The problem

William Zinsser:

“Often you’ll find yourself embarking on an article so apparently lifeless—the history of an institution, or some local issue such as storm sewers—that you will quail at the prospect of keeping your readers, or even yourself, awake.”

The Solution

“Take heart. You’ll find the solution if you look for the human element. Somewhere in every drab institution are men and women who have a fierce attachment to what they are doing and are rich repositories of lore. Somewhere behind every storm sewer is a politician whose future hangs on getting it installed and a widow who has always lived on the block and is outraged that some damn-fool legislator thinks it will wash away. Find these people to tell your story, and it won’t be drab.”

[…]

“I’ve proved this to myself often. Many years ago I was invited to write a small book for the New York Public Library to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its main building and millions of musty volumes. But behind the facade I found that the library had 19 research divisions, each with a curator supervising a hoard of treasures and oddities, from Washington’s handwritten Farewell Address to 750,000 movie stills. I decided to interview all those curators to learn what was in their collections, what they were adding to keep up with new areas of knowledge, and how their rooms were being used.”

“I found that the Science & Technology division had a collection of patents second only to that of the United States Patent Office and was therefore a second home to the city’s patent lawyers. But it also had a daily stream of men and women who thought they were on the verge of discovering perpetual motion. “Everybody’s got something to invent,” the curator explained, “but they won’t tell us what they’re looking for—maybe because they think we’ll patent it ourselves.” The whole building turned out to be just such a mixture of scholars and searchers and crackpots, and my story, though ostensibly the chronicle of an institution, was really a story about people.

It captures the idea that every decision is also a rejection — choosing one path means forgoing whatever the next-best alternative would have given you. The “cost” isn’t always money. It can be time, energy, and attention.

Opportunity cost is most useful when making high-stakes decisions: career moves, financial choices, or any situation where saying yes to one thing means saying no to something of high value.

The Trade-off Test

1. What choice are we trying to make?

2. What are we giving up (sacrificing) by making this choice?

3. What else could we do with the same time, energy, and money?

Opportunity cost thinking always requires a named alternative. No alternative named = no opportunity cost analysis done.

Tools

JITI (Just-in-Time Information). Acquire only the information necessary to accomplish your next step. It helps prevent information overload and keeps you focused on what’s most important at any given moment. Protect the next step.

Lean Learning Method

1. Identify the next step in your journey.

2. Gather the minimum amount of information required to complete that step.

3. Take action and complete the step.

4. Rinse and repeat.

1. ITWEWWILL

• What: ITWEWWILL stand for “If this were easy, what would it look like?”

• Why: It is a “question I ask myself when I feel overwhelmed, paralyzed by choice, or just confused and frustrated with something I’m trying to accomplish. This question has helped me in my marriage. It has helped me with my team…It’s the most useful and versatile question you could ever ask yourself at any moment in time when you’re figuring out what to do next.” - Pat Flynn

• Application Example 1: When we “were inspired to invent a brand-new tripod for vloggers, this question became our guiding compass throughout the entire process.
  
  …neither of us knew anything about creating physical products, manufacturing, or shipping, and it was this Keystone Question that helped us figure out what to do next.
  
  During the prototyping phase, we asked ourselves, “If this were easy, what would it look like?,” and we simply cut various shapes out of cardboard boxes we had lying around. When trying to determine what the proper dimensions of our product will be, we asked ourselves the same question, and decided to drive to a TouTuber conference (VidCon) and just ask the creators who were there. And when deciding to sell our product, that same question helped us understand that building relationships with influential people would be way more valuable than trying to nail advertisement campaigns.
  
  […]
  
  After our public launch, we asked ourselves that all -important question once more, and found that the easiest way to expand the company was not to buy warehouses, hire more employees, and fight for more market share. We didn’t have the time or resources to do all of that. Rather, we decided to add accessories to our main product, such as a ball-head attachment and a mobile phone adapter. Instead of inventing the products from scratch, we white-labeled them from manufacturing partners who had designs already made that we could adjust slightly. We then sold all of those products individually, and as a total package.”
  
  […]
  
  “This is the power of asking ourselves the same ITWEWWILL question multiple times across the various stages of a launch. Because at each stage, we can make decisions that affect our real-time situation versus trying to build an entire five-to-ten-year business plan.”

John and his family have a weekly Sabbath practice that’s both simple and sacred.

Here’s how they do it, in his own words:

“To begin, set aside a day. Clear your schedule. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. Say a prayer to invite the Holy Spirit to pastor you into his presence. And then rest and worship. In whatever way is life giving for your soul.

My family and I do this every week. Just before sunset on Friday, we finish up all our to-do list and homework and grocery shopping and responsibilities, power down all our devices (we literally put them all in a box and stow it in a closet), and gather around the table as a family. We open a bottle of wine, light some candles, read a psalm, pray. Then we feast, and we basically don’t stop feasting for the next twenty-four hours.”

Shutting down every device frees them to simply be—to step back into the unhurried, ordinary moments that make a life.

“We sleep in Saturday morning. Drink coffee. Read our Bibles. Pray more. Spend time together. Talk. Laugh. In summer, walk to the park. In winter, make a fire. Get lost in good novels on the couch. Cuddle. Nap. Make love.

I spend a lot of time just sitting by the window, being. It’s like a less stressful Christmas every week.”

John begins to feel a deep peace later in the day. A kind of stillness that’s hard to explain.

“And something happens about halfway through the day, something hard to put language to. It’s like my soul catches up to my body. Like some deep part of me that got beat up and drowned out by meetings and email and Twitter and relational conflict and the difficulty of life comes back to the surface of my heart.

I feel free.

Free from the need to do more, get more, be more. Free from the spirit—the evil, demonic spirit—of restlessness that ensalves our society. I feel another spirit, the Holy Spirit, of restful calm settle over my whole person. And I find that my ordinary life is enough.

And on Saturday evening when I turn my phone back on and re-enter the modern world, I do so slowly. And, wow, does that ever feel good.”

Laundry piles up.
Errands spill into Saturday.
By Sunday night, you’ve answered a few emails “just to get ahead.”

It feels like rest never really comes. Instead of feeling lighter, you end the weekend weighed down.

But maybe it’s not just you.

Modern life is built to stretch work into every spare corner. Free time shrinks, and what’s left gets filled with chores or passive scrolling.

That’s why so many weekends feel empty. You did things, but you didn’t live.

What if the missing piece isn’t more rest, but something else? Something that makes time off actually feel like time well spent?

That missing piece is fun, as Mike Rucker argues in The Fun Habit.

Fun means engaging in experiences that bring pleasure and presence.

We’re quick to audit our calendars for productivity. Meetings, deadlines, deliverables — all get scheduled with precision.

But what if we also audited for fun?

Rucker describes two types: pleasing and living.

• Pleasing activities are the lighter joys: a good meal, a funny show, a favorite hobby.

• Living activities take more effort but deliver deeper reward: playing a game, hosting friends, exploring new places.

Together, they protect our free time from dissolving into chores or screens.

Some examples

Pleasing activities (easy joys):

• Listening to a favorite playlist

• Watching a comedy or comfort show

• Playing a casual video game

• Reading a light book or magazine

• Enjoying a great meal or dessert

Living activities (effort + reward):

• Playing basketball or another sport

• Hosting friends for dinner

• Learning a new skill or hobby

• Going on a hike or day trip

• Traveling somewhere new, even locally

Prompts to guide choices

• What did I do this week that felt fun?

• When did I last lose track of time?

• What’s one thing I could add this weekend that’s fun for its own sake?

My personal shortlist

• Play basketball

• Reading books (calm project)

• Family meals

• Walks with no set route

• A weekend sabbatical: no work, low-stakes activities, no alarms

• A walk in the park while noticing tiny details

Audit your memories, not just your calendar

Fun is often treated as an extra, something to fit in after the important thing is done.

But fun is an important thing, too. It shapes how we experience time. It turns empty hours into stories worth keeping.

The laugh you almost brushed past. The meal you almost rushed. The game you almost turned down.

The cost of neglecting fun is that your life becomes efficient, but forgettable.

So perhaps the better audit isn’t just of your calendar, but of your memories. At the end of the week, what moments are worth keeping?

• Best-fit customers are easiest to sell to and retain.

• Focusing on a narrow prospect segment feels counterintuitive. If you want more customers, why not target more people? In reality, the opposite is true. The broader the focus, the harder it is to connect and convince.

• Other customers: Think your product is fine, but not special. They take longer to decide, push for discounts, and churn when something cheaper appears.

• Best-fit customers: Instantly understand the value. Buy quickly. Suggest you should charge more. Tell their friends. Stay loyal. Defend your product.

• With limited sales and marketing resources (and most of us have limits), it makes sense to spend them on people who look like your best-fit customers—if there are enough of them to meet your goals.

Finding your best-fit customers begins with knowing the core capabilities or unique attributes they value most.

Maybe it’s because I work from home, where the boundary between work and rest is blurry. But even on weekends, I tend to carry my weekday habits with me.

For example: every morning, I head to a convenience store, buy a cup of espresso, and read a book about a skill I’m working on. That routine has been good for growth during the week.

On weekends, though, I often catch myself reaching for the same book, about to repeat the same weekday habit. I had to remind myself: weekends should feel different. Different structure. Different rhythm. Different pace, intensity, and stakes. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel like a weekend at all.

Evenings are similar. When I’m tired, I’ll still pick up books on career growth or skill-building. It’s input stacked on top of input, when what I really need is recovery.

That’s why I want to be more conscious and deliberate about rest and renewal. Deep work and constant progress take a toll. And if the repair process can’t keep up with the damage process, the result is exhaustion — maybe even illness.

Kevin Kelly put it best: “A strong work ethic requires a strong rest ethic.”

This guide is my attempt to build that rest ethic through experiments for rest and renewal. Practices I can scan when I feel tired, restless, or overextended — and choose one to restore balance.

Experiments for rest and renewal

1. Quiet / Low-Stimulus Practices

Sit on a porch, balcony, or park bench with no phone.

Watch clouds drift or a sunset unfold.

Gaze at a candle flame or fireplace.

Practice mindful breathing without structure.

2. Sensory Resets

5. Listen to ambient sounds (rain, birds, waves).

6. Take a bath with no distractions.

7. Drink tea or coffee slowly, noticing flavor and warmth.

8. Try “one-song listening” — immerse in a track fully.

3. Intentional Stillness

9. Lie down in silence for 10–15 minutes (not to nap).

10. Sit in a dark room with no screens.

11. Set a timer for 10 minutes and practice “doing nothing.”

4. Nervous System Reset

12. Practice 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation.

13. Sit quietly in nature — at a park, near water, or under trees.

14. Take a sauna session.

15. Do a cold plunge or cold shower.

16. Alternate hot and cold showers.

5. Gentle, Tactile Hobbies

17. Knit, crochet, or sew slowly.

18. Doodle or sketch with no goal.

19. Water plants or tend to a garden.

20. Do a crossword or jigsaw puzzle at leisure.

6. Mental / Emotional Repair

21. Play a hobby with no stakes — sketching, gardening, or music.

22. Journal for 10 minutes to process thoughts.

23. Write down three emotions you’re feeling right now.

24. Call or meet a close friend for connection.

25. Spend time with family without screens.

7. Physical Recovery

26. Take a gentle walk to improve circulation.

27. Do a stretching routine or yoga flow.

28. Try tai chi for slow, restorative movement.

29. Use a foam roller or self-massage for muscle release.

30. Drink a full glass of water when you feel drained.

31. Eat a nutrient-rich meal with protein, antioxidants, and healthy fats.

32. Practice slow nasal breathing for 5 minutes.

33. Try box breathing: inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4.

8. Rhythms & Environment

34. Get 10–15 minutes of morning sunlight.

35. Do a digital detox hour — no screens.

36. Take a tech-free walk.

37. Create a quiet corner for rest (dim lights, no noise).

9. Micro-Detox Practices

38. Leave your phone in another room for an hour.

39. Eat one meal in silence without multitasking.

40. Take a short walk with no music or podcasts.

20 November 2025

Dr. Andrew Huberman's Morning Routine

• Wake up at the same time range (6:00 - 6:30 am)

• Write down wake up time

• Drink Water w/ Seasalt

• Go outside for 10-15 min walk

• Drink caffeine (coffee) 1.5-2 hrs after waking up

• Work for 90 mins (cognitive)

• Breakfast at 11:00 - 12:00 (fasting until 11 am)

• Physical exercise (1 hour)

• Deliberate cold exposure

10 November 2025

On Problems (in copywriting)

• What’s the gap between their observation and aspiration?

• What makes them suffer right now?

• What does suffering look like?

• What situation/outcome do they want to avoid?

• Who are they angry at?

• Who do they feel misunderstood by?

• What annoys them?

• What do they feel guilty for?

• How are their problems impacting their day-to-day life?

24 October 2025

Guiding Policy vs OGSM

24 October 2025

What’s the HTW in an email campaign strategy context?

In business, “winning” = higher margins or market share.

And the ways to win (cost leadership or differentiation) are modes of advantage that lead to that end.

But What Are the “Cost Leadership” and “Differentiation” Equivalents?

In business, Cost Leadership and Differentiation are just two archetypes of advantage.

In email, your advantage comes from how you shape behavior — your mechanism for influence.

Think of it this way:

So the true variable you optimize in email is not “margin” — it’s conversion leverage:

How efficiently can your emails move users from awareness → action, relative to other touchpoints or campaigns?

Here’s the more universal definition adapted to email:

How to Win in Email Strategy = your theory of how your campaign will move your chosen segment closer to action more effectively than the default experience.

And your ways to win fall into patterns — just like business has cost leadership and differentiation.

These are your strategic “modes of advantage” — the email equivalents of cost leadership and differentiation.

Final Guiding Question (for Your Email Strategy Framework)

“What system of messaging, proof, and timing will move this audience toward action more effectively than the default experience — and why will it work?”

That’s your email strategist’s version of:

“What’s your way to win in your chosen playing field?”

It preserves the essence of strategy — focus, advantage, and theory of change —
but in your own operational reality.

13 October 2025

Strategy Choice Cascade Elements

1. Winning aspiration

2. Where to Play

3. How to Win

• Roger Martin: “The simplest way to think about your HTW choice is that it is your theory of how you will be better than the competition.”

• More broadly, I see How to Win as the theory of what solution can best address the nature of the diagnosed problem.
  
  For example, in the context of business strategy, a company may fail to “win” (i.e., lack a competitive advantage) because it doesn’t achieve the highest margins among its competitors.

  
  The solution to that diagnosed problem would be any mechanism that leads to higher margins, which, in business strategy, are 1) cost leadership and 2) differentiation.
  
  This framing reminds me of the Guiding Policy concept from Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy:
  
  He writes:
  
  ”[A guiding policy] outlines the overall approach for overcoming the obstacles highlighted by the diagnosis. It’s ‘guiding’ because it channels action in certain directions without defining exactly what shall be done.”
  

  In this sense, How to Win should always be crafted in response to the diagnosed problem. Different diagnoses naturally lead to different How to Win choices.

• From my microessay:

  “Your How to Win is your theory of how you’ll reach your aspiration more easily, more reliably, or with less resistance.”
  
  Here’s another broad framing from the same essay:
  
  ”How to Win = Your theory of how your unique system of choices and capabilities will overcome resistance and produce progress more reliably than alternatives.”
  

• HTW deliverable: Strategy Portrait

4. Core capabilities

5. Measurement systems

12 Oct 2025

How will you measure your weekends?

• Urgency - none, low

• Stakes - none, low

30 September 2025 Tuesday

It turns out, Playing to Win Strategy Framework is not limited to creating Business Strategies. It can also be applied to other fields. So far, where they can applied:

Personal Strategy

23 September 2025, Tuesday

A few questions On Writing a Relatable Story

• Why write a relatable story?

• When is it important to make it relatable? When is it not?

• What makes a story relatable? What makes people identify with the protagonist?

20 September 2025, Saturday

What does slow living mean?

And how is it different than the status quo?

Let’s explore a subset of slow living first: slow working.

Fast working (the status quo)

• Doing income-producing tasks on the clock.

• Working at 80–90% intensity.

• Pushing under deadlines: fast-paced, high-stakes, urgent, rushed.

• Doing income-producing work with time pressure because of a deadline (faster-paced, high-stakes, urgent, rushed, hurried)

Slow working (the inversion)

• Doing income-producing tasks without the alarm clock dictating your start and breaks.

• Working at 50–60% intensity.

• Moving without deadline pressure: slower-paced, low-stakes, unrushed.

What would need to be true to make slow working real?

Do fewer tasks.
Fewer tasks mean fewer deep work blocks. Fewer blocks open more rest periods and reduce the overall “volume” of deep work.

Lower the stakes.
Take on projects where missing a deadline doesn’t carry heavy consequences. Personal experiments, creative work, side projects.

Extending to slow living (weekends)

What does slow living look like outside of work?

• No income-producing work.

• Low-stakes activities. If weekdays drain your mental tank, withdraw from other tanks on weekends: social, physical, spiritual, emotional.

• A weekend sabbatical. Step back entirely from obligations and treat the weekend as sacred rest.

• No time pressure. No alarms, no rigid schedules.

• Low intensity. Move at half-speed.

• Mindfulness. Do things for the sake of doing them, not for an outcome.

  For me, that could be:

  • Playing basketball just to enjoy the game.

  • Reading a book without needing to take notes.

  • Meeting friends without an agenda.

  • Sharing a meal with family.

  • Going out for a walk.

  • Listening to music.

  • Soaking in nature.

  • Cooking a meal slowly.

  • Journaling or sketching ideas (like this note entry you’re reading now).

  • Philosophical meditation

  • Building moments of awe

  • Doing experiments from the book, Art of Noticing

The common thread: the activity is complete in itself. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere.

Newton’s first law of motion states that:

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force.

On a frictionless surface, the tiniest push can move the heaviest object. But in the real world, friction pushes back. The rougher the surface, the more force required to move anything.

In physics, the equation looks like this:

Force needed to move an object = coefficient of friction × weight of the object

Customer resistance is measurable like friction

A person at the status quo will remain at the status quo unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

If there were no resistance, any sales pitch would work. Any nudge would do.

But resistance exists.

According to The JOLT Effect, it comes from two main sources:

1. Status quo bias — the comfort of the current state outweighs the risk of change.

2. Customer indecision — the fear of making the wrong choice.

So the equation for change looks more like this:

In other words, force for change must exceed (status quo bias + customer indecision).

That means we can influence three major factors:

1. Increase the desire for change — sharpen the pain of staying put.

2. Reduce the pull of the status quo — show why the old way is riskier.

3. Reduce the weight of indecision — make the choice safer, smaller, or less risky.

That’s sales inertia.

(to be continued…)

• What six weeks of work looks like

• How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp

• The next cycle: Blackburn (Sep 19 - Oct 28)

• Six-week cycles via Shape Up

• On avoiding pile-ups.

• I’ve read about it, watched courses, maybe hold a degree.

• So… you don’t need to introduce me to the subject. I know the terms, the basics, and the big ideas. But you’ll still need to guide me through doing it. I can follow instructions, not yet invent solutions.

Level 2. I understand

• I can explain the concept, maybe even write about it.

• So… I can hold a conversation, contribute ideas, and spot when something makes sense vs. when it doesn’t. But I may not yet know how to turn that understanding into a finished piece of work.

Level 3. I can do it (once)

• I’ve put it into practice at least once, maybe with help.

• So… I’ve crossed the gap between theory and practice. I can show you something I’ve made. But it’s not proof I can repeat it. You’ll probably need to review, correct, and guide me heavily.

Level 4. I can do it (alone)

• I can complete the task end-to-end without hand-holding.

• So… you can trust me to take a task from brief to draft without step-by-step guidance. The quality may still vary, but I won’t stall or get lost.

Level 5. I can do it well (consistently)

• I’ve done it many times, made mistakes, and learned what works.

• So… you can expect reliable output. I won’t just “get it done,” I’ll get it done to a standard, again and again. You don’t need to micromanage.

Level 6. I can get you this result

• I’ve created outcomes for multiple clients/projects.

• So… you’re not just hiring my effort or output, but my track record of increasing the odds of success. I can adapt to messy real-world conditions and give you a higher probability of results than someone less experienced.

If it’s a self-betterment project…

• Don’t read books that aren’t tied to my goals for the next 6–12 weeks.

• Don’t chase skills I can’t apply to a project in the next 6-12 weeks.

Dickie Bush wrote: the best way to build a skill is to start a project that requires you to use that skill.

So the filter becomes simple: will this book (or skill) plug into something I’m building in the next 6–12 weeks? If yes, keep going. If not, it goes back on the shelf for later.

If it’s for entertainment… then it doesn’t matter. Read anything.

That’s because…

• The solution comes from the guiding policy.

• The guiding policy comes from the diagnosis.

• Change the diagnosis → the entire strategy changes.

This is why two strategists can look at the exact same challenge and produce completely different outputs.

Take a simple example:
A restaurant is losing customers.

Strategist A’s chain of thought:

• Diagnosis: “The problem is our menu is outdated.”

• Guiding policy: “Refresh the menu and add trendy dishes.”

• Solution: New menu launch and marketing push.

Strategist B’s chain of thought:

• Diagnosis: “The real problem is slow service.”

• Guiding policy: “Speed up table turnover and improve waitstaff efficiency.”

• Solution: Hire more staff, retrain team, and update processes.

Same restaurant. Same symptom.

Different diagnosis → different policy → different solution.

If you misdiagnose the problem, you don’t just build the wrong solution.
You make it impossible to sell the right one.

A wrong diagnosis locks you into fixing the wrong thing.
A right diagnosis makes the strategy — and the copy — almost write itself.

The next time you’re stuck on a campaign, ask yourself: Am I solving the real problem, or just the one that’s easiest to see?

• Its goal is “to write something” — not to communicate a useful idea.

• It could have been written by anyone.

• It has no human element, no story, no warmth.

• It takes no point of view.

• It doesn’t speak to one reader with one problem your solution can solve.

• Its scope is unclear — trying to say everything, it says nothing.

“A strong work ethic requires a strong rest ethic.”
- Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

Recharge creatively

1. Painting

• “What makes painting particularly important is that, for almost everyone, it will only be a hobby. It’s something you enjoy purely on its own terms, with no endpoint in sight, and no monetary benefit.”

2. Start a CALM project

• “A CALM project can be almost anything creative that has a clear endpoint.”

  • Photography

  • Coding

  • Quilting

  • Writing

  
  BONUS: Consider doing your project with other people to supercharge its rejuvinating effects.

Recharge Naturally

3. Bring in nature

• “[Patients] with windows overlooking a serene grove of leafy trees…were healing on average a whole day faster, requiring significantly less pain medication and experiencing fewer complications than their counterparts staring at the wall.”

• Glance at some photos of trees

• “Participants who took a 40-second ‘micro-break’ to view either a green roof…made significantly fewer errors and showed more consistent focus on the task at hand, compared to their peers who viewed the concrete roof.”

• “Participants who closed their eyes and listened to natural soundscapes for seven minutes (bird song, the sounds of a rainforest, the sounds of seagulls, the sounds of summer rain) reported feeling more energised in their work for hours afterwards.”

4. Take a walk

Concepts

CALM Activities

In his book, Feel-Good Productivity, Ali Abdaal writes that relaxing creative activities has four characteristics and that he likes to “remember using a simple acronym: CALM”.

CALM stands for:

• C - Competence

• A - Autonomy

• L - Liberty

• M - Mellow

All these characteristics of creative activities help boost our energy.

Hobbies

• “The defining characteristic of a hobby is that it’s low stakes. There’s simply no way to win or lose a hobby, nor to turn it into a business…The trick is to ensure that they remain just that: distinct from your work, with no clear end point and no stress.”
  
  ”Remind yourself that the hobby should be enjoyed for the process, rather than any kind of high stakes goal…Quality doesn’t matter. Allow yourself to make mistakes, experiment and grow at your own pace. Your primary goal is not to become an expert or a master. It’s to enjoy and recharge.”

• Opinion, perspective-led writing

• Embedding your personality to your writing

• Expertise-led writing

• Personal experience storytelling

• Connecting to a fellow human being (empathy)

• Humour