I once spent $299 on a course I never watched. Not because I needed it. Not because I researched it. Not because it fit my learning style. I bought it because I saw “47,329 students enrolled.” My brain did the math: “47,000 people can’t be wrong. This must be good.” Spoiler: It wasn’t good. For me, anyway. The content was basic, the pacing was wrong, and I could’ve learned the same material for free. ...
I once spent three weeks building a custom CSS framework. It had exactly the features I wanted. Perfect naming conventions. Elegant utility classes. Beautiful documentation. I showed it to my team. They said, “Why not just use Tailwind?” My response? “Because mine is better.” Was it actually better? No. Objectively, Tailwind had: More features Better documentation Larger community More battle-testing Active maintenance But I couldn’t see that. All I could see was MY framework, MY design decisions, MY time invested. ...
“It takes 21 days to form a habit.” I’ve heard this approximately one million times. Self-help books. Productivity blogs. Motivational Instagram posts. Life coaches. So I tried it. Day 1-7: Woke up at 6 AM to code before work. Felt great! I’m building a habit! Day 8-14: Woke up at 6 AM most days. Missed a few. Still committed! Day 15-21: Made it to Day 21! The habit is formed, right? ...
I checked Twitter 47 times yesterday. Not because I needed information. Not because I was expecting something important. Just… checking. Pull down to refresh. Scan. Nothing interesting. Close app. Five minutes later: Open app. Pull down to refresh. Scan. Find one mildly interesting tweet. Read. Close app. Repeat. All day. I wasn’t looking for something specific. I was looking for the possibility of something interesting. And that’s exactly how Twitter (and every other addictive app) is designed to work. ...
It’s 2 AM. I should be sleeping. Instead, I’m lying in bed thinking about that bug I almost fixed. I know exactly where the problem is. I know how to solve it. I just ran out of time. My brain won’t let it go. Or that blog post I started writing three days ago. I have the outline. I wrote the intro. But I haven’t finished it, and it’s nagging at me every time I sit down to work. ...
I was reading a psychology paper that promised to change how I thought about willpower. The study claimed that ego depletion—the idea that willpower is a limited resource that gets exhausted—had been proven through rigorous experiments. Hundreds of studies supported it. It was taught in psychology courses. It was in textbooks. I built my productivity system around this concept. I scheduled important decisions for the morning. I avoided making choices when I was tired. I believed willpower worked like a muscle that could be depleted. ...
I once turned down a $40,000 freelance contract because I was afraid of losing my $80,000 salary. The math was simple: take the contract, it would take 3 months, that’s $160k annualized. Way better than my salary. But my brain didn’t see “$160k potential.” It saw “giving up the guaranteed $80k.” The fear of losing my steady paycheck was stronger than the excitement of potentially making more. I said no. The person who took the gig finished it in 2 months, got referred to three more clients, and now runs a six-figure freelance business. ...
I once deployed code to production because a VP told me to, even though I knew it would break things. I was a junior engineer. They were a VP of Engineering. They said, “Ship it now. We need this for the demo tomorrow.” I tried to explain: “The tests are failing. The database migration isn’t ready. This will cause data corruption.” They responded: “I understand your concerns, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Trust me. Ship it.” ...
It’s 8 PM. You’ve been in meetings all day. You resisted checking Twitter during presentations. You held back your frustration when that one coworker interrupted you for the third time. You made yourself exercise even though you didn’t feel like it. You ate a salad for lunch instead of pizza. Now you’re home. You sit down to work on your side project—the one you’re genuinely excited about. And you have absolutely nothing left. You stare at the screen. You open Twitter (ironically, the thing you resisted all day). You order takeout. You binge-watch Netflix. ...
I deleted Twitter from my phone last Tuesday. Not because of the politics or the drama. Because I couldn’t stop comparing myself to people who seemed to be crushing it while I was struggling. Every time I opened the app: Someone raised a $50M Series B Someone hit $100K MRR on their SaaS Someone gave a keynote at a major conference Someone got acquired by Google Meanwhile, my startup was barely break-even, my side project had 47 users, and I’d just had a PR rejected for the third time. ...