2026-04-30 17:03:00
Multi-tasking is mostly an illusion.
What we’re actually doing is slicing our focus, jumping from one thing to another and then back again.
All that jumping decreases our productivity and worse, erodes our peace of mind.
You’re only doing one thing at a time anyway. Might as well embrace that instead of spending so much time shifting gears.
2026-04-29 16:29:00
I bought a snack food the other day, and was disappointed to discover that the thing inside the container had little in common with the picture on the front. It was pallid, lifeless and drab.
The marketer who decided to improve the picture was making a choice, one with consequences. When you choose to disappoint a customer later so you can make a sale right now, you’ve also chosen to create disappointment for a living.
If you’re not proud of it, don’t serve it. Improving the image on the package shouldn’t be a substitute for making something people want to buy.
2026-04-28 17:03:00
When there is motion, it creates an impact of the environment.
First, the path is barely noticeable. But then, others see the hint of a path and walk on it, making it more clear. Finally, the path becomes the route.
Sometimes there’s a small rut. But a rut shifts gravity and wheels or feet land in the rut, making it deeper. This is how moguls appear on ski hills as well.
When it rains, the paths and ruts fill with water, and we call them puddles.
Of course, puddles are a metaphor.
Puddles only exist when there’s been some sort of motion that caused a depression that could collect the water. If you want to see how the audience is responding, how the culture is shifting, how your customers are acting–look for the puddles.
Fill in the rut and a new one will appear somewhere else. There are almost always puddles.
2026-04-27 17:03:00
In terms of cost, serving a small ramekin of toasted pistachio nuts is a tiny portion of what an airline spends in transporting someone first class.
In fact, it’s such a relatively small expense that it’s easy to simply avoid it. Send the money to the bottom line and focus on the parts that are actually worth paying for.
Gratuitous bonuses send signals.
They tell the customer that you have the resources and confidence to pay attention to the little things.
They help distinguish extraordinary items from ordinary ones (after all, the folks in coach show up at the arrivals gate at exactly the same time).
And they deliver a story of status, one that’s internalized and often shared.
I’ve never seen a product or service that couldn’t be improved with metaphorical warm pistachios.
Pass the nuts.
2026-04-26 17:03:00
The expression “bad money crowds out the good” refers to Gresham’s Law. It means that once lesser-quality and counterfeit currency begins to be traded, people hoard the good stuff and only trade the poor substitutes.
Social media platforms fall into a trap like this when they seek to grow. For example, at the beginning, Substack had a very high signal to noise ratio–plenty of good ideas and so readers were happy to expect that an email from them or recommendation from the platform was worthwhile. It didn’t get put in the spam or promo folder, because it wasn’t spam.
But now, having run out of the highest-quality content, the site is making it easy for hustlers to import vast lists of email addresses and quickly grow (or appear to grow) their lists. I’m getting unsolicited and unwanted”subscriptions” often, and the easiest thing to do is just send all of their messages to spam. Which hurts the original good currency. Once the bad “money” shows up, it attracts more bad money.
The same thing happens when trusted sources start padding their content with AI slop, or when a small business inserts a few low-value, high-margin items into their sampler pack.
Attention is precious. Trust is even more so.
When you trade them both for growth, it’s inevitable that you’ll fade away.
2026-04-25 17:03:00
[Off topic, but I hope it might be useful]
Mindfulness can improve your life. So can stillness and spiritual grounding. This is not a post about that.
Breathing is an architectural challenge and a chemical necessity.
We breathe about 20 pounds of air a day (and if you’ve ever tried to weigh air, you can imagine that this is quite a bit.) Why bother?
The body is fueled by a series of chemical reactions, and most of them require the right balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The body is finely tuned to be aware of the available quantity of each, and reacts accordingly.
We evolved to have a particularly complicated system for ingesting air. We have two nostrils and a mouth. Thanks to speech and other requirements, the mouth is well suited to rapid inhalations and exhalations.
Which is a problem.
The first lesson of James Nestor’s book is simple: Shut your mouth.
Spend three days breathing only through your nose. Even when you work out. Especially then. (Except swimming. I tried. It doesn’t work.)
And consider slightly taping your mouth when you sleep. Just a small piece of surgical tape, about a half inch across–right in the center. Put some lip balm on before applying so it won’t irritate you. Don’t do this if you have apnea or other issues, or a doctor who suggests against it. It’s a very small piece of tape, easily removed.
That’s it. Three days.
Nestor spends hundreds of pages explaining a huge range of benefits and volumes of peer-reviewed research. Some of it might be a bit overblown, some is surprising, but all of it makes sense.
But you don’t need a Ph.D. to determine how it feels after three days. It’s like discovering you’ve been using the wrong door to get into and out of your house.
I had such a good experience that I felt like it was worth sharing. Breathe through your nose, small sips, not gulps. You may find that you sleep better, snore less, run further, and are less stressed.
No one told me. Now we know.
