Month: August 2025

George Foreman made millions as a professional boxer. His highest payout were $5 million for his fight against Muhammad Ali. But the single-best thing he ever did for his bank account was to sign his name onto a grill. The “Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine” aka “George Foreman Grill” has sold more units than most countries have inhabitants, and it generated north of $200 million for Foreman, far more than he ever made from his athletic career. I see three takeaways.

First, a lot of people will pay to see their heroes in action—but an ungodly amount of people will pay to feel like their heroes, even if they’ve never met them. A tiny speck of stardust on a kitchen device you use every day is worth more than a real drop of sweat on your t-shirt from sitting in the first row that one time. Performances are great, but the real money lies in the associations.

Second, windfalls can come from anywhere. Even once he had made it as a boxer and opportunities opened up for him left and right, I doubt George Foreman would ever have foreseen that a mini-grill would make his ultimate payday. Those sizzling dollars, by the way, could easily have ended up in Hulk Hogan’s pocket. The grill company called him first, but he was picking up his kids from school. By the time he got home, George had signed, and Hogan ended up with a blender instead. The blender never took off, but the grill did.

We can never know where our best results will come from. Therefore, we should probably expect our wealth to grow most from somewhere unexpected. That won’t allow us target our efforts any better, but it will help us not throw in the towel too early on what might become a great thing. Which brings me to…

Third, let your bets play out. It’s one thing to keep making good bets. Another is to not short-shift your odds after you’ve put your chips on a certain number. As long as you believe in a company, a product, a message, or a thing you’re making, don’t abandon it. Let your stock keep growing unless the fundamentals change. My best investments usually come from picks I at some point forget altogether. George could have ended his licensing deal at any time. I’m sure he saw plenty of potential reasons over the years. But it was a good bet, and so he let it play out until the end.

Of course, the Foreman formula is not a get-rich-quick scheme. After all, for all the lean meals he could make on his grill, even George knew: Before great opportunities keep flying onto your doorstep, first, you have to punch your way to the top.

Jhoon Rhee was the Bruce Lee of taekwondo. Born in Korea while it was occupied by the Japanese, he began practicing martial arts when he was 13, the same age Lee started. He, also like Lee, emigrated to the United States as a young man to go to college. And since both of them hoped to establish their art forms in the West, perhaps it is no surprise they eventually became friends.

After teaching his first American disciples, issuing black belts, and establishing a taekwondo presence in the US, Rhee started hosting tournaments. At a 1969 national Rhee was directing, something went wrong: Presumably, one of his students took a hard kick straight to the face and broke his cheekbone.

We can only speculate how Rhee felt, but it’s not hard to imagine: concerned about his student’s health, dejected with the bad publicity, and worried about the future of his sport in the country. That’s when Rhee received a letter from Bruce.

Bruce reminded Jhoon that the event was “a stepping stone and not a stumbling block.” “As a side observer,” Lee continued, “I know you have done your part right, and though the outcome of the tournament was not quite up to standard, you did everything right.”

Lee encouraged Jhoon to not throw in the towel. After all, he was on the right path: “You have that quality of being active, awake, pushing ahead at all times, and always ahead of the other tournament directors in terms of services, knowledge and truthfulness.”

And when, while admitting he was both trying to cheer up his friend while sharing some truth, Lee wrote a line that’s been ringing in my ears ever since: “When the mean is in order, the end is ultimately inevitable.”

It’s hard to chase your dream the right way. To do it ethically. To take the long way around. It’s hard to get up every morning and invest time, especially as you watch others taking shortcuts—even if you know those shortcuts will ultimately turn into dead ends. Insisting on kindness, quality, and good intentions is no guarantee for a financial payoff. But, according to Lee, it will get you to the right destination, whatever life may have decided that to be for you.

“You are taking the right steps in the right order. You know you are. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, and keep walking until you’ll succeed.” That’s what Lee seems to say, and it’s a message I personally feel I can’t possibly hear often enough.

It worked for Rhee, apparently. He kept going. Hosting tournaments. Training students. And in the 1980s, he ran a network of 11 martial arts studios on the East Coast of the US. Rhee was also inducted into the Taekwondo Hall of Fame in 2007.

Choose the right means, find the right ends. If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a parent, parent. Take the straightest path to your biggest dreams, and don’t let the noise of the world send you on a highway in the wrong direction.

“What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become,” Lee ended his letter. “Remember, success is a journey, not a destination. I have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.”

My best friend from childhood recently got married and had a daughter. Of course, our group of friends organized a gift. But since he and I used to be so close and, on the rare occasions we now see each other, still are, I thought I’d send them something as well.

After noodling on it for a while, I decided to send them gifts for themselves. As in, “This is for you—because even as a partner in a marriage and a parent, you are still your own person. It will be easy to forget in the coming years. So here’s a small reminder.” Then, the process really began.

I had to ask another friend for help with the wife’s gift. She loves arts and crafts and runs a small online store on the side, so I ordered some material for her to work with. My friend recently got into Pokémon cards again, just like me, so I organized a special, graded card of his favorite Pokémon and a collector’s box. Now, I still need to wrap everything, put it into one box, and write the card. And send it out, of course.

I hope they’ll enjoy the box when they receive it. In the end, it’ll be a small gesture in the grand scheme of things. But even small gestures can take significant amounts of time—and that’s often the part that makes them not-so-small at all.

Writing a birthday card, selecting a gift, cooking a meal—most of us would file all of these under “tiny favors,” yet it is in these little interactions that we can most easily show how much we truly care. And we do. And others see it. And that’s why, in the end, it’s small gestures that make the world go ’round.

In most companies, no one wants to be the last line of defense. What if it goes wrong and then all fingers point at you? That’s a heavy future to carry, which is why, usually, it goes to the CEO—and comes with the highest pay. As a result, everyone else can stay higher up the blame-chain. Out of the blast radius.

Meanwhile, when I go to bed at night, I look forward to my duvet. Even in summer, unless it’s excruciatingly hot, I’ll use the whole blanket, not just its cover. Isn’t it magical when a thick layer of bedding tucks you right into dreamland? It’s called a “comforter” for a reason—and yet, the reason it’s comfortable is that it’s heavy.

Nobody likes to lug a big bag of groceries back to their house, but what else does weight do except slow us down? Perhaps, just like at night in our beds, it grounds us. Responsibility is not the same as stress. You can meet one without being ridden by the other. But an ideal to live up to does force us to plant our feet firmly on the ground.

Instead of belaboring the pressure of a challenge, we can let gravity gently push us into the right place—a place where we belong, where we can contribute, and where our sacrifices hold meaning because they happen in service of others.

Weight is not just heavy. It is grounding. Don’t fall into the sky. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you’ll always sleep peacefully under a blanket of knowing you did your best.

They might change over time. Or not. Chances are, some shades of you will always stay the same. Others will transform unexpectedly or slowly meander into a different hue as the years go by.

How will you know? By doing a color test, of course!

One of the first personality tests I did was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. I got INFJ, which suggested I was introverted, emotional, and caring. All of which was true. But that was 11 years ago. How about now?

The other day, my coworker mentioned the True Colors test. It partially maps to the MBTI. So I figured why not try this one and see if my types still match? I got blue as a color. According to the results, that makes me “flexible, personable, warm, compassionate, and imaginative.” “You are typically calm, optimistic, and kind.” And I have a strong desire to be appreciated by others, supposedly.

I can see most of those points. And on Reddit, I can also see that blue matches with INFJ. It seems my true colors are still the same.

In hindsight, I wish I had done the MBTI every year plus one other test to contrast the results. But even in 10-year-intervals, looking into a mirror for your character is still interesting. For if nothing else, it’ll allow you to stay in sync with that always-relevant Cyndi Lauper song: “I see your true colors—and that’s why I love you.”

My deodorant hit the “it’ll run out soon” level. Every day since the fluid first seemed to stand low in the bottle, I’ve been thinking: “I need to replace this soon.” That was more than a month ago.

I don’t know if it’s because I keep the deodorant upside down and that makes it hard to accurately assess how full it is, or because I simply use so little each morning that it barely goes down, but whatever the cause, that’s a lot of fretting about deodorant—fretting which is entirely pointless.

The other day, after worrying for the umpteenth time, I realized: “You know what? Screw it. Just let the damn deodorant run out. Once it’s empty, you’ll replace it. It takes 30 seconds to grab a new one from the stock. Don’t think about it now because you’ll hardly think about it when it happens.” That was solid advice to myself. I wish I had taken it.

Instead, the scene repeated as usual the next morning. Yet again, I learned a new lesson: “Actually, I can also replace it right now. I can grab the new one and put it next to my current bottle. Chances are, that’d have the same effect.” Naturally, I didn’t do that either.

But I did get a third takeaway: You can be someone who lets hygiene products run out, or you can be someone who has replacements on hand. It doesn’t matter who you choose to be, and you can, in theory, change your mind each time. But making the choice and living with it, that is what counts—and that’s the part that makes your worries evaporate like deodorant on skin.

Take comfort in who you are, and you’ll keep your peace of mind.

Sitting at an empty table late at night in his not-yet-quite Michelin star restaurant The Bear, chef Carmy is stewing in all kinds of questions. His cousin and maître d’ Richie, ready to lock up the place and get out of there, sits down and asks him what’s going on.

“I’m fine. I’m thinking,” Carmy says. “What about?” “Mistakes.” That draws a long, silent stare into nothingness from Richie. God knows they’ve both made plenty of those. But the word “maître d'” is not the only French thing Richie has picked up in recent months. The former owner of a highly dysfunctional sandwich shop has picked up more respect, kindness, and patience than he’s ever had on his path to running the house in this fancy new establishment—and, with it, some new joie de vivre.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Carmy says, still brooding. Richie takes a breath. “Today.” “What?” The clock has long struck past midnight, and so Richie reminds his boss: “Today is tomorrow, cousin.”

The future is always coming. Sometimes, it hits us before we realize it. The arms tick past 12, and every day quietly bleeds into the next.

Don’t let it shake you. You stay right on course. Less brooding, more rooting—for yourself, and for others. Today is tomorrow, and you’ve got people to serve.

For some years now, I’ve been using roll-on deodorant instead of spray cans. I find it lasts longer while creating fewer stains on my t-shirts. The problem is that once the bottle is half-empty, the liquid takes forever to reach the ball when I turn it upside down.

At some point, I realized I could just keep the bottle upside down at all times. So now, whenever I grab my deodorant, the fluid is already on the ball, ready to fight the sweat.

In spaceflight, a gravity assist is a way of using a planet’s gravity field in order to accelerate a vehicle. By briefly entering a planet’s orbit, you steal a tiny, negligible fraction of its gravitational energy. As the planet and your spacecraft keep moving in different directions, instead of pulling you further in, the gravity field eventually “slingshots” the vehicle out of the planet’s orbit, thus speeding up your spacecraft.

But even down here on Earth, where gravity only points in one direction, it can still be of assistance.

My deodorant takeaway inspired me to turn other things upside down. An electronic device, for example, when I’m trying to pull a cable out of it. A bag of food which reveals its contents more easily if I flip it 180 degrees instead of slowly pouring it out sideways. Oh, and my body wash in the shower, of course.

Most recently, however, the most notable gravity assist helps me retrieve Pokémon cards from their so-called toploaders. A toploader is a rectangular card protector made from rigid plastic. It’s great for keeping cards from getting bent while storing them in a binder or mailing them to someone else. The problem is that, often, the cards won’t easily come back out. The gap at the top of the toploader is narrow, so it’s hard to pull it out with your fingers. If you try to bend the toploader and widen the gap too much, however, and you risk damaging your card. The answer? Gravity. Turn the toploader upside down, tap it on a surface a few times, and voilà, your card will slide right out!

I’m sure there are many more gravity assists for me to discover. Where are yours? Have fun finding out. There is little more satisfying than realizing your struggle was optional—and then letting nature do the work.

I remember running home from the bus so I could catch the beginning of my favorite anime series. Since public transport served multiple small villages in one route, what would be a 15-minute car drive back from school turned into a 45-minute ride. The walk to our house was steep but, thankfully, short.

I had to do this run many times because in the early 2000s, there were many good anime shows on German TV—and they all lasted for quite some time. Pokémon is still going 25 years later, although Ash finally found what he was looking for after some 20+ seasons. Digimon‘s first two seasons were connected and both had over 50 episodes. Yu-Gi-Oh! ran for over 200 episodes.

The same applied to other, non-drawn German classics. Das Traumschiff, “the Dreamship,” boasts over 100 movie-length episodes since 1981. Fabrixx, a show for kids showing them how teenagers handle their problems, also hit the screen more than 200 times. And don’t get me started on Hollywood blockbusters.

The Marvel cinematic universe was just getting started. Harry Potter turned into eight movies. The Lord of the Rings got its trilogy, and so did many other franchises, from X-Men to the Matrix to the Star Wars prequels. Spider Man, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean—I could keep going.

Back then, I never knew when a story would end, but I always trusted it would be resolved. 20 years later, I expect everything to end as soon as it stops playing, mostly because the film industry has stopped committing to anything, let alone epic sagas. Sometimes, I don’t let myself enjoy a show or movie to the fullest because I’m harboring these doubts. “This might get canned anyway, so don’t get too excited.” I know many film fans feel the same. It’s a sad state of affairs, and it does take away some of that magic that makes you want to race home as soon as you get off the bus.

On paper, axing a show must always make sense to executives. “This is what the numbers say.” The story they don’t tell is one of redemption that gets you loyal fans for years because you actually saw something through. If there was a movie studio people could rely on to finish its shows, I bet that studio would receive a massive following. But with most studios instead canceling even the shows they previously already committed to, that’s not where the world is headed.

Writing a trilogy of novels. Drafting a multi-season show. Committing to posting one blog a day or one song a week. These are big sacrifices. If feedback is instant, why bother deciding in advance? Why not just double down on the hits? Because sometimes, hits take time to ripen. The pizza gets crispy at the end.

Even if only your 12th book is a hit, your then-publisher can still reissue all of your prior works. But if you quit after the first one, you’ll never know.

Dare to make big commitments. They’re as scarce a resource as they’ve ever been—yet they might be exactly what we need to make us run home with excitement, ready to discover the next chapter.

She looks ordinary, and she hides behind a partition tucked away in a corner of the community center library. Despite that, Ms. Komachi brings out the innermost feelings in whomever happens to stand in front of her counter.

The last person to do so in What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is Masao Gonno, a 65-year-old recent retiree. It’s only been a few months, but Masao isn’t exactly enjoying his newfound time. “I don’t know what to do with it,” he admits to Ms. Komachi. “The remainder of my life feels meaningless.”

Ms. Komachi has a habit of sounding like she does not understand people’s issues at all. But then, somehow, she always seems to say something deep that’s relevant to their problems. Kind of like a child would, by offering a completely new perspective on the topic. It happens with Mr. Masao, too.

“What do you mean by ‘the remainder’?” she asks him, and Masao must admit: He doesn’t really know either. “What do I mean by ‘the remainder’?” he asks himself. Out loud, he answers matter-of-factly: “The left-over part, I suppose. What remains.”

Then, it’s Ms. Komachi’s time to shine: “Let’s say you ate ten Honeydome cookies from a box of twelve. Would the last two be ‘remainders’?”

This throws Masao for a loop. He worked for Kuremiyado, the company making the Honeydome cookies Ms. Komachi talks about, for more than 40 years. “This question,” he suspects, “touches on the heart of the matter, but as I don’t feel capable of voicing my answer, I keep mum.”

Eating 10 out of 12 cookies means you’ve finished 83% of the box. But do the last 17% really become just “a remainder?” Why would they? They’re the same cookies as the other ten. They taste the same. They last just as long. And, hopefully, they’re also just as delicious.

If Masao has already lived 83% of his life, that means he has 12 years left. Are those 12 years worth less than the prior 65? What makes them “the left-over part?”

Sometimes, I make spaghetti bolognese for my fiancée and I. The next day, we eat “the leftovers.” She likes the pasta better on the second day because most of the sauce has been soaked up by the noodles. If the leftovers taste better than the fresh dish, aren’t they more of an upgrade?

Time. Noodles. Cookies. Each next unit of something precious is as valuable as the last. Don’t split life into “the good stuff” and “the rest.” Taste every moment to the fullest, and you’ll never fret about when your sweet treats might run out.