1.

In discourse, relationships, or business, you must learn to distinguish between those really interested in something and those merely fascinated by it. You’ll waste your time if you keep pitching to those who’ll never commit, because they have no intention of ever proceeding beyond curiosity.

2.

Someone once told me that I had written about them in an essay; that I had used a negative illustration that they felt was about them. (No names, of course, so they were just guessing. Second, it wasn’t actually about them.)

So, I asked them what point I was making, and you guessed right; they couldn’t answer this question. I then explained to them that if they thought I was writing about them but couldn’t explain the point I was trying to make, then perhaps I was, in fact, writing about them.

“If you elevate yourself to the point where you see yourself in my writing yet cannot see the broader point I’m making, you prove why you are indeed that negative example. If I were you, I’d try to change.”

The discussion ended.

3.

If you want to know what a woman thinks about men, look at how she treats her son. What she wants for her son, she wants for men.

If you want to know what a man thinks and feels about women, look at how he treats his daughter and his mother.

4.

If you want to endear yourself to someone, treat well those they love. Few things can prove how much I love you more than loving those you love. If you want to hurt someone, hurt those they love.

It’s not hard to make someone love you; it’s also not hard to cause them pain. Those who love those you love and those who hurt the ones you love know what they are doing.

5.

I post on Substack, LinkedIn, and X. In a way, all social media platforms are the same, and in many ways, none is like another. The same is true for people. You are like all other people in some ways, and you are like none of them in many ways.

The trick is to know when what you have is representative of everything else, and when it isn’t. This is true about both good and bad elements/attributes of anything and anyone.

6.

A bio tells you what someone thinks of themselves, but what they post shows you who they are. A bio is frozen; posts are dynamic. Don’t trust what’s static; trust what’s evolving.

This is also why you should write online. If you don’t, people won’t know you enough to know if they can identify with you. This is a key weakness. In today’s world, you need to be known by as many people as possible—because you need a personal brand—and the only way to meet these is by sharing your thoughts, philosophy, ideas, and outlook online.

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7.

In life, a great deal of frustration results when people who’ve chosen to lead unconventional and extraordinary lives want to be understood by those who haven’t.

You cannot want to be different yet expect to be understood by those who aren’t.

If you still want this approval and acceptance, if you still need them, you aren’t exceptional yet; some parts of who you are are yet to catch up with who you want to be.

8.

There is a particular reason why I resent rhetoric that diminishes people, especially in politics: my life is not enhanced by the belittling of others.

Nobody stops me from doing or being anything. It follows, then, that another being made to feel small doesn’t help me in any way. It’s possible that some people gain when others are ridiculed; I suspect this is the rationale for the politics of making others feel small.

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I’ve already written about the subject of betting on yourself here, but I want to explore some things I didn’t touch on then. Specifically, I want to go much further than persuade: I want to reveal how you actually don’t have the option of not betting on yourself.

The work that I do mostly falls under two main categories. First, there is selling, mostly in the way of asking someone to choose something I have created. It could be this newsletter, Everyday Living. It could also be my book, The Practice of Living. Second, there is the work I do as a consultant, mostly related to ghostwriting. (There are other things, of course. Just want to keep the illustration simple by sticking to writing and writing-related services.)

All services involve sales, but I have noted a subtle yet highly important difference in how I sell them, and how potential customers accept or reject them.

When selling something I have created, I am asking someone to choose a product I have already made. When I am pitching ghostwriting services, I am asking them to hire me. These two things aren’t the same. They aren’t because I am not the same person. I am not because the mind of the person doing the evaluation doesn’t view me as the same person.

In setting one, I am a thinker and teacher. Someone wants to consume my thoughts and be led by them. In setting two, I have substitutes. There is only one The Practice of Living; there is only one Everyday Living. There are, however, many ghostwriters. I can be a good one, but the truth is that in that industry, there are others, and the client calculates that I am not especially special.

Those of you who have 9-5s and write newsletters on Substack can relate. You are the boss of your publication, but you are mostly just one of many employees at work.

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When someone buys a product you’ve created, they are experiencing you as a creator. When you ask to do something for them, you are asking for a job. Both of these things are hard; as already noted, I do both. They are, however, not the same, and they aren’t equally hard.

Even when someone rejects something you’ve made or created, they still have a great deal of respect. You are a producer, and they are a consumer. When they reject you because they won’t or cannot hire you, it’s different. You are an employee, and they are the employer.

There are, of course, good and excellent employees; people who’ve taken the time to be good or excellent at what they do.

Law firms need lawyers, and big finance needs analysts. The dynamics, however, don’t change just because you’re a skilled employee. Someone still has to hire you, and they can reject or fire you.

I’ve found that it’s much easier to sell “buy this thing I’ve made” than “hire me for this job.” All selling is hard, and most of what you’ll ever pitch someone, they will not buy. The reasons why they won’t buy, however, matter because of how different they are.

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I’m at a phase where I am consolidating my Everyday Living philosophy and frameworks. For now, I offer and refine these through writing. But—and I share this with you because I am building with you—the point is to expand to other mediums and ways.

You can be sure that as I refine and distill things even more, and as I myself come up with sharper models and frameworks, there will be videos about everyday living, and perhaps an app (don’t worry, there will never be courses. I don’t like them, and I know you don’t, too.)

One medium first, because I’m testing these ideas. When scaling comes, it will be a much larger ecosystem.

OK, enough about this. I’m not (yet) pitching to the VCs who read this newsletter. I’m sharing this vision for three main reasons.

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It took me some time to understand some of these. I share them because money is a big part of our lives. To not be enslaved by it, we have a responsibility to form the right attitudes about it.

1.

If you aren’t born into money, you must never feel ashamed of not having it, especially while young. Money is a measure of value, and it takes some time to be able to get to a point where you can be valuable.

You wouldn’t be ashamed that you aren’t 50 when you’re 27. What you must earn, give yourself time to earn.

2.

Many of us understand money as something that’s payment for work done. The problem is that there’s only so much work you can do. Part of getting to conceptualize money right was learning to see it as payment for value created.

Value has no limit. A newsletter can be read by tens of thousands; an app can be downloaded by millions. A business can outlive you.

The catch is that payment for work is immediate, which is why salaries are soothing. Value, however, pays upon compounding; it almost never pays immediately.

What value are you creating today that’s compounding?

3.

Customers don’t care about your product; they care about their needs. Consumers don’t care about your effort; they care about the thing created by it that’s valuable for them. You don’t have to create things you don’t want, but you do have to find wants to make the things you create valuable to those who would pay you.

4.

Money is not moral. Someone will pay a prostitute, but they won’t have money to subscribe to your fitness app. Money follows necessity, and necessity isn’t moral. It’s a compulsion.

To understand money, view it as you do its cousin: power. All people who moralize power are clueless and bitter, and they often get eaten.

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5.

Sell to those who have the ability to pay. People shop with their pockets, not hearts.

6.

People don’t buy from you unless they like you. So, while they shop with their pockets, it starts with the heart. You want to court the willing and able.

7.

It’s vulgar to talk about money endlessly. No, this is not an elitist view—I’m neither rich nor part of the elite by any definition. All people obsessed with money tend to be shallow, and anyone who has it has generally created the value necessary to be rewarded with it; hence, he’s beyond talking about money.

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Sometimes, I get asked what I’d advise someone who has to start from nothing. Those who’ve read my writing for long know about my past of being born into poverty and being orphaned at 8.

Not that I have much, but I’ve managed to build a life that some find interesting enough to ask this question: “Given where you started, what would you advise those who, for whatever reason, face similar or comparable circumstances?”

It’s a good question, because the truth is that many people will have to give themselves anything they’ll ever obtain. So, here, in this essay, I share the perspectives, attitudes, and techniques that I believe can lift anyone out of anything.

1. Seize the Clarity You Were Handed

When you are born poor and then your parents die, you acquire an unusual clarity early on, because there is simply nothing to distract you.

There’s nothing to inherit, and there’s no one to pity you. You look around, and the only path is forward. You are freed from the burden of options, unlike those who have to wonder whether to go to law school or work in the family business.

If you are starting from nothing, the only thing there can be is what you build. Let that sink in; let this understanding give you focus. Let it be the incentive that fuels your desire for excellence.

2. You Can’t Be Envious; You Simply Cannot Afford It

By definition, other people will have things you don’t have. You cannot and must not envy them, because envy is the thing you cannot afford. Those born into things can be envious. If they distract themselves and make nothing out of their lives, they can still fall back on what they were born into. Unlike you, they don’t have nothing.

You, however, have nothing to have if you don’t create, and I’ve never seen an envious person who masters the attitude of abundance enough to create, make, build, and arrive at plenitude.

This is not moral advice; it’s clarity. The master hunter drops anything that would slow him down. Envy will slow you down. You have a lot of pressures to deal with. You are poor with no support system. You simply have no capacity for envy.

3. You Cannot Not Be Farseeing

Getting anything in life that matters is hard, even for those born into privilege. This means getting anything will be a lot harder for you. You must learn to rid yourself of any arbitrary timelines and timeframes that society imposes on people.

You need time, a lot of it. Give yourself time, and then use foresight to build in that longer timeframe.

I don’t praise patience, foresight, and long-term thinking for no reason; my interest in these is not mere excitement. They are necessities for one who starts while behind. The beauty is that they are tools that are available to you.

It’s costly to conform, because in conforming, you enter a competition where you don’t have the tools needed to win. You cannot compete with those who’ve always had money, networks, connections, and reputation. You will only end up thinking you aren’t good enough, something you cannot afford to do.

Remember, not even your mother is around to remind you how capable you are. If you doubt yourself, it’s over.

4. Avoid All Types of Victimhood

I’ve shared a thought that some have found uncomfortable, and yet I have repeated it: you don’t need to be hurt by everything.

I believe all the discourse about healing is actually doing more harm than good. I believe few things should ever hurt to the point of necessitating healing, and thus much of the writing and videos on healing are, to a large degree, self-indulgence.

You must know that people simply don’t care. Second, even when they do, there’s still what no one can do about your sad story. Third, your story need not be sad.

I don’t look at my past and see a sad story. I see just history, reality, and events. People are born into poverty all the time, and people die all the time. Things will happen. You cannot be stuck in the past. You have a responsibility to keep going and change your fate.

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5. Be Strategic About Money

That you are poor or starting from nothing means there isn’t much money or opportunities where you were born. Money, then, lies outside. That’s why even parents encourage their children to move out of their villages and small towns to cities.

It’s hard to succeed where your parents didn’t, and that they didn’t is why you have to build from nothing in the first place. Acquire the skills that can aid mobility, then move.

But you don’t always have to move. We don’t work in factories anymore; many of us work on our laptops. In today’s age of connectivity, you can be in one place and have global reach.

I write, and I’m consulted, from Nairobi, and I have clients from many places. I don’t need to ever be in those other places. And—and this is important—this makes it possible to earn in dollars and spend in shillings.

Money also depends on where you come from; it depends on what currencies you earn and spend in. There is a reason I’d rather be in Nairobi; there’s a reason why Europeans are flocking to Thailand. Understand currencies and see your money grow wings.

We live in an era of globalization. Go where your money means the most—you can go there physically or virtually.

6. Overcome Stereotypes

Most people don’t like poor people. I wish it weren’t this way, but it is. Part of building from scratch is overcoming the limitations that the very reality of having to build from nothing imposes. You must grow to become one who isn’t affected by any insults that will come your way, and you must grow to convince people that you are a person they should listen to.

The good news is that everybody respects competence. If I write well, you want me to ghostwrite your memoir, even when you don’t like me. If you are sick, you want the best doctor; you want to get well before you go back to the little foolish business of “I don’t like people like you.”

The bad news is that it takes time to acquire skills and the competence that will see people give you a chance; the evidence that will outweigh their prejudices. Still, become these things, for yourself, and for the practical reasons that whatever work you’ll ever do will require clients, and you cannot have them if you don’t have a reputation.

7. Today Is the Best Time for Those Who Must Start From Nothing

Starting from nothing is hard, but it’s not impossible. Actually, there has never been a better time for those who must do it.

You have the opportunity to reach more people than those who had to do it in the past. That I can reach you with these words is the very illustration of this point. Whatever you can do, whatever you’ve been training to be good at, take it to people online. That is why I am keen to encourage people to build a personal brand. This is your leverage; this is where you can find those who value your work enough to share it, spread the word, or pay you.

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Of course, they won’t do it if your work isn’t good. But it is, or it will be, because you’ve been making it so for the last ten years. We’ve already established that things take time, because it takes time to be good, especially when you had to do it against all odds.

8. Know What Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make

I’ve seen many make this mistake, and it’s a sad one, because they aren’t bad people; they just misread their situations. In chapter 4 of The Practice of Living, I urge people to be precise because opportunities are rare. This is especially true for those who start with nothing.

We cannot avoid making mistakes; this is how we learn. But all mistakes aren’t the same. The point is to be one who makes the fewest mistakes in the course of arriving at a desired outcome.

You cannot be the rudest children in the foster care system. You cannot be the most expensive employee that the startup has ever known. People with systems to fall back on can be these things, but again, people who have such systems aren’t foster kids and aren’t looking for jobs.

So, as I argue in The Practice of Living, be good, and be precise. You want to be the sharpest instrument. When you pray, you don’t ask for ten chances, because you know how to make use of one.

So, prudence, not hesitation, and caution, not fear. You don’t want to spend your time rising from mistakes you shouldn’t have made in the first place. Remember, you barely have time. The few times that fortune looks your way, you must make them count.

9. The Reason Why You Do All This

A guy we’ve know each other for a long time once told me this when subscribing to my Substack:

“I’m paying for the work, but I’m also paying to support you, because I know what it’s taken to get to where you are, especially given where you started.”

He’s a lawyer, and he grew up middle class. He once told me that if it’s so hard to become something for someone who had some money while growing up, he can only imagine how hard it must be for one who didn’t.

I don’t have children yet, but when I do, I don’t want them to have to start from nothing. I don’t think I owe them much, and certainly won’t want to provide for them in a way that prevents them from learning things they should for an autonomous life. Life is hard, even when you don’t have to face poverty. The best gift is to be trained on how to handle it.

Still, it’s very hard and exhausting to have to earn everything, and not everyone is resilient enough to not be crushed.

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I think children should at least get the basics provided for them—the basic needs, the social needs like education and healthcare, and some reputation to build upon. Then, after that, it’s their job to earn what they become.

Life, then, doesn’t begin when you’re born; it begins where your parents left off. The point is to leave off where those who come after you won’t have to start at a negative.

If you had to start with and from nothing, you have a responsibility to ensure your children don’t. If everyone has to start from zero, then there is simply no momentum.

This isn’t just about your children. I’m making a broader point about civilizations here. If we all must start worrying about basic needs, we cannot build families, societies, or civilizations.

Each must do their best to move the human race forward by making it much easier for those who come later. As for the descendants for whom easier times will create soft and lazy people, these were perhaps never going to create anything anyway. They don’t negate the point of leaving a foundation for one’s children.

10. Have Fun While Doing All This

All these things will be hard, but you must train yourself to have fun while doing them. There’s only one life, and that yours must be spent catching up, surmounting, and overcoming doesn’t mean you become the unhappiest, anxious, or acidic person the world has ever known.

Everyone’s life is hard, and that includes those who were born into things you must earn.

Carry your loads with grace and elegance. Let your competence dazzle. There is never an excuse for being chronically unhappy.

We live, we strive, we win, or are felled. As for what it’ll be, that judgment will be in the autobiographies. For now, we still have time.

On one hot afternoon, probably in 2005, I was sitting in the shade with my grandmother. We were just chilling and chatting, and the conversation drifted to parenting. I praised her parenting skills, and then asked what, according to her, caused one to be a good parent.

She paused, reflected, as if extremely keen to advise her grandson right. Then she told me: “You cannot be a good parent before you are a grandparent.”

She proceeded to tell me she was a good parent because she had simply raised many children—her children, and then us, her grandchildren.

The secret, she revealed, was that a parent should be two things. First, they should be loving. Second, and especially regarding behavior that should be corrected, they should be able to respond without reacting; act without panicking.

All parents are capable of the first requirement; after all, most parents only ever raise their children, not anyone else’s. They cannot possibly be anything but loving. Th…

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1. Select well, or love will ruin you. There’s no place for love if you’re with the wrong person.

2. Only those who consider their value matched can be in love. Otherwise, one is simply buying time.

3. Young love is pure. Older love has experience. The young love passionately and intensely; older lovers understand practicalities and implications. Know what you’re in for.

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4. All love, eventually, ends. Things don’t need to end badly, but they’ll end.

5. Men want what they want; women want what they want. Women shouldn’t complain about what men want, and men shouldn’t complain about what women want. What another wants doesn’t have to make sense to you; they want it regardless. Either you can give it to them, or not.

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Those who’ve read my writing for long know that I love the wild, and that I also love illustrating ideas and concepts with what happens in the wild. So, here is yet another one.

I was recently chatting with a friend of mine who is very passionate about women’s affairs. She knows she can be biased, so when in doubt, she likes to ask me what I think. She has praised me for being fair, sober, and impartial.

The subject at hand was a situation which she felt was unfair (to one of the parties involved), and knowing my love for wild animals, she compared the “unfairness” to the way lionesses have to do most of the hunting while the lion remains boss, honored as the king of the pride and jungle. She was excited telling me this, you know, the way a friend knows, “I’ve got you here.”

I agreed that lionesses do most of the hunting, indeed almost 90% of it, but I explained to my friend that that doesn’t mean they matter most in the pride ecosystem. You know that I never keep people waiting, so here’s why:

The lioness is useful, but the lion has leverage. Simply, without the lion, there’s no pride. A predator will appear, take the territory, and then kill the cubs. There will be no territory in which to hunt, and there will be no cubs to continue the bloodline. So, protection simply ranks higher than hunting, because to eat, you must at least be alive.

Often, I meet people who think that theirs is the most important job or role. They try to convince me why they are being undervalued and underappreciated. It could be in a relationship or marriage, it could be in the organization in which they work, but it is also often in the social setting when analyzing group dynamics.

We must know that there is a difference between being useful and having leverage. The point should be to ascend the ladder to go much further than being useful. It should be to make sure you aren’t replaceable.

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The Freelancer

When I started freelancing after graduating from university, I still had doubts about whether this was the path I was ready to make mine. I knew I really didn’t want a corporate job; it just didn’t feel aligned with who I was and who I wanted become.

“What if, years down the line, I had nothing to show for it?” I’d wonder, sometimes.

At the time, I trusted something that I’ve always been good at: knowing what I don’t want, even when I don’t know what I want.

I’m glad I did.

Everyday Living

I mostly started this newsletter to spread the message about my book, The Practice of Living, which I felt at the time was doing badly in sales because I just didn’t have an elaborate promotion plan.

The newsletter, however, has become central to my work; it has led. It has become first, and the book and other aspects of my work and creation now rely on it. Still, and this is the more interesting thing I want to tell you, I have found the work that I have been …

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The writer who writes a book in a month after having postponed for months is not disciplined. The student who is married to the library just before exams is not disciplined. The lover who strives to make a relationship work after a poor selection of a partner isn’t disciplined.

Camping in the gym, going extremely hard to lose weight, isn’t being disciplined.

These actions are good, praiseworthy even, but they are nothing more than being mature enough to bear the consequences of correcting one’s mistake.

Many people erroneously equate discipline with force. This is wrong. At its core, discipline is effortlessness (I will circle back to this later).

Trying too hard isn’t discipline. The point of discipline is to train, repeat, refine, and perfect to the point of obtaining unconscious competence. Discipline is the dancer so agile that they move with ease, so much that they appear not to be moving at all.

Discipline, then, isn’t just action. It’s planning and prioritization; it’s foresight. It’s seeing what you never want to be compelled to correct.

Discipline is studying early to not be married to the library. It is writing 500 or 1,000 words every day to not have to rush the process of writing a book. It’s seeing the extra weight before it becomes a problem, then moving to cut food intake. It’s saying no to the irresistible lover who you aren’t compatible with for a long-term relationship.

Discipline, for the most part, remains largely invisible, because it simply avoids the problems that many who claim to be disciplined are working so hard to end or contain.

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I have a certain dislike for lateness that some people in my life have often found to be extreme. It might appear so, but only when one looks at the lateness. However, to me, being late isn’t about the lateness; it’s about the lack of discipline.

If you cannot be on time, you have no respect for time, the medium in which things happen. You will always be behind; you will always be in a hurry, firefighting, and fixing things. You will appear to be working hard, but only because you are dealing with problems you were just not good enough to learn to avoid.

I’ve never met anyone that’s chronically late that is disciplined.

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Action is good, but thought-out and strategic action is better. The squirrel runs, but it still gets eaten. The lion stalks, then chases, and then, with power, chokes to death. The squirrel runs; the lion has discipline.

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1. Family is those you cannot choose to abandon. This holds for them too.

2. Family is mostly blood, but other ties can make one family. These others aren’t many, though.

3. There are no grounds under which it is permissible to abandon family. You can be mad at them, not be on speaking terms, etc., but the responsibilities and obligations that you owe them don’t and never change.

4. With family, you learn to love even those you don’t like, because there can be love without liking, just as there is liking without love.

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5. It is simply unacceptable to neglect family. Here, obligations determine what constitutes neglect.

6. A family member who won’t pull their weight deserves punishment. They must be sanctioned. The punishment, however, should not involve banishment.

7. A parent should not parent a child he or she doesn’t have authority over. Responsibility without authority is being cheated. Those raising stepchildren, especially, must be aware of this.

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8. Don’t be there for those…

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I. Distractions

Distraction is a more powerful force than many understand.

In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, you deceive to distract. Toni Morrison famously explained that the serious function of racism is distraction. People are kept explaining and proving their humanity, and then they are left with no real time to focus on their own lives.

The point here is that if distraction is at the core of military adventures and is the hidden strategy of those intending to keep others down, then you know how powerful a weapon it is.

Phones distract; reels and doomscrolling can obviously lead astray. But these are nothing compared to the bigger distractions that we don’t see. The dead relationships we don’t dare leave; the job with a good salary, but which is just enough bribery to not pursue what makes one come alive.

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Sometimes, we are alert to the small distractions, but the very life we are living can be a distraction. Every life that isn’t aligned is a distraction. It is like a nation of bribery; it works, sometimes, for long. But then it reaches its limit.

Some nations are able to reform in time. Those that don’t realize that there is no way around nation-building don’t. They entertain and distract themselves; they fool themselves. And then they run out of time; they fade, or they fall.

Today, what is the distraction that you don’t notice or have normalized, accepted, and even institutionalized? What do you suspect you’ll regret on your deathbed?

II. My Beef with Poverty

Children think adults have the best lives. They cannot wait to grow up, become adults, and enjoy this freedom too. They grow up, they become adults, and they realize they had exaggerated the perks of being an adult.

Poverty imposes many limits and constraints, and it is only natural to imagine that life would be infinitely better if one had money. Unfortunately, if one spends their entire life poor, they just never get to find out.

I want everyone to have money, the type that at least frees them from having to think and worry about money all the time. I want everyone to have enough to stop waiting for something to happen so that they are happy, fulfilled, or generous.

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Recently, a lady friend of mine complained to me that her children were so lazy that, if she weren’t their mother, she would hate them. “They are just so very lazy,” she said, exhausted, “the scene disgusts me.”

I asked if she had told them how their behavior made her feel, to which she explained that it’s simply impossible for them to change. Perhaps it was a generational thing, she added; maybe the young just don’t care about being hardworking anymore.

This woman, like me, grew up somewhere rural. I understood her very well. I tried to explain to her that we were hardworking because we had to.

If I didn’t milk the cow, there would be no milk to cook tea. If we didn’t plant and cultivate, there would be no harvest, which meant no grain, which meant starvation. If I took a nap one afternoon and didn’t go to fetch water, that meant a household where you couldn’t bathe or wash anything.

In the village, everything ran lik…

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Suppose something unflattering about you were to become known. What about this would affect you the most, and why?

Let’s say you are searching, applying, but, still, cannot find a job. Or, having exhausted your savings, you’ve had to move back in with your parents. Or perhaps you’re in the middle of a pivot that you just cannot get right. It’s taking too long, and even you are beginning to doubt yourself.

Each of us, on occasion, will deal with something that makes them pause, reflect, and say, “Perhaps I’m not really as good as I have always thought. If I were, I would have seen this coming.”

If this “failure” were to become known by people you don’t think should know about it, there’s a possibility that you’d feel ashamed, embarrassed, or deflated. You might think that such details becoming public could lower your reputation, perhaps in a way that undermines your brand.

Today, I am here to tell you that you shouldn’t worry about any of these things, and I explain why.

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The Assumption of Control

First, and especially after we’ve been doing well for some time, we come to exaggerate how much control we have over things. This is misleading.

There is you, and then there is the environment in which you operate that’s greater than you.

Skilled employees will still struggle to find work in a job market where labor is being axed as firms move towards AI. Good people with pure intentions might still not find love in a distorted and polluted dating market.

We feel shame when we think everything is personal, that there are things we aren’t doing, that outcomes would be different if we were doing them.

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There is a place for personal responsibility, and there is the place for the acknowledgment of what is beyond us. This is important; you are one person in a system, and there are no individual solutions to systemic problems.

Decisions

Closely related to the above is that you can still lose after making the right decision. That things don’t appear to be going anywhere isn’t evidence of poor decisions. It’s not evidence that it is time to stop and change your approach.

This, at times, confuses because people expect to win with the right decisions; they even expect that winning is the thing that validates decisions.

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1.

Everything is training. Doomscrolling. The compromises you accept—at work, in relationships. Things aren’t just happening; every experience is shaping us to become people who are in a certain way.

What you are doing now, what is happening in your life right now, what is it shaping you into? Do you want to become that person?

2.

Sometimes, I revisit music that I loved in, say, my high school years. A really good song may not have tens of millions of views on YouTube. There simply weren’t as many listeners then as there are today. (I’m especially referring to consumption over online platforms.)

There will be more consumers for your work ten years from now than there are today, but you won’t benefit from this if you don’t keep creating.

Despite everything—and I am especially qualified to tell you this, given the life that I’ve lived—life generally gets better. Don’t be lied to; don’t give up on your future.

3.

Regular readers of my writing know that I place a very specific emphasis on dreams. I dedicated an entire chapter in The Practice of Living to this subject, and many who’ve read the book have loved it.

I cherish dreams because they are a thing nobody can take from you. You can dream, regardless of what you were born into, where you are in the world right now, or where you are in your life’s journey.

And if you execute diligently and consistently, you can actually create the world you dream of.

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4.

There are no socialists in poor countries. Everyone can see there’s nothing to redistribute. Only people in rich countries flirt with this economic distraction, and for a simple and predictable reason: there’s wealth to fixate on in the first place.

We must discuss reforming capitalism, especially, uplifting those being left behind. Socialism, however, only fools those living in countries enjoying plenitude created by capitalism.

In a capitalist society, possibilities and incentives remain. In a socialist system, they are removed, for everyone, and everyone sits by the fireplace, emptying the granary, and cheering on the upcoming poverty of all.

5.

Speed is an indicator of prioritization and optionality. What we want, what we really need to happen, we do immediately. What we don’t want, when we have options, we do other things first.

A job that you keep saying “I’ll apply,” the partner who won’t commit, a delayed response from someone you want to collaborate with, etc. How fast we move is an indicator of how much a thing means to us.

This is not about rushing, which just reveals incompetence. It’s about how soon we give an informed yes when presented with an opportunity.

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6.

You can be rich by acquiring more, or by letting go of your desires. Each comes with its set of costs. If you are the type that values more, you suffer the costs of obtaining. If you are the type that caps and eliminates, you bear the costs of going without.

All the whining and wailing are coming from those who are playing a game that isn’t meant for them. Choose your way to riches, and pay your costs happily.

7.

If you don’t love the person initially, you don’t grow to love them. If you don’t like the job at the start, you won’t grow to like it. All the excuses and justifications eventually start to mean nothing, and what you’ve always known becomes impossible to not see.

The one searching for their path either finds it or at least finds meaning in the search. The person who said yes to what wasn’t aligned dies from the crushing weight of a wasted life.

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If you anticipate how something you’re doing or planning to do will affect me, two things are true about you.

First, you are considerate; you care enough to see how your actions affect other people. You are not just all about yourself. You are a good person. This is virtue.

Something else is also true about you: you know game theory. You don’t just do. You anticipate reaction and response. You refrain from doing what triggers the response you don’t want. You see ahead, many steps ahead. You act to create certain outcomes and avoid others.

You are good; you are skilled.

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I already made this point in a previous essay, but I return to it because I believe it merits a detailed elaboration.

It might be related to the sentiment that ‘how you do anything is how you do everything,’ and thus it is impossible to be good at one thing while being terrible at others, just as it is impossible to be terrible at some things while being excellent at others.

My observation and judgment is that the skilled are virtuous, and the virtuous are skilled, and thus those who aren’t good at one tend to be poor at both.

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Selfishness

Nothing illustrates this better than the fate of selfish people. They are, of course, not virtuous. They don’t care for anyone but themselves. They don’t share; they don’t help. They are simply insufferable.

But all selfish people are foolish, and this is even more regrettable. They are myopic and act in a manner that harms their long-term interests.

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Since publishing The Practice of Living in 2022 and starting this newsletter in late 2023, there is a question that keeps coming up, repeatedly, and with a stable frequency.

“What is your thinking process, how do you think these things that you write, and how can I, too, obtain this level of clarity?”

I have refrained from answering this three-part question, because I wanted to address it when the time is right, when I had a detailed process to share. That time has come, because I have reflected exhaustively on this matter, and also because I now have a body of writing that I can review to offer insights about this question, especially because I want to answer it from the angle of readers’ interaction with my writing.

A note before we proceed:

You may recall the announcement where I said I’ll be broadening, aligning, and refining the work I publish on here. As part of this, I will be writing articles that are answers to recurring questions.

This is why we are here, after all. So, we discourse on things especially pertinent to our lives.

The detailed and personalized explorations will only be for paid readers. If you don’t want to miss the full Everyday Living experience, if you want to be part of this journey of answers, please do upgrade to paid.

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This article was particularly inspired by an exchange I had with in Notes, who asked me the following:

“I’d love to know your thinking process. Do these points just pop up in your head whole and ready to share? Or do you sit with them and distill.”

So, here’s the detailed answer, for everyone.

Whether you are evaluating a relationship or a job offer, distilling business ideas, forming an opinion about the policies of a given government or politician, planning for the future, or meditating on existential questions, the way to think clearly remains the same, and it is possible to train yourself to think and act in a manner that delivers the outcomes you want.

This is how I do it, and it appears that I at least do it in a way that is admirable, which is why many of you have asked about the process.

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This is the first in a series of articles where I will be sharing ten things or rules about something. Unlike Meditations, which touch on various topics, these will be ten things about just one thing, and they’ll be brief. Enjoy, and reflect on.

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Before we proceed, I’ll make this request: If you’ve found my work valuable, consider upgrading to paid. This support makes it possible for me to keep providing these essays. I’m grateful to my paid subscribers, and as more of you upgrade to paid, I have big plans to bring you even more impactful work. This is the promise. So, stick around and experience the unfolding.

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