The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.

🏷️ Categories: Continuous improvement, Deliberate practice.

Chuck Close, one of the most renowned painters of his generation.

Besides his work, he is remembered for an unglamorous idea: “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” And he added something even more important: “If you just hang in there, you’ll get somewhere.” He said this from years of experience in his craft, after thousands of days of dedication. While many people imagine success and inspiration as a fleeting flash of brilliance, professionals do something less romantic, but far more effective.

They work every day.

Here is the hard truth: we don’t usually fail to make progress because of a lack of talent. It is often because we have romanticized the process too much. We wait for clarity, plenty of motivation, and a great idea, when in reality much of our growth comes afterward—not before—we get started. First comes the work. Then comes understanding. And afterward, almost without realizing it, the results begin to appear.

And if you think about it, Chuck’s idea about art is, deep down, a useful idea for almost any life and goal in which we want to succeed.

Big changes begin on ordinary days

The extraordinary rarely begins with a great idea.

Almost everything we do at first comes out a little clumsy. In the beginning, you barely master the basics, you make mistakes often, and your movements lack precision. But if you give it time and keep practicing, something magical happens: you start to see patterns, improve your technique, and notice the small details that used to escape you. What initially seemed like simply repeating mechanical actions gradually becomes real understanding and mastery. And so, almost without noticing, your level changes.

And this idea applies to every area of life.

• Playing a new instrument.

• Practicing a sport.

• Learning languages.

• Writing.

• Singing.

• Painting.

Many people see goals as great achievements. But it is more useful to see them as the consequence of improving your daily routine. Don’t obsess over the big accomplishment; think about raising your level a little every day: a small adjustment, a little more precision—that is enough to achieve extraordinary results over time.

That is why measuring your performance is vital: what isn’t measured doesn’t exist.

The process is liberating; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you know what you’re going to do, you could do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you’ll do the same thing you did today, and for a certain period of time you can simply work. If you hang in there, you’ll get somewhere. — Chuck Close, Inside the Painter’s Studio.

You don’t need perfect conditions to start

This idea really struck me.

“I was never one of those people who needed a perfect situation in which to paint. I can make art anywhere, anytime; it doesn’t matter. I mean, I know a lot of artists for whom having the perfect space is essential. They spend years designing, building, and equipping the ideal place, and just when they are about to start working, they sell it and build another one. It seems to me that it’s a way of avoiding having to work. But I can paint anywhere. I’ve made big paintings in the smallest bedrooms, in garages, whatever.” — Chuck Close, Inside the Painter’s Studio.

Notice this valuable lesson.

Waiting for the perfect moment is often an elegant way of postponing the work.

This is the weak point of many people with great potential. Believing they need more time, more space, more energy, less noise, or a more orderly life. But sometimes all of that is secondary, and simply starting is what would make the biggest difference.

Think about it for a moment:

• If you want to write, start by keeping a simple journal for a little while each night.

• If you want to improve your fitness, adjust a few meals and go for a walk.

• If you want to read more, leave the book somewhere visible and reduce the time you spend on social media.

Start imperfectly, perfect it later.

Aim for consistency, not intensity

Even with a good environment and everything in place, the most important thing is still missing.

• Coming back tomorrow.

• And the day after tomorrow.

• And next week.

Chuck Close had a simple and effective work routine, which is why it worked.

“On a normal day, I paint from nine until twelve. Three hours in the morning. I eat at my desk, or if the weather is nice, I go to the pool. Or if it’s really nice, I go to the beach for an hour. Maybe I have lunch at the beach, and then I come back and paint from one to four, another three hours. That’s a typical day. I work every day there without exception.” — Chuck Close, Inside the Painter’s Studio.

There is no mystery in that routine.

What there is, however, is repetition. An organized day. There is nothing impressive about it, but that is precisely why it is real and effective. Applied to everyday life, this has tremendous value.

• If you want to read more, you don’t need to read fifty books this month. You simply need to make reading a normal part of your life and take advantage of every free moment to read.

• If you want to get in better shape, you don’t need a perfect week of training. You simply need a slightly better version of last week and to keep refining the process.

• If you want to write better, you don’t need an immediate masterpiece. You simply need to write enough for practice to refine your ideas and your voice.

This is how real improvement happens.

Raise the bar gradually. Through continuous, almost imperceptible improvement.

Things come out of activity, and through working you will run into possibilities and open doors that you never would have imagined if you had stayed sitting around waiting for a great idea. — Chuck Close, Inside the Painter’s Studio.

That is how many coincidences, opportunities, and life changes come about.

Not before you start.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to learn more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore further:

1. Geniuses Don’t Need Inspiration, They Have a Routine

2. Steal Like an Artist: Nothing Is Original, But You Can Be

3. Inspiration Doesn’t Exist: Lessons in Discipline from Camilo José Cela

✍️ Your turn: What small habit, if you repeated it every day and kept raising the bar, would dramatically change your level within a year?

💭 Quote of the day: “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. Things will emerge from the activity itself, and through working you will encounter other possibilities and open doors you never would have imagined if you had been sitting around looking for a great artistic idea.” — Chuck Close, Inside the Painter’s Studio.

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 400,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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References

1. Fig, J., & Lee, L. (2009). Inside the Painter’s Studio.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity, Continuous Improvement.

Stephen King is one of the most brilliant and prolific writers of recent history.

As a writer, he has amazed the world by publishing stories with an astonishing ease that other novelists would take decades to write. His impact is so great that he has defined entire generations of readers, and his film adaptations have stayed etched in the minds of millions of people. Beyond his massive commercial success, he is someone extremely disciplined when it comes to writing.

How is it possible that he maintains an unstoppable creative pace after so many years?

That’s the question I asked myself, and fortunately, Stephen King gives us the answer in his book On Writing. In it, he leaves the keys to understanding everything about his writing routine and his techniques for staying creative despite the passage of time.

Let’s dig into it.

1. Recognize ideas by crossing variables

The average writer suffers from analysis paralysis while searching for the “perfect idea.”

Stephen King understands that ideas are discovered, more than invented. They’re like treasures. Your only task is to have that creative eye trained to connect two elements the rest of the world considers unrelated, and see what emerges.

“Good story ideas seem to literally come out of nowhere, as if they fly down from the sky: two previously unconnected ideas come together and create something new under the sun. Your job is not to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they appear.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

For this, it’s key to keep feeding your mind quality raw material every day. Stephen King is a compulsive reader, and that leads him to expand the horizon of his ideas and find those new connections there. He’s inexhaustible.

“You can’t expect to captivate another person with the power of your writing until they have captivated you… If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

2. Set a daily limit and a deadline

Discipline is the only real path to success.

Stephen King writes about 2,000 words a day without fail, at an unstoppable pace and steady speed, like clockwork. It’s necessary. By setting a strict three-month deadline for the first draft, for example, you keep your brain from sabotaging the process through continuous perfectionism. This way you avoid Parkinson’s Law and focus on the important elements, which make up 80% of the book. The details come later.

“If I don’t write every day, the narrative force of the story rusts, and I begin to lose control of the plot and the pacing. Worst of all, the excitement of creating something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like an obligation, and for most writers, that’s a death sentence.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

“I believe that the first draft of a book—even a long one—shouldn’t take more than three months. If it goes on longer, the story starts to take on a strange, foreign feel, like a report from the Romanian Ministry of Public Affairs.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

3. Create a noise-free environment

If you try to create while your phone is buzzing with notifications, you’re lost.

Any writer, or anyone who wants to take something seriously, must be very clear that they need to reserve time alone. Stephen King faces his desk toward the corner of the room and shuts out the outside world. You need a creative refuge.

“Start like this: put your desk in a corner and, every time you sit down to write, remember why it isn’t in the middle of the room.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

“Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place you go to dream.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

4. Have a trusted person

We need the friend who tells us hard truths to our face. In writing too.

For Stephen King, that trusted person is his wife Tabitha. That person with enough judgment about writing is your guardian angel. That person you can share your drafts with, who tells you when you’re making a huge mistake before you expose yourself to the internet or real editors.

“She and I can argue about many aspects of a book, and there have been times when I’ve gone against her judgment on subjective matters, but when she catches me making a mistake, I know it, and thank goodness I have someone nearby who warns me that I’ve unzipped my fly before I go out in public like that.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

5. Improvise first, edit later

You shouldn’t start with the whole book resolved in an outline.

Stephen King doesn’t recommend fixing everything in advance, and prefers to operate intuitively, letting the situation evolve organically. This will lead you to see aspects of the work you couldn’t have anticipated from your initial theoretical outline. As you write, the feel of things changes.

“I distrust plots for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even with all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe that planning and the spontaneity of true creation are incompatible.” — Stephen King, On Writing

“...stopping a project just because it’s difficult, whether emotionally or creatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to keep going even if you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work even if you feel like all you’re doing is stirring up trouble sitting at your desk.” — Stephen King, On Writing

You have to get used to giving your best even when you’re unmotivated.

6. Work in paragraphs, not sentences

Isolated sentences lack force, they’re nothing on their own.

The real building block where coherence begins to emerge is the paragraph. That’s the writer’s basic unit of work, just as the brick is for the bricklayer. Don’t get lost micro-optimizing a single line and focus instead on chaining paragraphs together with a solid logical sequence.

“Words create sentences, sentences create paragraphs, and paragraphs come to life and begin to breathe.” — Stephen King, On Writing.

7. Cut

The first draft always suffers from informational bloat.

Your job is to cut at least 10% of the original text. Clean up adverbs, excessive descriptions, piled-up adjectives, and give the reader room to fill the gaps with their own imagination, following Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory.

“It’s not bad, but it’s too long. You need to revise it to make it shorter. Formula: Second draft = First draft - 10%. Good luck! — Stephen King, On Writing.”

8. Maintain coherence

During the initial editing phase, focus on the universal truths of the story, those forces that move your ideas within the narrative. If an action contradicts a character’s psychology or breaks the architecture of the work, fix it. The last thing to review is syntax, swapping a word for another synonym, and similar stylistic minutiae. The fundamental question you should ask yourself is: does the work make sense?

“The most important question is: Is this story coherent? And if it is, what will make that coherence a song? What are the recurring elements? Do they intertwine and form a theme?” — ​​Stephen King, On Writing.

What to do now?

Not all of us are meant to write 2,000 words before breakfast or churn out massive novels every three months. Trying to clone someone else’s exact routine without understanding their motivation and personal circumstances is a mistake, but it can still serve as a guide for anyone who aspires to write more and better.

Stay prolific.

See you soon.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The mathematical formula that predicts your creative success

2. Practice matters more than standing out: Stephen King’s hard lesson

3. Master the art of writing: 60 timeless tips from great writers

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity.

Yesterday I read a text without looking at the signature.

And still I knew who had written it.

I recognized it before finishing the first sentence: those words, rhythm, and metaphors that come back in every piece and instantly give away the author. It was impossible for that text to belong to anyone else. Once again, it became clear what quality every writer should pursue: that the voice be so recognizable it doesn’t need a signature.

That the voice be the signature.

Today, moreover, this has become a necessity.

Anyone can generate a “correct” text in seconds. AI does it better than humans: impeccable grammar and structure, everything immaculate. It’s “correct” text, not personal. AI has no scars, no obsessions, none of that handful of words, phrases, and metaphors a writer returns to again and again.

That’s exactly where your voice lives.

We all have a small arsenal of words, verbs, expressions, and metaphors we repeat, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without noticing. A musician has chords they always return to. A photographer, a favorite framing. A writer creates with their own language. Your voice is your collection of words.

And that collection can be refined and elevated to make you unmistakable.

I’ve spent months deliberately building mine. I call it my lexicon, and this is the method I use to achieve it in four phases.

Let me tell you about it.

Phase 1: Detect your current language

Before building anything new, you need an inventory of what you already have.

A few weeks ago I opened my latest articles, personal notes, and several pages of my journal. I was looking for patterns. I underlined every word that repeated. Then I did the same with verbs, expressions, and metaphors.

In barely half an hour, the pattern was obvious.

That’s the exercise: gather ten or fifteen texts of yours that feel personal and underline everything that repeats. In this phase, just gather your patterns.

Phase 2: Refine what you found

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Not every word you use deserves to stay. Ask yourself, one by one: does this word represent me, or was it just the closest one at hand? Imagine you discover you’ve written “important” or “very” twenty times in your last ten articles. That’s fine, it’s an adequate word, but maybe you notice that “crucial,” “decisive,” “critical,” or “essential” fit the tone you want better.

Compare it yourself:

• Usual version: “This is an important step in the process.”

• Refined version: “This is a critical step in the process.”

The change seems minimal. It isn’t. You’re no longer choosing a synonym to sound more sophisticated: you’re choosing the word that best represents how you think, depending on the case.

Repeat the exercise with your most frequent verbal tics:

• Do you always write “do”? Try “build,” “design,” or “forge.” You can be metaphorical, if that’s how you want to be recognized.

• Do you always talk about “ideas”? Maybe “keys” resonates more with you. Maybe “seeds.”

• Do you always write “problem”? Perhaps you identify more with “obstacle,” “friction,” or “challenge.”

There’s no correct answer. There’s one that sounds more like you.

Phase 3: Expand your language

Your voice is words, and also structures.

Maybe you always open a reflection with “the key lies in...” Or you resort to the formula “it’s not about X, but about Y.” Or you chain three adjectives after a noun before finishing with a short sentence. In my case I discovered I constantly resort to nature metaphors: cultivating ideas, planting habits, putting down roots, pruning projects, blooming little by little. That’s how my head imagines these concepts.

Notice what changes when you apply your own filter to a neutral sentence:

• Neutral sentence: “You have to work little by little on ideas until they bear results.”

• With my filter (nature): “You have to cultivate ideas little by little until they bloom.”

Same information. Completely different voice.

When you become aware of your own molds, you stop using them out of inertia and start using them with intention. That’s where style stops being an accident.

Phase 4: Build your lexicon

This is the phase that turns awareness into a system.

Open a notebook or a note in Notion, Obsidian, or wherever you prefer, and start building your lexicon from A to Z. Under each letter, write down the words, verbs, and expressions you feel already form part of your voice.

My entry under the letter C, for example, looks like this:

• Key

• Crucial

• Cultivate

If you read me often, you’ll already have noticed that all three appear frequently.

For metaphors I do the same: seeds, roots, gardens, growth.

But don’t stick only to what you already use. Start incorporating uncommon words that represent you, even if you don’t use them yet. It’s not about forcing the reader to open a dictionary every other line, but it is worth having on hand a small peculiar repertoire that, when it appears, sounds unmistakably like you.

An example of mine: I don’t say “great advantage,” I say “overwhelming advantage.”

Think about changing “harsh criticism” to “scathing criticism.” Or take words like “conspicuous” for what stands out effortlessly, or “taciturn” for someone who speaks little and carries weight when they do. You don’t need to use them always, they’re like tools in a box, you don’t pull out the hammer for every project, but you know where it is when you need it.

What you get from this

When you repeat this exercise for weeks, your lexicon becomes internalized.

It becomes your personal style manual to the point that you stop consulting it, and what you were looking for from the start happens: someone reads a text of yours without seeing the signature, and still knows exactly who wrote it. That is the only real defense you have against a world full of generic text and AI.

I hope you give yourself the space this week to start your own lexicon.

See you in the next letter.

Stay creative.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. How to absorb the style of your favorite authors

2. Iceberg Theory: Hemingway’s method for creating unforgettable stories

3. How to become so creative it’s scary (50 ways to generate ideas about any topic)

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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🏷️ Categories: Decision-making and biases, Behavior, Social relationships.

In 1954, a woman from Chicago named Marian Keech claimed to receive messages from extraterrestrial beings warning her of something terrible…

The world would end in a flood on December 21 of that year.

A small group of followers, “The Seekers,” abandoned everything. They left their jobs, gave away their possessions, and said goodbye to their families to follow Marian Keech. They bet their entire lives on the prophecy coming true. In the middle of this collective madness, three psychologists infiltrated the group: Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. They knew they couldn’t save them from the madness, so their goal was to observe closely what would happen when the world, obviously, didn’t end.

And December 21 arrived.

And nothing happened.

The planet kept spinning with its usual horrible indifference and, to no one’s surprise except theirs, there was no flood. Anyone would say that was the moment the group dissolved in shame and was forced to admit they had been wrong.

The exact opposite happened.

Hours after the failure, Marian Keech announced a new message: her faith had been so powerful that God had decided to forgive the Earth. The group united even more. They began seeking new members and journalists to announce the miracle. They needed more people to believe, because the more people who confirmed their story, the less painful it would be to face the crushing, painful reality.

Leon Festinger, one of the infiltrated psychologists, called it cognitive dissonance.

Festinger saw that the human mind doesn’t want to know the truth, it only wants to protect its story. If reality attacks that story, the mind defends itself with even more conviction, even if it’s false. It wants to keep its story no matter what.

And this doesn’t happen only to “crazy people,” it happens to all of us, even if you don’t realize it.

In this analysis I’ll show you how this affects people and companies, causing catastrophic errors simply from the blindness of not wanting to change and admit they were wrong. And, above all, you’ll see what science says about how to change the mind of those people who refuse everything.

Let’s go point by point…

I. Consistency

The problem with these people was consistency. They had an avalanche of data against them, but after selling all their possessions and abandoning their families, how could they admit they were wrong?

There was no turning back.

Once you take a direction, the brain wants to maintain consistency. Think of those brilliant people who defend absurd ideas tooth and nail. The human brain constantly generates a model of what it expects to find, and then compares that model with what it sees. We don’t see the world neutrally.

• When there’s a match, everything flows normally.

• When there’s a prediction error that’s too large, activation is generated in the anterior cingulate cortex, the region of the brain that processes conflict and expectations (Ide et al., 2013). It feels similar to being hurt.

That’s why arguments don’t change anyone.

You won’t get someone out of a cult by proving them wrong.

You won’t change a person’s religion or ideology with data.

You won’t convince anyone of anything if that idea is part of their identity.

The more time, energy, and life someone invested in a belief, the harder it is for them to abandon it. The brain will never want to break consistency by force.

II. Progressiveness

Collapses are invisible while they happen, but obvious afterward.

Nobody sees an empire fall in real time. Nobody woke up one day in ancient Rome saying “we’re finished.” These things are only seen in hindsight. The empire decomposed over generations, until one day what the empire had been centuries before and what it was that day had nothing in common.

“Isn’t it curious how day by day it seems like nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” — C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian.

Progressiveness is the crux of the matter.

The same thing happens in your life.

Nobody gains 20 kg overnight, they gain a hundred grams a week for months, and each week, compared to the previous one, seems like nothing, until everything has changed. Nobody drifts away from a close friend all at once: they just start responding a little later, cancel one plan, then another, until one day they realize they never see each other anymore. You slowly become someone different, and since each day is only compared to the previous one, you never feel the accumulated weight of the change.

It applies to the good and to the bad.

It applies to whoever wastes all their money.

to whoever doesn’t quit a bad habit.

to whoever stays up too late.

to whoever slacks off.

to whoever smokes.

Nobody leaves an identity in one leap, because a leap is exactly what triggers dissonance and all this resistance, but you can take a step so small it barely brushes their current identity... that one they can take.

And then another.

And then another.

III. How gradual change happens

Now that we’ve seen why people don’t change and that the key is to go little by little. Apply it like this.

1. Prioritize the relationship before the argument: The same argument is more persuasive if you’re a close person (Hovland, et al., 1953). They’ll be willing to listen to you if you gradually start to strengthen your relationship with the person.

2. Reduce the context: When a group discusses an opinion, the group’s average position shifts toward a more extreme version of what they already thought (Myers & Lamm, 1976). You see it over and over in debates between politicians: they criticize each other while their allies applaud, and each one leaves more convinced than they came in. Choose a moment without pressure, private, close, alone. There, no group will polarize it.

3. Be progressive: Ideas have a spectrum called the Overton Window. If you’re at point 10 and the other person is at point 1, your view will seem extremist to them. Instead, take them to point 2, then to point 3, and so on up to 10. Make the change so smooth that they feel they did the reasoning themselves and you didn’t even convince them.

4. Feed good ideas, don’t fight bad ideas: Every time you criticize their idea, you remind them of it and they’ll defend it. Instead, tell them the idea you want and ignore what you want them to forget. Over time, if your idea abounds in their head while the other goes unrepeated, the balance tips on its own.

You won’t convince with arguments, you need persuasion to get them to lower their guard.

“As we age and brain plasticity decreases, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to change in response to the world... we tend to ignore, forget, or discredit information that doesn’t fit our beliefs.” — Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself

Data doesn’t change opinions. Remember that.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The mania of labeling people: The Robber’s Cave experiment and the lessons on human behavior

2. Why do we label people? “Us” Against “Them”: Social Identity Theory

3. How to discuss any topic without shouting or wanting to kill anyone: The Rapoport Protocol

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. Cuando las profecías fallan.

2. Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Communication and persuasion: Psychological studies of opinion change. Yale University Press.

3. Ide, J. S., Shenoy, P., Yu, A. J., & Li, C. R. (2013). Bayesian Prediction and Evaluation in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. Journal Of Neuroscience, 33(5), 2039-2047. URL

4. Myers, D. G., & Lamm, H. (1976). The group polarization phenomenon. Psychological Bulletin, 83(4), 602-627. URL

🏷️ Categories: Creativity, Behavior, Decision-making and biases.

The interpretation we make of social silence kills brilliant ideas.

Human beings learn by observing what others do, but we also infer what is worth doing based on what nobody does. The lack of evidence makes us feel that something is impossible. If nobody has built that project, written that book, defended that idea, or left that secure job to pursue something uncertain, we assume there must be a reason we don’t yet understand.

And yes, sometimes there is…

and sometimes there isn’t.

The first conclusion contains a very human error, and it’s the same error that keeps thousands of artists and people trapped in the same dynamic as always.

In systems where everyone observes everyone else, like on social media, inaction spreads. In psychology it’s called the Bystander Effect: the phenomenon that explains why nobody helps when everyone expects someone else to intervene first. You’ve seen it in countless places in your life.

• A person falls on a crowded sidewalk and pedestrians walk past. Nobody acts until the rest act. Everyone just stares or ignores it.

• A musician playing in the street who nobody gives money to, but if a few people do, others begin to take the same initiative.

• A column of smoke in the forest that nobody reports to firefighters because they assume someone else already has.

Creativity and ambition are blocked by an identical phenomenon. Everyone waits for someone else to validate an idea first before investing time, reputation, or effort in it. Nobody wants to be the one who takes the risk. Nobody wants to be the first to jump into the void without knowing if there’s a net below. However, it is those capable of distinguishing between what is impossible and what has simply not yet been attempted who make history.

They are two different things.

The inability to tell them apart cruelly holds back people of great potential.

You have to know how to jump into the void…

I. The easier path

We follow paths because the brain prefers what is easy and safe.

It’s an evolutionary adaptation by which the brain is always deciding which ideas deserve your attention and which to discard as too risky or difficult.

The Bystander Effect is the manifestation of a basic principle of human behavior: when we don’t know how to act, we watch others (Bandura, 1977). For millions of years, this strategy boosted survival odds. Copying was cheaper than experimenting. If the rest of the tribe avoided a certain plant, a certain territory, or a certain behavior, imitating that avoidance cost you far less than discovering why they avoided it — especially when the price of discovering it on your own could be death…

• Solomon Asch demonstrated this in his conformity experiments: people who knew the correct answer to a simple question ended up giving the incorrect answer rather than contradict the group.

• Cialdini would later call this “social proof”: we use the behavior of others as a cognitive shortcut to decide what is correct or true, saving ourselves the costly process of thinking for ourselves.

Our brain still operates under that logic, but today, the greatest value is rarely found by traveling existing paths. It’s found on the ones yet to be discovered. And yet, you keep consulting the collective map before taking any important step, asking yourself what people would do in your situation, when reasonable people, by definition, have never done what you wish to do.

If they were “reasonable,” they would follow the group.

Think of your brain as a GPS constantly trying to recalculate to bring you back to the main road. Every time you go off course it alerts you, and that inner voice you have suggests you return to safety, to familiar ground. The harsh reality is that humanity’s great advances, those artists we call geniuses, began as people who left the GPS’s route.

And they didn’t go back to the marked route no matter how much the GPS warned them…

II. Today it seems obvious, yesterday it seemed absurd…

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — Arthur C. Clarke, 1962. Clarke’s Third Law

Here are two of my favorite “insanities” that are reality today.

• Before the airplane, the idea that a human being could fly was considered, at best, a fantasy, and at worst, a dangerous madness, until the Wright brothers came along and showed the world it was possible.

• Before the internet, the idea that millions of people could communicate instantly without intermediaries and without physical borders sounded like delirious science fiction. Look at it today.

Once demonstrated, all these ideas stop seeming revolutionary.

Everyone will say: “Ah of course, this is how it is and it works for this reason, blah, blah, blah.” Our brain reconstructs the past as if it had been obvious from the start, as if anyone could have seen it coming. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is called hindsight bias, and it’s the trap that always makes you underestimate the courage that each great advance or original idea required.

We confuse familiarity with truth.

• The philosopher Thomas Kuhn documented this pattern in scientific revolutions. Science advances through violent paradigm shifts, where the previous framework collapses because it can no longer explain observed reality, and a new generation of thinkers (ridiculed or ignored) builds a new framework from scratch that explains everything previous and everything new.

• Nassim Taleb would later add that these events, which he calls “black swans,” are statistically impossible to predict from within the previous paradigm, because the previous paradigm was designed without accounting for their existence.

The ideas that change the world first need to change the worldview.

Read that last sentence. That’s the key. It’s about being willing to build, write, launch, or defend something while it sounds absurd to everyone else, because by the time it stops sounding absurd, the window of opportunity will already have closed and will be occupied by whoever dared before you.

When it stops sounding absurd and they want to copy you… you’ve already gone from crazy to genius.

You need to be like a star, giving all your energy to shine while everything around you is dark… and keep shining regardless of whether anyone is watching or ignoring you.

Hold onto that.

III. The first madman changes the rules of the game

An idea, however brilliant, moves no one while it remains only an idea.

What moves people is seeing another human being who already tried it and succeeded. Precedent eliminates perceived risk without eliminating real risk, and that, however absurd it sounds, is enough to unleash a cascade of imitators.

The first to act bears a mental cost that no one else will have to pay.

Uncertainty.

They carry all the uncertainty, all the potential ridicule, all the weight of being completely alone in their conviction, with no data confirming they aren’t making a monumental mistake. Those who come after only need to verify that someone already survived the attempt. That’s enough for them. From that moment on, it rewrites what the rest of the tribe considers possible.

Malcolm Gladwell described how these social cascades work (Gladwell, 2009).

A small number of initial actions, taken by the wrong people (from the perspective of the established system), can unleash massive change because the majority only needed to see that it was safe to move. And this, however unsettling it may seem, applies to creating.

But also to how we live.

Without realizing it, many end up following the path that others told them to, directly or indirectly. We choose careers because they’re “safe,” understanding safety as whatever millions of people have already traveled without dying in the attempt. We choose relationships, cities, routines, and even political opinions following the same mechanism that stops you from helping someone lying on the street or calling firefighters if you see a column of smoke in the distance.

“Someone else will do it.”

Imagine opening a trail in freshly fallen snow.

The first person sinks to their knees with every step, not knowing if there’s firm ice underneath or a void that will swallow them whole. They move slowly, hesitating, carrying the full weight of the unknown, freezing, soaked, and shivering.

The rest simply follow their footprints. How comfortable.

Their comfort exists only because someone else paid the price of opening the path.

It applies to everything in life.

IV. Don’t follow paths, open them

History proves it.

Memorable people built their own path, which is precisely why they exist: there are, in essence, two ways of living. One is to travel illuminated trails, precisely mapped by previous generations, with clear signs at every crossing telling you exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to avoid any unpleasant surprise. The other consists of exploring places where no maps yet exist, where every step involves a degree of uncertainty that most people find directly intolerable, all full of thorny bushes and disgusting mud that stains everything.

The first option offers safety, but it’s a life indistinguishable from thousands of other lives following, in essence, the same course.

The second option demands uncertainty and enduring the stares of those who don’t understand why you’re “wasting” your time there, as so many people tell me when they discover I want to be a writer. The good thing is that this impassable path ends up building a genuine identity, forged through real choice and a body of work that only that specific person could have created, with that unrepeatable combination of experiences, obsessions, and mistakes.

Most people will spend their entire life wondering which is the best path…

They consult their parents, mentors, ChatGPT, any external source that might save them the work of deciding for themselves. In the endless search for certainty, they end up traveling no path at all. They spend their life in the hallway without opening a single door. Or you can choose the opposite and leap into the void.

• Start that crazy project.

• Start that radical life change.

• Start writing that pointless book.

• Start doing all that which seems absurd… until it becomes reality.

No explorer in search of new lands brings the map already solved from home.

You have to go out and explore, get lost, and find yourself in the process…

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The Paradox of Creativity: You love creativity, but you hate creative ideas

2. How to create an irreplaceable artistic vision: A practical guide for artists

3. First they’ll make fun of you, then they’ll want to be like you

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4, Pt.1), 377–383. URL

2. Flynn, F. J., & Lake, A. M. B. (2008). If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 128–143. URL

3. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory.

4. Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70. URL

5. Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The psychology of persuasion.

6. Clarke, A. C. (1962). Profiles of the future: An inquiry into the limits of the possible.

7. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions.

8. Taleb, N. N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable.

9. Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Attention.

The way of telling stories has changed.

Humans have mastered narrative since we were small and we retain this capacity to connect through stories throughout our entire lives (Denning, 2011). Traditionally, analog writing has followed a linear and unhurried structure because it worked very well for a reader who held a printed book and had relaxation time available, but in the digital environment, the rules of attention have changed completely. We no longer compete against boredom, we compete against the instant gratification of the next notification and stimulus on screen (Ward et al., 2017).

All of classical literary theory no longer helps us.

The screen demands a different rhythm.

To boost your reach and guarantee success as a writer on the internet, you need to take the psychology of the structure that always worked in books and adapt it to the digital world, where the reader decides in two seconds whether to stay or leave.

Without a style adapted to the new reading media, you become illegible.

The 6-sentence formula

In the digital world you can’t afford a slow introduction.

There exists a celebrated structure called the “Pixar Pitch,” popularized by Daniel Pink (2012). In his analysis of modern persuasion he uses a structure of six sequential sentences that condenses a complete story to guarantee its success. This is Pixar’s essential pattern for telling stories that hook.

But for the model to work in internet writing, it has to be sped up.

The 6-sentence formula:

1. Once upon a time... (Establishes the initial situation or status quo).

2. Every day... (Describes the normal, ongoing routine).

3. One day... (Introduces the triggering incident that interrupts the routine).

4. Because of that... (Details the first direct consequence of the interruption).

5. Because of that... (Details a later consequence or domino effect).

6. Until finally... (Resolves the tension and reveals the final outcome).

How does this apply to internet texts?

The title must merge the starting point (”Once upon a time...”) with the expected outcome (”Until finally...”). It defines the topic of the text, who it’s aimed at, what problem it solves, and what exact benefit the ideal reader will obtain. It works so well on the internet because the brain performs a rapid scan and demands immediate relevance to release dopamine and maintain focus (Wolf, 2018).

It’s pure psychology.

“On screen we read fleetingly. We are predisposed to pay attention to new information; from an evolutionary perspective, what is new, bright, and eye-catching could contain vital information for survival. It takes priority. Reading on screens creates a cycle of expectation and gratification.” — Doug Lemov, Forgetting How to Read (URL)

A good title stops the target reader in the middle of their scroll to read your text.

Then, the body of text will develop points 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the “Pixar Pitch.”

Rhythm is crucial

For the idea to sink into the mind, the introduction must be brief and rhythmic.

This is where point 2 of the Pixar Pitch (”Every day...”) is established: you must show the reader’s everyday situation (which can be changed or improved) or the routine of the reference figure (person or case to learn from). Here we learn what was behind this “Once upon a time...” where the initial situation was established.

And for this introduction to hook, we’ll use psychology.

According to Ziming Liu, a world expert in digital reading behavior, the structure that dominates is based on the constant alternation of rhythms to avoid cognitive fatigue and abandonment on screens. This style is very effective for searching for information, quick skimming, and rapid access via links (Liu, 2005).

This is due to the “F Effect.”

Nobody reads full articles on the internet. We read the beginning, jump to the middle, and abandon before the end. This behavior reduces comprehension and accustoms the brain to a fragmented consumption of knowledge.

The solution?

Write for the “F Effect.”

Through a dynamic pattern, a single short and impactful sentence is launched to capture focus, that idea is developed in a brief block or through lists, and it closes with a forceful conclusion. By eliminating all the unnecessary fat from the text and structuring the ideas clearly, the message is easy for the reader to scan and allows them to consume deep concepts quickly.

In the world of scrolling, this is the way to be deep in ideas without sounding boring.

If your text looks like a block of cement, the digital reader will flee.

“One day...”: The moment of change

In traditional narratives an opponent is needed to generate tension.

In digital writing, step 3 (”One day...”) occurs upon introducing the obstacle that prevents the reader from reaching their desired goal. There are infinite examples.

• Sector: Learning

  • The enemy: The myth that you need “willpower” to concentrate when the real problem is the design of your environment.

  • How to present it: “One day you understand that you don’t suffer from attention deficit, but that your workspace is designed to distract you.”

  • The solution: A 3-step system to hack your physical environment and activate deep focus in under 5 minutes.

• Sector: Personal finance

  • The enemy: The false belief that you need to earn a lot of money or be a math expert to start investing.

  • How to present it: “One day you notice that saving in a traditional bank account is making you lose money every year due to inflation.”

  • The solution: A minimal guide to automating your investment in index funds with just 50 euros a month.

• Sector: Productivity

  • The enemy: The toxic culture of “always being busy” and confusing filling the agenda with being productive.

  • How to present it: “One day you look at your list of 20 pending tasks and grasp that ending the day exhausted doesn’t mean you’ve made progress on what matters.”

  • The solution: The rule of the one thing: how to prioritize your day around a single high-impact block of work.

The stories that work best on social media are those that challenge established beliefs, interrupting the reader’s routine (point 2 of the Pixar Pitch) with an uncomfortable truth. Your role is to embody that real transformation by showing the exact moment you decided not to keep doing the same as always. Another option is to tell how to achieve it from your position as an expert who has dedicated hundreds of hours of study to the topic.

The audience despises those who don’t practice what they preach and those who “sell smoke.”

Avoid it.

“Because of that...”: Consequences

Steps 4 and 5 of the Pixar Pitch represent the domino effect.

The direct consequences of having challenged the status quo and the process of seeking a solution. On the internet, this phase is measured by perceived usefulness and the number of applicable ideas the reader can copy and paste into their own life (Berger & Milkman, 2012). Each paragraph of the text must break down the mistakes you made, the lessons you learned, advice you would give... It’s a frontal battle against the obstacle you posed, where you dismantle the reader’s objections and offer them practical tools, transforming abstract theory into concrete steps.

All this progress leads toward the story’s final resolution.

“Until finally...”: The outcome

Everything guides the reader toward the final destination promised in the title: step 6.

The ending of the text gives a direct reward or a call to action that encourages the reader to act. By closing the text this way, you demonstrate that your text served to resolve a real need. Creators who master social media write using the psychology of these 6 phases, but there’s one last key idea.

The structure is flexible and you can adapt it to the length of the platform.

It’s not always necessary to narrate the 6 steps linearly; in fleeting formats, the key is to compress the structure to its essence. Here’s an example of how I used it to write a Substack Note.

The best reading advice I ever received: Read less.

The obsession with speed has turned reading into another form of anxious consumption. The books that truly change your life are inhabited, not devoured.

Please, read slowly, underline, and internalize those words.

Those who are always searching for “the next book that will change their life” will never let even one do. Read less, read slowly.

• Due to the brevity of the format, I directly began the introduction with point 3 of the Pixar Pitch: “One day...”: One day I changed how I read.

• From there, I developed it visually in the form of the “F Effect” with a clear block of text that exposes consequences and conflict (points 4 and 5): “The obsession with speed has turned reading into another form of anxious consumption...”

• I continue with a direct request to the reader to experience the change for themselves: “Please, read slowly...”, to reach “Until finally...” the outcome (point 6) in the last lines, emphasizing the benefit and why that change is desirable: “Whoever always looks for the next book... will never let even one of them do it. Read less, read slowly.”

The 6-sentence structure holds the psychological keys.

Whether you write a long essay on your blog or a four-line text on social media, success lies in knowing how to expand or trim these phases. The goal is always the same: stop the user’s scroll, guide them through your text through a conflict they have, and offer them a valuable transformation for them.

That’s all.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Pixar’s 12 rules for creating stories that hook

2. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

3. I wrote 300 articles in 500 days: 7 keys to instantly improve your writing

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 350,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Denning, S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative.

2. Pink, D. H. (2012). To sell is human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.

3. Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. Journal Of The Association For Consumer Research, 2(2), 140-154. URL

4. Wolf, M. (2018). Reader, come home: The reading brain in a digital world.

The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.

🏷️ Categories: Mental models, Decision making and biases, Continuous improvement.

If you only work hard, you risk achieving nothing.

It sounds impossible in a culture that applauds effort as the supreme virtue.

Let me prove it to you with the most brutal story I know: a medical team that worked to the point of exhaustion in a war hospital, and still watched thousands of men die without ever knowing why. All that effort was worth nothing.

It failed on one crucial point.

This is the reason the soldiers were dying. And it’s the same reason so many goals fail today.

The worst winter of all

In 1854, the nurse Florence Nightingale arrived at the military hospital of Scutari to care for the wounded of the Crimean War. She worked with absolute dedication alongside her team. Endless shifts. Whole nights walking through wards with a lamp (so much so that she was called “the lady with the lamp”).

Despite everything, that winter was devastating at the front.

4,077 soldiers died in Scutari alone.

Human effort to save lives was at its peak. And yet more people were dying than before she arrived.

How could both facts be true at the same time?

That was the question no one at the front managed to answer. The days passed and the bodies piled up in the corridors. Falling wounded was, almost always, your end. What was happening inside that hospital? Why weren’t care and dedication enough? What was truly killing those men, if it wasn’t battle wounds?

The answer lay in having focused on the wrong variable.

In Scutari, the real cause of death was invisible because of the very system of work. No one cross-referenced cause of death, month, and ward condition. The sanitary commission was unable to find the answer.

Florence Nightingale was the one who found it.

She proposed a method to record, cross-reference, and read the data that had been piling up for months without anyone knowing how to interpret it. That was the only real change. A few months were enough to reverse the mortality that a whole year of physical effort had not managed to fix.

What did she find?

The problem wasn’t the wounds, the hunger, or the exhaustion. It was infections caused by broken sewers under the building, something that needed to be repaired.

Mortality dropped sharply instantly (Nightingale, 1992).

The system cannot evaluate itself

Here is the principle that explains Scutari, and a good part of your life: no system (a war, a company, a body, an entire life) can correct itself without a feedback loop that shows it, precisely and in time, what is failing and why.

It sounds technical. It’s simple.

Think of a company that demands 80-hour weeks from its team, optimizing processes that no one has verified are the actual bottleneck. Think of someone who “tries hard” every day in a relationship that is breaking apart, without knowing what is truly breaking it.

However hard they try, they waste their time.

You need to understand two concepts:

• Open loop: you act and the result isn’t seen. No one confirms whether it worked, so you repeat the same gesture over and over, with the same blind faith as always.

• Closed loop: the result of your action comes back to you turned into new information, and that information corrects the next move.

The difference between the two is what makes some advance at a tremendous pace while others remain stuck even though they work ten times harder.

Being busy gets confused with making progress. They have nothing to do with each other.

You need feedback to stop making blind efforts. You need a system where the error can be seen from outside yourself (a piece of data, a graph, another person), something that closes the loop and informs you.

Make the invisible visible

What Florence did to change the situation was not to work harder.

She sat down to think.

She found a way to represent data that already existed but that no one knew how to read. The result is known today as the rose diagram, or coxcomb chart: a circular graph where the visual area of each death was obvious (Selanders, 2026).

Twelve months of the year represented in a single image that convinced an entire government that most of those deaths were preventable, and that the war (and the lives) were being lost because they weren’t working on the right variable.

Here is something almost no one explains well: the human brain does not process columns of numbers the way it processes a shape. An area of color, enormous, taking up half a page, communicates in a second what forty rows of a table would take half an hour to convey (if anyone even gets to reading them). It’s pure psychology: your brain evolved recognizing shapes, sizes, and contrasts long before learning to read a table (Brasseur, 2005).

Feedback only changes you when the next action is clear.

This is the reason 99% of people remain stuck, despite having all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge four seconds away. It is not a problem of access. It is a problem of friction. Everyone hates friction. Having the information and knowing what to do with it is not a direct path. For the great majority, that friction weighs heavy: thinking, hours of effort, hours of solitude putting ideas into practice with no one to help you along the way.

— “Ugh, how tiring, better not.”

That’s why most people don’t change despite having the potential to achieve it.

Now imagine the opposite: shrinking that distance to the minimum.

• If the data says A, you do B.

• If the data says B, you do C.

The path becomes obvious with clear instructions.

Florence’s diagram versus a 40-page report that no one reads. The calorie counter on a smart watch versus the vague “I know I eat badly” that you repeat when you weigh yourself. The weekly bank statement versus the balance you’ve spent months avoiding opening, with that mix of anxiety and avoidance.

Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, put forward this law in 1943:

“Every self-regulating system needs a feedback loop that translates the result of an action into a signal readable for the next decision cycle.” (Norbert Wiener, 1943)

What does this mean?

He explained it with a rocket. A rocket that does not receive continuous information about its deviation from its trajectory never reaches its destination, no matter how much fuel it carries. The same happens to you with your goals. It doesn’t matter the effort, the hours, the money, the willpower. It will all be wasted if you don’t have a signal that tells you, in time, how much you’ve deviated.

You need to study your own performance every day.

A day without feedback is a day in vain.

Design your own rose diagram

Most people live exactly like Scutari in its first winter.

Trying hard, but without any system that shows the real cause of why things aren’t changing. Without a graph of their energy, their money, their writing, their body, their relationships. Only with the vague feeling that “something isn’t right,” a feeling too hazy to act on with precision.

Applying the idea is simple. What’s striking is that almost no one does it.

Here are examples you can set up in minutes:

• A time log: forget what you say you do each day. Write down what you actually do, in time blocks, every 24 hours. There you’ll see whether you focus on what you say you focus on. I did it. It will strike you to see the reality.

• A kakeibo: a minimalist Japanese method for saving. With paper, a notebook, and a calculator, in 5 minutes you have the month’s finances done.

• A habit metric: what you eat each day, how you train, how much you write.

Think about which aspects of your life truly matter to you. Make a list of the variables you can measure in each one. Keep one to three variables (the most crucial ones) and measure them for a couple of months. That’s what I did during my first 3 months of writing and I multiplied my performance by 4. The secret? Measuring.

Your results will take off.

See before acting. Measure before improving.

That is the sequence. Almost no one follows it. You need your own graph. Choose a single area of your life (the one that matters most to you) and create, today, the simplest possible signal that makes it obvious what to improve. Everything else comes after. The work becomes too easy when 100% of your energy goes to the center of the target.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Talent is overrated: An in-depth analysis of what separates the top 1% on the planet from the rest

2. The 2 types of growth: Which one are you in?

3. The infinite soup experiment: What isn’t measured, doesn’t improve

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Brasseur, L. (2005). Florence Nightingale’s Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams. Technical Communication Quarterly, 14(2), 161-182. URL

2. Selanders, L. (2026). Florence Nightingale. Encyclopedia Britannica. URL

3. Nightingale, F. (1992). Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not.

🏷️ Categories: Life lessons, Behavior.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, there was a historic arrest.

A woman left her job as a seamstress at a large department store and boarded a bus to go home. That afternoon didn’t seem different from so many others; it would be one more trip at the end of the day. She sat down on the bus and, for several stops, everything went on as normal, but the vehicle kept filling up. When there were no free seats left, the driver ordered this woman and three other passengers to give up their seats.

Three obeyed.

This woman did not.

The four passengers were Black and, under the racial segregation laws in effect in the southern United States, Black people had to give up their seats to white people. The driver asked her if she was going to get up. She replied: “No.” He then threatened to call the police to have her arrested. And she, without raising her voice, held her decision and remained seated there.

Her arrest triggered an enormous reaction in the Black community and set off the so-called Montgomery Bus Boycott, a mass protest against racial segregation. It was also one of the first episodes that brought a young Baptist pastor named Martin Luther King onto the national stage.

Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to stand up, changed everything with one gesture.

A gesture small in appearance, but one that shows how convictions are not defended with statements alone. Your convictions are defended in the moment when living according to them carries a real cost. That’s where your real values show.

Conduct is the truest proof of our values.

You are what you do, not what you say you do

Saying the right thing has value; words carry weight.

But actions carry greater weight.

There is a point where words stop being enough. Sooner or later, we all end up in a situation where acting defines who we are. It happens in what we tolerate, what we accept.

This idea can be applied to almost any area of life.

As a teacher, the goal is not to say that you care about your students. It’s to prove it with the patience and dedication with which you explain and teach them.

As a father or mother, it’s not enough to state how much you love your children. You have to prove that love in the time and attention you give them every day.

As a writer, it doesn’t matter what you say about how much you write; what matters is proving it with the dedication you give to your craft.

As a leader, the goal is not to talk about your vision. It’s to prove it in the decisions you make, to prove that you are someone trustworthy even under pressure.

Our conduct is the most reliable indicator of who we are and what we value.

Words matter, but the final proof is in what you do, even more so when the situation gets rough. Living in accordance with what you say is not so easy; consistency is, therefore, a virtue few possess.

You are what you do, not what you say you do.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. You become what you repeat

2. Henry David Thoreau and the idea of success we forget

3. The marginal cost trap: Why we do what we swore not to do

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Theoharis, J. (2013). The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.

🏷️ Categories: Zettelkasten, Creativity.

Saving an idea is not having it.

Consulting it is not understanding it.

At most, it’s an administrative process that feels intellectual. That’s why your “for later” folder is a cemetery and your notes app holds 4,000 entries you never open. Screenshots you never look at again? Threads saved in a folder you don’t even remember exists anymore? A “read later” list that you know, deep down, is infinite? A saturated phone gallery?

It’s a design problem. It’s built for storing, not for combining and creating.

There’s a man who solved this 350 years ago without even being aware of it.

His name was John Locke (you may know him from his role in philosophy). In his first year at Oxford University he had the problem of every curious mind: too much information and no way to connect it. He ran an experiment. Without knowing it, it would become the basis of every note-taking system that has proven to work.

That idea is so simple it’s infuriating that almost no one applies it.

Let’s look at it in depth.

The collector’s fallacy

When everyone has access to an advantage, it’s no longer an advantage.

Having access to information no longer has value.

Nowadays everyone has all of knowledge one click away. That doesn’t give you value and doesn’t produce understanding. Understanding appears afterward, in the connection with another idea you saved three years ago without knowing that one day they would need each other. It also happens in the friction, in the effort of breaking down the idea and thus escaping the illusion of fluency.

Think of the compulsive reader.

They save thirty notes a week. They say it’s “pure gold,” and there it stays, buried, gathering dust. You need to separate the act of capturing information from the act of processing it. For this, Locke created a system that he published in his small treatise “A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books.”

“I communicated this method voluntarily, as I have done with many others to whom I thought it would not be unwelcome.” — John Locke, letter to Monsieur Toinard (1685)

He wasn’t trying to understand anything at the moment of writing. He was only making sure that idea could find its way back to him, guided by the index, not by luck.

Notice the twist. Not the other way around.

You weren’t going to go looking for the idea. The idea was going to appear again, on its own, when your index led you to it without you having to remember why you’d saved it in the first place. This is the opposite of how almost any modern system works. Today we save with the logic reversed: we classify first, understand later (if the later ever comes). We open the app, create a new folder called “Productivity” or “Philosophy” or “Business Ideas,” and put the fragment in there assuming that we already know, at that exact instant, which domain that idea belongs to and where it’s going to live forever.

That attitude changes, at the root, how you think.

Locke’s method

How does this work in practice?

Locke divides the first two pages of his notebook (the ones that face each other when you open it) into twenty-five equal parts, with parallel lines drawn in pencil. Then he cuts them vertically with more lines, from top to bottom. He marks every fifth line of those twenty-five in ink. At the start of each of those five spaces he places one of the twenty letters of the alphabet that he reserves for this use, and a little further along, within the same space, a vowel.

The result is a grid of 100 coordinates (20 letters by 5 vowels).

“When I find something worth noting down, I immediately look for a suitable heading.” — John Locke

Each time he finds something to note down, he calculates the coordinate (letter + vowel) of its heading and goes to that box in the index. From there, there are only two possible paths. Take the word “Epistle.” First letter, E. First vowel that follows, I. Coordinate: E I.

The first path: the box already has a page number written in it

That coordinate has already been used before (perhaps weeks or years earlier, with a completely different word). The number tells him which page to go to. He writes the new entry right after whatever was already there, with the heading clearly visible in the margin. If “Epistola” already generated the entry E I → page 34, and months later he notes down “Enigma” (which also starts with E and whose first vowel is I), he goes straight to page 34, even though the two words have no relation to each other. They share a page by pure mechanical coincidence.

The second path: the box is empty

That coordinate has never been used. He takes the next blank page (the next one available, with no other criterion), writes his entry there, and notes the number in the index box. From that moment on the coordinate is registered: next time the first path applies.

Notice the most intriguing detail of the whole system.

For a monosyllabic word starting with a vowel, like “Ask,” the coordinate collapsed into a single box: A a (its own initial vowel doing double duty as letter and vowel). Isaac Newton, on the other hand, fell into the trap that Locke had avoided. In a notebook he titled “Certain Philosophical Questions” (Cambridge, 1664), he distributed 37 headings in advance and calculated how many pages each one would need. He guessed wrong on almost all of them: some ran out within a few weeks, others stayed empty forever.

Locke’s method is unusual because it pursues something that is underexploited today in any note-taking system: unforeseen combinatorics.

The place where an idea lived had nothing to do with its meaning. That separation, which at first glance seems like a whim, is the very same mechanism, copied exactly, that three centuries later a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann would rediscover when developing the Zettelkasten.

Meaning lives in the network of connections that you weave afterward.

Locke jotted down loose entries (”Epistle,” for example) without knowing which others they would end up sharing a page with. When rereading neighboring entries, like “Epistle” and “Helium,” he was forced to look for the connection between two ideas that, on the surface, had nothing to do with each other.

It was, in the most literal sense, an idea-generating machine, using the reading of a book as an infinite quarry of creative material.

How to apply it today

How does this translate to your life?

First. Stop creating folders by topic. Assign, instead, a neutral coordinate: a date, a sequential number, an identifier that says nothing about the content. That replaces Locke’s letter and vowel.

Second. Keep a single index (a list, a table, a master note) that connects keywords to those coordinates. The index doesn’t explain the idea, it only points toward it. There lies the crucial difference between indexing and classifying.

Third. When an idea “runs out of page,” link it to a new page, the way Locke did by hand with a number at the foot of the page indicating the next page where that coordinate continues.

Fourth (the step everyone skips). Go back to the index from time to time without looking for anything in particular. Just to notice which coordinates, saved years apart, start to rhyme with each other.

A personal note: if you’re like me and prefer not to write on top of a book, apply the same method in a separate notebook. Assign that notebook to a book you’re reading and use its blank pages (starting from the first) the way Locke used his own. You can even share several books within the same notebook.

Mixing is the only form of originality

Almost no truly new idea is born from pure inspiration. Everything is born from fragments that used to live in separate worlds and that, thanks to a system like Locke’s, end up sharing the same sentence years later.

You’re not short of ideas. You’re short of the system that combines them.

Austin Kleon summed it up in his work steal like an artist. That’s how the history of ideas works. Everyone remixes what already existed, with the only difference being that some do it with a system that allows that mixing to happen, and others leave it to the luck of memory (which, as you know, is the worst possible database). Mark Twain went further: for him, all writing was, to some extent, plagiarizing.

If the system you use today to save your ideas forces you to know what they’re about before saving them, you don’t have a thinking system. You have a filing cabinet. That’s fine. But a filing cabinet doesn’t generate new ideas. It only stores them.

Try Locke’s system.

You’ll have endless ideas, I promise you.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Introduction to the Zettelkasten method

2. 6 habits to take notes like an expert

3. How to use a notebook to reclaim your mind and escape passive scrolling

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Lock, J. (1685). A new method of making common-place-books. URL

🏷️ Categories: Decision making and biases, Continuous improvement.

In December 1922, a woman was at a train station in Paris.

Her name was Hadley. She was in a hurry and felt somewhat unwell. She was alone in a foreign country, somewhat overwhelmed. She was carrying a bulky suitcase in which she carried numerous writings of her husband: original manuscripts, copies, notes for an unfinished novel… In an instant, Hadley felt thirsty and got off the train to buy water. When she came back, the suitcase was gone.

Her husband’s name was Ernest Hemingway, and that day he lost years of work.

At bottom, the error did not occur at the station, it occurred much earlier.

The error occurred much earlier.

It occurred the day Ernest did not separate the copies from the originals, it occurred because of the fragility of having as the sole backup of years of work a suitcase traveling across half the world under uncertain conditions. The “moment of failure” was long before the instant the suitcase went missing on the platform, but we don’t usually see that. 99% of people don’t operate under that logic, they only see the tip of the iceberg.

What failed was the system.

That’s the key idea: to think like a strategic genius you don’t need to be able to make sharp decisions under maximum pressure… it’s enough not to have to make them.

The tip of the iceberg

We always blame the instant because it’s what’s visible.

“She got distracted.” “She wasn’t paying attention.” “She had a bad day.” All of that happened to Hadley, yes, but a bad day is the coincidence of several small vulnerabilities, sometimes uncontrollable. Tiredness, hurry, an unfamiliar environment... it all adds up.

None of those three things causes a disaster on its own. Together, they do.

This has a name in systems engineering: the Swiss cheese effect. No serious accident is caused by a single failure, that doesn’t exist. What is caused is a chain of small failures (each insufficient on its own) that one day line up like the holes of several stacked slices of cheese, letting the entire disaster pass through from one side to the other with no way to stop it.

Your life works the same way. It happened to me with the car.

The night before I went to bed late. I woke up with just enough time, left in a hurry (though carefully) and arrived at a stretch of curves I know by heart and that just going slowly is enough for. Except that morning. That morning the ground was damp from the night dew, there was loose gravel on the asphalt and I had ten minutes of accumulated delay in my head.

I braked. The car didn’t.

It slid a few meters and ended with a light impact against the vehicle coming uphill on that two-way road. Nothing serious: a scratch, a small dent, we hit each other in slow motion, but four factors that never coincide, coincided: humidity, gravel, hurry, the sharpest curve of the whole route.

The question is: what part of your life depends on that bad Tuesday going well?

Protocol

Every time you have to think about what to do in the moment, you spend a scarce resource, which is your concentration. But even more so if it’s with the clock running and your brain already occupied with ten other things. You need a well-designed protocol that shifts that expenditure to a different moment: one in which you are calmer, with more time and no one waiting for your answer, thus securing the process.

I’ll tell you about this with something of my own, because it’s where I’ve verified it best.

I have a written protocol (literally, in a document, with numbered steps) for turning any loose idea into a Substack article. How to think of the initial idea. How to raise the quality of the idea before writing it. How to cross-check sources. How to expand that outline paragraph by paragraph. How to review gaps and contradictions in my own argumentation before publishing. There is no step where I have to ask myself “now what do I do?”

Just follow the script and the result will turn out well.

My writing protocol saves me time, energy, and guarantees a minimum, even on my worst creative day. Design protocols for any activity you carry out frequently and that has numerous steps. Protocols prepare you to have all the decisions made in advance, when your energy is at its maximum and you are not sick, exhausted, angry or anything like that.

The protocol ensures you get the expected future decisions right…

and the unexpected ones?

Redundancies.

Redundancy

The protocol serves to order foreseen decisions. Redundancy assumes that, even so, something is going to go wrong, and builds margin before that failure has a real cost. I’m talking here about a broken alarm clock, an unforeseen traffic issue, a corrupted file on your hard drive, these things we all hate. They are going to happen, the question is how antifragile we will be. That’s the word, and it was what failed Ernest Hemingway that day at the Paris station.

“Some things benefit from disturbances; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Build a system that shocks don’t affect.

I apply it as simply as this.

• I usually wake up without an alarm clock, but just in case, I don’t have one, or two, I have three alarms programmed to go off with a 5-minute gap between each one.

• According to Hofstadter’s Law (2007), we tend to be very optimistic about how long things take us, so I always leave for every place with 10% extra time just in case. The law states: “It always takes longer than expected, even when taking into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

• One of the ones that helped me the most was this one. My car’s tank never goes below half, so a real emergency never depends on whether “today was the day” to stop by the gas station.

• And all my writings published in Jardín Mental have two separate backup copies, one on a hard drive at home and another in the cloud.

Think about it. No engineer builds a bridge for the exact weight it expects to cross it. Bridges are built with a much greater margin to survive everything that could happen. Apply that same idea to your daily life and you’ll see how much time, money, problems and stressful decisions you’ll save yourself.

What happened to Hemingway was a matter of time before it happened.

Carrying the copies in the same place as the original documents was reckless, everything that happened to Hadley was a simple conjunction of factors, like the holes in the Swiss cheese I was telling you about. Like the day I had the accident.

You are going to have bad days, the question is whether your protocols and redundancies will save you.

“A competent general always draws up his battle plan before facing the enemy.” — Charles E. Hummel, Freedom from Tyranny of the Urgent

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The inventor’s paradox: For small problems, huge solutions

2. 3 Timeless Ideas to Solve Problems Before They Occur

3. Why life become more complicated

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Hofstadter, D. R. (2007). Gödel, Escher, Bach: un eterno y grácil bucle.

2. The Hemingway Society. (2023). The Lost Suitcase. URL

🏷️ Categories: Behavior, Decision making and biases

There are ideas we accept without thinking about them too much.

We repeat them because they sound good, because they fit with what we see everywhere, and because the world seems to have already decided that they’re true. However, many of the things we value most are not exactly the ones that best help us live.

Some, in fact, sabotage us.

Yesterday, while rereading some Jardín Mental articles, I noticed a pattern in certain common, unquestioned beliefs that run through the way we live. Overvalued ideas. Others undervalued. Science has been pointing this out for a while, but our way of living has barely moved since then.

Let’s talk about 7 ideas that seduce us more than they deserve, and their undervalued alternative that is worth much more than we think.

1. Being busy is overvalued

We have turned being busy into a sign of importance.

• If you don’t stop, you must be doing something important.

• If you’re exhausted by the end of the day, you made a lot of progress.

• If your schedule is overflowing, you’re a high-value person and everyone needs you.

The funny thing is that being in motion is not the same as moving forward.

The hamster on the wheel doesn’t stop running, but at the end of the day it’s still in the exact same place. Constant busyness is more a sign of scatteredness than of performance. The big goal is not to have a full schedule, it’s to devote yourself 100% to the few real priorities.

Most important things don’t require speed.

They require more focus; with a couple of hours a day, the results are already enormous.

Being focused is undervalued

Doing one thing at a time seems like too little in a culture obsessed with doing too much, but science has shown that multitasking and the constant distraction of modern life completely destroy your productivity and your energy.

• Multitasking prevents you from deciding which information is important and which is not.

• It makes it harder to remember information, and it’s harder to relate and apply it.

• It makes you tire faster and makes you more likely to make mistakes.

Most people spend the day very busy and very unfocused.

You don’t need to go faster, it’s enough to go one at a time, prioritizing what’s important.

Read more here: The myth of multitasking.

2. Avoiding criticism is overvalued

Being seen is scary, I admit it.

As soon as you share something of yours, whether it’s an idea, project, opinion, or a different way of doing things, you expose yourself to the possibility of being judged. This alone makes many brilliant people decide not to show themselves and keep everything they carry inside.

It’s safer, yes, but silence also has a price.

You can be criticized for creating something, or you can go unnoticed because you never dared to share it. There’s a bias called the “spotlight effect.” It’s the bias by which we overestimate how much others notice our mistakes and appearance. We mistakenly believe we’re being judged all the time, which generates social anxiety.

The good news is that this is a mental distortion. It’s not true.

Being different and sparking debate is undervalued

We believe we’re protecting ourselves by fitting into others’ expectations. In reality we’re rejecting ourselves. Out of fear of not fitting in, we gradually leave out exactly what made us unique and would have made us shine in the first place. There’s no way to live with your own voice without making someone uncomfortable.

The cost of avoiding all criticism is a life at the service of others.

Read more here: The art you’re hiding could change the world.

3. Total freedom is overvalued

Total freedom sounds beautiful until you have to organize your days.

Being able to do everything, with no schedules or limits, seems like a dream, but the reality is that this infinite breadth becomes a burden. When everything is possible, nothing has direction. Every decision is a negotiation with yourself. The result is simple: you end up exhausted and lost because it’s impossible for a creature of habit to live in chaos.

Routine is undervalued

The restrictions in your routine, if well chosen, are a form of relief.

Even though it goes against the fashion of the modern spontaneous life, routine is a form of relief. A clear framework that reduces decisions, that gives you a schedule and a clear space to channel your energy toward what you want to achieve. Routine is the stability needed to be able to plan a life and long-term purposes.

Read more here: Why I chose to live a boring life.

4. Motivation is overvalued

We love to think that the only thing separating us from our goals is “feeling like it.”

We believe that when energy arrives, we’ll be able to write the book, achieve that physical change, learn that language, or reach that goal. As if transformation depended on feeling inspired for a while.

This has been proven not to work.

Motivation is volatile, you won’t always have it, and you can’t depend on it.

The power of your environment is undervalued

What matters is the environment.

The way you organize your space, the distractions around you, how easy it is to start something or how hard it is for you to be distracted. All of this and many more factors decide what you can achieve. Much of our behavior does not come from conscious decisions, it’s a pure unconscious response to the environment.

Until you become aware of the weight of the environment, you will keep being its puppet.

Read more here: How to change habits (without willpower and without effort).

5. The news is overvalued

Current events have an effective way of seeming essential.

It arrives with urgency, always with life-or-death headlines, with the feeling that you must know it now or you’ll regret it. This is how we fill our minds with recent information that tomorrow will have been replaced by other information just as urgent and just as forgettable.

Watching the news is the easiest way to fill your mind with noise.

Reading classic books is undervalued

If a good book has survived ten, twenty, or fifty years, it’s usually because it contains something more valuable than a news story. Bad books disappear over the years, no one remembers them. Those that remain for decades or centuries usually do so because they keep saying something true no matter how much time passes.

This has been mathematically proven, it’s called the Lindy Effect.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Plato’s Dialogues are examples of this. They are all books centuries old that continue to be essential reading, from which inspiration is still drawn.

• Not everything new deserves to enter your head.

• Not everything old has lost its strength.

If we are what we eat, take care of your mental diet, you are the content you consume.

Read more here: Why you should read the classics.

6. Winning is overvalued

We want results. It’s natural.

The problem begins when results matter more than the process that makes them possible. Then the temptation appears to speed up, to look for shortcuts, to appear before being. That’s why people want good grades without learning, numbers without building, victory without having yet become the person capable of achieving it.

The harsh reality is that this does not transform us, we remain just as stuck.

Improving is undervalued

Improving doesn’t shine as brightly as results, but it’s the only thing that, over time, generates results that don’t collapse at the first setback and that don’t leave us exposed. The best way to improve is through deliberate practice, the psychologically proven technique for mastering any skill.

If you want results, focus on the process, not on results.

Read more here: How to master any skill.

7. Intensity is overvalued

We’re seduced by the idea of changing everything in 24 hours.

We always try to achieve physical change in record time, to study as if it were a race against the clock, and to achieve everything soon. It’s related to this obsession with results I was talking about. However, pushing yourself to the limit again and again is not effective, in fact, it works against you.

The most important thing is not to do a lot today, it’s to come back tomorrow.

Consistency is undervalued

Progress rarely depends on a single extreme session.

No one achieves a physical change by training hard one day and not coming back for a month. It’s necessary to sustain habits for weeks, months, years. The most realistic way to achieve any goal is through small actions you can repeat every day.

Consistency isn’t appealing because motivation is overvalued, but it works.

Aim to be consistent, not intense.

Read more here: The old man who moved mountains: The power of consistency.

And now it’s time to apply it.

See you!

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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The following letter is part of our “Distilling Books” collection, in which we extract the most revealing ideas from literature.

🏷️ Categories: Learning, Mental models.

In 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, an eccentric man named James T. Mangan wrote a book with a perhaps overly ambitious title: You Can Do Anything!

And Mangan took it seriously.

Twelve years later, he would go on to claim ownership of outer space in its entirety and found his own country: Celestia.

He took what was laid out in his book about being able to do anything seriously... History remembers him as a strange character. Honestly, it’s not hard to understand why. Among the extravagant ideas in his book hides a treasure that no one knows: a practical guide on how to acquire knowledge.

Mangan gathered 12 ways to learn and think for oneself.

The more you read them, the more you realize the guy maybe wasn’t as crazy as he seemed... Some of his ideas could change the way you seek answers, feed your curiosity, and above all, think for yourself. I’ll tell you in advance, ChatGPT is not your best friend for everything.

These are his 12 keys.

Let’s get to it.

1. Practice

The best way to learn is to practice what was learned.

Everything else is information that passed through your head like water through a colander, leaving barely a trace of moisture, something quite different from understanding. You can read 10 books about lifting weights and still be unable to lift anything if you don’t train. You can watch 100 videos about finances and still be stuck if you don’t invest.

If you look around you, you’ll see that most people are at the “I know that” level.

Something quite different is the “I can do this” level.

If you want to learn and truly make the most of the time invested, take action.

Most of us give up on the first or second attempt. But whoever truly wants to learn, whoever truly desires to know, will persevere until they achieve it. Practice! — James T. Mangan, You Can Do Anything!

2. Ask

We were all born asking questions without shame. That’s what children are like. “Why?” “How?” “What’s that?” Any three-year-old bombards the world with curiosity. Then school arrives, or tired parents, or classmates who mock the one who “didn’t understand,” and you shut down.

We learn to pretend we already know, and that’s the worst mistake.

The wisest people are willing, even eager, to share it with whoever asks. Asking doesn’t make you less. Almost everyone who doesn’t ask does so only to pretend they know, I saw it with my own eyes during my university years.

Your ego will finish you off if you believe ignorance is a reason for shame.

Always ask to get to the bottom of the matter.

3. Know yourself

This is one of the most underrated ideas.

Much of what you need, you already carry within you, only you’ve never put it into words because you’ve never forced yourself to do so. You have already lived through as many conversations, challenges, failures, and decisions as it takes to have a buried gold mine that you ignore. There’s raw material in you, it needs polishing, but you have a lot to say.

To transform all this into knowledge you must write it down.

Knowledge is only knowledge when it takes shape, when it can be expressed in words or reduced to a principle; and now it’s your turn to get to work on your own gold mine, to refine the raw ore. — James T. Mangan, You Can Do Anything!

• What topics do your friends or family come to you for advice about?

• What things do you know how to do that you take for granted, but others don’t master?

• What could you talk about for hours without getting bored or running out of ideas?

• What do you do frequently and naturally, that others tell you “is difficult”?

• What have you lived through, overcome, or learned from personal experience that you could teach someone who is just starting out?

What is “normal” for you may be, for others, a guide, inspiration, or solution to a real problem they’ve been searching for for a long time. You just need to start recognizing the value of what you already know.

4. Circle the question

• People tend to operate in system 1, that is, they decide instantly and by impulse.

• The elevated mind walks around the idea before expressing its opinion.

When you examine something new, whether it’s a philosophy book, a business plan, or criticism of your work, your first instinct is to look at it from the angle that already confirms what you think. It’s more comfortable, but it condemns you to seeing only one side of everything you examine, while the object has infinite sides if you move around it.

Circling the question means being willing to investigate alternative perspectives.

Don’t ignore the broader dimension of your work. Don’t be afraid of hurting yourself if you have to change a preconceived opinion. Have a free, open, and unprejudiced mind! — James T. Mangan, You Can Do Anything!

Always seek alternative options and information contrary to your beliefs.

Ask yourself: “What data could prove me wrong?” You’ll have a complete view and avoid confirmation bias. As Charlie Munger said: “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”

5. Experiment

Try something you don’t know will work and observe what happens.

There’s no need to try crazy things. Think about making small modifications to your current environment and routines. Launch that project you had in mind. Try that podcast. Start writing on Substack without a clear plan.

There is implicit knowledge in practice that theory will never reach.

You’ve known this since you were 5 years old. It’s the reason why just reading about how to ride a bike doesn’t let you ride it. You need to learn everything related to movement and the balance sensations perceived while pedaling. As my father used to say: “there are things that are easy to learn and impossible to teach.”

You need to experiment for yourself.

6. Teach

If you want to know if you really understand something, try explaining it to another person without using the jargon you memorized. This is the basis of the Feynman technique.

Teaching will help you discover the exact moment when your knowledge has gaps and stops being pure clarity. Teaching forces you to anticipate questions, you’ll need to express yourself clearly, be logical, and know how to delimit concepts. In the process of trying to transfer what you know, you’ll end up mastering the learning.

This is one of the reasons why writing has skyrocketed my learning.

If you want to master the art of learning through this technique, read this.

7. Read

Reading is the timeless way of transmitting knowledge.

Perhaps one of the best, but only if done proactively. Passive reading fills you with others’ opinions disguised as your own knowledge, so you must always question what you read, turn to alternative sources that support or question what you read, and not take anything for granted without going deeper yourself.

If you need to read to acquire knowledge, read critically. Don’t believe anything until you understand it, until it’s clearly proven. — James T. Mangan, You Can Do Anything!

Deep reading is quite an art, if you want to master this learning technique, in this article I cover all the keys to getting 100% out of every book read: How to read a book (for real).

8. Write

One of the most forgotten techniques in the present.

Writing is thinking on paper. When you write to explain something, you’re explaining it to yourself first. How many times have you written something just so you wouldn’t forget it, and then discovered you never needed to check the note because you’d already learned it by heart in the act of writing it? It happened to me dozens of times.

It’s similar to the process of teaching, but this time you teach yourself.

If you have difficulty expressing ideas clearly, if you struggle to develop a concept, or if you see that your paragraphs lack order, you already have the answer: those are the aspects you don’t yet master and about which you must learn more. For this reason, please, write every day, even if it’s just a diary, it will change your life.

Until you articulate your ideas cleanly on paper, you haven’t mastered it.

9. Listen

You have two ears and only one mouth. Use them in that proportion.

When someone speaks, give them the chance to finish before your mind starts preparing your response. Hemingway already said this: when someone speaks, listen carefully and stop thinking about what to say.

• Pay maximum attention when conversing and you’ll find infinite value in every chat.

• 99% don’t stay quiet, that’s why they can’t hear the value in the rest. Don’t be one of those.

  ---

10. Observe

There are only two types of experience: yours and everyone else’s.

Yours is slow, costly, and often painful. Everyone else’s is available for free, all the time, right in front of your eyes, without you having to suffer any of their mistakes. All you have to do is keep your eyes open, something nobody does because they’re looking down at their phone.

The landscape is interesting, revealing, full of novelties and meaning.

• Observe the person who won to understand the mechanism behind their success.

• Observe the person who lost to recognize the flaws in their attempt.

The whole world is a free classroom for whoever pays attention.

11. Define

That’s right, like dictionaries.

A good definition includes everything the thing is, and excludes everything it is not. If you’re able to recognize a chair when you see it, describe it in maximum detail so that no one can doubt how to identify a chair by your definition, you’re doing well.

If they doubt your definition upon seeing a sofa, table, or stool, you failed.

This example is everyday, but apply this concept to your most elevated and technical knowledge. Imagine that, studying finance, would you be able to make a detailed glossary of all the key concepts someone should know and define each of them with high precision?

That’s the crux of the matter.

• Learning through the process of writing is broader.

• Defining helps you compartmentalize your mind better.

Give names to your ideas, order them into a scheme, give them hierarchy.

I’m sorry to say that, until you can define a chair or a door (or any other everyday object), you don’t actually know what they are. You can recognize and describe them, but you cannot determine their nature. Your knowledge is inexact. — James T. Mangan, You Can Do Anything!

12. Reason

It’s the only thing that distinguishes you from a machine.

Animals have knowledge. They react, learn by conditioning, repeat patterns that worked for them before, but they cannot reason. The more you reason, the more you move away from living on autopilot, reacting to stimuli like any other biological organism programmed by instinct.

The good news is, you don’t need years of formal study.

You need to compare the points of an idea, notice the similarities, do basic statistics to see which ideas repeat and which are anomalies. Perceive differences and detect what lies behind those anomalies. Seek the theoretical framework of all those scattered ideas you saw. Elaborate your theory and conclude with data.

This is reasoning.

It is, without exaggeration, the highest form of knowledge that exists, because all the other forms on this list only give you raw material.

Nobody is going to build your mind for you

If you put together these 12 ways of learning and gaining knowledge, you’ll notice something the traditional education system never offers you: the knowledge needed to be able to learn everything on your own. None of this requires a classroom, certificates, or permissions. The mobile phone is the greatest university in history, open 24/7 and from anywhere in the world.

Do you see the people around you taking advantage of this enormous potential?

Exactly. They use the phone to scroll, not to educate themselves.

All it requires is having a small spark of motivation, wanting to go beyond the minimum the education system imposes on you. The potential is enormous and can, literally, change your life forever.

Stay curious, the potential of the 21st century is infinite.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Why is intelligence declining? The Flynn Effect and the drop in IQ

2. A notebook to reclaim your mind: The tool to escape the scroll

3. Henry Ford said: Education is not filling you with data

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Mangan, J. (1936) You Can Do Anything!

🏷️ Categories: Learning, Attention, Memory.

There’s someone holding the bar for you right now.

You don’t see it. It’s in every video, in every reel, in every 60-second summary you consume before your brain even gets to process it. You keep moving the mental weight. You keep feeling like you’re learning, like you’re gaining new knowledge. You end the scrolling session with the feeling of having done something meaningful.

You haven’t.

You confuse having consumed something with having understood it, and that error has a name: the illusion of fluency (Jacoby, Bjork, & Kelley, 1994). The fluency with which you process information gets confused with the depth with which you understand it. The easier something is for you to consume, the more convinced you are that you’ve understood it. It’s the perfect trap, because it doesn’t feel like a trap.

It’s a bias of your brain.

What you need is not more fluency. It’s friction. Much more of it.

It’s the same principle that makes your muscles grow. The same one that strengthens your immune system. Controlled stress (not comfort) is what generates adaptation. Civilization as a whole has dedicated itself to eliminating mental friction over these last decades. Along with it, it has started eliminating the capacity to think.

If “learning” doesn’t cost you anything, worry.

1. Fluency is your enemy

You finish a twenty-minute video.

You close the app believing you’ve understood something. Five minutes later, someone asks you to explain it to them. A pang in your chest warns you: you don’t remember. The words don’t come out. You knew the concepts, didn’t you?

No.

They left your mind the instant you closed the video.

Your brain has no way to measure whether it has truly understood something. The only thing it measures is how easy it was to process the information, and it uses that ease as a substitute for comprehension. Video is the perfect machine for keeping you trapped in that illusion for hours, every day, without you noticing. Moving images. Warm voice. Background music. Cuts every three seconds so that your attention never has to make the effort of sustaining itself on its own.

You confuse that ease in consuming data with having learned.

Imagine two people studying the same economics concept. One watches a twenty-minute explanatory video. The other reads, for the same amount of time, an article about the same thing. When they finish, both rate their comprehension as high, nearly identical. Only one will be able to reconstruct the ideas without help a week later.

The content is the same.

The mechanism is not.

Confusing fluency with comprehension is like confusing an empty highway with knowing how to drive well. You go fast because there are no obstacles, not because you’ve improved. The day a real obstacle appears, you crash.

Only friction makes you better. Seek it out.

2. Friction is your ally

Friction governs every biological system you know.

A muscle doesn’t grow because you move it a lot; it needs you to take it to the point where the fibers get damaged at a microscopic level, and the body, in repairing them, overcompensates: it builds more tissue than there was before (Schoenfeld, 2010), anticipating that the stress will return. An immune system strengthens by being exposed to pathogens, not by avoiding them at all costs. Adaptation is always a response to friction.

Learning is no exception to this rule.

Psychologist Robert Bjork devoted decades to studying this phenomenon, and his finding challenges what thousands of students do every day in libraries, hoping to pass an exam (Bjork & Bjork, 2011): difficult conditions (retrieving information from memory instead of rereading it, spacing out study instead of concentrating it, generating your own answers instead of receiving them already chewed) produce worse immediate performance… and skyrocket your long-term comprehension (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

The mistake almost everyone makes is optimizing for the feeling of fluency.

That’s why I use the gym example. When a training partner helps you lift the bar (reducing the real weight your body bears), you’re still moving the bar, but your muscle never receives the signal of real stress. It’s as if, deep down, you’re lifting less weight.

Video does exactly this to your prefrontal cortex.

It lets you “move the weight” of knowledge (finish the video and feel like you’ve learned) without your brain ever having to bear the weight that would produce adaptation.

You urgently need to train the muscle of your attention.

And books are the gym where you must go to train it.

3. Text is weights for the mind

There’s a difference between reading and watching that almost no one talks about.

Text is, perhaps, the only mass communication technology whose progress depends entirely on your capacity for comprehension. A book doesn’t move on to the next sentence until you decide to move on. If you don’t understand a paragraph, the paragraph stays there, waiting with its usual coldness. Text stops when you stop. It goes back when you go back. Its pace is, in a literal sense, your pace.

Video doesn’t work that way.

It moves forward regardless, whether you understand it or not. The next twenty seconds will play even if your brain is still stuck on the previous one, trying to process a dense idea. There’s no natural pause. There’s no waiting. Just the content, moving forward at a pace someone else decided for you, edited entirely so that you feel fluency.

Reading is rowing your own boat. Watching a video is riding along while someone else rows.

Hold on to this.

It’s the reason why society as a whole has come to know a bit of everything and understand nothing. More content is consumed than ever. Less is understood than ever.

4. The society of fluency

Video is just the most visible example.

It goes further. There’s the summary that saves you from reading the book. The thread that saves you from reading the article. The AI that gives you the answer before you bother making the minimum effort to try it yourself. Each layer, on its own, is a bit of control you give up. Together they amount to the complete atrophy of your capacity to learn.

It’s the paradox of our generation.

On one hand, we live in the era with the most access to information in all of history. Entire libraries fit in a pocket. Any question has an answer four seconds away. On the other hand, a growing number of indicators (sustained reading comprehension, reasoning about extended arguments, long-term retention of what is “consumed”) only get worse.

It’s the direct consequence of optimizing fluency for the masses.

People can no longer tolerate cognitive friction.

5. Seek out friction on purpose

Train your mind like an athlete trains their body.

You have to distinguish between friction that holds you back and friction that builds you up.

A serious athlete seeks the heaviest weight they can control with good technique (not the heaviest possible, which would injure them, nor the most comfortable, which would generate no stimulus at all). The same applies to learning. It’s not about seeking out the densest, most inaccessible material that exists. It’s about finding the friction that takes you just above your current limit: the exact point where the effort is real and progress is still possible.

In which areas of your life should you introduce that friction?

The answer begins by reversing the most common and least questioned habit of information consumption: active retrieval versus passive recognition.

• Recognizing is nodding along when you see something again, feeling the familiarity of “I already knew this.” That’s how society spends hours scrolling without understanding anything.

• Retrieving is closing the source and forcing your brain to reconstruct it from scratch, without help. That’s where friction happens. Reading a chapter and closing the book to rewrite the central idea from memory, without looking, is what changes everything.

Writing, in this sense, is the most accessible friction generator that exists.

Why do you think I write every day?

Writing forces you to discover, sentence by sentence, where your understanding of something you thought you had mastered breaks down (Bangert et al., 2004). You can’t fake clarity on a blank page the way you can fake it by nodding along in front of a video. The page hands you back the exact gap your comprehension still has.

It exposes you.

If you want clear thinking, and to truly learn, you need to write. Civilization as a whole is running, at full speed, toward total fluency.

Every product, every platform, every new layer of artificial intelligence competes to eliminate a little more friction from your day. And in the middle of that collective race, the advantage lies in being one of the few who still know how to carry the weight alone.

Think about physical work — the same thing happens.

When manual effort was the norm, no one needed to go to the gym: the body exercised itself, every day. Society moved to sedentary jobs, and not exercising on purpose began to lead the body into atrophy. That same thing is already happening to your mind (and it’s going to get worse). A society that worships fluency is going to lose its cognitive capacities if it doesn’t train them on purpose.

Pick up the bar and lift the weight yourself.

Start reading.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

“If you want to lift a hundred pounds, you don’t expect to succeed the first time. You start with a lighter weight and work up little by little. You actually fail to lift a hundred pounds, every day, until the day you succeed. But it is in the days when you are exerting yourself that the growth is occurring.” — Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. How to read a book (for real)

2. Autopilot: what ChatGPT does to your mind (and you don’t realize it)

3. The reading technique that reshaped my mind.

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Bangert-Drowns, R. L., Hurley, M. M., & Wilkinson, B. (2004). The effects of school-based writing-to-learn interventions on academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 29–58. URL

2. Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. En M. A. Gernsbacher, R. W. Pew, L. M. Hough, & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society. URL

3. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. URL

4. Jacoby, L. L., Bjork, R. A., & Kelley, C. M. (1994). Illusions of comprehension, competence, and remembering. En D. Druckman & R. A. Bjork (Eds.), Learning, remembering, believing: Enhancing human performance (pp. 57–80). URL

5. Schoenfeld, B. J. (2010). The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(10), 2857–2872. URL

🏷️ Categories: Literature, Behavior, Attention, Zettelkasten, Minimalism.

Congratulations!

If you haven’t read any of the books I’m going to mention to you today, you’re in luck, because I would pay all my money to be able to experience again the revelation it was to read their pages for the first time. Reviewing my Zettelkasten a few days ago, I asked myself… What books have been the most revealing of all the ones I’ve read?

Here’s the answer.

This is the list of the 11 books that completely reconfigured my mind.

They changed the way I think, decide, act, and relate to the world. The revelations they provoked in me were decisive, there was no going back. When you know it, you can’t stop knowing it. When you see it, you can’t stop seeing it. It is the fortune (or misfortune) of wisdom.

They are not ordered by how good they are.

They are ordered by the role they played in building who I am now.

Let’s get to the books already…

I. The origin of everything

1. Inspector Imanishi Investigates — Seicho Matsumoto

This book has nothing special about it.

This book changed my life like no other.

How can both statements be true?

If you ask me today what The Sand Castle is about, I’d have to think about it, but if you ask me what it made me feel when I closed it, I can tell you without hesitation: for the first time, the idea of “someday I want to write” stopped being a fantasy and became a decision with a date: “Today.”

This is something that perhaps no one considers when looking for books to read.

The modern obsession is to read the books everyone recommends because they only evaluate the quality of their content. In reality, a book of “mediocre” quality that you see secondhand in a dusty shop can be the book of your life.

This happened to me with The Sand Castle.

I had spent months with the noise in my mind. I wanted to be a writer. Seicho Matsumoto made me enjoy his book, but what it did most in me was make me realize that postponing a goal was the cruelest way of betraying myself. If he had been able to write that work and libraries are full of books, why couldn’t I be capable? Am I not up to it? I doubt it.

That day I decided it: I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

I didn’t yet know what “whatever it takes” meant.

I would learn that with the next ten books on the list…

II. How knowledge works

2. The Forest Unseen — David G. Haskell

A book that fell into my hands by absolute coincidence, as usually happens to me.

On an internet page about books I clicked the cursed button: “Random.”

That’s how the message appeared on screen. I now had a mission: to read it.

David Haskell sits for a year in front of the same square meter of forest and observes. Just that. The end. In that patient observation, something is revealed that changed my mind: the labels we use to separate the world — “biology,” “physics,” “psychology,” “economics” — are not real boundaries. They are only human tools, maps of convenience that we trace over a territory that in reality doesn’t have those lines.

In that square meter of forest, chemistry, physics, biology, economics, history and much more happen simultaneously, all mixed together. Fungi, beetles, and deer don’t care about your university departments of “Chemistry,” “Economics,” or “Biology.” When analyzing these animals, you can see everything related at once.

• A mushroom speaks to us of gastronomy when you cook it.

• A mushroom speaks to us of chemistry when talking about its nutrition.

• A mushroom speaks to us of economics when you put it in a supermarket.

• A mushroom speaks to us of geography when we analyze the terrain.

I could go on infinitely with the mushroom example. Now imagine it for every element of the forest, or of the world. And then imagine the combinations between the different elements. Knowledge is an ecosystem, where everything relates. From there was born the idea of treating my learning as a mental garden.

This book talks to you about nature and about what learning really means.

3. How to Take Smart Notes — Sönke Ahrens

How to Take Smart Notes explains the Zettelkasten method.

The linked-notes system that sociologist Niklas Luhmann used to produce, on his own, more than seventy books and hundreds of academic articles throughout his life. This is where Haskell’s book connected without me expecting it.

• In The Forest Unseen I learned that labels are human tools of convenience. Knowledge is mixed and connected.

• Ahrens gave me the practical tool to live that idea every day.

Traditional education trains you to see knowledge by folders: here go my psychology notes, here the history ones, here the marketing ones. Each folder closed off. The Zettelkasten completely inverts that logic. Every note you take is not archived by topic. It is linked with other notes by relationship of ideas, regardless of what discipline each one comes from. A note about Skinner’s behavioral reinforcement can end up connected to a note about marketing.

The system makes you creative and makes you think globally, the way life works.

I started building my own mental garden this way. Writing stopped being the anguished moment in front of the blank page; the strength of the connections that already existed in the zettelkasten allows me to write naturally.

This book sent my learning through the roof.

III. How the human mind works

With the map of wisdom more or less clear, I fell into the hole of psychology.

Four books made me say to myself: I need to know more.

4. The Social Animal — Elliot Aronson

The beginning of everything. The obsession started here.

The Social Animal is a classic of psychology that teaches you that human beings don’t make decisions out of nowhere. Our beliefs, prejudices, choices, and environment affect us a lot, perhaps too much. I closed it with the feeling of: I can research these topics for years and never get bored.

And here I am, years later, still getting inspired and researching more about it.

As advice: Pay attention to the moments when a topic grabs you, that disproportionate fascination is what you should follow, looking for increasingly specialized books about those aspects that were revealing.

That’s how I fell into the next book…

5. About Behaviorism — B.F. Skinner

This book was the final fall into the obsession. My first articles are about it.

Skinner is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable because it takes away the pretty story you tell yourself about why you do what you do. It explains to you, obviously, that your behavior is pure consequences of reinforcements and punishments. You’re not as far from other animals, you stop telling yourself that movie of “that’s just how I am” and start telling yourself: what is reinforcing this? What pattern keeps me in these habits I detest?

This book made me rethink my life. Nothing more to say.

6. The Mind Is Flat — Nick Chater

At this point, I already noticed that science and society go down different paths…

Much of what popular culture takes for granted about the human mind had already been disproven by science decades ago, and nobody had bothered to tell the street. People keep living in the “psychology” of 60 years ago.

Nick Chater tears down, one by one, a bunch of ideas we keep repeating as if they were truths: that we have a hidden “depth” underneath the surface, a hidden self full of hidden motivations waiting to be discovered through therapy or introspection… Chater does a review of all current psychology to make clear to you what is actually known today about the mind.

This book did me a favor that I’m grateful for every time I see a viral “psychology” video on social media…

The Mind Is Flat is the vaccine against that type of unfounded thinking.

7. Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely

My obsession with understanding how we reason and behave was already critical.

Ariely taught me in which predictable directions we go wrong, because this is the most curious part of all. That you are not special, nor am I. The general tendency tends to be the same and this book is the catalog of concrete and repeatable errors we make when deciding: the anchor effect, loss aversion, the way the price “free” makes us make absurd decisions, the way the options presented to us shape what we believe we want, and so on…

After reading it, you can anticipate and be skeptical about what your mind tells you.

I no longer take so seriously what my mind tells me.

After this book, I began to understand why people sometimes do absurd acts, make senseless decisions, and why, from the inside, it always seems to us the obvious decision or action. When you see it, you can’t stop seeing it…

You’ve been warned.

IV. How societies work

With the individual mind more or less understood, it’s time to raise the scale.

What happens when you put thousands, millions of those imperfect and predictably irrational minds into the same system…?

8. The Foundation Saga — Isaac Asimov

Yes, I like science fiction. Isaac Asimov is my favorite author.

There is an idea in Foundation that hasn’t left my head since I read it: psychohistory, the fictional discipline Asimov invents, in which the behavior of a large enough human mass can be predicted mathematically, even though each individual within that mass is completely unpredictable.

That is, we cannot know your individual destiny, but we can know that of your entire society.

It’s a fictional idea, but not so far-fetched… You, as an individual, can be a walking chaos, we already saw with Ariely that you are, but when you add yourself to millions of people just as chaotic, patterns begin to emerge. This has a name in real science: sociology.

This book was my gateway to thinking about sociology, about economics, about history — everything is, as a group, systems within which we live. Learning to think in systems changes everything that happens around you: why certain cultural trends appear and disappear, why platforms reward certain behaviors and punish others, why “the market” does what it does even though no individual participant is planning it that way.

It lets you start seeing the world from a bird’s-eye view.

And as you see, once again, what mattered was what it provoked in me, not so much the book itself.

V. Attention and discipline

The last 3 books are curious, because two of them have a historical relationship, the last one seems not to fit at all, but all 3 led me to the same conclusion.

9. The Book of Lieh-tzu — Liezi

There is a story within this book that I haven’t been able to forget.

It’s a book similar to Confucius’s Analects and the story in question is that of Yu Gong, the “foolish old man” who decides to move a mountain blocking his way, carrying it stone by stone, without modern tools, without haste, knowing that perhaps neither he nor his children will see the work finished and it will take centuries.

Everyone laughs at him, but there is a key fact demonstrated by science.

This fact changed the whole story. After researching, I arrived at the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC), the brain structure that current neuroscience points to as the real engine of willpower. What’s fascinating is this: this structure activates and grows when we do difficult tasks that generate mental resistance, and it shrinks, atrophies, when we stop challenging ourselves.

• When you go to train and don’t feel like it, you’re developing this area.

• When you procrastinate lying on the couch, defeated by laziness, you atrophy it.

This completely changes the relationship you have with discipline. Since I understood this, I stopped negotiating with myself. There’s no longer room for “I don’t feel like it today,” because I know, with neurological basis, that every time I give in to that negotiation I’m making it more and more complicated. And every time I do the hard thing without negotiating, I’m making it easier and easier next time.

It was a discovery that emerged from the most unexpected story.

For the third time, the content is only an excuse; what the book provokes in you is the key.

10. The Book of Zhuangzi — Zhuangzi

Cook Ding. My favorite story of all.

Ding is a butcher who cuts up an ox with such mastery that he seems to be dancing more than working. His knife slides through the joints without resistance, always finding the space between bone and tendon. When asked how he does it, Ding answers something that left me thinking for weeks.

It comes to him effortlessly.

He has stopped seeing a whole and complicated ox, and sees, with total clarity, the exact structure of spaces and joints through which the knife must pass.

This story forced me to ask myself an uncomfortable question: was I really concentrated when I believed I was? Or was I simply present physically, with my mind fragmented into twenty different distractions, confusing effort with real attention?

If it’s costing you effort, you’re not concentrated.

Maximum concentration takes you into a state of flow, with zero friction.

I took my level of concentration to a place I couldn’t even have imagined as possible before. And performance on any task requiring clear thinking skyrocketed. Minimum effort, maximum result.

11. Digital Minimalism — Cal Newport

The culmination.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport is, in a certain sense, the most practical book on this entire list. It asks you to reconfigure your entire life: which apps have permission to be on your phone, which notifications have permission to sound, which spaces of your time are protected, what you do with your free time…

The book kept haunting me, asking: do you do what you truly want to do?

Cal Newport doesn’t ask you for total abstinence from technology, he doesn’t want you to be a hermit, but he does remind you that the vast majority of society has completely lost control of its own attention, of its time, of its priorities. Which confirms everything psychology taught me book after book.

After applying the book seriously, I recovered an average of two hours a day.

I’m not exaggerating.

Multiply it by three hundred sixty-five days. Now imagine what can be built (a book, a business, a skill, a close relationship with those people you love…). What would you do with more than 700 hours recovered from the claws of algorithms and social media?

This is the book that closes the circle.

The thread that connects them

If you look at this list from afar, you’ll understand why I ordered it this way.

I don’t want you to read this list step by step, there are no magic formulas. I just want you to understand this: Pay attention to the books that push you, follow that disproportionate fascination when it appears, and once you understand all that, apply it in your life. Knowledge is only powerful when you apply it.

Read, then move to action.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

🏷️ Categories: Attention, Decision-making and biases, Social relationships.

We live surrounded by too many exceptions.

For almost all of history, your brain learned what a “normal” life was by observing a few dozen people. That was the map used to interpret reality. Today that map is different. Now you spend hours consuming an endless succession of people at their best moment: the perfect trip, the perfect body, the perfect business, the perfect relationship, success before turning 30.

The environment changed, not the brain.

The brain simply does what it has always done: it takes what it sees repeated and turns it into the reference point from which it judges its own reality. Maybe that’s why you feel like you’re making less progress than you should. Maybe that’s why what would have looked like good progress a few years ago now feels miserable to you. You may have even come to think that you are the problem.

What if you weren’t?

What if that feeling of falling behind is a distorted perception of reality?

If the reference point is broken, so is the judgment you make about yourself. That changes your self-esteem, the decisions you make, the goals you chase, and the life you end up building in the long run. This is the great challenge of the 21st century: understanding how digital reality warps our vision, and achieving a focused mind.

Let’s take apart, piece by piece, how our view of life has changed.

I. The inflation of the extraordinary

The exception is now the norm.

Before, the reference point was the neighborhood, at most, the city. Today you find yourself comparing your life to the best moments of millions of people online.

Think about it.

When you open any platform, you’re not seeing anyone’s life — you’re only seeing the 0.001% best moments of thousands of different people, edited and selected to capture your attention for the next three deceptive seconds. That content doesn’t represent those people; it only shows the highest peak they reached, over months, maybe years, compressed into a few seconds of video with background music.

A brain flooded with those stimuli starts to believe “this is normal.”

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered this (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Humans don’t judge the frequency of an event by how often it actually happens in reality — that would be statistics. The brain judges frequency by how easy something is to recall.

In other words: the easier you can recall it, the more frequent and important you consider it.

It’s called the availability heuristic, and it’s devastating at a mental level.

If you watch a hundred videos of people making a million dollars in a month, your mind irrationally starts calculating that making a million dollars in a month is common. It isn’t. Statistically, it’s unlikely — but the availability of that information in your feed rewrites your view of reality, and you don’t even notice it happening, because it’s unconscious.

That’s why it’s so dangerous.

On top of this you can add the effect of hedonic adaptation (Brickman & Campbell, 1971): the brain’s tendency to normalize any repeated stimulus until it stops noticing it. The first time you saw someone do something impossible, it left you speechless. The hundredth time, you barely stopped to look. Your threshold for amazement skyrockets, because the doses you’re accustoming your brain to are enormous.

That’s why it seems like nothing is enough anymore to make you watch a TikTok video all the way through.

I like to call this the “Louvre effect”: imagine walking through the Louvre for months without ever leaving. On day one, every painting takes your breath away. On day one hundred, you walk among masterpieces staring at your feet, counting flies. The paintings haven’t changed, but your capacity for wonder has been exhausted from constant exposure to something designed to be exceptional, not everyday.

The internet has turned all of reality into an infinite Louvre.

And you walk through it, every day, for hours, without noticing that you’re slowly killing your ability to value anything that isn’t spectacular. Everything that doesn’t appear on screen feels colorless, dull, tasteless, and boring.

You start to change who you think you are, and you devalue your own surroundings.

II. Identity needs the everyday

Your identity answers a question your brain asks itself 24/7.

What kind of person am I compared to my environment?

For almost all of human history, the answer was your immediate environment. As I’ve been telling you: your range of comparison was narrow, and therefore attainable.

Today, your perceived environment is made up almost exclusively of statistical anomalies: 23-year-old CEOs, Olympic athletes, writers who sell millions of copies, creators with audiences the size of entire countries. You compare an entire mountain range (which is your life, with its valleys, its hills, and its moderate peaks) against Everest, which is the only thing shown on social media.

When the reference point is the top 1% of the planet in their top 1% moment…

Your identity is always a tiny misery.

It doesn’t matter what you achieve. There will always be someone, somewhere on the internet, who did it faster, younger, with more money, with more followers, and better-looking. Imagine Cristiano Ronaldo watching Lamine Yamal win a World Cup at such a young age, when he himself, despite all his achievements, never did.

Even he ends up looking like not much.

Psychiatrist Alfred Adler called this the inferiority feeling (Adler, 1927): that chronic sense of not measuring up, which in small doses can motivate you to improve, but in massive doses, will crush you.

This anxiety of “being nobody” ends up altering how you make decisions about your life.

III. If everything seems possible, nothing is enough

Extreme abundance produces a dangerous illusion.

If infinite possible lives exist, any life is a renunciation.

Before the internet, your life options were limited by geography, by social class, by the information available. That was painful in many ways, but it had the positive side effect of forcing you to commit, because there was no visible alternative. Today it’s the opposite. Now you can watch, in real time, someone living in Bali, someone building an e-commerce empire, someone living off farming in the mountains, someone retired at thirty on cryptocurrency…

The internet is a circus of rare animals. It has them all.

And then you, in your ordinary home, after leaving your ordinary job, start to feel the crushing weight of all the lives you’re not living.

Barry Schwartz is the leading expert on this. He called it the paradox of choice (Schwartz, 2004). More options don’t create more happiness; there’s a point where they create paralysis, and when you finally choose, they create regret, because now you’re aware of everything you left on the table. Before you gave up 3 lives, now you give up 3,000 (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000).

You see the opportunity cost directly in the palm of your hand, every day.

Everything you didn’t choose, someone else is living, and they show it to you on social media.

This explains why it’s so hard for you to commit to anything. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was the first to warn about this phenomenon in newer generations. He called it “liquid modernity” (Bauman, 2000): now people “flow” through life. A person can change homes, jobs, ideals, and even partners and friendships without any commitment or friction.

Everything is taken casually, as convenient, and without commitments.

Sound familiar?

It does to me, a lot.

You feel that constant FOMO, that background hum whispering that maybe you should be doing something else that would work out better for you. Why not quit that project? What if that city is better? Is this the right person?

An explorer with infinite maps never reaches any destination.

IV. The easiest (and most boring) path

If you truly want to live an extraordinary life, you must first be boring.

And when I say boring, I mean very boring. Really boring. This culture, addicted to appearing extraordinary, lacks what it actually takes to truly be so.

Henry David Thoreau retreated to the woods to answer this very question many years ago — long before the internet existed, long before the problem became massive. He wanted to discover what was left of a life once you stripped away all the social noise, all that comparison and that anxiety to keep up appearances. What he found was simplicity — a boring life to many, but one of maximum clarity and deep focus.

There, he produced the results that made him go down in history.

There, he wrote Walden (Thoreau, 1854).

I ask you. I beg you, even, to live slowly and focused.

The tree never tries to pretend it’s tall; it simply keeps growing. Be a tree.

Don’t compete with the forest. Don’t check how many centimeters the tree next to you grew this week. Don’t compare yourself to the tallest redwood on the planet if you’re a pine tree. Simply, day after day, continue the process that turns you into what you chose to be. When you finally reach a notable height, no one will see the decades of slow growth that made it possible.

They’ll only see the tree.

That’s the lesson the internet made us forget, and one we must relearn.

“I will no longer compare my journey to that of others; I refuse to do that harm to my own life.” — Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Internal comparison: the key to living with intention

2. Digital minimalism: 4 steps to reclaim time in an accelerated world

3. Why are we increasingly alone? The online world; the empty parks

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Adler, A. (1927). Understanding human nature (W. B. Wolfe, Trad.). Greenberg.

2. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press.

3. Brickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. En M. H. Appley (Ed.), Adaptation-level theory: A symposium (pp. 287–302). Academic Press.

4. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006. URL

5. Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less.

6. Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Walden; or, life in the woods.

7. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232. URL

🏷️ Categories: Literature, Learning, Mental models.

The information generated each day now exceeds what was produced in an entire century before.

90% of the world’s digital data was created since 2023. We generate ~500 PB per day. That doesn’t mean we have better information. What we do have is an enormous amount of noise competing for the same limited mental space we’ve always had.

All the information you’re swimming in is anchored to the present. You have news 24/7, algorithms that surface the trends of the moment and bury deep whatever happened a few days ago. Every platform is designed to give you an immediate reaction and to capture your attention through novelty. Society as a whole is swimming in a puddle and believes that puddle is all the water there is.

We live trapped in the present without realizing we’re trapped.

Nothing is more dangerous than being trapped without knowing it.

A fish believes the ocean is all that exists, because it has never left the water. It has no frame of reference for what lies outside. Humans do the same thing with our historical moment. We believe our way of organizing the economy, work, relationships, and the meaning of life is simply “how things are,” rather than one possibility among thousands that humanity has already tried — and will try again after you and I are gone. We’re a small thing.

You need something to pull you out of the prison of the present. Something that grants you, even if only for a few hours, an escape from that puddle.

That something is reading.

Deep reading completely reshapes your identity. Whoever converses with the dead ends up thinking with a freedom that their contemporaries — busy scrolling — can’t even imagine.

You transcend the barriers of space and time.

I. To Read Is to Transcend

Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, already spoke about this 500 years ago.

In a letter from December 1513 addressed to Francesco Vettori, a friend of Machiavelli’s and then the Florentine ambassador in Rome, Machiavelli shared his enthusiasm for reading.

He described how, in the evening, he would return home and enter his study. At the door he would remove his day clothes, covered in mud and dirt, and put on his royal and courtly robes. Dressed appropriately, he would enter the ancient courts of the men of old, where, received with love, he fed on the only nourishment that truly belonged to him and for which he was born. There he wasn’t ashamed to speak with them and ask them the reasons behind their actions, and they, with humanity, answered him. For four hours he felt no boredom, forgot every sorrow, did not fear poverty, and death did not frighten him. He gave himself over to them entirely.

Machiavelli was preparing, for a few hours, to become the conversation partner of Livy, of Tacitus, of the great men of antiquity. He read in order to inhabit, even temporarily, a mind different from his own, in another place and time.

That is what happens psychologically when you read seriously.

Modern neuroscience confirms what Machiavelli intuited without needing a brain scanner: when you read deep narrative or argument, your brain activates the same neural networks you would use if you were living that experience firsthand (Speer et al., 2009). Yes, it really is that remarkable.

You are simulating a life that isn’t your own.

Every wise person knows that knowledge is only truly transmitted when real dialogue exists between two people driven by the same question — even if one of them has been dead for two thousand years. An author’s immortality happens each time someone reads them again. That’s why Plato, Seneca, Aristotle, Confucius, and thousands of others are immortal, with incalculable value.

And yet many people ask themselves: what can someone who’s been dead for centuries teach me about life today? That’s why they prefer Google or AI.

Only the fish that doesn’t know the vastness of the world would ask that question…

II. The Dead Know More Than Influencers

History works like an algorithm, and it is, by far, the most intelligent algorithm that exists — far more intelligent than any feed designed to maximize your screen time, believe me.

• The internet rewards whatever generates a reaction in the next thirty seconds.

• History rewards whatever remains useful after the people who wrote it, the people who first read it, and several generations after them, have all died.

The ideas that survive are the ones that keep solving problems centuries later.

Why do we still read Aristotle twenty-three hundred years later? The algorithm that has kept him relevant is the passage of time itself. Because his observations on virtue, character, and habit still accurately describe how the human mind works, two thousand years later. Life changes, but the basic architecture of the human psyche doesn’t change much.

Why do millions of books that were bestsellers in their day disappear?

Because they answered the specific anxieties of a specific moment that has already passed, without touching anything deeper than that moment.

Nassim Taleb called this phenomenon the “Lindy effect.”

The longer an idea has survived, the greater the probability it will keep surviving into the future. It’s the exact opposite of how fashion, trends, or viral content work, which burn out as fast as they appear. A book that has held up for five hundred years statistically has a better chance of still being relevant in a hundred years than a Twitter thread with a hundred thousand retweets today.

Natural selection eliminates organisms that don’t fit their environment.

History eliminates ideas that don’t fit reality.

It’s the most reliable quality signal that exists, far more reliable than any annual bestseller ranking. Reading great thinkers will show you that you, too, are conditioned by your own era, just as they were by theirs — you simply didn’t know it yet.

From there, you can begin to expand your mind.

III. How to Extract Everything from a Classic

Let me give you an example from something that happened to me recently.

Imagine you’re going to read The Art of War, as I did this past July.

90% of people who buy it saw the cover on an airport bestseller table and read it as a military manual from fifth-century-BC Chinese dynasties. They finish the book knowing something about infantry formations, the mountainous terrain of the state of Wu, and how armies were organized two and a half thousand years ago. They close the book, put it on the shelf, and that’s where it dies. Interesting — zero application.

Reading it to think better is something else entirely.

You need to ask yourself, page after page: what timeless, universal concept lies behind this passage?

Read it again. Remember it.

When Sun Tzu says that the greatest victory is subduing the enemy without fighting, you can take it as something about armies, or as a principle of positioning that applies just as well to a business avoiding a price war, or to a salary negotiation that’s won before you even sit down at the table, because of the reputation you’ve already built. It works for any form of anticipation.

The idea is that the best victory is the one you win without having to fight for it.

The terrain has changed. The mechanism hasn’t. That’s what I mean.

This is what I call “abstraction of principles,” and it’s the reading skill that has completely changed how I approach books. I read slowly, but that’s because every page is worth ten times more. The process is simple, and I want you to understand it — let me walk you through it:

1. Strip away the context: Every book comes wrapped in a context or setting. The example I mentioned, The Art of War, comes wrapped in a military context. None of that is the high-value content. The first step is consciously recognizing which part of the text is just backdrop.

2. Look for the concepts: If you removed the proper names, the dates, the technology, the circumstances of the era… what concept would still hold true? For example, the fear of losing status in front of the group works the same in a Paleolithic tribe as in a modern corporate office. Look for that.

3. Extract the concepts: This is the step nobody takes. Recognize the principle and put it into your own words. Don’t remember things like “Sun Tzu says you must know the terrain.” Remember: “I shouldn’t make any important decision without thoroughly understanding the real context I’m competing in.”

4. Name it: That’s a very long phrase to remember, but you can give it a memorable name. For example, call it the “Law of Terrain” — the law stating you shouldn’t decide anything vital without knowing the context in detail. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first concept for thinking and acting. Store the idea in your mind, as a piece of your mental toolbox.

5. Put it to the test: A principle that can’t be applied to any concrete situation in your life is just a pretty sentence to underline and forget. It’s smoke. Take the principle you just named and actively look for where it fits into something you’re currently living through: a business decision, a personal conflict, a doubt about what to learn next, anything. If you can’t find where it applies, it’s not useful. Keep reading. There are thousands more in every book.

6. Write it down: If it worked for you, you need a place — physical or digital — to store it, so you remember it and keep applying it until it becomes so natural you do it unconsciously. I use my Zettelkasten for this.

Don’t read The Art of War to learn about ancient Chinese military strategy.

Read it to discover the laws of conflict that have never changed, and that will keep operating the same way five hundred years from now. Hold on to that — they need to be timeless, universal concepts. In other words, ones that work in any era and any place.

Only then will you transcend time and space with a breadth of mind that’s startling.

“Books took her to new worlds and introduced her to extraordinary people who lived exciting lives. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” — Roald Dahl, Matilda

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. Why you should read the classics

2. How to choose your next book: A simple method so you don’t get it wrong

3. The Antilibrary: The books you haven’t read are the most valuable ones

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Chadwick, I. Letter to Francesco Vettori. URL

2. Speer, N. K., Reynolds, J. R., Swallow, K. M., & Zacks, J. M. (2009). Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Visual and Motor Experiences. Psychological Science, 20(8), 989-999. URL

The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity

Kurt Vonnegut is a writer who knows how to stay with you.

If you’ve ever read one of his novels, you know what I mean. His writing makes you smile at the absurdity of it all, but a second later, it leaves you staring into the void, wondering what the true meaning of being here really is. He mastered the art of words and was a generous teacher, which is why he used to remind his students that their first job is to grab the reader’s attention and their second is to take care of it so they don’t leave. You have to give them an addictive story.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing your next short story, screenplay, novel, or newsletter—you’ve probably faced the same questions that haunt me in the morning: How do I connect this idea with the person on the other side? How do I make them stay?

Today, I want to break down with you the seven writing rules Kurt shared in the preface to his book Bagombo Snuff Box, and tell you how they’ve helped me shape the rhythm of everything I write.

Let’s take it step by step.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 7 Rules

1. Use people’s time in a way that makes them feel it was time well spent

Time is the scarcest and most valuable resource we have. Deep down, it is our life. Reading is one way of spending that time, perhaps one that is increasingly endangered in an age of endless short-form video content. For this reason, your reader should leave knowing they received something they didn’t have when they arrived.

Don’t think of anything too lofty. It could be something as simple as:

• A lesson

• An emotion

• A practical idea

• A new perspective

This applies to both fiction and nonfiction.

Think of movies like Interstellar, which gives you a profound reflection on time, love, and the future of humanity; or Homer’s Odyssey, which connects us with Greek mythology through an epic adventure filled with emotion; or even this article of mine, which aims to give you a practical insight for your writing.

Always write with this value proposition in mind.

If, when you finish your work, you can’t point to the benefit of reading it, revise the work.

2. Give the reader at least one character to root for

It doesn’t matter whether your protagonist is your own audience trying to get through a gray day, a warrior in a distant world, or simply an inanimate object.

We all need someone to accompany us through the fog. Only when we get the reader emotionally invested will they be willing to hold that character’s hand through every stumble along the way. This is also a key principle that the artists at Pixar emphasize when making their successful films.

And yes, this is obvious in fiction, but it remains useful in nonfiction.

When I write an article, or when you examine the successes of the genre, one key to success is weaving it together with a story. We empathize because the author strips themselves bare and tells us about their process from the same mud we’re standing in today, or because they bring forward the experience of someone who has already climbed out of that mud. It’s simple: we don’t fall in love with data; we fall in love with people and stories.

• On the most intimate level: We see ourselves in the vulnerability and hope trapped within The Diary of a Young Girl.

• In personal development: We see ourselves in the mice from Who Moved My Cheese?, dealing with the fear of change.

• In psychology and survival: We see ourselves in Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, looking for purpose in the middle of chaos.

If there’s no “someone” to hold on to, it’s very hard for the reader to stay.

3. Every character should want something, even if it’s only a glass of water

Desire is the heartbeat that keeps a story alive.

Think of The Big Lebowski: an entire movie revolving around a man who simply wants to get his rug back. Now, every time you review your paragraphs, ask yourself: What is this character really looking for? Answering that question gives the plot a clear direction at all times.

• In Finding Nemo: Everything boils down to a father who simply wants to find his son.

• In Gladiator: The driving force behind an entire empire is a man who only wants to avenge his family and return home.

• In The Lord of the Rings: Despite its epic scale, the plot is as simple as two friends who want to throw a ring into a volcano.

You can make things as intricate, profound, and expansive as you want, but at their core, things are quite simple. Have a clear premise and build around it.

4. Every sentence should either reveal character or advance the action

This is one of the best editing principles there is. In short fiction, where Kurt was an expert, if a sentence doesn’t reveal something about a character or move the story forward... simply remove it.

Your reader will thank you.

And in nonfiction, the same rule applies: every sentence should move toward a new idea or develop the value of what you’re explaining. If a paragraph doesn’t deepen the subject or take you to the next step, it’s filler.

The masters of nonfiction get straight to the point and make every line count:

• In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Stephen Covey doesn’t waste time; each principle is broken down with clarity and pragmatism.

• In Atomic Habits: James Clear cuts out the fluff to give you a manual where every line is a precise instruction for using the method.

Conciseness and clarity don’t take away depth. Quite the opposite: in many works where the reader’s goal is to want to know more, they amplify it. Read with your scissors in hand and cut everything that doesn’t take the reader toward what they want to know.

5. Start as close to the end as possible

This is crucial in short formats such as short stories and newsletter-style nonfiction.

Cut the unnecessary preambles and let your reader fall straight into the heart of the story. Starting in the middle of the action, what narrative calls in medias res, is exciting for you as the writer and transfers that same pull to the person reading.

It’s the key to succeeding in short formats like the short story, and it applies to nonfiction too.

Long introductions are obstacles in the path of a modern reader who lives in a hurry. Your opening should immediately make the value of staying clear. Don’t beat around the bush—present the problem, promise the solution, and get started.

Look at the introduction to this article as an example. In just three paragraphs, I told you:

• Kurt Vonnegut was a master at hooking readers.

• He taught his students to do the same.

• Are you struggling to connect people with your ideas and make them stay?

• Stay, because here are his seven expert rules to solve that problem.

If the topic interested you, you were hooked instantly.

6. Be a sadist

No matter how sweet and innocent your characters are, make terrible things happen to them.

This is also the golden rule of Pixar movies: We fall in love with the characters’ struggle, not their easy success. It’s only in the storms that we get to see what they’re made of, and we love them because they reflect our own imperfections—we see people who, deep down, are just like you and me.

It’s what I was saying earlier about nonfiction: connect with stories of people who climbed out of the mud and explain how they did it so they can help you.

7. Write to please just one person

There’s an unfounded idea that publishing on the internet means speaking to an auditorium full of people.

That’s not how it works.

If you try to make the entire world fall in love with your work, your voice will become diluted. Look at the content that goes viral: it tends to be superficial because it needs to appeal to the lowest common denominator to reach everyone. In that process, it loses all its charisma because it has to be capable of touching everyone—and every person is a universe when you go deep enough.

Instead, if you write with one specific person in mind—with their doubts, their fears, what they need to read today—something magical happens. The magic of platforms like Substack is that success isn’t measured in millions of empty clicks. The artist’s value lies in connecting with a small community of souls who resonate with your art, support your work, and take part in the process. The ongoing exchange of comments and events creates a bond between you and your readers, between all of us.

Think about your ideal reader, write only for them, and let the others find their way to you.

Return to the basics when you feel lost

Which of these rules resonates most with your own mental space? I tend to come back here whenever I get stuck halfway through a draft. If these lines manage to accompany you in your own process or spark your curiosity to discover the work of this fascinating author, then the journey will have been worth it.

Thank you for being here with me for another day.

Take care.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The 10 Rules of Elmore Leonard for Mastering Writing

2. The 6 Psychological Rules That Determine What Goes Viral

3. The 4 Structures of Great Stories, According to Kurt Vonnegut (and Science)

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

Share

References

1. Vonnegut, K. (1999). Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity, Mental models.

Kafkaesque.

Orwellian.

Machiavellian.

Stop for a second on that.

A surname shouldn’t become an adjective. That’s not normal. And yet there they are, intruders in language, functioning as a tool of thought to describe the world. You use those words for absurd situations, oppressive systems, ruthless policies, and you never even stopped to think about the anomaly they represent.

That’s what they are: anomalies.

They hit culture so hard that they left a mark even on language itself.

The question you should be asking is: what had to happen inside a person’s mind for the rest of humanity to start thinking, without realizing it, through their way of seeing the world? Because that’s what happened. Kafka, Orwell, or Machiavelli expressed a worldview that remains alive generation after generation, with an immense influence on the collective imagination.

And if you understand that mechanism, you also understand why 99% of today’s creators, writers, and thinkers, no matter how much content they produce, will never leave a mark that survives the passage of time.

Let’s dig into how to find your original worldview.

Your legacy is not your works

A book can disappear from shelves. A scientific theory can become obsolete the moment a better model appears. A company can go bankrupt. An empire can fall. A trend can evaporate in 24 hours. But a new way of looking at reality remains generation after generation and can leave an indelible mark on people’s lives and their way of thinking.

These are perspectives that, once you know them, you can’t “un-know.” They become part of you.

Books don’t change the world, but they do change people. And people gradually change culture. And culture contains language, which ends up incorporating your name, like Kafka, Orwell, or Machiavelli. The work stops being what matters; anything can be “Kafkaesque.” It’s their worldview that’s the key.

This is the path:

Book → personal change → collective change → linguistic change → legacy.

I want you to see this with the same clarity I see it, because it’s going to change how you approach anything you want to create from today on.

It’s not book → fame.

Fame and legacy are different things, almost opposites. Fame is consumed quickly, like this year’s bestsellers, few of which will still be relevant works in 10 years because of the Lindy Effect. Legacy settles into the world, into people, into how they describe reality. It lives in language. I wouldn’t say Plato, Cervantes, or Shakespeare are “famous,” but they are influential — they have an immense legacy.

Have you heard of “platonic love”? There’s your proof.

Legacy is the consequence of continuously expressing your vision through your art.

The importance of vision

This answers the most important question in the analysis.

How is a new way of interpreting reality built?

The structure is this: Worldview → principles → works.

Each level is born from the one before it.

• Your worldview is the fundamental way you interpret existence, human beings, work, suffering, success… it’s your way of seeing the world.

• Principles are your basic “laws” that describe that way you see the world. They are the pillars of your beliefs. They are your axioms and mottos.

• Works are where your principles materialize, like articulated fragments that describe ideas from your worldview — like books in a great library that is your vision. Articles, books, theories, companies…

This structure reverses how the internet thinks.

The internet believes that publishing a lot generates a brand. That a brand generates an audience. That an audience generates a legacy. In other words, that the process starts from the bottom, from the works. You push and push and push, hoping that at some point your identity will emerge from the fog of content you keep publishing.

Here I say the opposite.

First reflect on your vision, your principles will appear, your principles will give you ideas for creating works you can be proud of and motivated to make. This happens because you have an identity bond with them — you want to express yourself.

Everything flows from top to bottom.

Later there will be time to refine your worldview through your works. Every day I publish on Substack, I live that process. You can’t afford to drift for months or years without even knowing which direction you want to express yourself in.

Think of a tree.

• The articles you write are the leaves.

• The principles are the branches that group the leaves.

• Your worldview is the whole tree, with the central trunk that holds everything up.

Most creators spend years staring at leaves. They never ask themselves what belief system is producing those leaves in the first place. They are fragmented, erratic authors, hard to categorize and hard to connect with. They’re chaos.

What’s missing is the overarching vision that ties together and multiplies the combined weight of all their works.

• When you read Kafka, you see that suffocating universe everywhere.

• When you read Orwell, you see those political ideas in the background everywhere.

That’s what I mean. Whatever they’re talking about, there’s a coherent vision. It’s inseparable.

Your vision can’t be copied

We live in an age where anyone can generate, in seconds, a correct article without a single spelling mistake. Information is no longer scarce. Any fact, summary, “how to do X in 5 steps” is a click away, and a machine can produce it better and faster than you can.

That should only terrify you if information is your only product.

But no one can replicate the exact sequence of experiences, readings, obsessions, and wounds that led you to think the way you think. No one. An AI can imitate Kafka’s style, but it can’t have lived through what turned Kafka into Kafka. It can spit out an idea, but it needs some precedent or reference. AI doesn’t generate from nothing. Your worldview is the only intellectual property that can’t be pirated, because it lives inside you.

Your vision cannot be replicated — you are the only person in the world who knows it 100%.

“Each of us holds many mental maps. We interpret everything we experience through them.” — Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

People search for those artists like water in the desert. They want connection, identity, a person with a particular vision they can identify with, who can help them resolve their own vital questions. They want to feel that, by reading you, listening to your music, or seeing your painting, they see a part of themselves.

That’s why Kafka hooks so deeply into anyone with inner doubts. Same with Camus.

That is the real reason your vision matters more than ever.

If you want to know more about how to become irreplaceable, read this:

For today, we’ll continue with the process of finding your vision.

How to find your vision

Let’s get straight to it.

Step 1: Find your obsessions

Those interests that are inseparable from you, that define your way of life.

• What topic occupies your mind every day?

• What can you talk about for hours?

• What subjects do you research over and over?

• What things can you not stop doing or thinking about?

• What topic do people ask you about and associate you with?

That’s what matters to us. If you need inspiration, here are some of mine: writing, literature, creativity, attention, memory, all the psychology related to human behavior, good life habits, calisthenics, languages, geography.

Anyone who knows me could instantly associate those topics with me.

My writing reflects a percentage of my obsessions.

What are yours?

Don’t worry if you have many — you just saw my case. Your interests aren’t a random, disconnected pile of topics; deep down, you can write about anything and still be varied, because the most profitable niche that exists is you yourself, with all your obsessions expressed from one single vision.

Do you think that if Albert Camus talked about sports, gastronomy, or architecture, his worldview would change?

I doubt it very much.

That’s what I mean. Every great thinker and artist in history spent decades, not months, decades, trying to answer the same questions from a thousand different angles.

• Nietzsche asked, over and over, how to create your own values in a world without God.

• Jung asked, over and over, how to integrate the rejected parts of ourselves that live in our minds and that we avoid.

• Kafka reflected the lack of hope and purpose in life through every one of his stories.

• James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, has spent years studying how habits affect long-term performance.

There’s no other secret — it’s simply an obsession with certain topics, and expressing your vision through them.

• If James Clear talked about finance, he’d talk about how financial habits can make you rich.

• If Kafka talked about architecture, he’d say it’s just a way of trying to leave something permanent in an ephemeral, cruel life.

• If Jung talked about gastronomy, he’d tell us how flavors and family meals shape our minds, reminding us who cooked for us as children and the mark those flavors left on us.

See it now?

Expressing your vision through principles in your works builds your legacy.

Step 2: The world is your library

When you have an obsession, the world works in your favor — literally.

If your obsession is clear, everything you see gives you raw material to deepen it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a conversation, a movie, a book, or a lived experience. You can’t help but see it everywhere. That effect is called the availability heuristic. Once you’re at that point, the world becomes an infinite library from which to extract raw material.

Want some examples for inspiration?

• Having read so much about human behavior makes it impossible for me not to observe, with an analytical eye, the people walking by while I sit in a park. How they relate to others, whether they read, whether they look at their phone, how many minutes before they switch activities. What pattern they repeat in their behavior…

• Having read so much about creativity and writing makes it impossible for me to stop looking for patterns or keys that give meaning to a book. I can feel when the author structured things a certain way to give the work rhythm. I notice the connection between their ideas and those of the authors who inspired them.

There’s a nuance that multiplies the value of this step.

Two people can read the same book, watch the same movie, or come across the same idea, and walk away with different raw material. The idea doesn’t change — what changes is the light passing through it. It’s like light through glass: it refracts differently depending on the material.

• If your obsession is attention, a book about investing will speak to you about consistency and time horizon.

• If your obsession is creativity, that same book will speak to you about how to spot patterns before others do.

The book is the same. Your vision makes it yours.

That’s why two authors obsessed with the same topic never produce the same work. The raw material is shared; the filter isn’t. Hold on to that idea.

All of this leads you to gather an enormous amount of raw material: examples, books, quotes, authors, movies, experiences, conversations, podcasts, scientific articles… The amount of information you find that supports your vision is immense — it can become overwhelming. Honestly, these days I have a list of ideas that could keep me writing nonstop for almost two years.

What should you do if your obsession is already clear but you don’t know where to start?

Here are some examples.

• If my obsession were existentialist philosophy, I would spend 24 hours a day focused on that vision — I’d learn everything about Kafka, Camus, Emil Cioran, Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Dostoevsky, or Kobo Abe. Everything I saw would inspire me more and more in my own vision. I’d watch every cult film about existentialist philosophy, every book, painting, and song.

• If my obsession were finance, I would learn everything about Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Jim Simons, Benjamin Graham, or Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I couldn’t walk into a coffee shop without mentally calculating its fixed costs, profit margin, and business valuation.

Start there, then expand — become a polymath. You’ll start expressing your vision in everything, whether it’s gastronomy, astrophysics, or architecture.

That’s what I mean.

Step 3: Detect recurring principles

Here we consolidate your vision into fundamental laws.

Ask yourself: what principle always shows up, no matter what topic I’m dealing with? Right there, that’s where your philosophy begins. After enough reflection, you’ll see a set of principles underpinning your entire vision.

Need some inspiration?

One principle I hold is that, from studying attention at the psychological level, I discovered that the ability to sustain attention is plummeting, and unfortunately, if you can’t focus, it becomes impossible to achieve anything in life. Any life goal requires patience and prolonged concentration — things that are failing today.

That’s one of my principles. If you’ve read me a bit, you can confirm it. It repeats.

That’s what I believe, and I can back it up with dozens of books, hundreds of scientific articles, and thousands of everyday examples where I’ve seen what I’m defending. My vision led me to research the topic until I found that essential principle.

Every author holds principles — it’s just a matter of time until you find yours.

Transcending

If someone, someday, ends up seeing the world differently because of an idea you expressed with enough clarity — even if they never remember your name, even if they never cite the source, even if they simply start thinking “this way” without knowing where that “way” came from — then the phenomenon that produced the word “Kafkaesque” has already happened.

Maybe on a much smaller scale.

Kafka is in the top 0.1%.

I can’t promise your surname, name, or pen name will make it into the dictionary, but the mechanism is identical when we talk about being remembered online, on social media, in your generation, or wherever your vision is able to reach.

Being prolific is an advantage, but only if your work has quality and vision.

Most people jump straight to the end without going through any of the earlier stages of building a vision and developing their own principles. That’s why their content, no matter how much they optimize it, never ends up sounding like anything of their own. It’s erratic, sometimes even contradictory — today they say “A,” tomorrow they say “B.” You don’t know where they’re headed, and it’s hard to connect with them because even they never got their own mind in order.

You now have the keys to create your own vision.

Stay creative.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. How to become an irreplaceable artist in the age of AI

2. The Wine Glass Technique: How to write deep ideas and still go viral

3. The two types of creators who will dominate the internet

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 95,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 250,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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The following letter is part of our “Distilling Books” collection, in which we extract the most revealing ideas from literature.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity, Zettelkasten.

Every day, I send myself dozens of WhatsApp messages.

And photos, and voice notes, and screenshots of all sorts of things. It’s indispensable digital junk, because whenever I come across an interesting idea that I hear on the bus, on the street, while I’m at a bar or in an office, I compulsively write it down so I can draw inspiration from it later. I say “compulsively” because for a long time I considered that anxiety to collect things the writer’s disease. It’s the collector’s fallacy. It creates a feeling of progress even though you’re not actually moving forward at all… A serious writer works fragments until they take shape; they don’t leave them rotting in a folder…

So why was I accumulating notes?

Because when I wrote in my journal at night, I liked expanding on the ideas from the day. If I didn’t have many ideas on a given day, I would tell myself, “So what did you do today, Álvaro?” I felt pressure to turn chaos into something coherent within 24 hours, and since you can’t always produce something brilliant in 24 hours, I became overwhelmed. The notes waiting to be processed piled up like a massive avalanche, growing larger and larger as time went by.

It was while reading Albert Camus’s notebooks that I realized what was wrong with my process…

In 2025, The Complete Notebooks was published, the first complete translation of his personal notebooks. I have to tell you, I felt seen. Camus writes down an idea for a novel next to a complaint about how disgusting the weather has been lately. He writes a carefully developed reflection on loneliness and then jumps to something that happened to him that day on the street. It’s erratic, very erratic. All of this was going through his mind day after day while he was writing works such as The Stranger or The Plague.

Camus didn’t write his “journal” in the modern sense of an orderly confession of what happened to him that day. Rather, it was a “mental warehouse,” you might say.

That changed the way I write my own.

At first, I treated my journal as a meticulous record of what happened during the day, but it failed to capture the day’s inspiration. By obsessing over capturing everything that inspired me, I ruined the journal. Eventually, I understood Camus’s idea of a “mental warehouse.” If you look at it that way, a warehouse isn’t a place where you use everything; it’s simply where all the valuable products are kept, neatly organized. Valuable ideas go in there and stay there, waiting for a reason to return to them.

Hold on to that.

Instead of sitting down to “polish ideas” for publication, I started capturing and doing nothing else. Less material, but carefully chosen and without rushing. That’s what he did. Camus returned to his own fragments again and again. A note about the weather in Algiers might resurface much later, transformed into a scene in a novel. Perhaps an annoyance about feeling unwell or guilty would resurface over the course of days and days until it crystallized into the idea for one of his works, such as The Fall or The Stranger. That’s what I mean. Reading his notebooks in their entirety made this apparent again and again. It seemed as though Camus’s ideas were collected, worked on over weeks or months, and gradually connected the loose ends until they took shape. In the process, all the chaff was discarded, leaving only the grain.

Daily reflection was the way to sift through all this material.

My publishing pace is, of course, faster than Camus’s. A Substack article has little in common with a novel, but that doesn’t make the process any less valuable. Good ideas increasingly emerge in my articles through daily distillation, just as they did for Camus. The same idea can roll around in my journal for weeks, expanding day by day, while I record the events of everyday life.

“Masterpieces are not born from a single isolated act; they are the result of years of shared thought, so that accumulated experience lies behind a single voice.” — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

That is the key to Camus’s method.

I think it’s more urgent today than it was in Camus’s time, in fact. He lived in a slow, analog world, with plenty of time between one stimulus and the next, but… what about us? We live bombarded by a deafening noise in which most people simply keep running without stopping to think. A journal as a mental warehouse forces you to stop for a second instead of letting everything disappear into the black hole of infinite scrolling.

So if you don’t know how to write today, do this.

Open the page and write down the sentence someone said to you this morning that caught your attention. Also save the existential question you asked yourself last night while staring at the ceiling as you tried to fall asleep, along with that quote you saw on social media that you liked. From there, tag where those ideas are in your notebook and, day by day, keep bringing them back to mind and expanding them with whatever new things you encounter.

Before writing anything new, reread your latest entries.

Be highly selective. Save exquisite ideas and return to them day after day, pushing them a little further each time. Repeat this, day after day, week after week, and one day (you won’t know which one) you’ll discover that the loose thread you’ve been dragging along for months has, without you fully planning it, turned into a complete, well-articulated idea.

Don’t write essays.

Write fragments that might one day become essays.

“Your job isn’t to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they appear.” — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The moving confessions in Franz Kafka’s diary

2. Want to be a writer? 5 reasons to start a journal

3. Keeping a journal will change your life: The working tool of geniuses

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 100,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 300,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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References

1. Camus, A. (2025). The complete notebooks.

🏷️ Categories: Writing, Creativity.

“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it seems to disturb no one else.” — Kathryn Stockett, The Help

A few days ago I was talking with some friends about keeping journals…

At some point in the conversation, one of them said something that stuck in my memory: “So everything we’re talking about today is going to end up in your journal, right?” I told her yes. In part, always yes. Every person, place, and moment that has meant something to me ends up recorded on some page.

Nothing escapes the day’s final tally.

That’s the wellspring of writing. A writer doesn’t invent from nothing. Nobody really does. A writer simply pays attention where no one else bothers to look, then stubbornly refuses, with a sickly persistence, to let it fall into oblivion.

That’s the crux of the matter.

You already know this, you live it every day. We’re flooded with information that comes and goes without leaving a trace. A face, a stray phrase, an ordinary afternoon: the average mind processes and discards them instantly because we’re saturated with fast, intense stimuli, and we no longer give weight to the everyday and the slow. Most brains let these things drop into the black hole of forgetting, though a writer has a different system running behind the curtain.

Their attention is a filter on reality, and the hunger to write forgives nothing.

Once something manages to get through that filter, there’s no turning back. Your smile becomes a sentence that repeats in their head for days. A glance held one second too long risks becoming a metaphor. Without asking for it, by getting close to a writer you’ve already become raw material for a mind that distorts reality only to hand it back to you transformed into words.

That’s the reality behind the obsession of writing.

Writers have a habit of intensifying everything they receive.

Give them love, and they return it multiplied into paragraphs, letters, mountains of poems. Give them indifference, and they hand it back in rough prose that underlines every moment you seemed distant — maybe turning you, without your knowing, into the most bitter character in their next novel. There’s no way around it. To love a writer, to hate them, even just to know them, is to risk your story with that person ending up as ink one day.

If you’re not ready for them to read your chapters, better not get close.

It’s a quiet discipline. Writing is solitary, and paying attention requires silence. The way your eyes moved across the landscape. The exact sound of your laugh. The gesture of looking away when something bothered you and you didn’t want to say it out loud… A writer keeps their eyes on those details.

And the key, as you can see, is always in the ordinary.

That’s where extraordinary paragraphs are born.

That transformation is the writer’s craft.

Kafka didn’t write about a man turning into an insect by chance. It was a metaphor for no longer being understood by the very people who should know you best. Something similar happened to Sylvia Plath, who turned her grief into a language so intimate that, decades later, strangers still see themselves in her words. Or to Osamu Dazai, who turned his sense of not fitting into the world into a reflection where thousands still recognize themselves.

Writers don’t need much drama.

The ordinary is more than enough.

The strangest part of all this is that, even though they record everything, they also wish they could forget. There are names they’d like to erase and memories they’d love to leave behind for good, but those memories don’t disappear as easily as they’d like — because they end up being the well writers return to again and again when inspiration runs dry.

If you think about it that way, writing is cruel.

Long after the conversations have ended and the photographs have faded with time, a version of you will go on living among their sentences, intact, waiting for someone to read it again. Someone who, without knowing how the idea was born, will feel recognized in their own world — the same way it happens to us when we read Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Osamu Dazai, and so many others who turned their experience into ink. There we recognize our own fear, doubt, joy, all reflected in those lines. Behind those rows of black ink that sometimes look like the bars of a cell, there are trapped stories of real people, moments only the writer knows in their true form.

Words stay alive long after everything else fades.

That’s the risk you take by getting close to a writer.

— Álvaro

🌱 Instagram: Mental Garden

Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:

1. The moving confessions of Franz Kafka’s diary

2. Virginia Woolf: Self-doubt, creativity, and writing

3. Keeping a journal will change your life: the tool of great minds

P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.

If you’re just starting out and don’t know how it works, or if you’ve been at it for a while but are stuck, this will help you. I’ll help you find your direction, position yourself as a leader in your niche, and build a system tailored to your needs for sustainable growth.

My credentials? Over 95,000 global readers in 2 years, 100% organic growth, with 250,000 monthly visits. All from scratch, writing all by myself in my spare time.

If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me

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