This a space where I explore ideas, practice writing, and find others. You may enjoy reading if you like thinking about the future, meaning, and flourishing.
I'll be writing over here for a while, on expanding ideas from Christopher Alexander into experience. This is a short preview of what I'll be doing. If this sounds interesting, subscribe on Substack. My wife loves birds. She’ll notice some new guest to our yard,
At some point perhaps fifteen years ago, I got bit by the self-development bug. You've probably been bit too. It seems common in these parts. It's basically good, I'm convinced. All the self-help books, courses, trainings, and coaching surely amount to something. Maybe we&
Ari Nielson and I talked about something that's been bugging me for a while: why is the perception of transformation so misleading? The elation trap vs actual change (0:00) Related to something I've been thinking about (marvelous personal projects that take a long time)… Many
"Thanks for your help, appreciate it", I typed into ChatGPT earlier today. Why am I thanking an algorithm? It can't appreciate gratitude. Yet this small politeness feels natural, even necessary. It reveals something profound about our relationship with AI. Most of us instinctively assign personhood to
Last fall, my dog died. She had been acting lethargic. During a checkup, they found several large tumors covering her spleen, liver, and pancreas. It was already too late. Joe Hudson talks about how grief is beautiful. How, when his dad died, the experience was wonderful. Since hearing this, I
What if I told you that unhappiness was optional: that no matter your circumstances, you could choose to be happy? Feels sort of offensive, right? As if I'm claiming that you're complicit in your own suffering. This was my initial reaction to The Option Method. The
A familiar arc plays out again and again across the internet: 1. An underserved market need emerges, often due to the complacency of entrenched players or innovation that opens new possibilities. 2. An innovative startup addresses this need, creating a superior platform that is more user-friendly, cost-effective, or offers better
I want to let you in on a little secret: one of the best ways to improve your life is to try a bunch of things that probably won't work. The placebo effect is one of the most perplexing phenomena in modern medicine. It's a tool
There's an ancient tradition when talking about efficient markets to bring up stories of $20 bills that lay on the ground, and economists who don't pick them up because, in an efficient market, money wouldn't be on the ground. Also by ancient tradition, the
Visakan Veerasamy has a great catchphrase: joke about outcomes you want. the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they
This feels braggy, but I stopped having negative self-talk several years ago. I literally never have a "Andrew, you suck" sort of thought. I can be sad, angry, confused, or disappointed, but there is never any accompanying self-hatred. It's default-happy, kind of like how depressed people
In John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis lecture series, he models four ways of knowing: participatory, perspectival, procedural, and propositional. This is a rich concept that requires a lot of space to fully appreciate, but entirely changed how I thought about knowledge. Post-enlightenment Western thought is dominated
Mustaches are cool because they show "proof of work". You need to be able to grow one, but the real challenge is that they take time to grow, including an awkward stage where all mustaches look bad. That's why a good mustache is cool as hell.
There's a cool pattern common in many people I respect most: doing a thing, but without the normal incentives of the thing. Here are some examples I encountered recently: 1. Writing a blog without wanting or needing to "build an audience", instead focusing on enjoyment and
In July 2026, I added a small addendum at the bottom, reflecting a bit more about the experience. I recently wrapped up The Art of Accomplishment Master Class. It's an annual cohort coaching class, led by Joe Hudson. It's expensive, and takes real commitment — both time
My last company is adjacent to the wellness industry — helping people fix very real health issues. Through that experience, I was exposed to quite a lot of the utter fluff that's common in the industry, and was surprised by what worked, from a marketing point of view. The
I'm a bit of an interventionist: I enjoy tweaking systems, experimenting, n=1, and so on. And along that comes a lot of research. This time, I'll save you a lot of time and risk so you understand more about supplement science and how the industry
Earlier this year, I designed and built a cold plunge. Including prep and drying off, I can do a 5 minute plunge in about 10 minutes, making it easy enough to do every day. If you're interested in having one, here's a guide about what exists
Sometimes we talk about things that are hard to talk about. Direct language, such as how I'm talking to you now, is such a small slice of our total experience. Language can be (ab)used through poetry, fiction, or song to convey feelings that the words themselves can&
There's a conversational move that I discovered recently: when explaining a perspective with examples, use the worst-yet-still-good example. One that's still representative of your position, but isn't the strongest you can think of. This may seem counterproductive: it's normal to give extreme