Month: November 2025

Here’s what happens when I sit down to write on a busy day, hoping I’ll be done in 15 minutes: I can’t think of anything worth sharing. I’ll squeeze my brain, get distracted, and, 30 minutes in, I might finally get started. Of course it takes the longest when you wish it’ll go the fastest!

Paradoxical intention is a treatment idea from psychotherapy: Instead of hoping to prevent an ailment, you lean into it. Insomnia, for example, or your fear of public speaking. Or, in my case, trying to write a blog post quickly.

The idea is that if your mind is working against you, you pretend you want to do the opposite. Instead of fretting about the fact you can’t sleep, you tell yourself: “Okay, fine, I don’t even want to sleep! I’ll stay up all night, do this, and then that, and then…” Zzzz. Alright, it might take a bit longer, but you get the gist.

The exact element to double down on depends on the situation and source of your troubles, but it’s a fascinating way of self-management. For me, when writing, I can pretend I have all the time in the world. As soon as I don’t stress about a timer, ideas willingly float into my periphery. By slowing down, I end up speeding up. Writer Thomas M. Sterner observed a similar phenomenon while tuning pianos: the more time he took, the faster he was done.

When the path forward is blocked, it’s natural to look for alternative roads left and right. To knock on the wall and hope it falls over. But sometimes, it’s worth turning around. To make the detour the default. Pretend you like the problem.

If pushing harder isn’t working, try to run the wrong way on purpose. Should all roads lead to destiny, what begins as a diversion might turn out to be a shortcut.

The hard part is focus. Staying on a single task for multiple hours is basically a superpower in today’s world of interruptions. But even if you can focus, there’s also that moment in-between. Can you switch from one focus to the next? And, once again, actually focus?

Again, the focusing is the hard part. I’m not too good at it these days. I have my moments, and I’m always working on it. But that moment of switching feels connected.

The other day, I had a great, focused morning. But as soon as I started watching some anime during my lunch break, I sort of branched out into distraction. It took me a while to recover and get back to focus. So if focusing is hard, switching from focus to relaxation back to focus is just as hard. That’s why Tony Stubblebine came up with interstitial journaling. The idea is to capture your thoughts when you’re moving from one project to the next throughout your day. To write it out and ease the transition.

This morning, I woke up with some leftover dreams. I quickly made a mental cut so I could get up and start the day. I switched to thinking about my Pokémon collection to test my theory on deliberate context-switching. That transition worked. The next one was harder: Getting from Pokémon back to my morning routine and the day ahead. Aha! So some topics are stickier than others!

For me, a nonfiction book is better context for my lunch break than a TV show. Why? Because those books have natural stopping points where it’s easy to pause and let ideas linger. If a TV episode ends in a cliffhanger—and when do they not—it’s hard to leave that mental train track.

Practice your focus, sure. There’s nothing like spending three, four hours in a concentrated manner. It’s extremely rewarding. But also practice deliberate context-switching. Even when attention is in short supply, the moments when you turn it from one matter to another should be yours and yours alone.

About two thirds through Hunter x Hunter’s 148 episodes, I realized its soundtrack reminded me of Mozart. I started listening to various songs and compilations while working. One day, I caught a fateful comment below one of the music videos: “And then, in the end, when they died…”

My brain reacted immediately: “Wait a minute…what?! They’re gonna die? Who kills the two main characters of a show after 100+ episodes? Isn’t the manga still going? Did they replace who it’s about? And who spoilers halfway through a top-rated Youtube comment anyway? Damn it!”

For the next week or so, I raced through the rest of the show. I couldn’t believe Gon and Killua were about to say farewell. How? When? Why? The show manages to build out a wonderful, pure friendship between two preteen boys. I was genuinely anxious for that to connection to end—that’s what a good story does, isn’t it?

I watched episodes during lunch breaks, binged more at night, even upped the speed on some filler material, something I usually avoid like the plague. And then, on episode 135, it finally hit me: That comment was talking about other characters. All I had raced to was the wrong conclusion!

Ultimately, there was no need to speed through the show. No need to wonder if this would happen or that. I even rated the show already in my head. “If they actually off these kids, that’ll put a real dent in the overall feel!” Many of my thoughts in the week following that comment were built on a single expectation, and that expectation turned out to be wrong! Poof! The only thing that was eliminated were the results of my mental gymnastics.

Life is better without spoilers—but if you do encounter one, can you still refrain from judging what’s coming before it actually arrives? That’s a hard test. I failed it this time. But like the two boy heroes in one of my favorite shows who are never down for too long, I can’t wait to try again.

If the finish line might be nothing more than a wrong conclusion, why race when you can walk and enjoy the view?

The birthday paradox is an interesting mathematical phenomenon: How large of a group of people would it take for the chances of two of them sharing the same birthday to exceed 50%?

What does your gut tell you? 50? 100? 366? 730? The correct answer is 23—which also happens to explain how, in my high school class of 30, we could have not just one but two pairs of folks born on the same day.

The reason for this surprisingly low number is that you’re not just comparing each person to one other person. You’re comparing them to everyone else. So with 23 people, you already have 253 pairs of people to consider, and that tips your chances of a match to just over 50%.

Life is the same, I think. We usually see only one way an event can work out, one path to get to where we want. But actually, there’s an infinite number of combinations! You might not be accepted into your dream college when applying via the official route, but maybe you end up impressing a professor in another setting. Maybe a friend of a friend pulls out of a scholarship and recommends you in their place. Maybe you’ll get an honorary degree 30 years in the future.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo famously instructs C-3PO to “never tell him the odds.” That’s solid advice when you know the deck is stacked against you. But what if, most of the time, the odds are better than we think? You might feel you’re only 5% of the way, but perhaps you’ve already passed the halfway mark to your greatest success.

Continue enlisting chance as an ally, and don’t be surprised when more people share your birthday than you expected.

Some moments can split our life into a clear before-and-after. For my friend Brian Pennie, it was cutting himself off cold turkey from his heroin addiction of almost 20 years. Everything that has happened since? He considers it bonus time.

I don’t have a distinct before-and-after for when I started appreciating my life more consciously, but I do know that, since maybe around 2012, I’ve also been on bonus time. That was the year I started my gratitude journal, the year I began actively working on my habits, and the year I decided to forge my own career path without worrying so much what other people might think.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy or value my experiences beforehand. I had a wonderful, no doubt privileged childhood. But this was the start of a more deliberate journey through life. After that, every year was the best year of my life. It still is to this day. And though there’s far more I wish to do and see, if I were to die tomorrow, there’d still be more than enough to be grateful for. More than enough living I’ve already done.

There’ll always be times when it’s hard to activate your gratitude filter. When life has you down, and the best you can do is go on. But think about it. Really think about it. Isn’t there already an infinite number of thoughts, emotions, people, and moments in your past which deserve your thanks? Start a list in your head. Wouldn’t it just keep going?

Perhaps you, too, are already on bonus time—and recognizing that, even without knowing exactly when it started, might be one of your most important discoveries.

Right now, I’m scared of 150 different things. I’m scared something bad might happen to my fiancée, my parents, or my sister. I’m scared of something bad happening to me. What if I die before writing a great book, or any other book, for that matter?

I’m scared I won’t finish my next big project at work on time. Or the one after that, which also already has a deadline looming ahead. I’m scared my accountant won’t finish my tax return in time, that I won’t make enough to cover my website’s costs next year, and that no one might buy the Pokémon cards I’ve listed on a marketplace.

I’m scared to travel to Berlin next month for work, and I’m scared my investments will never go up. I’m scared my dishwasher will break again—this time without recovering—and I’m scared someone might steal our garden furniture or lawn mower. I could keep going.

Of course, these are all fears in different degrees. They pop up at varying times and mostly individually. But they’re all present enough for me to feel them out and list them right now—and those are just the fears I can pull out and see. Who knows what might lie beneath the surface.

And yet, for all those fears, I’m still here. Still writing. Still going to work. Still taking risks.

Life can be one long tunnel of horror if you let it. We’re all scared, all the time. The question is will you board the next ride regardless? Will you continue to hope for better against the odds? That’s what it comes down to: Always scared, never stopping.

I could think of worse mottos.

After handing in my wedding ring to get it resized, I spontaneously swung by a new Pokémon card shop in town. I walked in, looked at the man behind the counter, and thought: “That face looks familiar. Could it be…?” I browsed for a while, picked out a box to buy, then started talking to the guy while checking out. He recommended some boosters, punched in the numbers, and when he handed me the receipt and my debit card, he said: “I just read your name on your card. Do I know you from somewhere?”

I asked: “Is your name Ahmed?” His eyes widened, and he said yes. It turned out we had briefly gone to high school together 20 years ago. The last time I had seen him was at a New Year’s Eve party at my house in 2010—where he memorably, though entirely accidentally, destroyed part of our stone kitchen counter. “No way! Fancy meeting you here! Small world!”

I wouldn’t have expected to bump into Ahmed anywhere, let alone in Munich. Last I remembered, he lived in the north of Germany. Alas, people move. His father lived nearby, and he’d run a small Pokémon business himself since 2021. He applied when this new store opened and got the gig—so there he was. I, meanwhile, had gotten back into collecting in late 2023. Stores in Munich are far and few between. If a new one opens, I always go to check it out eventually—so there I was.

Nobody knows the timing of good things. They can happen right away or 15 years later. Force nothing, embrace everything. Walk through life with both open eyes and arms. You never know who you’ll meet behind the next door.

In a strangely moving episode of The Sandman, dream lord Morpheus calls upon his family for help. The Furies will soon be after him, and he must test the boundaries of the rules of his universe to try and escape certain death.

His first visit is to Destiny, his brother, a hooded man holding a book at all times. The writing in the book appears on its own, but once it is written, all Destiny can do is read it out aloud—and whatever is bound to happen will.

The last time Dream came to visit, he ignored his brother’s counsel. This time around, Destiny opts not to bother: “You may see it for yourself,” he says, and allows Dream to look into his book. To Dream’s surprise, the current page is empty. Could his fate yet be undecided?! “One’s destiny is determined by one’s actions,” Dream’s brother admits. He is an observer more so than an architect behind the scenes.

Hope flares up in Dream’s heart, but he dares not believe he is out of the woods just yet. Swallowing his pride, he shows up at one of his least favorite doorsteps: his father’s. As usual, Time has few words for Dream, let alone kind ones. “My children seem to think that because I am Time, that my time cannot be wasted.” Ouch!

But eventually, Dream gets to ask what he wants to ask: Can he be saved? After all, the blank pages in Destiny’s book… Alas, time waits for no one. Not even cosmic beings. “Well, the specifics of your death,” Time says, “how it happens, when it happens, may yet be unwritten. But make no mistake: Destiny’s book has an ending. And so do you.”

Dejected, Dream shuffles his way back to the door of his father’s office. But he does note a lack of specifics. If Destiny’s book ends, what happens after? Will time itself stop passing? Or is the end of the last chapter simply the start of a new one? And if there’s neither a how nor a when for his demise, who’s to say it’s to occur this time around at all?

Even if our next step is extra scary, we can’t know in advance: Is it fate or just a phase? The truth usually only reveals itself much later, if ever—but perhaps this is supposed to comfort us rather than frighten us even more. Keep up the conversation, but never stop making choices. Just like Dream chooses to visit his mother, Night, next in his attempt to avoid the supposed inevitable.

Whatever the rules of your universe, stretch them as far as they will give in service of your dreams.

Have you ever noticed your dreams spilling over into reality after you wake up? Not the events, of course, but the feelings.

For me, most of my dreams take me into these humdrum, almost bland everyday experiences—but always with a twist. The twist usually makes the situation frustrating or slightly annoying without transforming it to the point where I can easily tell I’m in a dream.

The other day, I was cycling with two friends. They were calmly pedaling on a straight road on my left, having fun, chatting away. Meanwhile, I was riding on something akin to train tracks. The ground kept rising and falling, forcing me to ride up ramps and back down again. To pay attention to not get stuck and fall over. “Why am I struggling so much, and they’re just cruising?” I wondered.

Since dreams feel real, why wouldn’t the feelings we have after we wake up? In this case, the frustrating experience in the dream made me slightly irritable and uneasy. I ended up standing in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, thinking about it. This is a common occurrence.

Sometimes, my entire morning routine goes towards shaking off the remnant feelings from disconcerting dreams. I’m starting to accept this as a normal and okay pattern. Morning routines are for getting ready for the day. What does it matter what we must deal with to get there? Whether it’s physical tiredness or an emotional reset?

If you almost miss your bus stop and barely manage to get off in time, that’s going to spike your adrenaline. Chances are, you’ll deal with this almost-crisis for the next few hours, consciously or not. I don’t know the proportions, but it makes sense to me that an actual missed bus stop—even in a dream—will have a similar or even more dramatic effect. That’s okay. Just as it’s okay to then let that surge of emotions pass.

After all, it was only a dream—and sometimes, the best part of those is waking up.

That was the lesson of step 28 in Tai Lopez’ 67 Steps program, which I took way back in 2014. In that particular lesson, Tai talked about John Wooden, Lao Tzu, and the power of foresight. The idea was simple: The worst time to buy health insurance is when you’re already in the hospital. Wherever you can prevent big problems by taking small precautions now, you should make the effort.

Health is indeed a good example. Working out a little every day, stretching, walking, brushing your teeth—it’s the little habits maintained over a lifetime that give you the best odds at making it to 90 and beyond. But, yesterday, this idea popped back into my head in a different context.

It was dinner time, and all I’d had thus far was an espresso, a cappuccino, and a pretzel. I was ready for some yogurt and cereal, as my partner and I had discussed, but since she’d had a bigger lunch at work, she gracefully offered me half of a scrumptious chicken burger, which we still had left over from the day before. Once I started eating, I asked her if she also wanted some, but she declined.

Super happy with my unexpected burger dinner, I barely managed to pace myself. I didn’t quite wolf it down, but man, I was hungry. Before I knew it, I held the last piece in my hand. “I really should offer this to her again,” I thought, “so she can at least have a bite.” Guess what? It was hard! I did feel some friction before asking my fiancée whether she’d like the last piece. Crazy, right? How entitled we can feel to something that was gifted to us as a complete surprise only moments ago.

Alas, I’ve done harder things, and I was very happy when she took the last bit of the burger and also got to enjoy it. So, all in all, it was easy enough to share delicious food even whilst I was hungry—yesterday. If it was another day? Who knows. That’s when the saying resurfaced in my head: Do what is hard when it is easy.

Be kind when it feels easy. Start the big project when it feels easy. Do the chore when it feels easy. That moment, that mindset, that psychological state of affairs might not come back any time soon, and your karma bank needs all the currency it can get. Prepare, prevent, and anticipate, sure, but also leverage your moods to carry you to the big aspirations: Do what is hard when it feels easy.