In the winter, my living room gets pretty dry. Humidity can drop below 20%. After realizing that 40% and up is ideal for not just trading cards but people, too, I figured I’d buy a humidifier.

I went on Amazon, compared the top models in the lower to medium price range, and read their reviews. I found one people seemed happy with, ordered, and waited. After it arrived, I set it up, and it worked well enough. My living room is fairly large, so the humidifier had to run at max output, but, eventually, it made a dent. I got humidity to around 40%.

What the 4.8 rating on Amazon didn’t tell me was that this machine came with side effects. First, vapor constantly streamed from the device. It was basically a fog machine. After it ran for a while, you could see the fog hanging in the room. It made the air somewhat heavier. But if I opened a window to clear the air, guess what happened? Humidity dropped again! Then, the cycle would start over.

More annoyingly, however, the vapor actually set on furniture, items, and basically everywhere in the room. It was like a thin, milky layer of dust which crept onto the sideboard, into the holder for my Nintendo Switch, and around the plastic legs of the dining table chairs. You could wipe away the dust, but sometimes, it seemed as if a faint layer remained.

Eventually, I got worried this would cause permanent damage. And, besides, I wasn’t about to turn my living room into a hookah bar just to optimize the amount of water in the air. So, I sent it back and got a refund.

Around the same time, I remembered my dad had also bought a humidifier. I had seen it in action already, and I didn’t remember any fog emitting from the device. I asked him for the model name, and he sent it to me. Then, I set out to do a bit more research.

To my astonishment, I could barely find any information about my dad’s humidifier online. Most consumer products from large brands get hundreds of reviews on Youtube, Amazon, and various websites. This one barely had any.

One reason was that it came from a niche German manufacturer. They were specialized in humidifiers but mostly local to our geography. If your products aren’t available world wide, the crowd of folks reviewing your stuff slims down quickly.

After looking at some poorly shot videos and suspicious websites reeking of AI, I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place: Do I buy this product with barely any information on it, or do I keep complaining about my dry eyes and nose? Most other humidifiers were vapor-based, and I had at least seen this one live already. “To hell with it,” I went and hit order.

Many weeks later, I can confirm: This humidifier is amazing. It works, it self-adjusts, it has a quiet mode for at night. It makes the room livable and creates zero fog or dust residue. And I’d never have picked it off online research and reviews alone. Heck, I barely picked it after already seeing it in person! That’s how much review culture affects us these days.

It’s great that, for most products, we can access a wealth of data. It creates transparency and helps us make informed decisions. But whenever that data isn’t available, it now feels like a drawback. We suspect the worst and struggle to assess things on their merits alone. But that’s what money-back guarantees are for! If you can’t tell from afar, you can still try it for yourself.

Sometimes, the best product has no reviews. Don’t be afraid to take a chance.

When you buy Pokémon cards on Cardmarket, Europe’s largest marketplace in the space, a little flag next to the card name indicates which language it is in. If you’re lucky, you’ll also spot a camera symbol, which you can click to see a photo of the card before you buy it.

But of course, people are lazy. Most don’t upload pictures. For cards under 10 euros or so, that’s fair. The product is not that expensive, and if sellers have hundreds of items to list, the effort isn’t worth the reward. But I’m always shocked at how many listings of cards costing 100, 200, 300 euros with no pictures. At those price points, who buys without looking at the goods? So why make everyone message you just for some pictures? Clearly, there’s some nuance with how much effort should go into a listing.

For the language of the card, that’s a different story. About half a dozen times or so, I’ve received a card in the wrong language. I always order in English, but I’ve gotten cards in German and Spanish instead. One time, this led to a multi-month hassle of me trying to send back the card, it then getting lost in the mail, and both the seller and I making a loss. Most recently, a vendor shipped at lightning speed but didn’t review what he was shipping. Now, I’ve got a beautiful Horsea card in Spanish which I have no use for.

Perhaps I’m giving people too much credit. Cards in English are usually valued higher than other languages, so folks might be trying to get some extra cash and hope no one notices the error. Alas, I try to remember Hanlon’s razor: If it can be explained by sloppiness, don’t assume bad intent.

Still, that sloppiness is worth reprimanding. It only takes a few seconds to check a card’s language before you list it, and it only takes a few seconds more to check it again before you send it out. That’s at least two careless errors required for every time someone receives a card with the wrong alphabet on it—which makes the whole problem unnecessary and easy to avoid.

For most things in life, getting them right the first time is overrated. Almost all mistakes are reversible, done is perfect, and you have to start before you’re ready. But there’s a small percentage of issues where it really pays to nail them on the first try. Pay attention to those issues, and then throw in that little bit of extra care which will make their smooth solutions pay extra dividends—like being the kind of vendor people can trust to always ship cards in the right language.

She was an elegant lady in her mid-70s. Blonde, voluminous hair, impeccably dressed, with a slim figure. I was sitting in the hotel lobby, writing while waiting for my train. I had seen this woman the night before: At dinner, where she had walked around, smiled at everyone, and taken a few bites from the salad buffet.

“That’s the CEO!” I had told my partner, recognizing her from one of the explainer posters in the check-in area. Her name was Elisabeth Gürtler. As part of a long and complex history, the Gürtler family had taken over the famous “Hotel Sacher,” named after perhaps the world’s most well-known chocolate cake, in the 1930s. After multiple generational handovers and two premature deaths, Elisabeth found herself running the place alone with two teenage children in the 1990s—which she ended up doing for 25 years.

And now, ten years after her retirement, here she was. In the lobby of one of their now three luxurious hotels, kneeling on one of the couches, rearranging the flowers in a big vase. “Do you need help, madam?” one of the bellhops asked her. “No no, I get along fine, but look, this table over there. That needs to be rearranged and cleaned up. And tell the laundry section we still have plenty of what they need in that cupboard over there. No need to buy any additional ones.”

Elisabeth Gürtler has been through a lot, and she no doubt stands at the pinnacle of Austrian society for it. Still, instead of resting on her laurels or cashing in on her good name, she walks the premises. Fixes things. Puts love into the details that make a great hotel more than a place to stay—and quietly smiles at her guests all throughout.

Humility is choosing to do what’s right even when no one might see it, and I can’t think of a better way to stay young at heart. That’s what I learned from the CEO who arranged the flowers.

“Which electric tooth brush are you using?” she asked me. “The one with the round head? Oh, that’s no good. You should switch to one with a rectangular one. Better for the gums.”

Every time I go to the dentist, I get more homework. “Use this special floss once a week.” “Scrape your tongue.” “Apply fluoride every now and then.” It’s as if I had nothing to do all day except clean my teeth. Beyond the obvious upsells, however, their advice is often conflicting. Not just between one dentist and another but even in the same practice. “Oh, that was six months ago. Now, there’s a new study!”

Different people will feel healthy under different conditions, and different people need different conditions to actually be healthy. That makes for infinite combinations—and health a very subjective issue. If even doctors constantly argue about what’s best and change their minds every few months, finding universal rules is nearly impossible. Then, there’s the issue of perception.

One person will consider themselves healthy with a broken arm and a wheatgrass allergy, others will feel sick at the slightest sniffle. In reality, our health always lives on a spectrum. But sick/not sick is easier to process, and so how healthy you feel depends largely on your outlook. Optimistic people might end up actually healthier simply because they feel healthier more of the time.

Compared to five years ago, my dental routine has improved by a factor of ten or so. I now use an electric toothbrush that does the correct motions automatically, floss every night, and do some fluoride treatment once a week. I even got a mouth guard to combat grinding my teeth at night. But somewhere, there needs to be a line.

How much of your life’s time are you willing to dedicate to cleaning your teeth? Repeat this question for food, exercising, sleeping, and a bunch of other areas, and you’ll have a system, or at least a place to start. Your answers will change anyway. Oh, and they’re entirely subjective, too. Just like health.

In Netflix’ adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery, protagonist Lady Eileen Brent, nicknamed “Bundle,” chases lead after lead in the murder of her almost-husband-to-be. Bundle is bubbly, outgoing, and curious by nature. She also won’t take no for an answer.

Her character makes Bundle very effective at sussing out the details of a crime that leaves ever more bodies in its wake. It also makes her very obvious. But Bundle does not care about targets on her back, and so she continues haunting Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Battle, who’s the one officially charged with the investigation.

Battle is a man of observation more so than words. For the most part, he doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything. Unsurprisingly, Bundle confronts him more than once. At one point, while figuring out the circumstances of a mystery attacker’s nightly escape from the manor at which all suspects are staying, Bundle yet again walks right into Battle’s crime scene.

“What do you think about Sir Oswald?” she asks him straight up. It is here that, perhaps for the first time, someone other than her mother reminds Bundle it can pay to wait: “Now, I think a great many things, Lady Eileen,” Battle says, “but until thinking becomes knowing, then I prefer not to say them out loud.”

She only blinks for a second, but Bundle is, indeed, startled. Quickly, she collects herself and returns to her usual wit: “Ah! A very novel approach. Mmm. I do hope it catches on.” Still, you can see it on her face: Bundle is thinking—and whatever her gut is telling her about Battle’s suggested approach, she is not ready to make up her mind out loud.

By the time all is revealed, Bundle seems to have slightly altered her forensic methods. Still, the adjustment is not quite enough to blow this particular case wide open, and she misses the most important detail. Alas, Bundle is young, and more crime is afoot—a lady has a license to learn!

Time is rarely bad fuel for a mind trying to crack a tough nut. Let’s be deliberate about when we share our hypotheses with whom—for until thinking becomes knowing, some thoughts are best left unspoken.

When I feel down, exhausted, or sad, I go back to my comfort art. It could be watching Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, or How I Met Your Mother for the tenth time. It could be browsing a familiar Youtuber’s channel. Or re-reading my highlights from one of my favorite books.

Learning or engaging with new art is also relaxing. But it’s a different kind. Your brain is still working. Absorbing. Processing. Sometimes, there’s nothing like the familiar to make us feel like we’re regaining a little bit of control. To know what’s next and still look forward to it arriving.

Repetition is also part of learning. So even when you repeat the entertainment, you’re still picking up new nuances. And if not? Then you’re still recovering.

You can’t waste anything. So don’t feel bad for revisiting your comfort art.

It was a surprising request. My fiancée isn’t usually eager for art supplies. But when she said she really wished we had a greater variety of colored felt tip pens, I ordered a set for her. A few weeks later, I found out why.

It was my birthday weekend, and we were headed to a yet-unknown-to-me destination. On the train platform, my partner handed me a yellow envelope. “The Amazing Race,” it read, just like the scavenger-hunt-around-the-world TV show we like watching together. “Ohhh boy!” I said. “Here we go!!”

On the show, the two-person teams consistently receive clues about where they are headed next, how to get there, and which challenges they must complete before arriving at the “pit stop” of that leg of the journey. Each of these clues came in a yellow envelope with bold black letters, a homemade version of which I was now holding in my hand.

I opened it, and out came a hand-drawn clue. Same colors, same style, same layout as on the show—except all drawn in felt-tip pens. It was beautiful. “Route Info,” it read. The clue was in a vertical layout with a blue box at the top. Symbols indicated the different modes of transportation, and then, beneath them, there was the description. “So this one will tell me where we’ll go, huh?” “Board the train towards Mittenwald. Decipher the word scramble to figure out your final stop.”

I later received another clue on the train, and, for a few hours, we truly felt as if we were on the show. The tables on the train even came with a map we could explore, which was like free hot chocolate on top.

The sweet gift reminded me of my childhood. When we were younger, my sister and I used to do this all the time. If we saw a show or game on TV we wanted to be a part of, we simply remade the ingredients. We drew our own cards, imitated as best as we could, and even added our own rules where we felt like it. Most of the time this was more than good enough. Probably, it was more fun than being on the actual show would have been. As it turns out, 25 years later, the same recipe still works.

Time has its ways of gnawing at us. Don’t let it dull your imagination. Reinvent your dreams on a small scale, and make time for more make-believe—especially if all it takes is a set of colored felt-tip pens.

The best nonfiction books are the ones where the author spent a decade or more becoming the book before writing it. That’s why sequels often fall short. How could you possibly come up with the same amount of insight a year later? Of course, publishers know whatever comes on the heels of a mega-hit will meet relative success regardless, and so they push their bestselling authors to do more.

Greg McKeown published Essentialism in 2014. It sold incredibly well. Still, he waited for seven years before releasing a follow-up. And while Effortless was decent, it didn’t come anywhere near Essentialism—neither in sales nor in quality.

Books are the obvious example, but the same idea applies on a smaller scale, too. Many people join social media networks only to teach others how to succeed in gaining reach on such platforms. But if all you’ve ever talked about is social media, how can we know you’re any good at using them to reach anyone else but a fellow marketer? The same applies to writing platforms and Youtube. Do you have more to talk about than the medium you’re using? Or is it all just a means to make money?

If you want to share ideas from interesting books, first, you’ll have to read some. Your waffle recipes will land a lot better if you’ve actually used them to make hundreds of waffles. You can document your journey, take pictures, and share which quirky events happened along the way! A generic “how to flip condos” tutorial isn’t cool. What’s cool is seeing how you flipped a condo. How you spent hundreds of hours searching for the right place in the right location, renovating it, and going through the listing and sale process.

Even the tiniest tale is more magical when it draws on at least a morsel of experience. I can make hot chocolate come alive because I’ve prepared it many times. I spilled it in my microwave, so I can talk about that, too. Experience needn’t be big to be meaningful when you share it. But first, become the story.

Three years ago, I bought a nice bottle of chocolate liqueur at the Turin airport. It was modeled after the Mole Antonelliana, perhaps the town’s most famous monument. Sleek glass, beautiful Italian design—I thought it would make for a great display piece once it was empty.

The liqueur itself was okay. We used it mainly as chocolate sauce for vanilla ice cream on occasion. But those occasions were rare, and so, years later, the bottle still wasn’t empty. My mom recently encouraged me to not drink whatever was left, so I figured it was finally time.

I emptied the bottle and rinsed it. I filled it with some dish soap and hot water, then rinsed it again. Unfortunately, I realized, the chocolate liqueur had crusted up in various places. I couldn’t fully clean the bottle. It would always have some brown spots on the inside of the glass. But I already had an idea of how I wanted to use the bottle as a decoration piece, so I wasn’t gonna give up that easily.

For the next week, I followed a new routine. Every morning, I filled the bottle with dish soap and hot water. Then, I let it soak. Later, I turned it over and poured out the water while shaking it. This way, the water would splash around and tear off a few of the crusted bits inside. Still, some stains wouldn’t budge.

Halfway through the week, I changed my strategy: vinegar. I followed the same process, but now, I used a mix of vinegar and water. I kept varying the recipe. I also tried limescale remover, a vinegar-based cleaning liquid, and, ultimately, pure vinegar.

At the end of the week, I left for a short trip. Afterwards, life got busy, so, for the next seven days, the bottle stayed where it was. Who knew? Maybe soaking it longer would do the trick.

When week two was almost up, I pulled one more ace out of my sleeve: Coca-Cola. I remember hearing once that Coke is quite acidic and can dissolve almost anything. Why not put this theory to the test? I ordered some bottles.

Just as I was about to start the experiment, however, something happened: When I drained the week-long vinegar treatment from the bottle, one by one, the last four specks of hardened liqueur floated out. “Wow! Amazing!” I literally yelled out loud. “Ha! It worked!”

I rinsed the bottle a few more times and washed it one last time with soap. I removed the sticker around its neck, dried it, and set it up on the dining table. I have a lamp head you can attach to various items. As expected, it fit the bottle perfectly. Now, I have a pristine replica of one of Italy’s great buildings illuminating my meals. It’s a pretty unique piece of decoration, and I love it.

When I first stared at those stains in the bottle, I didn’t know how I’d get rid of them. But I knew this problem was solvable. I’m not sure why this particular challenge grabbed me. I’m not an interior designer by any means. But I felt dogged, and, to accelerate, I got a little obsessed. In the battle of man vs. bottle, I wasn’t going to back down.

Once you settle into a problem, solving it becomes almost inevitable. All you have to do is stay there. Never mind the time. You might make three attempts in one day or none for a week. As long as you keep engaging, eventually, the wall will turn into a door.

Even small battles can be worth winning. Know when to stay in the ring, and get comfortable resting against the ropes.

“How do you feel about turning 35?” my partner asked me. I told her I hadn’t really thought about it. Life had been too busy. The question made me realize I hadn’t captured any birthday reflections in several years. The last ones happened when I turned 30. I don’t believe in sharing ever more life lessons each year, but being halfway through yet another decade felt like an important milestone. So I reflected, wrote down some ideas, and shared them.

That article took three afternoons to write. About six hours, give or take. Did it bring me any closer to publishing my next book, clearing my massive article-import backlog for the blog, or making more bucks to pay for website operations? Nope. But it helped me solidify five principles I want to live by for the rest of my life. I call that a useful distraction.

Yesterday, I stumbled on a novel drafting contest for new fiction authors. Grand prize? $50,000. Even runner-ups will receive $5,000. The pitch is straightforward—5,000 words—and the deadline is clear. I kept the tab open. What if I throw one of my fiction ideas and three more afternoons at this? Will it get me to a submission-ready draft? I don’t know, but I’ll try and find out. If the effort-reward ratio gets tilted, I can always abandon ship.

I told my partner about the writing contest at night. I could already hear her words: “This is yet another distraction.” To my surprise, she didn’t say them. I brought up the matter and said: “I think it’s a useful distraction. I want to write more fiction sooner or later. So why not try it in a setting like this? Where it’s time-boxed and may come with some benefits.” She agreed with me. “That’s why I didn’t call it out.”

You’ll always give in to distractions from time to time. Useful ones often only change the timing of an action you’d have taken sooner or later regardless. You can’t reflect on a birthday years after it happened. The snapshot of your mind would never be the same. And if you want to write fiction, there’s rarely a bad time to start.

Useful distractions have another benefit: They crowd out unproductive ones. Sure, I might have spent my afternoons on more book writing. But I ensure to do a little bit of that every morning anyway, so they could just as well have gone to watching TV or playing video games. Useful distractions are inspiring. They make you put in more hours.

Work hard. Stay focused. But leave time for the fun stuff—especially when it makes sense. Embrace your useful distractions.