thing standing between you and a new language is the decision to begin.