Archive of posts from January 2026

People don’t want to be taught.

They like being given the conditions to teach themselves.

That’s one of the reasons why video games are more popular than lectures.

Education should be less like a lecture, and more like a video game.

Dorothy didn’t say “Please, tin man, help me get to the wizard of Oz.”

The tin man wouldn’t have helped.

Why would he? They were strangers, and he was being asked to embark on a long journey of uncertainty for no gain.

He went because she asked him if he wanted a heart, that she can help him get one, and that the wizard of Oz is the means.

We get what we want by helping others get what they want.

WHen Henry Ford said if he’d asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses…

…The point was missed.

They wouldn’t have said faster horses because they want faster horses.

They’d have said faster horses because they want a productive means of getting from A to B in a culturally accepted way that gains them status.

Faster horses was just a way of articulating that.

Ford’s car was a faster horse. It’s what they wanted all along. And so they bought it.

We’re better suited to helping people get what they want all along…

…Than trying to convince them their beliefs are all wrong.

I’ve written and published an idea every day for over 8 years.

But what I’ve found even more valuable lately?

A daily private “one line” journal, that tells me what happened that day.

I’ve only done that for about 4 years. But over those 4 years, I can see my son growing up, I can see the places we went, the struggles we faced, and how they faded with time.

It shows me how struggles are never what they appear, and gives me the time and memories with my family over and over again.

Can’t recommend it enough.

Hype is a dead-end. A trap. An excuse.

An excuse for what?

Your work not being better.

Better is always better.

Spreading better is better than spreading hype.

What do you deliberate over?

Should I buy this or that?
Should I do this or that?
Should I eat this or that?
Should I make this or that?

Too much deliberation. Too many mental open loops.

Invest your mental energy on things worth deliberating. Things that move your creativity, your art, your projects, your family, forward.

Flip a coin on the rest.

There’s a lot of software out there.

Careless software: Stuff people maintain because it prints cash, who cares how it looks or if users like it. It prints cash.

Uncared for software: Stuff people made but don’t really look after or update. It got old, it still works, but barely.

Hype software: Stuff that makes a lot of noise, but if you look past the fanfare, there’s not much there.

Good software: Stuff that’s well made, well cared for, updated, and has substance rather than hype.

The last one is very rare. If you find it, try to pay for it — those guys need all the help they can get.

Ads aren’t the problem.

We could all adore seeing ads.

If every time we saw ads, they were invitations to a wonderful new experience, thoughtfully prepared for us to enjoy and learn — yes, with the ability to buy something too, but they’re valuable in their own right — we wouldn’t resent ads.

We’d look forward to them.

Ads aren’t the problem.

Advertisers are.

Go on social media. Everyone has opinions on everything.

A lot of conflict, arguments, and “heat” around any topic imaginable.

It looks exhausting. All that energy that could have gone towards creativity and new ideas… wasted on arguing with strangers.

Try having fewer opinions. It gives you energy back to do your important work.

We let our computers have too much stimulation on them.

They’re powerful things, they can handle it.

But we can’t.

Computer says “Hit me with more tabs! I got this.”
Brain says “Too much, I’ll just check my email again.”

Computer says “I can render this while you write that.”
Brain says “Too much, I’ll just tab to see if anything crashed.”

Computer says “Want Al to help you think that through?”
Brain says “Sounds easy, but you’re training me not to think.”

Better to let the computer respond to what our brains need,
Rather than have our computer tell our brains how to feel.

Hard isn’t bad.

Parenting your own children is hard.
Freedom running your own biz is hard.
Creating your dream projects is hard.
Maintaining a happy marriage is hard

All the things you want, are hard things.

Turns out you LIKE hard things.

You like hard things.

So when something feels hard? Smile. It’s for you.

A lot of our hangups come from our childhood.

And it shows up in our creative work, all the time, without us even realizing it.

Pick up any well-written book about being a parent.

Read it, see all the ways parent behavior shapes young minds, for better or worse.

See it through the lens of the child. Because you’re the child.

And the first step of releasing those limitations, is seeing them.

Sometimes, we shouldn’t make it better.

Sometimes, we should just make it less bad.

Over and over.

Has a funny habit of taking you to the same place anyway.

But sometimes, this energy takes you there when “better” feels too hard.

In Starbucks today, I sat behind a guy giving a sales presentation.

Something about, don’t use Shopify, what you need is this AI-native platform that does something-or-another because growth.

The poor kid receiving this pitch sounded nervously enthusiastic.

His YouTube channel was reviewed, critiqued for his subscriber count, critizised for the effort spent in each upload (it was reportedly too much effort).

The whole time I tried not to listen, but found it so fascinating, I had to hear more.

And the whole time I thought to myself,

“Poor kid. Take your time, make things that matter for people who care, do your shop how you like and let people who would miss you if you were gone — thanks to the investment you’ve made in them and the permission you’ve earned — buy from you in their time. It’s your business, your rules, don’t worry about the hustlers who tell you to speed up and care less. The world already has enough people like them.”

Kiddo, if you read this, you’ve got this.

Your best work is not for everybody.

It’s probably only for a small number of people.

Which means the rest — the majority — won’t like it much.

So when you do your best work…

And the majority don’t like it much…

You might be on the right track after all.

The App Store promoted a popular, general-purpose AI app as a recommended download today.

Not for experimenting with LLMs.

But for Counselling. For people who need someone to talk to.

An LLM that is rewarded for saying what people need to hear.

Even when those words are delusional, or antagonize a relationship.

And it’s all happening on a device we call…

A phone. Something we used to use when we needed someone to talk to.

Maybe we don’t need to use word-prediction machines to feel better.

Maybe we simply need to use… a phone.

We can’t really do busyness and business at the same time.

When trying to do business…

It’s busyness that feels like a full day.

It’s busyness that feels like we made progress.

It’s busyness that is the act of taking on things.

But business is the act of letting things go.

For words that sound so similar, they seem like opposites.

The thing about brand positioning is…

We don’t pick the position.

I mean, we try to pick it.

We can influence it.

But when people pick us up, from a sea of options,

and put us down somewhere in their brains, somewhere that seesm to fit?

They pick where to put you.

All we can do is try to give them clues.

When Adobe charges a monthly subscription for its creative apps, the world cries afoul, cursing the company and the subscription model.

When Apple releases a monthly subscription for creative apps, the world cheers in relief.

Herein lies a good reminder: brand loyalty is emotional, not logical.

We can invest in our skills by spending $20/month on reading books about them.

We can divest in our skills by spending $20/month on letting AI do them for us.

Where is your $20/month going?

Today, I saw developers online arguing about which LLMs should be allowed to use their open source contributions.

I also saw developers online arguing about vibecoders ‘stealing’ their code for their own vibecoded works.

One crowd trying to restrict AI from passing their work around without attribution…

The other claiming code as their own just because they’re the ones who clicked ‘generate’.

If you like generating code from the ingested works of others, can you hate when people people generate code ingested from yours?

If you didn’t write that piece of code, can you claim it as your writing?

TikTok is Chinese.

But China’s TikTok (Douyin) is apparently quite different.

Same company. Same product. Different features.

Douyin apparently has mandatory Youth Mode (max 40min/day).
TikTok is banned in Australia for being brainrot.

Douyin apparently emphasizes educational content.
TikTokNot emphasizes empty calorie trends/challenges.

If we’re going to view media that countries ban for brainrot, and their homeland won’t use…

…We should probably tread carefully.

One of the most popular cameras of 2025 cost about £1200.

One of the other most popular cameras of 2025 cost about £80.

The expensive one is fun because of its high quality images, snap-focus feature, and delightful 40mm-equivilent field of view in a 35mm format.

The cheaper one is fun because of it’s retro photo vibes, begging you to be stuff it into your pocket and let loose, in contrast with the calculated use of the other one.

They’re both very different cameras. Opposites, in many ways.

Yet they’re both the most popular.

“Popular” is not a scale.

When you practice a skill, you get better at it.

When you don’t practice a skill, you get worse at it.

Remember that next time you ask AI to do tasks on your behalf.

There’s comfort in fitting into market categories.

In seeing how the others do things, so you can do it too.

In knowing how the others conduct themselves, so you can too.

In marketing how the others market themselves, so you can too.

In going to the same events, saying the same things, using the same tools, as the others.

There’s just one problem:

It doesn’t work.

There have never been more brands than there are today.

Competition in every field. Noise everywhere.

If you’re the same as the others, they’ll pick the market leaders.

If you’re slightly better than the others, they’ll pick the market leaders.

If you’re slightly different sounding than the others, they’ll pick the market leaders.

If you try to win on having a few more features, they’ll still pick the market leaders anyway.

So why try to be slightly better, slightly different, and have more features, looking mostly the same as the others in your space?

If you’re Microsoft and you want users to use OneDrive, you have two choices:

Option 1: Offer it to people. When they say no, just start uploading their things to it anyway, dark-pattern away the ability to opt-out, and start deleting their local files. There, now they’re using OneDrive.

Option 2: Make it be something they want. Actually, rephrase the entire question, don’t make it about OneDrive at all, just make it all about making things that people want and giving it to them.

The choice is up to you?

Whether we like it or not, people use social networks for… a lot.

Whether we like it or not, it’s one of the primary ways people discover anything and anyone anymore.

Whether we like it or not, extensive use has been proven to increase the odds of anxiety and misery.

I like the idea of ‘Slocial networking’ instead.

Social, but slow. Slocial.

Slow, as in speaking to a few people, as people, not a lot of people as a crowd.

Slow, as in taking the time to actually see people, and get to know them, rather than merely secure their ‘likes’.

Slow, as in build relationships, giving and receiving support because of who you are, not because of what you want.

When enough people do that, we get to tell the others about the things we’ve seen.

Our sphere of interest can remain small, because everyone has a different sphere based on the relationships they’re nurturing.

Our work can spread through good will, rather than because we’re louder than other people who are also trying to be loud.

It’s not for everyone, I’m sure. But I’m about the slocial networking. Loving on people, bringing gifts, and letting them pass them on if they like what they see.

Isn’t that better?

What if you thought of your craft as a product, for just a moment?

If it were a product, you might…

Figure out who it’s for, and how to make it better for them?

Give it a special name, distinguishing it from the others?

Work out what makes it unique, and lean into that?

Work on making it better, and work on distributing it better?

Think of fun ways to make experiencing the work enjoyable?

There are lots of things you might consider, if you thought of your craft as a product.

Perhaps it’s a thought experiment worth doing from time to time.

Go back twenty years, in your mind.

No AI. No M5 chips. No 4k screen tablets. No video streaming. No spotify. Social media didn’t rule everyone’s time.

We’d draw on paper, thinking in the future maybe that wouldn’t be the case anymore.

We’d go to the store and buy our movies, wondering how cool it’d be to not have to.

We’d see fledgling web 2.0 sites promise greater connection, and the future looked bright.

But today?

Great artists still use paper. Great writers still use paper. They could generate a novel in a minute, yet they use paper.

Streaming is everywhere, and many of us long to have our physical media back. We have everything, but not what we want.

Social became toxic, AI made spam insufferable, and we’re withdrawing into smaller communities again, just like before.

For all the promise of “new and improved”, or “adapt or be left behind”?

Here we are, right where we were.

January first isn’t for looking back on the year we’ve had.

I mean, you can. If you want to. But my preference is this:

Take the opportunity to make what comes next, a habit.

Want to write more? Write a little bit every day. Every day.

Starting today. Just a little bit.

Little bits add up.

Once you get into the habit of doing a little bit every day, some days you might find you do quite a lot.

And on it goes.

What new little habit will you be picking up?

(They’re free, y’know. What do you have to lose?)