Month: December 2025

I don’t care too much about productivity apps, but in late 2023, I found one I really loved, mostly because it had everything: a to-do list, background music, a timer, a gamified points and ranking system, and even a community chat to occasionally share whatever was on your mind. It was called Sukha.

I used the app every day and got pretty involved in the community. Sadly, it went downhill from when I joined. They moved the standalone app into the browser, completely changed the user interface, and many bugs started happening. It was a classic case of engineer’s disease: trying to fix something that’s not broken and making it worse in the process.

Eventually, I got fed up enough to start looking for alternatives. There was no shortage of them. Well, productivity tools in general, that is. With one search, you can find hundreds of Pomodoro timers, focus music apps, and to-do list tools. Finding one that combines all the features I wanted was a bit trickier. Eventually, I decided to give LifeAt a try.

LifeAt was available as a standalone app, which is nice when you’re trying to have your virtual work headquarters somewhere other than lost in the million tabs you already have open in your browser. It had beautiful backgrounds, sounds, timed tasks, and so on. There was also a community with a handful of chat rooms, and they boasted four million users. So I gave the free trial a go.

I still can’t 100% put my finger on why, but despite the beautiful design and flawless features, but after a few days of using LifeAt, I felt…nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had no connection to the app. No interest in using it. It was like a leaf lying somewhere on my terrace: If the wind carried it away any moment, I would not have cared at all.

One thing I did notice was that the chat rooms felt empty. On-screen, they had thousands of members. But no one shared anything. The only room where I could even get a response was one that consisted exclusively of high school students studying for exams—and even then it took a day to get a single answer. I soon abandoned ship in search of greener pastures.

After LifeAt, I looked at multiple other solutions. They all looked and felt more or less the same: beautiful but uninteresting. Eventually, I gave up on most of my requirements and settled on a tool called Flocus. Not because it was great, but because it covered the essentials: an on-screen timer that I can set to be as long as I estimate my task to be, along with a list of other, upcoming to-dos.

Having traveled around the productivity app space and back again once more, my number one takeaway was this: Soulless software is everywhere. We are now drowning in a sea of beautiful apps that make us feel nothing yet keep us tapping buttons and paying our subscription charges. The more I think about it, the more examples I can find. And this is to say nothing of the software spaces I’m less familiar with, like those for design, coding, making music, process management, and so on. If you’re experienced in either of these, perhaps you’ve noticed the same.

For many of the apps I looked at, I couldn’t even find who made it. After much digging, I’d end up at some blandly named “venture studio” in Canada—probably an agency firing out apps by the truckload, hoping one will go viral to then charge for the premium features—or an anonymous Twitter account with no posts in the past month.

I’m sure it’s not the only part, but that aspect I can’t and never will knock Sukha for: The community was the best in the business. Just real people doing real work and sharing their wins and frustrations along the way. One was a freelance designer. Another doing his PhD. Someone was trying to make it as a writer. It was the most water cooler chat I’ve had since water cooler chat stopped being a thing, at least for us remote workers.

Whatever you’re building, whether it runs on code, trumpets, or heated floors: Remember that it also runs, first and foremost, on people. Make sure it has some soul to keep the gang together.

Friends from the UK were in town. They brought my fiancée and I a stellar gift: A beautiful tin box full of Ben’s Cookies.

I ate my first Ben’s Cookie in 2008 while doing an internship near London with my best friend. We both still remember it. Baked the same way since starting from an iconic red shop in Oxford’s covered market in 1984, these cookies are just the perfect mix of gooey, crunchy, and flavorful without tasting overpowering.

Yet, for some reason, you can only find them in the UK and a few select locations worldwide. Ergo, a stellar gift for a couple living in Munich with no access to these bad boys. The red, Christmas-themed box with its beautiful white lettering is a marvel all on its own. But of course, the eight stars of the show were inside. There’s milk chocolate, double chocolate, triple chocolate, even variants with macadamia, peanuts, and more.

The next day, we were invited to other friends’ house. We didn’t have a good gift to bring, and I knew our hosts loved cookies. So we brought two of Ben’s. It definitely felt like a sacrifice at first. Were we really going to hand over a quarter of our special treat to someone else? But as soon as everyone popped a piece of a cookie into their mouth at the dinner table, the real lesson was clear: The best way to make presents last is to share them.

Now, our friends also know about Ben’s Cookies. They might look for them when they next go to the UK. Who knows? Maybe they’ll give them to more friends as a gift. And then they can tell them the story: “You know, the first time I ate these, friends brought them to our house, and…”

Sorrow shared may be sorrow cut in half, but a gift shared could turn into a gift doubled—even if, like a great cookie, it ends up disappearing entirely in the process.

For plenty of good things in life, it’s actually enough. Catching up with our neighbors, for example. We live in a big apartment building. Few people know each other really well. Folks move in and out all the time. But once a year, the community hosts a mini Christmas market right outside our house. It’s perfect!

Cheap mulled wine. Grilled sausages. And a catch-up. “Is your mother still in Venetia?” “When’s your wedding?” We chatted for a good two hours. What happened throughout the year. New building plans in our area. Which restaurants are a must-try. And then, we went our separate ways.

I have this running joke with an old friend. Every time we meet, I say, “See you next year!” when we part. And almost every time, it turns out to be correct. It used to make me a little sad. Now, I’ve accepted it. It’s okay, you know? What an achievement if you have 5, 10, perhaps even 20 friends whom you see every year! Isn’t that enough?

Your favorite restaurant. A holiday spot you like visiting again and again. That timeless movie or old connection you long to spend more time with. If once a year is all you get, then once a year is how you make the most of it. And who knows? Perhaps it’s because you only experience it once a year that it’s still special after all this time.

Don’t turn special into ordinary. Presence is most keenly felt in absence—and what greater presents to receive than the ones we look forward to all year?

12 years ago, I went to Japan for the first time with a friend. I loved everything about the trip and wanted to come back ever since.

My favorite memory among many great ones is how, on our last night, we ran through Tokyo’s massive subway network with a paper map, trying to find the spot where we had bought korot, heavenly wrapped crêpes filled with cream, banana, and chocolate sauce, a few days earlier. It was an amazing dessert, and we just had to get some more before we left.

I’ll never forget that day. It was one heck of an adventure. It also taught me about “omotenashi,” the Japanese art of “wholehearted hospitality,” when the two ladies manning the shop gave us a whole bunch of korots for free becausze they were closing and we only had euros, no yen.

That day also started a clock: When would I get to eat korot again? The delicacy was not only not available in Europe, let alone Germany—it wasn’t even a thing outside of Tokyo. And I didn’t know where to begin in making it myself. But for the next few years, I kept the memory of them close to my chest.

It’s funny how, sometimes, you know what you want, but you don’t go after it. I knew I wanted to go back to Japan as soon as I left. I don’t know why it took me 12 years to do so. There wasn’t a particular reason I had to wait that long. But there was also no particular reason to return, so maybe I felt I lacked the excuse—nor did I realize I didn’t need one. Alas, life had other plans for me. Still, korots popped into my head every now and then. I only wrote about the experience and omotenashi two years ago.

Naturally, the dessert was high on my list when I finally returned. In a wonderful twist of fate, I found some right in the first subway station I walked into once I got to Tokyo. I was excited but also worried: What if they didn’t taste the same? What if I had overblown their taste in my memory? I bought some, shared them with my fiancée, and we took a bite. Heaven. It still tasted the same. Just as fluffy, just as wonderful—and entirely worth the wait.

I’m happy that my korot repeat turned out well. Sometimes, you form expectations so high, the future that meets them feels like it’s already surpassing what you hoped for. More importantly, however, my 12-year-wait taught me that the best part of eating it again is not whether a meal tastes as well as you remember it. It’s the looking forward to the experience, regardless of how it turns out. In my case, I got 12 years of joyful anticipation. In the end, those were worth more than either crêpe.

Collect memories. Revisit them. But most of all, look forward to looking forward to things. Hope is the best prize of all.

“Hmm, on slide eight, that third box on the right there. That somehow feels like it’s already covered by the other two. Should we replace it with something else, maybe?”

My colleague was right. I had already felt the third box didn’t fit myself. Twice, actually. Once when looking over the deck for the second time, and then again just now, while presenting the topic to him. We were working on a pitch about blockchain together—ideally one our ambassadors can easily understand themselves and then convincingly share with others.

When I first drafted that particular slide, it seemed to fit perfectly with the case study that followed. “Traceability, authenticity, and sustainability.” Those were three of the benefits blockchain could unlock, I claimed. But, as my coworker rightly pointed out, any lift in eco-friendly effects is usually more up to, first, which blockchain you choose, and, second, how much more efficient it makes your operations. It’s a consequence, not a feature. Ergo, the right box must go.

Confirmation bias is when we’re seeking information that tells us exactly what we want to hear. Usually, it’s described as a bad pattern we must combat to think properly and weigh all sides of a situation. There are moments, however, when confirmation bias actually pushes you in the right direction. Whenever your gut is already telling you that something feels off, for example.

In well-founded moments of doubt, we don’t need someone to tell us it’ll all be fine. We don’t want to gloss over our negative intuition, which is stronger and more accurate than our instinctive enthusiasm. Instead, we want to feed it with information—and if that information confirms we should take a second look, what’s the harm? Chances are, the end result will be more polished for it. And if the alarm is false, at least we’ll have made doubly sure.

There’s a time and a place for everything—even confirmation bias.

This morning, my mind ran ahead the rest of me again. Imagine a ghost version of yourself peeling off and dashing straight forward. You see it, but you can’t keep up.

I was thinking about the roadmap at work, and all the case studies I have to make, and the research for the next year. I realized I hadn’t thought of my own personal theme for 2026, that I had to respond to some wedding logistics queries, and that there were still leaves in the garden to clean up. All my ongoing post drafts, my next book, figuring out my email list logistics…it was just a little too much bubbling to the surface at the same time. Ergo, my mind was over the hills, but my body stayed in place.

It’s not strictly a mind-body separation, by the way. But it makes the analogy easier. To separate the mental and the physical. Of course my physical self couldn’t have dealt with all these ideas at once. But neither could my mind. It was a small subsection of my brain darting too far into the future, that’s all.

Well, what do you? When there’s a portion of you standing 100 yards down the road? Simple: You let yourself catch up. Stop the dashing. Reset. And allow your body—and the rest of your mind—to reunite with the little phantom that went missing.

How do you do that? In my case, I closed the laptop. I put on some pants. I went outside, breathed some fresh, cold air, and walked to the bakery. Mostly in the shade, but there was a bit of sun, too. I asked for a coffee. I observed the friendly interactions between everyone in the store. I turned a corner while circling around the block, and there he was: future-ghost-Nik. Standing there. Waving. Waiting for me to catch up.

I kept walking. We reunited. And now here I am, ready to start the day.

“Getting ahead of yourself” is more than a metaphor. It can happen in ways that feel quite literal. It’s okay to fall behind—even when it’s also you who’s doing the running away. Simply take a beat when you notice. We all want to have fair chances. How about we first try to be fair to ourselves? Start by letting yourself catch up.

Have you ever seen a minecart chase in a movie? Like the one in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, for example? The heroes must escape from an underground dungeon, but how to get through the vast network of twists, turns, and tunnels? Aha! An abandoned minecart. They hop in and a frantic ride begins.

Besides the enemy chasing them, the heroes will struggle with obstacles, the minecart going too slow, too fast, or almost going off the rails. Every now and then, there might even be a gap in the track, which they’ll have to jump over. And if one thing goes wrong? They’ll crash, their chances of fleeing dashed in a millisecond.

Working with other people can be like a minecart chase. Let’s say you’re an organized, diligent worker, and you usually do your stuff ahead of time. That’s you, getting into the minecart right at the beginning. You ride, you control the speed, and you know where you want go.

Your team, too, wants to get to the same destination. So, one after the other, they hop in. But not everyone joins at the same time. Not everyone has the same information about the project you do. People get on, get off, and start asking questions. “Should I use the brake or not? How fast can we go into this corner?” More people can make the cart wobbly. Some folks want to slow down, others want to speed up. Others still only ever address to-dos at the very last second.

That last kind of working, “just-in-time,” as people like to dress it up, is particularly tricky. It’s as if someone jumps into your minecart from above right before a critical juncture. With a new mass and velocity, it becomes highly likely your cart won’t make the next jump. If it’s too late, what’s supposed to be shipped won’t be ready, and that leads to delays, angry partners, or a scolding from the higher-ups.

But as you might also have seen in the movies, sometimes, letting the minecart crash is not a bad thing. It could pop our heroes right into an underground pond from which they can swim out of the cave. Or drop them in front of the tunnel that leads to the exit. In any case, it gives them a chance to regroup and form a new plan of action. Finally, they’re not going at lightning speed.

When the minecart stops, it gives us room to think. Sometimes, you might not need that room, but others do. If you’re one of the ones feeling anxious on other people’s behalf a lot, consider letting the minecart crash. Allow everyone to reassess, and build again from there. Chances are, you’re not paid enough to worry, but you all deserve to get out of the cave and bask in the sunlight of your success.

Yesterday was a first: The boss at the barbershop that’s a ten-minute walk from my house gave me an appointment. I may have postponed my haircut once or twice before when it was exceptionally busy, but nine out of ten times, I walk into the place, sit down for a bit, then get serviced. Even the time he suggested shows their can-do attitude: “Can you come back in an hour?” Yup, still got my hairdo sorted!

This kind of barbershop is slowly becoming the typical barbershop in Munich: run by a bunch of Eastern European guys—I’m still trying to figuring out if they’re speaking Turkish or something else—always a few friends hanging around, but also as productive as an assembly line. There are no delays, no schmoozing, no upsells for fancy shampoo. It’s sit in the chair, get cut, next—which, for someone trying to get a haircut and only a haircut, is fantastic!

Yesterday, in my brief waiting time sitting on the same fake leather couch as always, the one that seems to want to swallow me for lunch, I properly looked around the place for the first time. It’s a single, rectangular room with gray walls. LED light tubes line the ceiling in a honeycomb pattern, which extends itself to the mirrors of the four cutting stations as well as some of the shelves. The interior mostly consists of fake dark wood with some fake gold trim here and there. Throw in a bunch of decorative metal signs, framed individual photographs, and a few art pieces, like a mini propeller, lion head paper cut, and a clock—all in steampunk style, of course—and you have it: the just-do-it barbershop.

The photographs, in particular, caught my eye. They weren’t photos of the owner, famous clients, or even his friends. They were basically stock images. All black-and-white, mind you, but still. Some were more artsy, others showed old-school barber equipment. There must have been at least 20 of them, and it made me wonder: “How much time did they spend setting this shop up?” I imagined the guy flicking through some pics online, just going with his gut: “That one. And that one. And that one.” Then, I saw him firing up the printer, quickly framing them, and sticking them onto the wall. Heck, now that I’m thinking about it, he might have just bought those frames online, completely finished with the pics!

I mused a bit more about how much time they took to decide on the setup of the place, and how long the renovations actually ended up taking them. Contrary to what it may sound like, however, it wasn’t from a position of condescension that I made my assessment. To my own surprise, rather than scolding the team for a rushed job, in my imagination, I applauded them for quickly making a whole bunch of good-enough decisions. “You know what? They’re probably right! Who needs six months to decorate a barbershop? It’s a barbershop! The sooner you can cut hair, the better.”

Ultimately, I realized the way the shop had been put together perfectly reflected the attitude of the people making it come to life. That attitude is worth emulating not just in their line of business but in most of life to begin with: Just do it. Pick the decor, open the shop, and get to the actual work. Then, keep doing it. And if that’s becoming the typical barbershop in Munich and beyond, I’m all for it.

Appointment needed or not, somehow, I’m already looking forward to my next haircut.

I started doing 50 push-ups daily when I was 28. Back then, for a young man in his 20s, that was perhaps decent but hardly impressive. Not worth much more than a faint smile or nod of appreciation.

Now, I’m 34. 50 push-ups are still just 50 push-ups, but the scope of people who find that feat impressive has already widened a little. Your 30s are for arriving. It’s when many people settle down. A time of homes, families, hopefully job comfort, and perhaps a bit of extra weight. I, too, have to fight a little harder than I used to to keep mine down. But the 50 push-ups are a staple, and they won’t go anywhere any time soon.

When I think ahead, I can only see my 50 push-ups becoming more and more impressive from here on out. And all I have to do? Maintain the same habit. Imagine seeing a guy in his 60s, 70s, 80s, and there he is, doing 50 push-ups in one go. Crazy, right? Way to stay in shape! But of course, if he’s done 50 push-ups for most of his life, to him that’s just normal. I’d like to be that guy when I’m 80.

It’s not just the results of habits that add up over time. It’s also their reputation. How others perceive you will shift, even if your habit stays exactly the same. Writing every day, holding the door for other people, being able to touch your toes—a lot of activities that seem boring now will appear impressive later. All you have to do is keep doing them.

Often, “extraordinary” is nothing more than the result of “average” maintained over a long time.

Only you can decide.

This morning, like every morning, I sat in meditation for 15 minutes. From the point of view that meditation is about eliminating your ego and thoughts, it wasn’t a very good session. I had a lot of thoughts—about work, about reviewing a friend’s book, about old movies and TV shows.

And while I managed to reset and switch topics a few times, I could never quite let go altogether. Finally, I remembered: “You don’t have to think this thought.” In that moment, whatever was on my mind at the time quietly faded away, and my brain could take a deep breath. Not enter Nirvana or anything, but there was a tiny bit of space—and of course, right in that moment, the timer rang, and life went on.

15 minutes for five seconds of inner peace. Was it worth it? Absolutely.