Optimizing Your Life Away

The cliff snaps into view now, only meters away. But the car doesn't slow down. "Hit the brakes!", I yell to Mickey Mouse. He's driving the car, wearing a suit. Also, he's in black and white. What he isn't is

Notes – We’re (Not) To Blame For Shame

Beach. Ocean. Late mornings, late nights. Whatever the western heart desires flushes my retina, ready for the taking. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. For a while. Then not anymore. Reeks of privilege? Yes, it does. I’ve got lucky in my life beyond belief. Especially in economically

Grappling With Insecurities

You can go four weeks without food, two days without water, and one minute without air – and I haven't taken a breath for fifty seconds. My eyes are wide open, darting around. It's one of the worst situations I've ever been in, and my

The Hard Life Brings the Good Life

Twelve months. He’s trained twelve months for this. Eleven. Ten. Nine. All this running. All this suffering. The clock’s about to hit eight o’clock. Seven. Six. Five. Nothing else existed. No time for friendships. No distraction whatsoever for the last four weeks. Three. Two. Everything for this

(Very) Quick One – Focusing On What's In Front Of You

There's been so much happening in my life lately. A "balanced" life comes in extremes it seems: nothing happens for months, then everything at once. But what doesn't change is the best strategy to cope with these different life phases. From what I'

Quick One – The Cataclysm That Is Pessimism

There worst disease you can suffer from is pessimism. In the modern world, it's become a pandemic, spreading over social media and the news. But in my opinion, being a pessimist is no way to live your life. "Everything is screwed anyway" drives me up a

Quick One – The Antidote is Human Connection

So I've been thinking about human connection a lot. A little because it's at the center of our lives and we don't even realize it, very much so because I felt isolated for the longest time. Remote work gets to me. I mean the

The Longer The Tale, The Harder The Fail

I can't remember the last time dread hasn't filled every pore of my body. For the past hours I've been staring into a screen. Thank (insert your favorite deity here) the screen can't look back because what it would see would terrify

Travel Log – Chapter 4: The Great North

The first morning after I arrived in Chiang Mai, I would not just get to know the Thai kitchen. I’d be cooking the meal myself. The beauty of cooking classes! A bus would pick us up and take us to the cooking class. My friend Sara, whom I’ve

The Oldest Game Changer In The Book

Social media is an angry-making machine. But nothing envelopes me more in rage than the hustle gurus. So-called "hustle porn" (don't google it, I've made that mistake for you) is all over the internet: the idea of putting in more time into

Notes - Thinking Is Overrated

Here we go again with advice I should follow myself. It's much easier to think yourself out of doing than to actually start doing something. Thinking is a superpower. It can be medicine to get you where you want to go. But we live in such a left-

Notes – Finishing Things

A lot has been happening in my life, especially when it comes to my career. I didn't have that much time to write (or so I tell myself), but there's one realization I really want to tell you about. Since I'm semi-responsible for

Notes – A Zest For Life

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this question: Why do some people seem to have everything but act like they have nothing, yet some have nothing and make everything out of it? This isn't about material possessions or anything. Heck, we seemed to mostly have

Follow Your Bliss(ters)

Joseph Campbell led an ordinary life, until he followed one of his great interests: he loved myths of old. What really got him going was reading all about these stories our ancestors told. This lit a burning question in him: why do we as a species tell stories – and why

Startup Stories – The Greatest Leverage Is Yourself

Startups are the most intense way of testing your idea in reality, because you will get the most truthful feedback from a merciless entity: the free market. But startups aren't just great at testing out your idea. They're also phenomenal in testing yourself. If a company

Startup Stories – The Number One Startup Skill

It's my first rodeo working for a startup, and I'm struggling to stay in the saddle. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Tasks come in from left and right. I don't know where to start. But then I remember something I've used multiple

How Studio Ghibli Helped A Child Of Divorce

I was only a kid when I almost drowned in a vortex of confusion. There's never a great time for parents to divorce. But as the American scientist Erica Komisar found out, there are worse times. The worst by far is when the child is between eleven and

Startup Stories – Welcome To The Arena

When I quit my job about a year ago to go traveling, I thought finding work when I got back again would be easy money. Especially for the new kind of employer I wanted to work for: startups. The job market spat in my face, kicked me in the shin,

Quick One – Ignorance Is Not Bliss

There’s this horrible notion slithering through human behavior: acting like a subject of knowledge is beneath one’s self for engaging with it. There’s nothing “cool” about not caring to know something. If that’s the thinking, then it’s all about ego. Because ego can’t handle

Quick One - What Paris Showed Me

For the past three days, I've explored Paris. What the "City of Light" made me realize is that we don't build like we used to before: there's beauty behind every corner. A certain flair follows you wherever you go. Yet in our

The Problem with AI Use Cases

Bombardment from everywhere. I don’t know where up and down is, let alone what to do next. No manual exists for such a novel situation. No checklist. Nada. They just keep detonating. Round after round, with no end in sight. For the first time in my life, I feel

Starting A Writing Practice in the Age of AI

The opposite of happiness is not unhappiness, but boredom. And I’ve had too much of it. About one and a half years ago, I was dying for a creative hobby. Something that would give me a chance for self-expression while also being cognitively challenging. “Why would you start

Tommy Teaches: How PVs Work (Part 1)

Okay, here we go ladies and gents. I struggle to learn when I only consume information. Gunning for understanding, you must create something out of the information. So why not write a short essay to strengthen the understanding of a subject? You also train your writing, communication, and storytelling ability

Reality Testing – One Path To Truth

It took me three times until I realized sprinting full speed hitting my head against a wall was causing the headache I was overweight growing up. Adding extra pounds on the scale doesn't add to your self-esteem, unfortunately. Otherwise I would've been one of the