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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...