Month: June 2026

Yuri has done the impossible: With the help of her friends, she has put together an entire fashion line within 48 hours. After her dad lost the family fortune, Yuri’s been struggling. Not just with money, but with who she is now that it’s gone.

Fashion was always a passion of hers. Now, it’s become a welcome distraction. And after her whole gang rallied around her, even volunteered to model the new designs, maybe Yuri’s luck is about to change. Just before her big debut, Yuri tries to absorb her new reality. Standing on the balcony, she looks out on the crowd and models presenting other upstart designers’ work. Her best friend Kitty joins her.

At the last second, Yuri gets stage fright: “I came out here to take in the moment, and all I see are people who knew me when I was rich…and then laughed at me when I lost everything and fell on my face,” she tells Kitty. “Sure,” her friend says, “but look at how far you’ve come. I mean, life cut you down, and you stitched yourself back together.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” Yuri admits, sounding defeated. But that is the point! “None of us ever do,” Kitty says. She pulls back the curtain to reveal all of Yuri’s friends dressing up for the show, making final adjustments to the designs, putting in the best effort they can. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s in front of you. What matters is who’s behind you.”

Even if it’s you against the world—as long as you have one person who has your back, you may succeed against all odds. Don’t worry who or what is blocking your way. Look behind, take comfort in your supporters, and then put on one hell of a show.

I have a rule about selling Pokémon cards: If it’s not worth 10 bucks, it’s not worth listing. Given my life stage, time commitments, and financial situation, I literally can’t afford to mail around cardboard in letters for which the stamp costs more than the goods. But many collectors get lost in small transactions. And while I’m wondering if I should raise that threshold to 20 or even 50 euros, everyone is playing the game at a different scale.

Of course, relative value matters: If you only have 50 or 100 bucks to spend each month, getting your money’s worth is important. But it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.

A few weeks ago, I listed around 20 cards in one go. I wanted to move a bunch of inventory quickly, and so I put up most cards at the low end of Cardmarket’s many listings. Every offer needs a market, and there’s no better way to sell something fast than to undercut that market by 10%. If you’re the cheapest seller, you’ll rarely have to wait long.

Lo and behold, within a few hours, the sales emails were already trickling in—and so were the questions. One buyer was interested in a golden card of Mew, which cost around 20 euros. In comes a second rule of selling Pokémon cards: always with photos. Especially for cards priced 50 euros and higher. Who buys an item for 50 bucks they’ve never seen before? So even for my cheap listings, I always add a picture.

In this case, the picture was of the card in a sleeve. The potential buyer wanted to see the card without it. The next few listings of the same items all had no pictures but asked for higher prices. So technically, my card was already the best deal on the market: It was the cheapest, and you could see what you’re buying! What a no-brainer, right? Well, not for this guy. But I was dealing with cards all day anyway, so I sent him another picture of the back of the card.

A few hours later, he came back: “Can you take it out of the sleeve?” He wanted more pictures all around, without the sleeve. This, again, is important if you’re truly trying to assess the condition of a card. But if it’s a relatively recent print marked as “near mint,” you can rarely go too wrong. Unless you’re trying to have the card graded, of course, in which case every tiny detail matters. I wasn’t sure whether this guy was trying to be smart about picking up a gradable card on the cheap or was simply worried about how far his 20 bucks would go, but I felt generous, so I once again complied.

I forget the rest of our conversation that day, but I do remember his panicked messages the next morning: “Hey, do you still have the card? I don’t see it anymore! Can you re-list it?” As a matter of fact, I could not: Someone had bought it while I had been asleep—no questions asked. And why not? It was a good deal!

This wasn’t the first time I saw this pattern. It has happened to me with 20-euro-cards, 50-euro-cards, and, just last week, with a 200-euro-card: Someone acts all interested, demands tons of pictures and information, then tries to haggle down what’s already a bargain price. In the meantime, another buyer swoops in and eats their lunch. “Good card? Fair price? Awesome! I’ll take it!”

Whether it’s in Pokémon, plants for your garden, or home decorations: If you plan to stick around in a hobby or market, you better train your opportunity scanner. Know your prices. Learn to assess quality. Build a gut for what’s a good deal, what’s not, and what might convert the latter into the former. Can you negotiate that person down the 30% it takes for this to be worth it? Or are you better off talking to the seller behind another listing? Will this purchase stand the test of time? Or fall apart in the shipping box? And, most importantly: Will this item still be available tomorrow? Because if not, you must strike while the iron is hot.

The other day, I bought a 1000-euro-item on impulse. I saw it, briefly researched it, and my gut told me the market was not yet correctly pricing this brand new, unexpected item on release. So I bought it. Days later, the lowest listings start at 1500. I would never have made this purchase a few years ago when I just started getting back into collecting. But now, having looked at thousands of listings and made hundreds of purchases, I know a good deal when I see one.

Train your opportunity scanner. It takes time but compounds. Graduate from small to medium to large, and don’t let the noise drown out your wise inner voice.

One day in early 1930, J. R. R. Tolkien, then a professor at Oxford, was grading his students’ papers. A sentence popped into his mind: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” It took Tolkien seven years to go from that line to The Hobbit being published. The book was a success, and readers wanted more.

Many years later, in the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien provided some more context on how the sort-of-sequel eventually came to life:

Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got it, but they had to wait a long time; for the composition of The Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me.

Nonetheless it took another five years before the tale was brought to its present end; in that time I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and the days though less dark were no less laborious. Then when the ‘end’ had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards. And it had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means.

That’s 17 years, for those keeping count. 17 years to write one book. A large one, but still: one book.

Of course, even before 1930, Tolkien had already spent 20 years writing stories and poems set in the Middle Earth universe. So, really, The Lord of the Rings is the work of a lifetime.

If one of history’s most beloved authors needed this long for his masterpiece to ripen, you needn’t worry: You have time—just make sure you spend it on what matters.

The semester is about to end, and Kitty and her high-school friends have painted themselves into opposite corners of the same room. The past weeks have been full of drama: school drama, relationship drama, and I’m-a-teenager-ok?-drama.

With only a few days of time left together before the big summer break, no one is talking to each other. As Kitty looks around the student cafeteria, she sees everyone pretending to be lost in their phone, sulking to themselves. The real reason? Fear. People are worried: about their future careers, about not seeing their partners for weeks, about what will become of them after high school will soon be over altogether.

Kitty, a born matchmaker, decides to take matters into her own hands. All it takes? A good crisis! Her good friend Yuri is designing clothes for a fashion show. But with only two days to spare, her mentor tells her the styles aren’t good enough. Refusing to let Yuri give up, Kitty rallies their entire friend group together: Q, who has beef with his boyfriend Jin, besties Mihee and Madison, with the former currently feeling abandoned by the latter, even Marius, who’s the reason Q and Jin are fighting.

No matter how they feel about each other, no one wants to let either Yuri or Kitty down, so they all show up, put their heads together, and come up with a completely new fashion line from scratch. Spats flare up here and there, but Kitty helps everyone find their way back together and, in the end, the show is a raging success—not least thanks to Min Ho’s music, who happens to be the only person Kitty didn’t invite—since he is her ex and, though she doesn’t like to admit it, Kitty has her own people-problems, too.

Thankfully, Kitty’s oldest friend, Dae, has been paying attention. Having listened to Kitty’s matchmaking advice for years, he secretly invited Min Ho and included him in the group effort. Then, all he has to do is get the two into the same room—and he does.

Over the course of the evening, the inevitable happens: The spirit of kindness and harmony catches on, and, like everyone else, Kitty and Min Ho make up. Not quite the way he expected it would go, but they leave the building on much better terms than they entered it, which makes both Dae and the rest of their friends smile.

It’s always hardest to apply your skills yourself. When does a great baker ever make a cake purely for herself? Someone who negotiates for a living might make a terrible deal on buying a car. And the calming voice of reason in a friend group may still snap at her husband after a long day of counseling for others.

Sometimes, the matchmaker needs to be match-made. But often, we can help it before we need help. All it takes is a kind check-in with yourself: Isn’t this what you’re usually good at? Sell yourself a few hours of your own time, and who knows? Maybe your own problems will rectify themselves along with all your friends’.

My neighbor and I were practicing soccer tricks. I held the ball with my neck, then rolled it up over my head and tossed it in the air. My friend would catch it in the same fashion, and we passed the ball back and forth.

On one of the tosses, the ball went high in the air. We both jumped forward to catch it, and bam—my nose went straight into his forehead. It hurt like hell and bled accordingly. That day’s session was over, and there wouldn’t be any others for a while.

At first, I thought it was a normal nosebleed triggered by the accident. But it took a long time to stop, and, the next morning, I could hardly touch my nose without intense pain. Eventually, though, the pain subsided, and, day by day, I felt better. I never bothered going to the doctor.

A few weeks or even months later, I took off my glasses and looked into the mirror. There was a bump on the right side of my nose. “Was that always there?” Soon, I put two and two together. “Oh my god!” My nose had likely been slightly broken, and rather than confirm and set it, I had simply waited it out—and now, I had to live with the permanent result.

Your body is just a shell, but it still needs to carry you for a lifetime. Nobody gets through life without a few scratches. That’s normal. But if you incur wear and tear solely out of negligence, the tough blows you can’t avoid might one day knock you out.

To my own dismay, I have more than one story like the one about my nose. My left big toe felt numb after wearing tight shoes for two days straight at a conference. I planned on seeing a doc about it but “never got around to it.” It’s recovered, but sometimes I still wonder if I have the same level of feeling in it that I used to have before.

Three months after a bowling accident, the muscle I pulled doesn’t hurt anymore, but something in that area still feels different. The orthopedist didn’t fully grok the situation, and while I finally have a slot with the physiotherapist in a few days, it’s already way overdue.

It’s a lesson I need for myself but also a public service announcement: When it comes to the doctor, go early, go often. Germans are notorious for working through sickness, and not every cold needs an intense analysis. But whenever a small ailment could turn into a chronic issue, don’t dilly-dally. Face the challenge head on, and get back to 100%—so you can keep playing soccer with friends for as long as nature will allow it.

It’s one of those universal aspirations. Like how people say, “I’d love to write a book someday.” We have a fantasy of what it’s like in our heads, but we wouldn’t actually want the reality of it.

Running a shop of some kind might be the most persistent dream of this sort. Ask anybody, they’d love to run a shop. Probably a coffee shop. Or a book shop. Or a shop specializing in fresh produce and delicacies. If you run into someone with more niche interests, they’d love to run a video game shop, a Pokémon card shop, or a shop for equestrian equipment.

Heck, many people, myself included, have dreamed of running a whole variety of shops over the years! There’s something about it, isn’t there? It’s just you and your goods, a warm, friendly space, and loyal regulars dropping in to chat and pick up some baguettes. So much for the vision, anyway.

Cleaning up after hours, dealing with paperwork, stocking shelves? Nobody wants to know about that! Annoying customers pinching pennies? Wares running out? Shipping fees going through the roof? Inflation, taxes, bureaucracy. Like most endeavors, operating a shop is a grind 95% of the time.

The 5% of movie-like moments will still be beautiful—but even if they’ll define the experience, they’ll barely be a part of it. Which is why many shops opened on a whim close down shortly thereafter. What the owners fell in love with was the owning. The feeling of running a shop, not the experience.

Every time I dream about opening, say, a coffee shop, I try to remember this lesson. I think of myself in the shop. Hanging out, writing. Serving coffee to customers every now and then. Enjoying the smell of freshly roasted beans on the shelf. Then, I realize I’m barely working. “Oh. Right. What you’d like is to own a shop run by someone else—but actually, that means you can just go to any coffee shop!”

Money and other barriers aside, it is much easier to buy a drink at a shop you already like going to than to set up the perfect one for yourself. The best way to keep the dream alive is to let it be a dream and not force it into reality, which could never live up to it.

If it’s something you’d die with regret over if you didn’t do it, by all means. Give it your best shot, and go after the dream! Grunt work and all. But if it’s only a feeling you’re chasing, a story you know deep down you won’t enjoy once you’re stuck on page 243 out of 1,500, relax. Find the feeling without the burden, and savor the fantasy as it is: unreal yet still satisfying.

Beware the dream of running a shop.

Every now and then, someone will post on one of the Pokémon card game Reddit groups: “Help! My brother passed away, and I don’t know what to do.” Sad to begin with, the post inevitably comes with lots of shaky photos: boxes on boxes, cards on cards.

Their brother was an avid Pokémon collector, but no one else in the family has a clue about his hobby. How can they decide what to get rid of and what to keep? How will they know what things are worth and where to sell them? It can be a real challenge.

Thankfully, the community is kind and helpful. “Don’t let anyone fleece you. This stuff’s worth at least $5,000.” “Here’s a great place to look up prices. List and wait, don’t rush.” “This auction house offers consignment. They can take care of everything for you and make sure you get good prices.”

Sometimes, the original poster will provide an update. “We managed to sell everything and unlock most of the value. Thank you guys!” But in many cases, the relatives don’t ask for help, and those collections end up on other subreddits as posts from savvy investors: “Look how much stuff I bought for $500!”

It’s unbelievable how much value we can assign to things as individuals. When I show fellow Pokémon nerds my collection, they often lose it. “I can’t believe you’ve got this, and this, and this! That’s such a rare box now!” But if I died tomorrow and my parents walked into their basement, they’d just be staring at a bunch of cardboard, facing that same question: “What are we gonna do with all this stuff?” To them, it hasn’t got any sentimental value, let alone a financial one. But once they listed and sold it, they’d get thousands of dollars in return.

It’s wonderful to pour your heart and soul into an activity. To connect with others over that shared joy, create insider knowledge, and maybe even have a hobby literally pay off. But it’s also easy to get carried away when you care about something.

Every day, people post angry comments on Youtube about their favorite video game receiving a bad rating. They hype up Pokémon cards as the greatest retirement plan, promote a diet no scientist would endorse, or review-bomb a TV show because it’s not true to the source material.

When you’re deep into something, talk to outsiders on occasion. Even the world’s biggest religions only count a third of the global population among their believers. So no matter what you’re a fan of, most of the rest of the world won’t care. You love it, and that’s wonderful. But to someone else it’s just “stuff”—remembering that can help you keep a cool head when you need it the most.

Eric Markowitz interviewed Seth Godin for his column “The Long Game.” His first question got right to the point: “What’s the hardest part of committing to the long game that no one talks about?” Seth’s answer has been sitting with me for a while:

I think the thing that doesn’t get talked about is that no one wants to admit they’re a short-term thinker. We fool ourselves into believing we’re committed to something for the long haul, but we’ve been trained since childhood to be tactical, to chase the short-term win, to have a short attention span. So I think the hard part is acknowledging that we’re often frustrated because we are thinking short-term. Once we open that door and recognize it, we can start leaning into a longer arc.

In order to get myself back together as an author, my idea was to try and publish a short book as my first project for each year. This way, I would release at least one book each year and get more reps in. I’ve made good progress on such a book this year so far, but I’m nowhere near publishing it, and the year will soon be half over. If I keep going at this pace, I’ll never get to the longer, more complicated but also more substantial books I really want to stake my name on. So maybe, I’m missing the point!

The same applies to useful distractions. They might be useful in the sense that they’re still aligned with my overall goal of being an author, but if they keep me from writing the most important book I could possibly write, they’re still distractions!

The most short-term thinking is the most obvious. When I’m dealing with Pokémon cards, looking at my stock portfolio for the 1,000th time without changing anything, or chasing some other financial quick win, I know I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s the slightly less short-term thinking that’s more pernicious. The “this fits in” kind of stuff that’s easy to justify yet still detracts from where we’re actually tying to go.

If you want a real shot at being a world-class author, you have to express the realest version of yourself. Dig out the truest, most compelling story you can, and share it with the world in the best shape you can polish it into. Whether you’re playing tennis, running for office, or making a home, that part always stays the same: Contribute the magic only you can work, and the universe will decide the rest.

Lean into a longer arc. Don’t let the audience distract you. And when you find yourself on a parallel road veering off the true path, ask: How long-term are you actually thinking?

Germans love to complain about their country. In the last few years, our politicians have given us more reasons to complain about than in a long time. I’ve worked remotely my entire professional life. Even when you leave the nitpicks aside, people often ask me: “Why don’t you move elsewhere? You could be living the dream!”

The first answer is a lesson most people will only learn if they experience it firsthand: Traveling is its own job. The more you travel while working full-time, the more tired you’ll get. Visiting a country when all you have to do is explore it is very different from having to show up in meetings and do serious work for eight hours a day. The dream quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.

The second answer is that home is home, and most people’s ties to their city, their country, and their loved ones are much stronger than even the most painful complaint. People stay in countries even when everything around them is bombed to bits. How could a tax raise or change in leadership possibly make them go?

The third and most recent answer I have discovered is that “not everything that glitters is gold,” as we say in German. Take Switzerland, every career-oriented German’s secret wet dream. Higher salaries, lower taxes, beautiful nature all around, what’s not to love? Well, the exorbitant costs of living, for example. The fact that there’s barely any parental leave, paid or unpaid. Raising kids costs two arms and one leg. And the bureaucracy is even more maddening than in Germany. Plus, Swiss people are hard to befriend. You’ll always be “the German” to some extent, perhaps even eyed suspiciously for taking a job a Swiss person could have held.

Similar learnings apply to Dubai, minus the fact they now have a war going on next door. “It’s a tax paradise!” It also comes with zero financial support. No health insurance, no unemployed benefits, no pension scheme. So out of that great net salary, you’ll have to pay many things which, in Germany, are already covered by the time you get your payout. Never mind the fact that as soon as you don’t have a job, they’re quick to kick you out of the country. Your bank account, your lease, your ability to transact, it’s all tied to your work visa unless you’ve lived in Dubai for many years.

Today, I talked to a German living in Barcelona. He’s trying to buy an apartment, but the prices have doubled in the last few years and are close to Munich levels. You also need to pay at least 20% down and fork over an extra 10% of the overall price in taxes. And who can—let alone will—pay 150 grand for a 50 square-meter flat, even if it’s nice? Unfortunately for my new friend, rent contracts aren’t unlimited either, like most are in Germany. After five years at the latest, you’ll have to renew. So he’s trying to move out before his rent doubles, too.

We talked about many of these dynamics and concluded: As soon as you look under the hood, every country has its problems—so you might as well stay in the one where you’ve at least grown roots around them.

“Why don’t you move elsewhere?” Because elsewhere is only different, not better, and there’s nothing quite like complaining about home.

One of Warren Buffett’s big mental models is the “circle of competence.” In order to be a great investor, Buffett didn’t need to know everything about every company. He only needed to know a few select companies better than anyone else. He could pass on thousands of investments as long as he knew he could correctly evaluate the ones he’d eventually put money into.

“Know your circle of competence, and stick within it,” Buffett says. “The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”

Knowing what you know, what you don’t know, and how much you need to know are the only three parts you need to make better decisions. One big challenge is mapping the terrain between the first two without venturing well into no-idea-territory. Many times in life, you need to go past your limits to find them.

Every now and then, however, a line in the sand will present itself clearly. Like the other day for me, when I realized: I love collecting and investing in Pokémon cards—but I could never run a business around shiny cardboard.

For one, I’d never want to actually sell any of my inventory! I’d always be speculating on the price going up. I would be too greedy in the prices I ask for. I love holding on to good assets way more than I enjoy giving someone a good deal, even though that’s also fun. But a good Pokémon business thrives on turnover. You need tons of transactions and to make enough profit with each one. Me, I’m exhausted from printing 10 shipping labels, prepping all the cards, and ensuring they all go to the right buyers. I love organizing, storing, and tracking. Not moving, packaging, and shipping.

Collecting Pokémon cards with a long-term angle is well within my circle of competence. Running a Pokémon card shop isn’t. It was a dream I had mused over a few times, but when that reflection hit me, I was relieved to realize I wasn’t cut out for it. One thing less to worry about. A beautiful, unlived dream.

When you see the edge of your circle of competence, don’t get greedy. Respect it. Appreciate it. Stick to the arena in which you can excel, and use your learning to build on strengths more so than to compensate weaknesses.

Knowing your boundaries before you hit them is a gift. Accept it.