Author: Nik

The rent for our new three-room flat in Munich is four times higher than the mortgage my dad paid for our two-story house with a garden that’s twice as large. The numbers are mind-boggling. I can’t even find an apartment quite as expensive in my hometown, and the only thing that comes close is a brand-new, five-room, multi-story, semi-detached house in a prime location. It’s nuts.

What’s also nuts, however, is that this morning, when I googled treatments for myofascial pain syndrome, a rather niche condition, not only did I get plenty of results, I even found a guy who will come to my house and treat me there. Back home, I’d be lucky to even discover a handful of therapists who know what MPS is. This difference, too, is included in my rent, even if it doesn’t show up on the bill.

Munich offers so many free vents, gatherings, and festivals, it’s hard to keep track of them, let alone attend them all. In the summer, you can go to any beer garden, bring your own food, and enjoy nature and companionship at the same time. You can float down a dedicated stretch in the Isar river and ride the tram back to your starting point for free. They even have an artificial wave spot for surfers. Within a stone’s throw of the Apple store, where you can go whenever you have any phone-related needs or issues, there are dozens of beautiful churches and historic buildings, and wherever you can’t walk within ten or 20 minutes, a bus, tram, subway, or commuter train will carry you. Upgrade to a rental car, which start from less than 100 € per day thanks to the heavy competition, and in less than an hour, you can go to any of a myriad of beautiful lakes and mountains, and hike, swim, or enjoy the scenery — also all for free.

Where I grew up, we’re used to needing a car just to get groceries. There are no on-demand rentals, of course, so you’ll have to lease your own. You’ll spend hundreds of euros on fuel every month — perhaps to go to your physiotherapist, who resides a 45-minute drive away — and even if you live dead in the city center, it’s not a place where much of anything happens. The lack of things you might enjoy, too, is included in the rent, even if it doesn’t show up on the bill.

I’m not arguing for living in big cities or swallowing exorbitant rent prices without blinking. I’m not even arguing for Munich (though I do love it very much). There’s a time to go big and central and a time to go small and rural, and each of them can make sense in different seasons, even for a lifetime. What I would like us to do is consider what’s not on the bill. We think we’re comparing apples to apples when we look at two three-room flats, but drop one into New York City, the other into Eureka Springs in Arkansas, and that comparison becomes apples-to-oranges very quickly.

Just like when the price goes up, things might improve, paying more for the same elsewhere can also come with hidden perks. Some of them you won’t discover until you try it; others you won’t miss until you’re back where you began. The best part of what feels like a bad deal at first might be something you’ll easily miss if you don’t blink twice. In rental contracts as in life, look for what’s not on the bill.

When you watch a rom-com from the 2000s, you know exactly what you’re getting: someone’s life being upended, upbeat rock music, and two people who are going to fall in love. In case of No Reservations, it’s a chef who finds herself in sudden custody of her now-orphaned niece, all while dealing with a new, sassy sous-chef in her kitchen.

What makes these movies fun to watch and re-watch, even 20 years later, is that they rely on an elegant simplicity modern movies often lack. Perhaps that’s why little Zoe carries the movie. “Is she dead?” “Go away!” “I’m afraid I will forget her.” Children don’t “put a paper in front of their mouth,” as we say in Germany, and in movies like No Reservations, the adults usually don’t either.

In a world where entertainment has become synonymous with five-season sagas and crossover movie lineups that span half a decade, it is refreshing to watch people go after exactly what they want for 90 minutes without hedging their bets.

We, too, possess the power of simplicity. Unfortunately, we are trained out of it as we grow up. “You can’t say that.” “That’s not how it works.” “You can’t just ask for a promotion.” The truth is you can challenge all of these assumptions on any day of the week, but if you’re too scared to lean back into “simple is powerful” — a default you, just like Zoe, once held close to your heart — you might forget that you can do so altogether.

It takes more than a cute cooking romance to consistently stand up for yourself, but every now and then, a little bit of “sweet and simple” can be part of just the right recipe along the way.

We talk about “going through the motions” as if it was a bad thing. We associate the idiom with routine, boredom, and stagnation. Actually, there’s a very good reason to go through the motions: It shows you what the motions are supposed to look and feel like.

You can’t judge someone’s tennis swing if you’ve never held a bat, and you won’t know what you’re looking for in a fully equipped flat if you’ve never furnished one yourself. The motions provide us with skill, knowledge, and appreciation, and chances are we’ll have to repeat them more than once in order to find any one, let alone all three, of those things.

Don’t lament repetition. See it for the training it is, and enjoy new sets of problems once you get to level up.

By the time John Wick returns to the screen for eponymous movie number four, his clock is ticking down fast. The action centered around the former hitman trying to escape his past employers all happens within a few short days despite spanning multiple films, and the bounty on his head keeps increasing.

The higher the number on John the walking lottery ticket, the fewer friends he seems to have. In a brief moment of refuge at the Osaka Continental, the “assassin’s hotel chain of choice,” John apologizes to his friend Koji for the hell that’s about to be unleashed on his establishment. Against everyone’s advice, however, including his daughter’s, Koji chose to provide John with shelter, and so all he does is remind his old companion: “Friendship means little when it’s convenient.”

It’s easy to go out when the weather is sunny, and it’s a no-brainer to say yes to a free dinner invitation. But what if it’s raining and your friend asks you to help them move? Can your bond withstand some stress-testing? Or are you a fair weather collaborator? Would you still open your fridge for them if there was a $40 million price tag on your friend’s head? Or whet your knives behind the front door?

Few in our lives will ever deserve loyalty to the end, but the ones who do should be able to call upon it no matter the circumstances. Choose your allies wisely, and remember that when friendship is easiest to abandon is when it counts the most.

Unit bias is our tendency to think that easily measurable amounts of things are automatically the right amounts of those things. Let’s say your favorite burger usually weighs in at 300 grams. If I make a larger burger that’s 450 grams, then cut off one third of it, the portion will be the same — but you won’t feel nearly as satisfied eating two thirds of a burger instead of “a whole one,” regardless of weight, calories, and nutritional value.

Unit bias affects us every day, and not just at dinner. When it comes to doing our work, we primarily use two yard sticks to measure our efforts: time and to-dos. Both are prone to unit bias. We schedule meetings for an hour and jot down “finish pitch deck,” even though the meeting might only require 43 minutes, whereas the pitch deck could take us two full days to put together.

With some awareness, however, we can also use unit bias to our advantage. Where units are often too large, for example meetings where the goal is to make just one decision, we can default to smaller units more frequently. One 15-minute meeting that requires another 15-minute follow-up is still better than one 45-minute meeting spent on the same issue. Where units are too small to complete, we can redefine them for more satisfaction and momentum from checking off more to-dos. If you create ten sub-bullets for each of your presentation’s slides, even if you only check off three of those today, you’ll feel a lot better than staring at your still-empty checkbox for “finish pitch deck” after three hours of work.

An even more useful approach, however, is to ask yourself: “What is my personal preference? Time or to-dos?” Do you lean more into time-based activities or goal-based ones? If I had to guess, I’d say most people tend towards goal-based planning simply because goals feel like units, even though they are not. But I know there are plenty of calendar-nerds out there, and I also believe “hour bias” is something we can learn.

Personally, I also prefer item-based planning. If I can finish a piece of writing in a day, I’d rather spend five hours on it until it’s done. If your video game tells you to collect seven mushrooms for a quest, it’s really hard to stop at five, isn’t it?

But not all quests can be completed in a day, and so especially for long-term projects, focusing on to-do units is exhausting. If you spend day after day putting in serious time, yet no end appears in sight, you’ll get burned out. Some things can only be completed hour by hour, small unit by small unit. Writing for an hour on your novel every day won’t be as satisfying as retreating into a small cabin in the woods for eight weeks, but if the former leads to the book’s publication whereas the latter ensures it remains a dream, the choice is painful but obvious.

Perhaps most importantly, however, know that you can mix and match. You can get in a few tiny time units on some projects, then spend the rest of the day chasing a bigger checkbox on your to-do list that you might not be able to complete. You can start your day with the satisfaction of knocking out some small but complete items, then attend a heavily time-boxed meeting marathon. Shrink certain units, enlarge others. Chunk and merge them like a butcher, turning a big pile of meat into the work of art that is a finely prepared sausage.

Beware unit bias. Consider your personal preference. Use to-dos and time-boxing like the interchangeable tools that they are, and remember: No matter how many slices the universe chops off your burger, it is still you who runs the show — and you function just fine on two thirds of your meal.

After my friend returned from his two-week trip to Japan, I asked him about his experience. “What was the best thing? What was the worst thing?” As often in life, the pros and cons he mentioned went hand in hand: “Tokyo is one of the top three cleanest places I’ve ever been, but there are no trash cans anywhere, and that’s annoying.”

It’s true. While most big cities reduce trash cans at some point — usually after terrorist attacks where bombs and the like are hidden in them — most also eventually bring them back. But not Tokyo. After a 1995 gas attack that hurt at least 1,000 people, the Eastern metropolis binned bins, and they haven’t returned in numbers since.

Surprisingly, the lack of trash disposal opportunities never turned into a big problem. Over a quarter century later, Tokyo is still bin-less, yet also still clean. Why? Culture. In Japan, cleanliness is more than a duty. It’s a value. From school children having to clean up the classroom to store workers partaking in monthly cleaning initiatives to the elderly volunteering to keep the streets tidy, the Japanese learn self-reliance around cleaning early on and then embody it throughout their entire lives — and that’s not something that ends when a few trash cans disappear.

After the change, people simply started disposing of their litter where trash cans were available, like in restaurants, convenience stores, and near vending machines. And if none are to be found? Then they just pocket their trash and recycle it at home. By placing a slightly bigger responsibility on every individual, the country distributes the weighty task of trash management evenly, and the result is a system that works.

Given its origins in culture, it’s easy to see why such a change would never work in America, where scrubbing toilets is synonymous with “lowest rung of the social ladder.” Cleaning is dirty work to be outsourced and handed off wherever possible, not a virtue to pursue. In fact, if something isn’t easy enough to clean, why not convert it into something that creates more trash? The amount of plastic forks, bags, cups, plates, and knives, among a million other things, is staggering. If you removed trash cans in New York City, within two weeks, the city would drown in its own filth. This isn’t to say that the US can’t get a grip on their trash another way, but a cultural shift is not something you can force overnight. It takes generations to sink in.

We have this saying in Germany that “if everyone sweeps in front of their house, the streets will be clean.” The Japanese live this philosophy even better than we do. Often, a little inconvenience now leads to a lot of larger-scale convenience later. You have to put your chocolate wrapper in your jacket, but you also get to enjoy clean streets wherever you go. The next time you feel annoyed at some social convention, ask yourself: “Where am I being rewarded for this? Is this actually silly, or is it a small tax I’ll be glad to pay in the long run?”

The purpose of inconvenience is to make large problems manageable. It doesn’t always hit its mark, but we should look for it before complaining.

I’m not a good cook. I don’t know how to ski. I’m bad at ironing, too, and I’ve never developed the patience to be any good at chess either. But you wouldn’t know any of these things if I hadn’t just told you about them. That’s something we tend to forget.

“Nobody cares what you’re not good at,” Derek Sivers says on Tim Ferriss’ podcast. “Publicly, you’re going to be just known for a few things that you’re good at. All those things that you’re not good at — nobody cares that you’re not good at them! So just let it go.”

With the caveats of our spouse, kids, and a few other people who see more of us more frequently than anyone else, nobody will ever know that we can’t parallel-park to save our life. By and large, your abominable mental math will stay a secret. So will your bad aim, your lack of graphic design skills, and your left-right disorientation — and even if anyone found out, they wouldn’t blink twice unless they’re directly affected.

There will only be a few times in your life when a bad trait threatens something important. During those times, you should absolutely raise all hell to fix what’s too expensive to leave unaddressed. On most days, however, the fear of being found out is unfounded. Most people are bad at most things, but since everyone focuses on everyone’s talents, that won’t stop the world from turning any time soon.

The first time I ordered three differently-sized baking dishes from a cheap retail store, I was shocked to see two of them broken on arrival. Instead of styrofoam or some other soft padding, they had only added some paper in the box, and with too much room to move about, two thirds of the good had not survived the rough trip on the delivery van.

When I reported the issue, the kind support staff immediately jumped into action. Two days later, the replacement dishes came. My girlfriend took the box off the courier’s hands, and within a second, it was clear: They had learned nothing from their mistake. Once again, no soft padding, just paper. Once again, two out of three dishes broken.

At this point, I told the support to not send any further ceramics, and to please revise how they were packaging them to begin with. Will they improve their shipping process going forward? Dubious, but hope dies last.

We often think we have to get it right the first time, but the truth is you can make a million mistakes and still find plenty of success. If all you do is never repeat the same error, you’ll come out ahead of most folks. It’s okay to learn expensive lessons — just don’t pay the same tuition fee twice if you can help it.

The other day, I accidentally cut myself while chopping tomatoes. It hadn’t happened in a long time, and the prime suspect was the different knife I was using. If you’re used to a five-inch blade and then start slicing with a seven-inch one, there’s more room for error.

“Argh. Dammit. That’s what happens when you use tools you’re not used to!” I said. But after I ran my finger under cold water for a bit and put on a band-aid, I resumed cutting and finished the job.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of avoiding a tool after it lets us down. But ultimately, it’s never the tool, is it? It’s us. The tool may be less than perfect, but we’re the ones who failed in using it correctly. A tool is just a tool, and being afraid of a knife won’t make you less likely to cut yourself. If anything, you’ll pressure yourself so much to be careful, you’ll slip up because you’re nervous.

Don’t be afraid of tools. Computers and scissors have no feelings about you — and if you want the two of you to work well together, you’ll do the same for them.

“Uh-oh.” After I had started my meditation timer, I realized sitting cross-legged wasn’t ideal. I had already spent a good amount of time in that position, and my legs and knees felt uncomfortable.

At first, I was tempted to change position. Sometimes, I do sit with my legs extended straight or put my hands on my hips instead of folding them in my lap. But then I realized: That’s also what meditation is about. It’s not just the relaxing kind of letting go that matters. Accepting pain is important too.

“Can you endure 15 minutes of sitting in a not-so-comfortable position? I think you can,” I told myself. And endure is what I did.

The world has become a place where, for every hint of suffering, a band-aid is easily available. But just because you patch it up immediately does not mean that, underneath the thin layer of protection, your wound isn’t still bleeding. You can distract yourself from your loneliness with Instagram, but that won’t make your loneliness go away.

Sitting in silence for 15 minutes, however, will show you that being lonely isn’t so bad. It’s survivable, just like accidentally cutting yourself while cooking, being single in your 30s, or making a big mistake at work.

Don’t run for the hills when you feel a pang of disappointment, back pain, or jealousy. Sit with it. In it. Turn 5 seconds of pain into 15 minutes of endurance, and the next time the world will try to shake you, you’ll remain firmly in your saddle, riding on through the desert as if the sand storm is nothing more than a breeze.