Just the other day, my sister asking me what to do about her personal growth and I asked her to read about the magic loop. A friend of mine who just moved departments inside a public company questioning whether the move should’ve been to a competitor, and I asked him the three questions.

For years I answered on instinct, but now I keep coming back to the same frameworks for career advice.

Should I stay?

Garry Tan wrote about learning and earning as the pair that decides everything — do either, ideally both, and if neither, leave. The third question is mine after experiencing good, great, and terrible managers.

1. Are you learning?

2. Are you earning?

3. Do you like your manager?

Charlie Munger, in Poor Charlie’s Almanack, helped me expand the concept from a different angle, what should a young person look for in a career?

Late in life, he said that with Warren he had all three.

Now the caveat, because you have heard it and it is true: the fastest way to get a raise is to leave, to job-hop. Early in a career, the market prices you better than your employer does, and loyalty is quietly expensive. I remember finishing Chris Voss’ Master Class followed by his book, Never Split the Difference, when I had to make my move away from Brainly, probably one of the most strategic things I've done for my career, as I wasn't earning and that was a dealbreaker.

I believe people don’t leave their jobs, they often start thinking of jumping off the boat because of bad managers. I did it twice because they made me feel stuck, and I regret nothing. I learned the hard way I can’t work for people I don’t admire, and life serendipity made me cross Legend, which substantially changed the direction of my life working with people I deeply respect.

There is a search phase, where movement is the whole strategy. And there is a holding phase where all three answers come back yes, and from that point movement destroys what you have been building. Most professionals never notice they have crossed from one into the other.

The objective is to play long-term games with long-term people, as big feats come after compounding, like in most good things in life.

Loops beat leaps

As I matured and got to understand the corporate ladder, I soon realized there's always a new top to reach, and I had to keep climbing, so as soon as I was clear on staying the question became how do I keep growing?

Ethan Evans spent fifteen years at Amazon and left with a framework he calls the Magic Loop. He published it as a guest post on Lenny Rachitsky’s newsletter in 2023, where it became one of the most-read pieces the newsletter has run. Five steps:

Read it twice, and you notice what it is really asking of you. Nobody hands you the next rung. You ask for it, you earn it, and then you ask again.

Step four is where most people stop. It requires saying out loud what you want, to the person who decides whether you get it. That conversation is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the price of the loop.

The loop also explains why “do you like your manager?” carries a heavy weight. This framework cannot run without a person who cares and is paying attention. Run it with someone who is not, and you have only done extra work, a classic recipe for burnout.

My recent experience with the magic loop has to be related with the AI revolution the Product Development community is going through. My business needed someone to lead, a Product person who’s not afraid to get technical. I asked how I could help leading the way, I negotiated a few specialisations and mentoring, I started experiment pods in the company with my expanded product lens, I grew in scope, responsibility, seniority and the check at the end of each month got bigger.

It feels like as I grow older I become more religious, or maybe that's just me coming back to my roots of how I grew up in a very catholic Polish family in South Brazil. Either way, Matthew 7:7 always comes to mind.

Discovery comes first

The three questions for deciding when to stay, the magic loop sets guidance and momentum to keep climbing the ladder, both are extremely helpful if you are confident in the game you are playing, and here I always think of Seneca, “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”

We build rigorous growth models, strategy docs, and product requirements for our employers, then let luck and intuition run our own life roadmap. Same person, two standards.

There is no replacement for inner work, the soul-searching, and journaling exercises required to find the right port to be sailing to.

I was 19 when I first put in writing what I wanted. I remember writing a letter for the 25-year-old me, visualizing a future where I had figured out how to work remotely to eliminate the unnecessary commute that used to kill me.

After enough mentoring in my mid-twenties, I realized I had to have a few things clear:

1. Personality type, values, and strengths, so that I could articulate with clear language what makes me unique

2. Things I love in this life and things that I don't, so that I'm intentional with my choices and compromise less

3. Rules to my own fashion and style, so that I feel authentic and connected to my inner creative

4. A few estimations of my F-you number, so that I avoid becoming a slave of capitalism on the hedonic treadmill

5. A projection of my lifespan, so that I don't take the time we have in this life for granted

Who are you? You have to think it out for yourself.

Once I had those answers, I moved on to think deeper about How Do I Grow and the flywheel of life became an evergreen exercise I revisit yearly.

I love to work with video, and I know content is a flywheel propeller, so I found ways to lead product marketing where I can perfect my editing and camera presence, win-win.

I'm naturally inclined to work with data and engineering solutions, so I found my way into building data products inside a public company where I connect what I know about data visualization because of how close I am to the stock market, massive win-win.

Traveling is how I feel adventure and capture memories, so I chased a business relationship where my ability to travel across different offices is valued so I pair business trips with weekend runaways, enabling me to see the world while bringing more color to the evergreens as I see different horizons, meet new people, try new food, hear new sounds, and cross different scents, life win-win.

I could only find my win-wins after I deeply understood myself.

Sources of Wisdom

1. Munger, C. 2005. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.

2. Evans, E. 2023. The Magic Loop: A framework for rapid career growth. Lenny’s Newsletter.

3. Pirsig, R. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Management

The book in three sentences

1. The business of life is the acquisition of memories, that’s the whole book for me.

2. Perkins, with his engineering brain that resonates with who I am, treats life as an optimization problem: maximize fulfillment, minimize waste. Money is only a means to an end. Overextending it quietly sabotages the very thing you were saving for.

3. We’re more afraid of running out of money than of wasting our lives, and that has to flip. Health is the multiplier on every experience, and it only ever declines, so timing an experience to the right age matters as much as affording it.

Why I Picked It Up

Andrea mentioned this book ages ago, and it’s been sitting on my backlog for a while. I finally opened it on my way to Oslo earlier this year and finished while landing in London, book number six of this year’s Goodreads challenge.

The timing of this book hit the sweet spot for me. A few months after Legend gets acquired as a unicorn, a five-year journey building and optimizing digital products, observing the business take market share. It's always been a dream for me to work on a public company; I just never imagined it would be this way. Holding more financial freedom than I’d ever had, Perkins put plain words to a feeling I’d been circling, the point of all that saving was never the pile, so what’s the point? I needed guidance and I found.

Memories pay dividends

Perkins is an engineer by training, like myself, and he frames the whole thing as an optimization problem: maximize fulfillment, minimize waste, like I tend to do in most projects I get involved in.

Experiences yield dividends because we humans have memory. I don’t just buy the trip and book hotels, it's that and every time I’ll ever recall it, every time I’ll open Instagram stories, every time I get the photos app notification of what I was up to last year.

Just like I preach for the stock market, invest early and the tail of those dividends runs longer, which is the quiet case for spending on experiences in your twenties rather than your forties.

I think about my collection of birthday adventures, the helicopter flight over Dubai, that Tokyo Omakase seat at Sushi Tou, the night in the Qatari desert, the photoshoot night in Hong Kong.

All memories that I won’t ever forget, the money spent is a lost afterthought as nostalgia becomes this unique emotional factor as I grow older, to me one of the most powerful human emotions.

Morgan Housel lands in the same place from another door. In The Art of Spending Money, he calls good memories the closest thing we have to living for today while compounding for tomorrow.

Know your peak

Here’s the part that stings and got me thinking of my first US adventures in my early 20s. An experience isn’t worth the same at every age.

Perkins borrows the retirement planner’s vocabulary: go-go years, slow-go years, no-go years. The same trip at forty and at seventy are not the same trip. Health is the multiplier on every experience, and it only ever moves one way. So the three things a great experience needs — money, health, and free time — almost never line up at once. Young, you have time and health but no money. Later, the money arrives and the health has quietly slipped.

Being an engineer, Perkins doesn’t leave it poetic. He points to a net worth peak, for most people somewhere between 45 and 60, after which you deliberately start spending it down. To find yours, you need two uncomfortable numbers: your annual cost of simply staying alive, and your projected death date. I did all the math, it's eye-opening. For life expectancy, he recommends liveto100.com, go check it out.

Morgan Housel offers a kinder version of the same exercise. Write your own obituary first, the one you’d actually want read out, then work backward and live up to it.

Seneca got there two thousand years earlier, and he was blunter about it: postponement is the greatest waste of life.

The fool is always getting ready to live.

The business of life

Strip away the annuities and the net-worth curves, and here’s what Perkins is really arguing: your life is the sum of your experiences, full stop. Everything you do adds up to who you are, and when you look back, the richness of those experiences becomes the only ledger that counts.

It’s also why I’ve spent years calling my own version the ABCs of a good life, my wrapper for the business of living.

Associate yourself with good people, and good things will happen.

Become one percent better every single day.

Capture memories worth remembering.

Dying with zero is really a book about time, about spending your finite life energy on the things that become memories.

Things I keep doing because of this book

1. Run the uncomfortable math. I keep a few death-date and burn-rate scenarios in my Life as a Product diary, so “spend it down” has actual numbers behind it.

2. Invest in experiences early. The memory dividend compounds, so my twenties and thirties are the highest-leverage years to spend on them.

3. Spend on health now. Preventive effort keeps the multiplier high for longer and makes every future experience richer.

A Note from me

I’m the target reader for this book, and I felt seen on nearly every page. The saver who needs permission to spend, the one for whom making money quietly became more thrilling than living. A few months past my five-year journey to an exit, with more freedom than I’ve ever had, the timing couldn’t have been sharper.

What I take from Perkins now is balance, spending on what I actually value in the present while still saving just enough for later with no intentions to go from this to a better one leaving money behind.

Am I getting it right? I think, finally, I am.

What to Read Next

Dying with zero sounds morbid until you sit with it. Really, it's the most life-affirming math I know: save enough to be free, then find the courage to convert that freedom into memories before the window narrows. It's the same thread I pull in Time Is All We Have, where the arithmetic of a finite life gets its fuller treatment.

Sources of Wisdom

1. Perkins, B. 2020. Die With Zero.

2. Housel, M. 2025. The Art of Spending Money.

3. Seneca. On the Shortness of Life.

The scene

Sabi is not one restaurant, but a lineage. Roger Asakil Joya built the Sabi Sushi chain out of Stavanger, and then built the thing that made the name mean something: Sabi Omakase, a counter on the edge of the city that in 2017 became the first sushi restaurant in Norway ever to take a Michelin star. It has held it every year since.

Oslo is the second act, and the more interesting one. Airis Zapašnikas was born in Kaunas in 1992 and apprenticed at a sushi restaurant in his own hometown before taking an offer to move to Norway, where he trained under Joya and Vladimir Pak. He took over Sabi Omakase Oslo as executive chef and general manager in 2022. The room had a Michelin star within a year. In 2025, he went to Tokyo and won the World Sushi Cup, the first Lithuanian ever to do it, and told the press afterward that the title mattered more to him than the star did.

The room itself gives away nothing. A Victorian block in Sentrum, OMAKASE lettered above the door, and an entrance that is essentially a mirror with the Michelin plaque beside it. No dining room. Eight seats, one counter, and the kitchen is the wood directly in front of your hands. Edomae technique — the Tokyo method, aged and cured and pressed rather than merely sliced. Twenty courses. Six pours. A little over three hours.

I was in at eight and out at twenty to eleven, and walked into a bright evening. Oslo does that in late spring, and after three hours of low light and close attention, it is genuinely disorienting.

What brought me there

I found Sabi while browsing the Michelin app planning a two nights Oslo visit on the way home back from meetings in London. Two nights in Norway’s capital, a bike tour, the Munch Museum, and the omakase highlight.

See something, eat something, walk eight kilometres, my recipe for successful traveling days, it worked out like a charm.

I first fell in love with the omakase experience at Noriko in Wrocław, Marcin’s corner, which later moved to Warsaw's Praga neighborhood. Then I raised the bar during the most special Think Week Japan edition, which permanently set a new scale for me. Sushi Tou is my bar, and it is not a fair one. Everything since has been measured against a room I will probably never match again.

The food

Twenty courses is a structure, and tuna the backbone, of course.

Baby tuna early, then lean, medium-fatty and fatty. The fat ladder, walked properly — you taste the gradient across the night rather than one showpiece slice.

The lobster was not a dish so much as a piece of theatre with a dish at the end of it. Broken down live, in front of us, the whole process visible before a single plate existed. It fascinates me every time.

The monkfish liver came on blue-and-white porcelain with a dab of wasabi. Ankimo has never been my thing; this was very good regardless.

Through the middle: turbot, halibut, squid, mackerel, razor clam, langoustine. Not all of it Nordic, either — the chef told us the tuna comes from Tarragona. Nothing dragged.

The Polish Oscietra caviar, banked thick on nori and arriving with the Krug, was the most extravagant thirty seconds of my year. Caviar and champagne is not an original idea. Executed at this level, in a room this small, it does not have to be.

The eel was the summit. It usually is, for me, and here it was the single best thing on a very long list of good things, the piece where Edomae stops being a description on a website and becomes the reason the fish tastes like that.

And then the rice. I did not enjoy the taste of it, and it never quite matched the fish, I cannot describe it better than that, and I have been turning it over for weeks. The fish is the half you photograph, the rice is the half that takes twenty years. Noriko’s has made me stop mid-bite. Tou’s rearranged what I thought sushi was. This did neither, and that is the whole distance between a four and a five.

It closed the way the old rooms close: futomaki, tamagoyaki, miso soup, and a strawberry daifuku folded by hand in front of us. A kitchen that has spent three hours demonstrating restraint finishing on something warm and slightly childish is a good instinct.

Hospitality

Omakase is a learning session. Attention to detail, technique perfected over years of training, one bite at a time, texture, aroma, and ingredients you would not otherwise meet. That is the omotenashi of it, and it is why anyone sits at a counter instead of a table.

Jan Markiewicz was our chef that night, and the only one: twenty courses, one pair of hands, 26 years old and Polish. Jan was friendly and professional throughout, and there is clearly a bright career ahead of him — I hope to stay in touch.

The service was excellent by every measurable standard: well-paced, technically immaculate, never hurried and never hovering.

The other half of an omakase counter is the strangers sitting on it, and Sabi’s crowd was worth having. Small rooms self-select. You end up talking to the people either side of you because there is nowhere else to look, and I still follow people I met at counters years ago.

The scorecard

Food 4: the tuna, the eel and the caviar course are all fives; the rice never was

Service 4: immaculate, well-paced, great pairing explainers; the bar for a five at this level is Tokyo

Atmosphere 5: eight seats, comfortable lighting, minimal and elegant

Overall ★★★★☆

The artful critic

Here is the question I actually walked out with, and it took a week of reading to answer: how does a restaurant hold a Michelin star through a change of chef?

Because Sabi has now done it twice, in two cities. Joya starred Stavanger in 2017 and still holds it. Zapašnikas arrived in Oslo in 2022, having trained under Joya, and starred that room inside a year. And on the night I ate there, neither of them was in the room, but a young chef alone, and the technique never wavered.

The instinct is to read that as a warning sign, but might've been the opposite. Of course I would love to have experienced Airis’ work, but Michelin stars the room, not the person, and a group that can produce two starred rooms in two cities with different hands at the counter has solved the hardest problem in hospitality: consistency across locations. That is not a chef being brilliant. That is a training system, a sourcing chain, and a standard that survives the individual. The same problem a product org has when something that works in one market has to work in three, and usually gets solved by shipping a diluted version and hoping nobody measures it.

Sabi did not dilute it. The Oslo room is not a franchise of the Stavanger room, it is the same craft in a different pair of hands, and the guide agreed within twelve months.

Which leaves the honest verdict. A system that reliably produces excellent also reliably produces familiar. Everything at Sabi was superb and nothing at Sabi surprised me. I have eaten this shape before, and the thing that makes the operation so impressive from a distance is exactly the thing that flattens it up close. Consistency is the moat and it is also the ceiling.

Would I come back? Not sure, because I question the value for money. One star means worth a stop during a trip, best cooking in its category and it might very well be for Norway. It's just that €460 for the full coursed and mixed pairing buys a faultless version of something I can get elsewhere, Noways put a higher premium for the experience.

Four stars, and the fifth may just have been held back by the rice.

“I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit… I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.”

— Jiro Ono

The book in three sentences

1. Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. That’s the whole book for me.

2. Wealth is what you don’t see, and your savings rate matters far more than your income or your returns.

3. The edge isn’t picking winners, it’s endurance. Staying reasonable, leaving room for error, and never interrupting compounding.

Why I Picked It Up

I came back to this book right after the editorial team at Moneywise announced they would be interviewing Morgan Housel, during the same weekend, I finally had a chance to visit Monet at the Musée d’Orsay.

It’s the one I recommend to anyone walking into personal finance for the first time, and the one I’d put in every college curriculum. The kind of read where you keep nodding because he keeps naming things you already half-knew. Most finance books teach you the math, yet Housel reminds us of the human side in an easygoing style, making it one of my favorites in the category.

Wealth is what you don’t see

Ronald Read swept floors and pumped gas in rural Vermont, never earned more than minimum wage, wore very simple clothes, and drove a beat-up car. When he died at 92, his estate was worth $8 million, most of it left to the local hospital and library. No lottery, no inheritance. He just saved what little he could, bought blue-chip stocks, and waited for decades.

A few months earlier, another man named Richard had been in the news. Richard Fuscone was everything Read was not — Harvard MBA, Merrill Lynch executive, retired in his 40s, an 18,000-square-foot home in Greenwich with eleven bathrooms and a see-through cover over the indoor pool. Then 2008 hit. High debt, illiquid assets, and the mansion was sold at foreclosure. “I currently have no income,” he told a bankruptcy judge.

The janitor beat the banker, not on intelligence, education, or income, but on basic personal finance habits and common-sense behavior. That’s the whole book in two lives. The win condition has nothing to do with being a genius but being consistent long enough that compounding can do the work.

Wealth is what you don't see, the Porshe not bought, the first-class upgrade declined, the Channel bag left in the store, the appartment in Costa del Sol that didn’t close. Wealth, by definition is hidden, it’s capital that hasn’t been converted into stuff.

When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they often mean is “I’d like to spend a million dollars,” which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire. Most of what looks like wealth is just spending. The genuinely wealthy people are the ones you can’t pick out of a crowd.

Savings rate is king

The oldest name for the discipline is “pay yourself first”, which will always remind me of The Richest Man in Babylon’s parable “a part of what you earn is yours to keep.”

This is the one I live by for as long as I can remember and attribute much of my investing success to. For every invoice, investments and savings come off the top, before the lifestyle catches up to the income, then the rest is what’s free to spend, guilt-free.

Growing up in Brazil after the 1994 first impeachement and economic crisis conditioned me to the reality of “living according to our means” and Morgan's experience forces you to reflect how building wealth has surprisingly little to do with my income or investment returns, but the gap between what I earn and what I spend, which is comforting to think that is far more under my control than the next great stock pick.

Expanding that gap is two-fold: taming a wild lifestyle creep is key because you spend less by wanting less, and you want less by caring less about what others think, that's optimizing the bottom line.

Optimizing the top line is the healthy ambition to make more. I empathize people's journeys are different, but for me, negotiating better contracts over the years became the bedrock to my financial independence.

Time is the multiplier

The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.

Most of Buffett’s net worth was accumulated after his 60s. He’s a great investor, but his real superpower is that he’s been one for three-quarters of a century. If he’d retired at 60, almost no one would know his name, and that’s the lesson, especially for the retail investor, our performance doesn't come from what we buy or sell, it comes from what we hold. The main activity is holding.

This is also why endurance matters more than peak returns. Housel, talking with Howard Marks, calls it strategic mediocrity, being willing to operate below your potential year over year so you can still be in the game in year thirty.

The mathematically optimal portfolio is worthless if you can’t stomach steep drawdown. A “sleep well at night” portfolio is, in the long run, the highest-returning portfolio, because it’s the one you don’t act emotionally and abandon at the worst moment.

Things I keep doing because of this book

1. Pay myself first. Savings come off the top, before the lifestyle catches up to the income.

2. Keep a healthy margin of safety. Cash reserves that cover five months of living expenses, allowing me to stay invested when markets get loud.

3. Refuse leverage. I chose to live this life debt-free with no hard assets, and I sleep better every night because of it.

4. Hold for decades. The compounding clock starts the moment I stop interrupting it.

A Note from me

Morgan Housel became my favorite personal finance writer. I have read all his books to date, and every single Collab Fund thought leadership piece. Probably my most recommended book to people asking “where to start?” when I start obsessing about the world of finance.

What to Read Next

Investing has been solved, but it's not easy because our human emotions get in the way of our success. I attribute a lot of my success with money to the fact that I started the compounding process early in life, never chased get-rich-quick schemes, kept it simple, boring, and diversified. If that sparks your curiosity, consider reading my piece on winning with investing.

The scene

Odré is a second act. Krystian Bruź and Maciej Mazur have been running Campo here for the better part of a decade, and instead of rushing a follow-up, they spent a long time looking for the right room and made repeated trips to Paris to work out what they were building. Classic bistros, brasseries, the old rooms. They came back with a brief: very classic, modernly executed.

The name is the river. Odré sits on the Bulwary boulevard along the Odra, and the layout is the thesis, an open kitchen running into the depth of the room, a bar at the centre, tables set close. Not a space decision. The room is arranged so the team and the guests are never fully separated, and that feels right.

Beautiful red curtains set the mood from the moment you walk in. Marble tables, candlelight, crystal glassware — cosy yet elevated. This is the kind of place where you lean in, lower your voice, and savour every moment.

Head chef Mateusz Konieczko runs the pass with sous chef Dawid Zimny, on a menu built largely on French classics.

The hospitality

Dominica was the standout of the evening. She read our energy, noticed our curiosity about the open kitchen, and proactively moved us to Table 9 for the perfect view of the action. That kind of intuitive service — reading semblance before being asked — is rare and deeply appreciated. It elevated a great meal into a memorable experience.

The food

Starters

◆ Gougère — Gouda, Quince, Black Garlic

One-bite amuse-bouche

An explosion of flavours and softness. The kind of opening bite that recalibrates your palate and tells you: tonight will be special.

◆ Époisses — Honey, Garlic, Pickles, Apples, Bread

Warm cheese fondue-style starter

Incredible experience. The cheese sauce alone with bread could risk monotony, but the pairing with fresh grapes and apple slices was a masterstroke — a whole twist of texture and sweetness that kept every bite interesting.

Mains

◆ 30-Day Aged Roast Beef — Demiglace, Café de Paris

His main

A punchy, bold plate. The demiglace was beautifully executed and the herbal Café de Paris butter was a different level. Honest note: the cut carried more fat than ideal and there was generous oil on the plate. It was good — but could have been tighter.

◆ Cod — Herbal Sauce, Pickles

Her main — off-menu special

Delicate, refined, almost whispering compared to the beef’s shout. The contrast between the two plates was striking: one punchy with herbs, oil and salt; the other elegant and restrained. A beautiful pairing across the table.

Drinks and Pairings

◆ Negroni

Classic, served in cut crystal

The amber glow of the Negroni against the candlelight was a moment. Perfectly bitter, perfectly balanced. Cozy and romantic.

◆ Mocktail Negroni

Non-alcoholic alternative

A thoughtful option that didn’t feel like an afterthought.

◆ Rioja (Glass)

Spanish red, paired with the beef

A pleasant surprise — better and more affordable than the Polish wine alternative on the list. Well-matched with the richness of the roast beef.

The scorecard

Food 4: the époisses is the high point; the mains have room to sharpen
Service 5: attentive, well-timed, never hovering
Atmosphere 4: red curtains, marble, candlelight, an open kitchen worth watching
Hospitality 5: Dominika moved us to Table #9 before we thought to ask

Overall ★★★★☆

The artful critic

Two operators with a decade of Campo behind them went to Paris, studied the classics, and came home to build a room where the kitchen and the guests can see each other. That’s the whole restaurant in one decision — and it’s why Dominika could read us and move us. The room was designed for someone to.

The starters are where this kitchen is most itself. The mains still have room to sharpen.

Would we come back? Yes, for the époisses, for a Negroni against the candlelight, and for table #21 for a double date with friends.

If I audit my feed today, the artists, authors, friends, family, the meme accounts pulling my attention, how happy am I with the library I cultivated? How intentional have I been?

What I consume shapes how I perceive, how I react, the language I use, and the color of my thoughts. Eventually, I start to think as they think.

What if I followed only the best 1%? How would that change me?

In the past, expertise was highly associated with access to information. That paradigm has flipped now that access is cheap. What's hard is sifting signal from the noise. Information curation, what's meaningful and reliable, matters more than ever.⁠⁠

We are flooded daily with more information than entire civilizations could have produced. The key practice in the modern world is not how to consume all of it, but how to decide what not to consume. How to stay informed without all the distractions? How to manage our information diet?⁠⁠

I was in the London office in the middle of a content strategy talk with a leader I admire, how attention spans have shortened, how fewer books are read by younger generations, how feeds are flooded with recycled content engineered to look smart in small bites that never reach long-term memory.

A few days later, I cross Ryan Holiday sharing old thoughts on the same topic, and on a 12-hour flight to South China, I went deep into Obsidian to revive this 2022 evergreen.

Curation is key

The act of selecting, organizing, and caring for the items in a collection.

To me, curation is the future of authenticity. When everything becomes commodity, what I choose to collect and the stories I have to tell about how each dot connect is what differentiates.

Some people are entertained by whatever the YouTube homescreen serves up. Or the Instagram feed. Or the random emails in the inbox. They’re algorithmically led. That's not good or bad, it's just is. I’m not above it as I catch myself watching CNBC on autopilot late at night when my brain wants to slow down. The difference is awareness.

Where I eat, where I travel, what I read, watch, listen to, the services I subscribe to, my wardrobe, the people I keep close — everything is intentionally curated and aligned with the main thing.

Every six months, I audit my information sources and consumption routines. Last time, in Hong Kong, refining the information diet in front of Victoria Harbor, thinking that, as far as we know, all we have is time in this one wild and precious life.

The audit is always a calming exercise, unsubscribing, cleaning the inbox, deciding what to say no to, exercising intention.

Attention follows intention

A wealth of information created a poverty of attention, and every minute of attention is a minute of life spent. There's no exchange rate.

The ancient Greeks treated distraction not as an external interruption but as a failure of character, a slow inner drift from what you said you valued.

Attention is the beginning of devotion, says Mary Oliver passionately.

Devotion to what you read becomes who you think alongside. Devotion to who you spend time with shapes your character. Devotion to your environment becomes the rhythm of your days.

Harvard research claims the people you habitually associate with determine as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life, and the lead scientist, Dr. Dardy Hardy, names three forces shaping who we become:

1. Input, what you feed your mind

2. Associations, the people you spend time with

3. Environment, your surroundings

Curate all three. Audit them on a cadence. The unaudited life drifts toward the algorithm.

Choose carefully who you give your hours to, I save time standing on the shoulders of giants.

Spend time reading

You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well, and I spend quite some time curating what I decide to read.

Think that for the price of a book that I often read in between flights, I get to sit with the best thinkers of the last few thousand years. Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers will tell you their nuggets of wisdom.

Warren Buffett, who built an entire career on this habit, once told a room of students how he’d prepare for a life in investing: “I read 500 pages every week. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will.”

Munger would call him a “continuous learning machine.”

On any given day, Buffett reads for five or six hours behind a closed office door. The trillion-dollar conglomerate of Berkshire Hathaway is a byproduct of that habit.

Friends who don’t tire. Friends across centuries. Friends who challenge you to think clearly.

Keep in mind that more is not better, and Seneca caught this trap two thousand years ago, when libraries were status symbols.

Seneca is telling us to curate, intentionally choose a few, go deep, and re-read.

I keep my list public on Goodreads and eventually share a few highlights in the books section as a habit to become 1% better every day.

Sources of wisdom

1. Holiday, R. The Diet That Is Making You Miserable.

2. Covey, N. I think we've all heard the saying "you become the average of the 5 people you spend the most time around."

3. Pabrai, M. Watch this before you invest a single dollar.

4. Kelly, K. The Need to Read.

The scene

In 2014 The Eight became the first Chinese restaurant in Macau to hold three Michelin stars. In 2024 it lost one. It has held two ever since, and it had two on the night I ate there.

I want that on the record early, because everything else I am about to write argues with it.

The kitchen belongs to Joseph Tse, who came to the Grand Lisboa in 2015 with five decades of Cantonese cooking behind him. The room belongs to two symbols. The number eight, which in Chinese numerology means fortune, and also my birthday date and the reason for the visit. And goldfish, which mean abundance — hand-stitched in silk across the dining room wall, and projected into the water curtains at the entrance so they appear to swim beneath your feet as you walk in. The entrance is dark and quiet and feels like being submerged. It is the best first fifteen seconds of any restaurant I have entered.

I arrived early into a nearly empty room. A Chinese family had taken a round table in one corner, eight of them, celebrating something. Two well-dressed men came in later and were almost certainly up from the casino floor. Beyond that: silence, low light, and a corner table laid with more care than most restaurants give an entire section.

What brought me there

Every April I celebrate a special edition of The Think Week, and this was 2026.

Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, then Macau. It came after five years at Legend, and part of the point was to sit down with one of our chief executives in his area, the person who brought me into the business in the first place. Five years is long enough that you should go and say thank you in person.

I turned thirty-something in Hong Kong on the 8th, then crossed to Macau for two nights: one at the Venetian out in the resort sprawl of Cotai, and one at the Grand Lisboa, for this dinner and for the older city — the Ruins of St. Paul’s, where the façade is all that survived, and far too much Koi Kei pork jerky from the souvenir bakeries near it.

I had booked The Eight from Poland, weeks earlier. In the email I mentioned, in a subordinate clause, that this was a birthday trip matched with a few meetings in the region. I was explaining why I wanted the date, didn't ask anybody for anything.

Hospitality

The amuse-bouche arrived tasting exactly like pulled pork in spicy chilli oil. The fiber was right, the give was right, the heat was right. When the waiter came to check on me, I asked whether it was pork — not to catch anyone out, but because I wanted to be able to remember what I had eaten.

Mushroom, he said.

Then he watched me be delighted about that, went away, and came back with a second round I had not asked for and had no way to request.

That is the whole thing. He was not solving a problem. Nothing had gone wrong. He noticed a small private pleasure and decided to extend it, and the cost to the restaurant was one more portion of mushroom. This is what people mean by unreasonable hospitality, and it is almost never expensive. It is almost always just attention.

And then, at the end of the meal, the peaches.

Not a cake with a candle in it. Longevity peaches — 壽桃 — the peach-shaped buns traditionally served at Chinese birthdays, two of them, on gold, with a chocolate plaque. Someone told me what they were, which is the only reason I understood what I was looking at rather than photographing a nice dessert.

Work backward from that plate, and you arrive at a clause in an email, written weeks earlier from another continent, by someone who was explaining a date rather than making a request. Somebody read it. Somebody kept it. Somebody decided that the right response was not the international default but the gesture that actually belongs to the place I was standing in.

I have thought about that more than I have thought about the food, and the food was extraordinary.

The food

Honey-glazed barbecue pork. Their signature, and the reason this kitchen’s barbecue has a reputation at all. Lacquered dark, tender the entire way through, sweet without tipping into candy.

Crispy fried chicken. The waiter’s recommendation and the better dish of the two. So delicate you would not believe it had been near oil — except for the skin, which shatters, and which is the whole Cantonese argument for frying in the first place.

Champagne to open. Then jasmine tea, prepared at the table with a deliberateness I stopped talking in order to watch.

What I did not eat: the dim sum. Over forty kinds, and arguably what they are best known for. I had also skipped the abalone, having eaten my fill of it in Hong Kong two days before. So this is a review of a fraction of a restaurant.

650 patacas. Around eighty US dollars. A two-star in London costs four times that, and I am not confident it would arrive with any of what I have just described.

The scorecard

Food 5 — the barbecue pork and the chicken were both faultless

Service 5 — a second round of mushrooms nobody asked for

Atmosphere 5 — goldfish, silence, and the best entrance I have walked through

Overall ★★★★★ — my number one restaurant experience to date

The artful critic

Here is what will not leave me alone.

I spent years working around review platforms. I know how ratings are built, how they are gamed, and how much weight people put on a number they have never once interrogated. And I ate, on my birthday, at a restaurant that had recently been told by the most powerful rating body in food that it was worth one star less than before — from "worth a destination” to being “worth a detour.”

So this was the best detour I've done in life so far.

A star measures a kitchen at its most demanding: consistency, technique, the hardest things on the menu executed identically on a Tuesday in February. That is a real and difficult thing to measure, and Michelin measures it better than anyone. But it does not measure whether someone reads your booking email.

Which is the more useful lesson for anyone building anything. The third star costs a kitchen years and a fortune. The mushrooms cost nothing. One of those is a moat and the other is a decision, and the decision is available to every business on earth this afternoon.

Later that night I took a couple of chips down to the floor and played Sic Bo badly for an hour, which is the correct way to end a night at the Grand Lisboa.

On the way out they had given me a keychain with an 8 on it. I do not know if everyone gets one. It is in one of my bags right now, sixteen months later, and I know exactly which bag.

“Service is black and white; hospitality is color.”

— Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality

The book in three sentences

1. Written as a private journal by the Emperor of Rome, the most powerful man of his era, who never intended it to be read, Meditations is an honest leadership manual, a daily practice of self-correction, perspective, and discipline that has survived nearly two thousand years.

2. Three ideas keep showing up, page after page: the people around you shape who you become, you can find stillness anywhere if you train your mind, and death isn't a threat, but a reminder to pay attention.

3. Not a book of advice, but a man arguing with himself to stay good, present, useful, and his honesty and vulnerability make it timeless.

Why I Picked It Up

I first came across Marcus Aurelius while visiting museums around the world, where tour guides often referenced his power and his meditations. Once stoicism picked up steam in Silicon Valley, I returned to his character through quotes from Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic until the name became unavoidable.

At work, every time I bring up stoicism with senior leaders, Meditations is the first title they reference, and even though most haven’t read it fully, they all respect what it represents.

Think about that for a moment. We have the personal thought journal of the most important man of his time. The Emperor of Rome, writing to himself, never expecting anyone to read it. And nearly two thousand years later, executives in boardrooms are still citing it. Together with the Gospel of John, Meditations feels like one of those evergreen pocket books I can always come back to.

I read most of it on my long flight from Warsaw to Japan for my 30th birthday, with a physical copy in hand and a pen for underlining. These were the three things that stayed with me:

1. The Leadership Manual Hidden in Book One

2. Discipline Equals Freedom

3. The Stoic Growth Engine

The Leadership Manual Hidden in Book One

The entire first book of Meditations is unlike anything else in philosophy. It’s a gratitude list. Marcus Aurelius, the most important man of his time, opens not with grand ideas, but by naming every person who shaped him — and what specifically he learned from each one.

From his grandfather: composure. From his mother: generosity and simplicity. From his tutor: to mind his own business and never listen to gossip. From Rusticus: to read accurately, not settling for the general idea. From Apollonius: to make decisions independently instead of depending on chance. From Maximus: self-control, dignity, and cheerfulness under adversity. What struck me most was how specific the attributions are.

His exercise motivates us to take note of and praise those who shaped our lives and careers.

Craig Sullivan, who taught me that no design survives first contact with users.

Bart Bobrowski for being mindful of what we test when building product.

David Sanchez for his lessons on prioritization when the juice is worth the squeeze.

Mike Funderberk, who cross-pollinated hospitality into how business is done.

David Gouray, who contextualized leadership as the one who provides clarity of vision, foresees the steps ahead and considers how the next generation should look.

Nick Kisberg, the CEO I most admire, who I learned to be an advocate for the aggregation of marginal gains.

My father, who guided my youth through example, looked back each day, being sure the very best was done.

And for all the mentors I never met, but got their guidance through their written thoughts, the giants I don't get tired to stand in the shoulders.

We rarely pause to map those debts. Marcus Aurelius did it as his first act of philosophical reflection, which tells you something about his priorities: before you can lead others, acknowledge who led you.

One line I underlined twice — the Alexander the Platonist lesson about not overusing the words “I am too busy.” No one should shirk the obligations due to society on the excuse of urgent affairs. I think about this one often.

Discipline Equals Freedom

The middle books of Meditations are where it shifts from gratitude to daily combat, Marcus arguing with himself about how to think, how to act, and how to stay grounded.

The passage I keep coming back to is from Book Four: you don’t need a beach house or a mountain retreat to find peace. You can retire within yourself at any moment. Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

I love this one because it creates an internal contradiction with my own life, the Think Week ritual, where I force myself outside my routine to get exposed to different cultures, different people, different horizons. Here, the Roman Emperor tells me this is futile, that I must be strong to find that inner space for reflection within me, anywhere, any time. Maybe it’s all a learning curve. Maybe the external retreat is training wheels for the internal one. I’m still working that out.

Discipline is the root of all good things, at the gym, discipline is visible; you either show up or you don’t. In the mind, discipline is invisible. It’s choosing not to spiral. It’s choosing not to speculate about what someone else is doing or thinking. Marcus calls this out directly: wondering about others is a loss of opportunity for our own work.

Three mental discipline moves he returns to across multiple books:

Your mind becomes what it habitually thinks about. He writes about the soul being dyed by its thoughts. Fill your mind with what serves you. I’ve seen this play out in investing — the portfolio you build reflects the mental models you feed yourself, not the hot takes you scroll past.

You don’t have to have an opinion. Marcus says everything becomes what your opinion makes it. Renounce the opinion, and you find calm. Where I'm not knowledgeable or simply don't have any particular interest, I reserve my right to have an opinion, passing without forming a judgment. Many people today feel they must have a sharp take on every topic, every headline, every debate in a world full of controversial topics where omission can be an offense. Marcus would call that voluntary suffering.

Do only what is necessary. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary. The wise person asks of every action: Is this essential? I think about this every time I look at a product roadmap. The best products aren’t the ones with the most features. Simple is kind.

The Stoic Growth Engine

A quote from Chris Bailey’s Productivity Project I carry when pondering the future: happiness is nothing more than coming to terms with how things change. A recurring idea across Meditations — everything is changing, everything is temporary.

The stoics had a name for this: memento mori. Remember that you will die. It sounds heavy, but Marcus doesn’t use it to depress you. He uses it to wake you up, to remind us that time is all we have. He puts it plainly: live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow. Make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

The beautiful tension in Meditations is that Marcus fully acknowledges how brief and small our lives are — he writes about mortal life being a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth — and yet he never uses that as a reason to stop trying. He uses it as a reason to be more present, more deliberate, more alive. Memento mori isn’t about fear, but gratitude for the time you have and the urgency to use it fully, without being too hard on yourself for the imperfections along the way. It's only one life, we gotta make it count, and it has to be fun because it's already too serious to take it seriously.

The better every day foundation lies right here, in a book written two millennia ago. Compounding only works if you believe that today actually matters. Marcus gives you that belief: today is all you have. The present instant is the only moment you actually occupy. Everything else is either memory or speculation.

A Note from Me

Meditations meet you exactly where you are. It met Marcus Aurelius in the middle of running an empire. It met me at 30,000 feet, building something meaningful, striving to be 1% better than yesterday.

The Stoics don’t promise you won’t feel pain. They promise that if you do the work, the daily reps of perspective, discipline, and presence, you can carry it well.

And that might be enough.

What to Read Next

Check the summary for Supercommunicators, a book about mastering the art of connection through deep questions and active listening.

1. Product people shape, sync, and ship

2. Valuable and feasible are Product responsibilities

3. Know the customers, the data, the business model, and the market trends

1. Shape the product: Harness insights from customers, stakeholders, and data to prioritize and build a product that will impact the business most. Product people must be able to develop their future projection for the product, the vision, and how to get there, the strategy. Setting goals, creating specs, discovery, roadmapping, and product/design feedback cycles must be executed excellently to reach the vision.

2. Ship the product: Ship high-quality product on time and without surprises. This is about quality assurance, fighting for budget/resources, unblocking blockers, going to market, and adjusting resources/priorities when things come up. Ultimately, if it’s not live, it doesn’t count. When in doubt, ship it.

3. Synchronise the people: Tell a story and align stakeholders around one vision, strategy, goal, roadmap, and timeline to avoid wasted time and effort. Running effective meetings and communicating important information up and down the ladder are vital.

Defining Product

My first contact with Product design came during technical high school, where technical drawing led to mechanical projects. A few years later, during my engineering studies, I was tasked with the most time-consuming and challenging assignment: to deliver the entire project of a reductor from scratch.

Of course, I didn’t have to think about a business model for the device, because it wasn’t the point. I had to think about every little part, consider every tolerance for each assembly step. The emphasis was on precision, reliability, and functionality, ensuring each product met rigorous standards and served a specific purpose.

Nowadays, I find myself on a different side of the product management discipline, in a digital world that is much more dynamic and customer-centric. Product is not just a physical object but often a digital experience, a service, or a platform. There’s a lot more discussion on understanding user needs, iterating quickly, and continuously delivering value. The focus shifts from purely technical specifications to creating seamless and intuitive user experiences, ensuring the product evolves in line with market demands.

Usable, feasible, valuable, viable

Marty Cagan says that while the engineer owns feasible and the designer owns usable, valuable, and viable, it’s the product manager who owns the two of the hardest things to do. And those are pretty big shoes to fill.

It reminds me of desirable, feasible, and viable — the core of Strategyzer’s approach to business model testing.

Product people must understand their market drivers and desires so they can create a value proposition that is desirable. They must also model customers’ willingness to pay to keep the product viable with a sustainable profit.

Product principles and essential skills

Simple is kind

Perfect is not when there are no more things to add, but no more things to eliminate. Always choose concise and simple communication over complex. Don’t use more words when less will do. Drop the unnecessary, find the bits of work and effort that will yield the least value, and tactfully eliminate them. Simple is kind is my favourite mantra.

Better every day

We encourage continuous improvement through testing. We believe in Kaizen, the compounding force, the aggregation of marginal gains from being 1% better every day in each corner of the business.

Think big, ship small

Product people must be able to project the future of their product and tell that growth story to stakeholders while navigating the realities of time, capacity, and scope. In 90% of cases, the first two are set in stone, leaving the Product to negotiate the scope to the best of our abilities. Descope and deliver because if it’s not live, it doesn’t count.

Build for hospitality

Anticipate user needs, pay attention to details, and celebrate the guest. Ancient Japanese hospitality gives us a way to look at what we build and how we build it.
Product people must be guests of the whole product experience. Eat the dog food.

Make it visual

We encourage going beyond the comfort of spoken and written language and tapping into our immense power as spatial thinkers. A prototype is worth a thousand specs, a short video is worth a thousand screenshots — augment with AI, show and tell.

There are four essential skills

Great product thinkers aren’t born, they’re built. While trends and tools come and go, what endures are core capabilities: the muscle groups that compound over time.

Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well, operating from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence.

These skills are the quiet force behind confident decisions, crisp communication, and compounding outcomes:

1. Know the customers, who are using this?

2. Be an expert in the data and core behaviours, what and how is it used?

3. Understand the three areas of the business model, how is the product desirable, feasible, and viable?

4. Monitor industry trends and competitive landscape, who’s up against us, and how do they play?

Prioritization, is the juice worth the squeeze?

More on this soon…

Leveling up and tuning the Product Organization

I use Ravi Mehta’s competency framework to score my strengths and gaps across execution, insight, and strategy. It keeps me honest about where I need to grow — and where I can add the most leverage.

Once a quarter, I step back, take a snapshot, and assess where the product organization is underperforming. When momentum stalls or impact feels shallow, this helps pinpoint whether we lack vision, delivery, or customer understanding.

It’s a tool for reflection — and a prompt for action.

People I follow:

1. Naomi Gleit

2. Lenny Rachitsky

3. Marty Cagan

4. Teresa Torres

5. Shreyas Doshi

6. Ravi Mehta

7. Itamar Gilad

Good reads

1. The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business is a Good Idea when Everyone is Lying to You by Rob Fitzpatrick

2. Continuous discovery habits by Teresa Torres

3. Atomic habits applied to business by James Clear

4. Influence by Robert Cialdini

5. Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager by Ben Horowitz

Core Principles

1. Diversification: We spread risk across multiple asset classes, sectors, and geographies to protect against concentrated losses.

2. Income Generation: Dividend collection is a core feature of our portfolio, providing steady cash flow and compounding opportunities.

3. Long-Term Perspective: Our investment decisions are made with a multi-year horizon, allowing us to benefit from compounding and ride out short-term market volatility.

4. Quality First: Emphasis on companies with strong balance sheets, competitive advantages, and predictable cash flows

5. Rational Decision Making: Evidence-based investing decisions, not emotional reactions to market movements

Essential Learning Resources

Foundational Books

1. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

2. 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer

3. Quality Investing by Lawrence A. Cunningham

4. The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks

5. One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch

After you cover the basics

1. Poor Charlie Almanack

2. Compounding Quality e-book

Great to audiobook

1. All “The Little Books,” Common Sense Investing, That Still Beats the Market, Valuation

2. The Richest Man in Babylon

Online Courses

1. Aswath Damodaran’s Valuation @ NYU Stern

2. Brian Feroldi’s Long-Term Mindset course

YouTube Channels & Podcasts

On Youtube

Joseph Carlson was the first YouTube analyst we paid attention to. His investing style is influenced by the same masters we inspire. You will get value from his main channel and secondary after-hours thoughts.

Ben Felix provides evidence-based investing principles that will hurt the beginner’s investor brain. Take it as a personal challenge and growth path to comprehend his thinking.

Brian Feroldi was a Motley Fool contributor who took his own path and delivered great content to the community. Start with the Cash flow statement, Income statement, Balance sheet, and How the 3 financial statements link together

On Podcasts

The Best One Yet, previously Robinhood Snacks, is our daily podcast, which provides 15 minutes of market news entertainment.

The Memo by Howard Marks, incredible thinking worth sitting back and taking notes.

Financial Publications & Research

1. Seeking Alpha, deep-dive analysis from diverse contributors

2. Financial Times, global market coverage, and premium market insights

3. Motley Fool Stock Advisor, long-term focused stock recommendations, and educational content

Research & Analysis Tools

1. Qualtrim, portfolio tracking and analysis, dividend monitoring, performance metrics, and KPIs

2. Finviz, market visualization

3. FiscalAI, AI features for conversational analysis

4. TipRanks, analyst consensus & price target

What to read next

Q3-2024 Portfolio Quarterly Report.

Access eToro portfolio.

After a few years of collecting my thoughts, here is my take on effective meetings.

The bottom line is, do the homework.

Meetings won’t change

Dialogue is the basic unit of work in an organization. The quality of dialogue determines how people feel about one another, how teams gather and process information, how stakeholder management is considered, how decisions are made, and the quality of those decisions.

I appreciate how AI is changing the way we work across disciplines, however, I believe meetings are one of those things that will stay same as ever.

Leading conversations, aligning people, getting buy-in for critical decisions, and solving problems as a group — these will always be foundational skills of leadership.

Specific to the discipline of Product, going by Lenny’s playbook, if the role of a Product Manager is about shaping the Product, shipping the Product, and aligning the People, how do you do those things exceptionally well without effective meetings?

Positivity score from 600 meetings

I returned to writing about effective meetings after receiving the The Meeting Marathoner award from Money.ca, their version of “The Dundies,” and preparing for a speech I gave in Warsaw on becoming a supercommunicator.

The fun part is that I happened to be capturing metadata to gain a deeper understanding of the quality of my sessions using Circleback Insights, and the Positivity Score set the direction for what I have to contribute.

Six factors that make my meetings positive

I was puzzled, what makes my meetings so positive?

I started the soul-searching process and turned into what I do best as a Product person, I asked my customers, people I meet with often, and key stakeholders from my initiatives. Nic, our COO, took the time to distill the essence that I struggled to pinpoint alone. Once again, the best copy comes from your most engaged customers.

While writing this evergreen, I had the opportunity to spend a week between Santiago and Val Paraíso, and the Pacific waves helped me reflect on his feedback with additional notes for each quality he listed. However, I will keep this section for last and focus on the practical part first.

Meetings are high-value and high-cost

Naomi Gleit is one of the mentors I never spoke to, and the PJisms I bring to my teams are 100% inspired by her school of thought.

The effective meetings framework I use

I structured my meetings framework after her initial foundation, and it all starts with the question: Why exactly do I want to bring people together?

Before I get to the three types of meetings, if we look from above, this is how the meeting lifecycle generally looks like:

1. You feel you need to meet people for a particular reason.

2. You reach out, invite people, and provide them context with a pre-read.

3. You meet, cover the planned agenda, and take notes.

4. You follow up with notes and action points.

The following sections will get into more tactical details of each stage in the meeting lifecycle.

When to call a meeting?

Every communication has an objective, and in my experience, these are the three most common reasons that justify bringing people together:

1. Alignment: Too important to be sent via email, or when Q&A and collecting inputs from others might be a substantial portion of value added, for example, all-hands meetings and product reviews.

2. Decision making: Beyond what the product team can do on their own, usually because of larger dependencies or stakeholders from different areas. Here, I’m a fan of the Amazon 6-pager written narrative and the good old Product requirements document (PRD), for example, an experiment results review call for a critical rollout decision or a prioritization session.

3. Problem-solving: A complex problem we don’t know the best course of action for, otherwise, it would’ve been a decision-making meeting. Here, we believe that having the right minds in a room thinking from different angles will unlock stronger solutions, for example, GrowthMentor calls, ideation workshops, post-mortems, or whiteboarding with engineering.

The worflow below is how my mind goes through the steps deciding if I need a watercooler ten-minutes conversation, if I could help people visualize first with an async loom, or maybe it fits an existing meeting agenda.

1. Always come prepared

An essential lesson from Kris, a VP of Marketing who coached me for half a year, that I will carry for the rest of my career, is The Five Ps:

Being prepared means starting with the end in mind, it means sharing with participants an agenda of what needs to be covered and what needs to happen for us to celebrate a successful session.

“In preparation for a battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Above all, being prepared means respecting everyone’s time.

2. Communicate clearly, at the start and at the end

Humans tend to remember the start and the end of interactions, it’s called primacy bias. Think about this, we usually remember the puzzling start of a movie and the triumphant ending. How we first met a lover and how that relationship broke. The palate-opening entrée and the sweet closing dessert.

The start and the end, when planned with intention, make any experience memorable.

Now translate the concept to our daily communications and consider the tactical aspect:

1. Meetings that start lightheartedly and with smiles often get people feeling better at the end, even if they’re not as productive, and that matters a lot.

2. Follow that with the reason why a meeting was necessary, rather than an email or a short video. Present the outline, including what needs to be covered, and explain how we expect to celebrate a successful session at the end. Show the homework and emphasize that everyone’s time is valued.

3. At the end, remind people of what was covered, help them feel a sense of progress, and celebrate.

3. Manage time exceptionally well

Work will be endless, your time is finite, the only thing you can control is time — and energy. I often call myself the “time warrior” during meetings as I fight for discussion topics to be time-boxed. At a tactical level:

1. Estimate the time per item for each agenda topic. The time sum should align with the booked time slot, always with a three-minute buffer, which is often used at the beginning as participants join the call. As time per topic approaches, I call “the time warrior” and move to the next.

2. If a discussion needs more time, don’t let the meeting run longer; people have plans and busy agendas. Park the topic and book a smaller session with stakeholders if it makes sense.

3. And my favorite tactic of them all, something I learned from the Wisepublishing leadership team, is to call for ELMO — Enough, Let’s Move On — when a topic starts derailing, either by throwing the cute red puppet we have in the boardroom at someone while making fun of the fact, or virtually with a lovely gif.

4. Open-minded and adaptable

I attribute this to:

1. Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit, one of my favorite Amazon leadership principles, and

2. My career in experimentation humbled me countless times, as my best and brightest ideas turned out to be wrong when they reached customers in production.

5. Recognize contribution with your own style

I count in two hands the most successful product experiments in my career so far, the ones that really moved the needle and hit the bottom line, and none of those were my ideas.

Of course, with the many reps I had building and optimizing products, I helped those who were brave to speak up and share their concepts to shape and refine their vision, a process I call “increasing the likelihood for a winner.”

I expect great ideas from those I work with, and I’m the first one to stand up and celebrate their wins.

6. Passion is infectious

I love what I do, I am grateful for the opportunities I have had, I work hard, and I ensure that every meeting I participate in ends with more positive energy than it started. That’s all.

The book in three sentences

1. Supercommunicators are individuals who have mastered skills that enable instant connection, and this is due primarily to how they ask deep questions.

2. Duhigg reveals that every dialogue runs on three tracks: practical problems, emotional experiences, and identity values.

3. Great communicators don’t just speak clearly; they listen for the type of conversation and adjust their response accordingly.

Why I Picked It Up

I first came across this book in Copenhagen's airport, in one of those “top 10 non-fiction” bookshelves they keep on display, to be later retargeted by Duhigg's TED Talk in one of my YouTube sessions.

I’ve always thought I was pretty clear in how I talk. But what I realized is that I often miss what the other person actually wants from the exchange. Here are three reflections that stayed with me:

1. Conversations Happen on Three Levels

2. Matching the Tone and the Energy

3. How to Make Conversations Land

Conversations Happen on Three Levels

Every conversation contains three overlapping questions:

1. What’s this about?

2. How do we feel?

3. What does this say about us?

Duhigg breaks down conversations into three tracks: practical (solving a problem), emotional (processing a feeling), and identity (protecting or revealing who we are).

Most communication fails because people are talking on different levels. You’re solving a problem, they’re expressing a fear. You’re focused on facts, they’re navigating self-worth. The mismatch creates distance, even if the words sound right.

Curiosity is key for the supercommunicator, not charm or verbosity. It’s the ability to pause and ask, “Wait—what kind of conversation is this?”

That question alone can shift everything. It slows things down. It creates space. It puts both people in the same mode of listening.

Since reading the book, I’ve started labeling conversations in real time. Am I hearing a feeling or a request? Am I answering a logistical question or something more profound? That shift alone has made me slower to speak and quicker to connect.

Matching the Tone and the Energy

The way something is said matters as much as the words themselves.

Skilled communicators pay attention to tone, rhythm, and emotional intensity. They slow down when someone hesitates. They let silence linger when it’s needed. They respond calmly when the other person feels tense. They stay in sync.

I’ve seen myself miss this. I jump in too fast. I focus on clarity and outcomes. But not every moment calls for progress. Some call for alignment. Matching someone’s energy isn’t about imitation—it’s about respect.

You respond at their pace, not yours. You meet them where they are.

That’s what presence looks like. And it’s what opens the door for trust.

How to Make Conversations Land

The best part of the book is how tactical it gets with its “guides to using these ideas.”

I will focus on a few key questions I noted, as well as parallels with notes I gathered from 'Never Split the Difference' and the playbook of CIA negotiators.

Duhigg shares a set of questions that help align conversations in real time:

• “Do you want help or just someone to talk to?”

• “Is this about the decision or how it was made?”

• “Is there something about this that feels personal to you?”

These questions help you tune into the emotional level of a conversation; they create space and slow things down. I’ve found myself using them not just at work, but with friends, family, and dates.

Following up with depth

The book also changed how I think about deep questions, the ones that invite someone to share more than just surface-level details, questions that tap into our emotions, feelings, and identities.

I started testing these questions in events, dates, randomly at the gym, and even in Eastern Europe, where the stigma is often perceived as less friendly people who don't smile as much, the difference between a flat “what do you do?” versus “how do you feel about where you are right now?” is striking.

You can memorize questions, get a deck with conversation starters, or whatever it takes to get reps and make these more natural to how you express genuine curiosity when connecting with others.

Super communicator meets negotiation

Some of these tactics echo what Chris Voss wrote about in Never Split the Difference, or what CIA field operatives use in high-stakes dialogue:

Mirroring the last few words someone says.

Labeling what you hear in their tone.

Staying with the silence instead of rushing to fill it.

These moves help people feel heard. They let you stay in rhythm with what the other person can actually receive.

During a strategy week in Canada, I joined a high-stakes session with VPs and C-levels to align on a 3-year plan for one of our car brands. I didn’t say much. But when I did, I reflected what I’d heard, connected a few threads, and asked a question that helped everyone take a step back. That moment kept coming up afterward. It didn’t land because it was clever—it landed because it was paced right, and in sync with the group.

The book also changed how I think about deep questions. I used to treat them as conversation starters. Now I see them as a way to meet someone at a more honest level.

Instead of asking “what do you do?” I ask “how do you feel about where you are right now?”

Instead of “what’s next?”—“what’s pulling you forward these days?”

I keep a deck of deep question cards in my living room. I use them with friends, and sometimes with people I’ve just met. They help break the script. They open something up.

Listening, mirroring, pacing, asking better questions—this isn’t theory. It’s how conversations open up. It’s how they land.

A Note from Me

This book reminded me that communication is a two-player game—and sometimes the best move isn’t to say something smarter, but to switch lanes entirely.

In life and business, connection often begins when we stop trying to be right and start trying to be in sync.

Next month, I will be in Warsaw bringing a summary of the book with personal experience notes to the stage.

What to Read Next

Check the summary for The Mom Test, the most recommended Product book.

The book in three sentences

1. People rely on psychological shortcuts — known as the six principles of influence— to make decisions faster.

2. These principles are powerful tools of persuasion, often used automatically and subconsciously.

3. Understanding them helps you both become more persuasive and protect yourself from manipulation.

Why I Picked It Up

It kept coming up. Whether we were interviewing product leaders, startup founders, or marketers, people would reference "Cialdini's work" like gospel.

It’s structured like a behavioral playbook for influence. You learn one psychological principle at a time, with vivid real-world examples. It's one of those books that changes how you notice things—ads, conversations, negotiations.

These were the three things that stayed with me:

1. The Six Shortcuts to Influence

2. Applying It Ethically

3. Spotting Influence in the Wild

The Six Shortcuts to Influence

Cialdini identifies six core principles that people use to make quick decisions:

• Reciprocity: We feel obligated to return favors.

• Commitment & Consistency: We want to stay true to our previous decisions.

• Social Proof: We follow what others are doing, especially in uncertain situations.

• Authority: We defer to those who appear knowledgeable or credible.

• Liking: We’re more likely to agree with people we like.

• Scarcity: We value things more when they seem limited.

Each principle taps into automatic behavior—mental shortcuts that help us navigate complexity but also leave us vulnerable to manipulation.

Applying It Ethically

These six principles don’t just work in sales or marketing. They show up everywhere—from product design to fundraising to parenting.

Here’s how I’ve seen them used well:

• Offering reciprocity with upfront value before a signup.

• Using commitment nudges like onboarding checklists.

• Featuring authentic testimonials and social stats.

• Framing advice with expert voices or credentials.

• Writing with warmth and relatability.

• Creating urgency ethically, not manipulatively.

Understanding these levers doesn’t mean you have to pull them all the time. But knowing they’re there gives you more intention and control.

Spotting Influence in the Wild

Once you read Influence, you start seeing these psychological shortcuts everywhere:

• The free sample at the grocery store (Reciprocity).

• The limited-time-only discount (Scarcity).

• The expert on TV in a lab coat (Authority).

• The “People Also Bought” section (Social Proof).

Cialdini doesn’t just teach you how to use influence—he gives you the tools to resist it too. This makes the book as much a defense manual as it is a strategy guide.

A Note from Me

Once you’ve seen these principles, you can’t unsee them. They’re everywhere. But one app that truly stands out for using all of them—often at once — is Duolingo ($DUOL).

Here are just a few of the ways I’ve seen Duolingo applying Cialdini's influence principles in the product:

1. Reciprocity – It gives you value immediately with lessons and streaks, often before asking you to pay or commit.

2. Commitment & Consistency – The daily streak mechanic builds a habit and nudges you to keep your word to yourself.

3. Social Proof – Leaderboards show what others are doing, and push notifications tell you how you're ranking.

4. Authority – The owl delivers tips and encouragement like an expert guide, often using structured learning paths backed by linguistics.

5. Liking – The app’s tone, mascot, and animations build an emotional connection. It’s friendly and unhinged.

6. Scarcity – Limited-time XP boosts, streak freezes, and seasonal badges add urgency and scarcity in a lightweight way.

What to Read Next

Check the summary for The Mom Test, the most recommended Product book.

Having a plan

Notice how every complex product comes with a manual so you can avoid mistakes and get the best experience, yet we enter this world with little instruction on how to make the most out of life. Some of us are lucky and learn the basics from good parents, mentors, and communities around us, but only time and enough reflective thinking reps help us to know ourselves better and understand our aversions and inspirations.

I entered the business world when I was 16, a mechanical technician in the quality department of Thyssenkrupp in South Brazil, the first time I recall being requested to have a plan. It took me a few years to start noticing how many people around me had very clear plans for their jobs but no order of operations for their lives. Being reactive to everything didn't work for my obsession with feeling in control, so I started planning life based on what I knew best at that time, turn-based RPGs and Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 that dominated my childhood.

Engineer was my character class, and by the age of 18, I had spent many points in intelligence and few in charisma or constitution, but I realized that navigating life was just a game of collecting experience points, and every six months I took time to review my character sheet. That was the beginning of me being intentional about how I designed a life worth living.

The Think Week

I remember being in Hungary around 2019 when I first crossed Bill Gates’ solo ‘think weeks’ in a cabin in the woods concept to go through the numerous books that a busy life wouldn't allow him to dive into. By then, I already had a well-established planning routine: at the beginning of each year, I set the roadmap for life and business, and every quarter I sharpen the saw.

What I got from his protocol was the idea of pairing that with travel, not necessarily to a remote place where I'd arrive by boat or helicopter, but to fresh horizons I haven't seen yet, which I've perfected over the past 7 years, having seen more than 60 countries.

I understand what Anthony Bourdain thinks when he said travel is not a reward for working; it is an education for living and how travel changes you. As I move through this life and this world, I end up changing things slightly. I leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life and travel also leave marks on me.

At work, we force ourselves to run sprint retros, quarterly business reviews, weekly TPS reports, everything with an expected structure that I missed when first trying to plan my own destiny. I tried and tested many templates and ended up with a simple set of tools that works for me and seems to work for the people I coached on life planning.

The Life Wheel: everything starts with this one. An eye-opener exercise from my first sessions paying for a legit life coach, back when you wouldn't find this title on 7 out of 10 LinkedIn profiles. This is the RPG character sheet structured in the life dimensions that make sense to me. I use a version of the PERMAV borrowed from positive psychology. For each Key Area of Life, I create a benchmark of what 0 means to me and what 10 would feel like. Every six months, you reassess where you are.

Objectives and Key Results: I had so many reps with OKRs in the technology world I'm part of that I incorporated the system into my own roadmap. Objectives are memorable and long-term-oriented, such as “The wisdom of speaking three languages” or “Celebrating a 30-year investing journey.” Key results are measurable and set for three to six months, like “Take three Spanish-only tours while traveling” or “Hit the eToro Diamond investment tier.”

Vision statement, principles, and mantras: I am a very systematic and focused individual, and after a few years of personal OKRs, I noticed a natural convergence to the vision I had for my life. When asked about it, the way I summarize it comes from one of my favorite books, which I remember finishing while in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2025: Richer, Wiser, Happier. I can track every single personal project to one of these three keywords. Principles, how I usually do things, and Mantras, key phrases I often repeat to stay on course, organically came into existence. I will always “start with the end in mind,” strive to be “1% better everyday” and design experiences based on “Omotenashi, the Japanese hospitality.” A lot of my evergreen writing has to do with capturing Principles and Mantras so I can pass them along. Believe me or not, I have a curated list for both, which I tend to review twice a year.

Asking right questions

Any retrospective is only as good as the questions asked and the attention given to the right topics. If I have to share three key questions I ponder on each Think Week, these are the ones:

1. What’s the main thing? Has it changed for any reason? What projects and adventures are advancing the main thing?

2. How are the different life areas I track progressing over time? How do I stack up against my definition of worst vs best?

3. How am I growing? What are the routines in place that reinforce my 1% better every day? How and when do I apply learnings?

Away from keyboard

I was 21 when I was sent to California to take part in my engineering at Cal Poly Pomona. During 18 months in the land of dreams, I captured more Wisdom points to my character sheet than any time before. I understood how big the world was and how much there was out there to see. The game of life took an Age of Empires turn where now I had to clear the “fog of war.”

It's crazy to think how much I grew up plugged into screens, first the Super Nintendo, then the PS1, and after ’99, when I got access to dial internet after 2 p.m. on Saturday and full-day Sunday, oh boy, I was all over the web, and that never changed. I would spend countless weekends in front of the screen, just like I am right now, updating this piece from my office in Poland on a beautiful summer evening.

Stepping away from our digitally saturated environments, for me, is an exercise in itself because I don't like being disconnected at all.

Yes, I check Slack daily during “vacation.” Yes, I answer emails. Yes, I am proud to always be on, but that doesn't mean I can't disconnect.

Cycling has always been my zen. The steady rhythm, the breeze, the changing landscape, it’s moving meditation. For some, it’s running shoes hitting pavement, the fresh breeze after hours of hiking, the peace in the flow of yoga. The key is finding your active escape. And the science is quite fascinating.

“During prolonged exercise or focused movement, our bodies release endorphins and endocannabinoids. These chemicals reduce pain, decrease anxiety, and create a sense of euphoria. It’s nature’s reward for pushing our limits. More than just feeling good. This state enhances creativity, improves problem-solving, and boosts overall cognitive function.”

The time I invest in these offline activities is an essential part of my creative, reflective, and soul-searching process. Many of my best ideas come during or right in a new city that I just arrived.

Sources of wisdom

1. Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You by Bill Burnett, Dave Evans

2. Use Strategic Thinking to Create the Life You Want, Harvard Business Review

Like everyone, I've been exploring the application landscape as new shiny-new-ai-things appear weekly. Productivity and workflow enhancement apps have been my favourite category, apart from using voice-GPT as a gallery guide.

I will react to Reforge's AI impact on PM activities and update you on my best AI-enhanced workflows.

Three sentence summary

1. AI is eliminating the time-consuming admin layers of product work.

2. This puts pressure on PMs to deepen judgment, taste, and storytelling.

3. The builders who can think clearly and communicate value will thrive.

What parts of product management get replaced?

I don't have a clear-cut answer or elaborated vision, but I can share what changed for me and my people.

AI enhances

These are areas where AI doesn’t replace the PM — it augments their thinking and accelerates output.

Strategic Direction: Competitive analysis or market research in deep research mode. Synthesizing survey responses, customer interviews, and chat transcripts. What used to take days now takes minutes.

Builder mentality: A prototype is worth a thousand Jira specs, and tools like V0, Lovable, Cursor, or Bolt have become essential for telling the product story.

Decision-making: I'm keen to see more development in this area. There is a case for prioritizing managers who process live backlog data and maintain some prioritization score, as you do. I also look forward to seeing more applications from experimentation platforms.

AI replaces

These are no longer PM differentiators; it's admin work delegated to systems. The best PMs are letting these go fast.

Meeting summaries: I've tried a few tools in this space, but Circleback worked like magic and became integral to my note-making system.

Product artifacts: I experimented with many tools to move faster with documentation, right now my toolkit looks like this:

1. Chat GPT Pro Projects, for PRD templates used in Jira epics or user stories for engineering tickets, where I share examples of templates to keep in memory.

2. Reforge AI extension in Jira is handy for release notes and comment summaries.

3. Notion AI for exploring the knowledge base (yes, I moved away from Obsidian)

If I had to highlight the top three workflows where AI feels like complete magic for me:

1. From meeting note to Jira ticket ready for developers: I ask the Circleback bot for a summary of requirements as we diligently repeat ourselves for the bot to capture the right decisions during calls. Copy and paste that transcript into the GPT Jira ticket writer bot template.

2. From UI inspiration to mobile-friendly prototype on your phone: You have a new feature you found from an adjacent industry that could be added to your product. You get that screenshot to ChatGPT, ask for a V0 spec, build the thing in V0, and get the prototype share link. With screenshots of the prototype and the specs, get the engineering ticket from the GPT Jira ticket writer to investigate the feature.

3. Talking to technical documentation: I export all API integration docs into a PDF and load them into a Claude project as a knowledge base, then I talk to the documentation and run audits on my systems.

Taste and judgement

I appreciate how Shaun and Fareed contextualize taste and judgment as key attributes for product people; I see both as integral parts of personal branding that influence the most powerful leadership tool: storytelling.

Product people are always crafting narratives that take people on a journey to understand what they're building and why it matters.

So what are you being paid for?

The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists.

The book in three sentences

1. Great teams aren’t built on talent alone — they’re built on trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results.

2. Most teams fail not because they lack strategy, but because they lack the courage to be honest.

3. One dysfunction leads to the next, creating a compounding failure spiral.

Why I Picked It Up

I got this recommendation from a friend who was leading a software engineering department through a tense org restructuring. The book reveals a leadership parable told through the story of a fictional tech company that reminds me of The Goal.

I listened to the audiobook, and here are three things that stayed with me:

1. Trust is the Foundation

2. Conflict is Productive

3. Commitment to Results

As I reflect on my notes and start mapping the learnings, I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the Amazon Leadership Principles.

Trust is the Foundation

Lencioni begins his story with the team’s offsite, where the cracks are subtle but real. The CEO notices people play it safe, avoid personal disclosures, rarely admit when they’re unsure, and the absence of vulnerability-based trust, the kind that lets someone say:

I messed that up — I need help.

I've experienced a similar counterproductive environment as described in the book, where more time was spent documenting decisions and taking screenshots of who said what on Slack, because "being protected" is almost more important than making progress. If vulnerability is not welcomed, teams stay in protection mode.

The story portrays how even the most senior executives in the fable carry a status armor, which kills open dialogue. Building trust means being vulnerable and genuine first.

Conflict is Productive

As trust builds up, productive conflict can emerge — the second dysfunction.

In the early meetings, team members nod along, hold back critiques, and defer to consensus. The danger? Artificial harmony.

Lencioni contrasts this with healthy disagreement: interrupting not to derail, but to challenge and engage. In one moment from the story, a key exec finally voices disagreement about a hiring decision. It sparks tension — but also a breakthrough. People finally start speaking their minds.

This idea reminds me of Amazon's leadership principle “Have a backbone,” because Teams that don’t disagree and commit, don’t grow.

Commitment to Results

In Lencioni’s model, the fifth dysfunction is inattention to results. This aligns with Amazon’s principle of “Deliver Results”. It’s not enough for teams to trust each other and engage in healthy conflict if they aren’t collectively focused on outcomes. The fictional team in the book only starts succeeding when everyone shifts from individual agendas to a shared commitment to results.

A Note from Me

The five dysfunctions of a team:

1. Absence of Trust – people don’t open up or admit mistakes.

2. Fear of Conflict – real issues get buried under politeness.

3. Lack of Commitment – vague alignment leads to scattered execution.

4. Avoidance of Accountability – no one calls out underperformance.

5. Inattention to Results – ego or personal goals take priority over team wins.

I came back to this framework during a reorg when team roles were shifting, and trust was shaky. It helped me zoom out and ask: Where are we stuck? It wasn’t about velocity or OKRs — it was about people not feeling safe enough to disagree out loud.

I started by acting on what was under my control, making small trust deposits: owning my own mistakes early in meetings, being transparent about uncertainty, and surfacing silent resistance in 1:1s. Over time, it gave others an opening to do the same. That’s when the real progress started.

If your team feels off but you can’t quite name it — this book gives you the vocabulary and the mirror.

What to Read Next

Check the summary for The Mom Test, the most recommended Product book.

The book in three sentences

1. A father and son motorcycle trip becomes the canvas for a philosophical deep dive into the nature of Quality.

2. The narrative oscillates between the road and the mind, blending storytelling with an inquiry into values, meaning, and madness.

3. At its core, it’s a guide to living with care — integrating rational analysis and romantic intuition as one unified way of being, which reminds me of Product.

Why I Picked It Up

I first came across this book during my days as a mechanical engineer, when my world revolved around tolerances and inspections. I remembered it as dense — even intimidating.

Years later, after stumbling upon references to the book on Lenny's podcast, I picked it up again, now working in the digital space of Product — still solving problems, still thinking in systems, but through a completely different lens.

And here are three reflections that stayed with me:

1. Quality Comes Before Definition

2. The Mechanical Is Spiritual

3. Classical Meets Romantic

Quality Comes Before Definition

Before you can measure, define, or optimize anything, you feel its quality.

That feeling of “rightness” is the seed of good product decisions. It’s not irrational. It’s pre-rational. Learning to trust that sense, that Product intuition, and then validating it is part of mastering the craft.

In Zen, Pirsig assigns his English students the task of writing about “what is quality?” Most of them freeze. Not because it’s too abstract, but because it’s too familiar. They know what quality is — they feel it every time they read something good or bad — but they can’t define it. The moment they try to pin it down, it slips away.

That’s the point. Quality isn’t born from the definition. It’s revealed through experience.

Product people chase the same thing. A flow that just works. A design that feels frictionless. A release that clicks. We sense quality before we can articulate why it’s there.

The Mechanical Is About Care

One of Pirsig’s most vivid contrasts is between himself and his friend John, who rides a sleek BMW but wants nothing to do with maintenance. John just wants the machine to work. He avoids the details, dreads the thought of opening up the bike, and resents any breakdowns. For him, the machine is a black box — something to be used, not understood.

But Pirsig sees the opposite: real peace of mind comes from engaging with the machine, not ignoring it. From paying attention. From care.

Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial, really. It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance.

Product work has the same shape. You can either patch things blindly — or take the time to understand how the system works. Real builders don’t just want things to run. They want to know why they run, and how to make them better.

Care is not extra, it is the work.

Classical Meets Romantic

Zen is a book about a breakdown — intellectual, emotional, and philosophical. And at the heart of that breakdown is a split: the classical mindset that dissects and explains vs. the romantic mindset that experiences and appreciates.

Pirsig doesn’t tell us to pick one. He illustrates what happens when you fail to integrate the two, which applies to the Product world.

Strategy is worthless without taste. Design is fragile without structure.

The real craft is holding both, even when they pull against each other. Knowing when to analyze and when to feel. When to break something apart and when to step back and see the whole.

Most teams lean one way. Great teams hold the tension and build something better from it.

A Note from Me

In mechanical engineering, I was trained to eliminate error. In Product, I’ve learned to embrace uncertainty — and still move forward with care.

To me, product management is a discipline of attention. A commitment to listen, to inspect, to integrate — and above all, to pursue quality before we even try to define it.

What to Read Next

Check the summary for The Mom Test, the most recommended Product book.

Broadly speaking, time management isn’t just a skill, it’s the essence of life itself. The main question isn’t how to extend life as long as possible, but how to live it all the way along.

Focus on essentials

The concept of time exists to support our minds in reasoning, measuring, categorizing, and understanding relative change.

Einstein explains it, the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Time keeps our memories in context, and because we know time is limited we are forced to prioritize.

The main challenge of managing our limited time is deciding what not to do and how to feel at peace about not doing it.

More time is wasted doing things that don’t matter than doing things inefficiently, making elimination the best optimization.

I tell myself, do less, just like Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, if you seek tranquility, do what’s essential. Do less, but better.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.

But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.

You have to pick carefully. I’m as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

— Steve Jobs

Saying no doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make you selfish, it doesn’t make you ungrateful for the generosity you’ve received, and it doesn’t shut the door on serendipity and opportunity.

We can go at any moment, we treat our time as a gift and focus only on what’s essential.

Waste no time

All of us are short-lived creatures vulnerable to being struck down by disease or accident at any time, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years, 100 years, or even 110 years. These are all tiny numbers in the grand scheme of time.

Life is short, and we only have one, but the main question isn’t how to extend life as long as possible, but how to live a life worth living all the way along, to live a life that you’d feel good about whenever it gets taken away.

Designing a life worth living became a hobby and a personal development system I started with a group of positive people that I met around the world.

There's a reason those weeks matter beyond the living of them. Experiences pay dividends, because we remember them — a good one keeps paying out every time you recall it, long after the moment is gone. So living all the way along becomes a maximizing game, creating and capturing the kind of moments that compound in memory for the rest of your life.

How you live affects how long you live, and most people could do better, myself included. If the arithmetic of a finite life moves you, the fuller case for spending it on memories is in Die With Zero.

Tracking and priorities

Where I dedicate my time and energy is the best description of my priorities.

I’ve been experimenting with productivity and tracking time for the past three years, here’s my recommendation:

Not having time is one of the biggest excuses we use. Because we all know, when it’s important enough we make time, if not we make an excuse.

Track your time meticulously for seven days.

You will be shocked at how much time flitters away doing things that don’t create value.

— ​Marie Forleo, Diary of a CEO E184​

You can treat time tracking as a habit for building momentum when you need accountability or as a quarterly exercise that you run for clarity when you need a picture of your time balance sheet. It depends on how much you want data.

There’s no place to hide once you confront the data, where the hours are going, and how life is being lived.

Tracking time as a habit helped me manage priorities as much as it reminded me to relax and explore.

We can’t add more days into our lives, but we can have more life into our days.

Do not take a minute of it for granted, remind yourself to live.

Your work will be endless, but your time is finite. You cannot limit the amount of work so you must limit your time.

Hours are the only thing you can manage.

— Kevin Kelly, ​99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice​.

Sources of wisdom

1. Paul Graham, ​Life is Short​

2. Seneca, The shortness of life

3. Perkins, B. 2020. Die With Zero.

All great achievements in life — whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge — stem from the magic of compounding minor improvements. Just as 1% daily growth can lead to a 37-fold increase over a year, consistent tiny gains in our daily efforts can result in extraordinary progress. The key is to focus on being just 1% better each day.

Continuous improvement is exponential growth. By striving to add more than we consume daily, we set ourselves on a path of abundance.

It’s not about perfection but progress. ​I take pride in every time you see me there’s progress.​ This commitment to daily wins is the heartbeat of my philosophy.

Japanese continuous improvement

My journey with continuous improvement began in an unexpected place - a manufacturing plant floor. As a young mechanical engineer, I was introduced to the concept of Kaizen not through books or lectures, but through the tangible transformation of processes I witnessed daily.

The term “Kaizen” was popularized in Masaaki Imai’s 1986 book, but its essence was already flowing through Japanese manufacturing long before that. American quality pioneers like W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran planted these seeds while helping rebuild Japan’s industry after WWII, and Toyota transformed these principles into what would become the most studied production system in history.

But what captured my imagination wasn’t just the systematic approach to improvement. It was watching how small, daily adjustments to seemingly minor details could cascade into remarkable outcomes. A worker would suggest a slight modification to their workstation, and within weeks, the entire process flow would become more efficient. A tiny adjustment in tool placement would save seconds, which multiplied across thousands of operations, would save hours.

This wasn’t just about manufacturing efficiency — it was a philosophy that spoke to something deeper. The idea that excellence isn’t achieved through dramatic overhauls but through patient, persistent, daily refinement resonated with my approach to personal growth.

Toyota’s implementation of Kaizen taught me five principles that transcended the factory floor:

1. Continuous Improvement: Change is not a one-time event but a constant journey;

2. Everyone Involved: Growth isn’t limited to leaders or experts - everyone contributes;

3. Eliminate Waste: Remove anything that doesn’t add value to your life or work;

4. Go to Gemba: Understand challenges by experiencing them firsthand;

5. Make Changes Now, Perfect Later: Start immediately, refine continuously. Think big, ship small.

These principles became the foundation of my personal philosophy.

Improvements don’t need to be dramatic to be meaningful, “It’s evolution, not revolution,” as I learned with Andrea Mastriner.

Just as a manufacturing process becomes more efficient through countless small adjustments, personal growth happens through daily conscious choices to be slightly better than yesterday. Progress compounds.

A Stoic approach to personal growth

The ancient Stoics understood something profound about human progress. To Seneca, one of Stoicism’s greatest teachers and the one I admire the most, the path to a fulfilled life was to acquire one valuable thing daily — a quote, an idea, an insight, a story. Something that fortifies you against fear, against adversity. Just one thing. He didn’t say that this one thing makes us perfect but rather that it makes us just a little bit better.

The Stoic approach strips away the overwhelming pressure of massive self-improvement goals and replaces it with something more sustainable: daily, intentional growth. Think of it as building your personal fortress, one stone at a time.

Consider these six Stoic practices for daily improvement:

1. Morning Preparation: Begin each day by anticipating challenges and starting with the end in mind

2. Physical Discipline: Train your body as a pathway to mental fortitude, a healthy body for a healthy mind

3. Mindful Response: Practice the pause between stimulus and response - a moment to choose wisdom over reaction

4. The Sage’s Perspective: Before making important decisions, ask, “What would the wisest person I know do in this situation?”

5. The Obstacle is the Way: View each challenge as your custom-designed opportunity for growth

6. Evening Review: End each day by acknowledging what you learned and how you grew

Epictetus, born into slavery in ancient Rome and crippled from an early age, embodied the very essence of daily progress against seemingly insurmountable odds. From these humble beginnings, he became one of history’s most influential teachers, proving that our circumstances need not define our growth potential. Notice he doesn’t say, “Become perfect immediately” or “Transform yourself overnight.” Instead, he advocates for a patient, persistent dedication to progress. This is what I mean by being better every day.

Prolific beats perfect

This message’s universality makes it powerful — it applies to every field, endeavor, and goal.

The emphasis shifts from perfection to persistence, from fear of failure to embrace of attempts.

Failure is not the opposite of success. It is a vital step on the journey.

Michael Jordan missed over 9000 shots before legendary status.

JK Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers before Harry Potter.

Stallone’s script was denied 1500 times before Rocky.

Edison failed 1000 times before the lightbulb.

Dyson tried 5127 times before the vacuum.

The person who gets 1 shot needs everything to go right.

The person who gets 1000 shots is going to score at some point.

Find a way to play the game that ensures you get a lot of shots.

Prolific beats perfect. Keep shooting your shots.

Sources of wisdom

1. Atomic Habits by James Clear

Confidence is the belief one can do it, often influenced by past success.

Confidence is quiet

Confidence needs no introduction. It manifests in what we do, not what we claim.

You recognize it not by reaction, but by calm. Not by certainty, but by clarity.

“We tend to trust people who appear confident—even if that trust isn’t always deserved,” says Dr. Daniel Kahneman.

In leadership, relationships, or personal decisions, we gravitate toward people who believe in themselves, not because they’re always right, but because they show up with presence, conviction, and composure.

That’s why confident people don’t need to convince or complain. They don’t broadcast belief, it just shines.

And when they fall short, they don’t spiral. They reset, reflect, and return.

Because true confidence isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being anchored.

Confidence and taste

Confidence in personal taste is a crucial asset in creative fields, demonstrating that a clear understanding of likes and dislikes can guide successful collaboration with artists. While technical skills may enhance the ability to create, a decisive taste and intuition can often lead to more meaningful contributions. Intuition acts as a hypothesis generator, allowing individuals to propose ideas and engage in debates to evaluate their validity. By refining these hypotheses through analysis and discussion, one develops a robust framework for decision-making in product design.

This iterative process of generating and testing ideas enables a deeper understanding of what is effective and valuable in a product, ultimately enhancing intuition and product taste.

Types of confidence

Confidence comes from things such as shelter, savings, basic needs, and desires. Things can be taken, and confidence will be shaken.

Confidence from the ability to do things and get things done, the ability to exercise, lead projects, sit alone in a room, and plan an adventure. Accidents happen, one day you can, the other you can’t, this confidence can be taken.

Confidence from those you are connected with, this kind of confidence is rooted in belonging. In knowing that you are not alone. That someone has your back. It’s the quiet strength that comes from being part of a tribe, a team, a family, or even a single trusted relationship.

Confidence from self, confidence in who you are, when you believe you will always figure it out, that you can’t change the wave but you can surf it — that confidence can only be taken by death.

What we have, what we can do, who we know, and who we are

Getting reps

Confidence often grows through repetition, exposure, and practice — because familiarity turns the unknown into the known. When we first face something unfamiliar, it’s natural to feel uncertain or hesitant. But each time we show up, take action, or even fail forward, we gather data. We start recognizing patterns. What once felt intimidating becomes navigable. Reps improve our skills and reduce our fear. Over time, we stop asking “can I handle this?” and start thinking, “I’ve seen this before, I know what to do.” That shift—from unfamiliar to familiar—is the quiet engine behind durable confidence.

Not all confidence is made equal; I am confident speaking on camera, maybe less so speaking in massive stages. To me, the “quality of confidence” is determined by three factors: knowledge, practice, and natural talent, talent being the least important component. Someone who has practiced public speaking a hundred times will outperform a naturally gifted speaker with no experience. The practiced speaker has weathered nervousness, forgotten lines, hostile questions, technical difficulties, and survived each time, building both skill and psychological resilience.

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.”

The traveler’s advantage

In a foreign city, we grow reluctant to ask anyone to guide us to the nice bars, because they might think us an ignorant, lousy lost tourist. This hesitation costs us hidden gems and meaningful encounters, it’s something you have to experience yourself.

Travel strengthens the second type of confidence—confidence in our ability to do things and figure it out. Each small success—finding your way back to the hotel without GPS, successfully ordering a meal with hand gestures, making a local smile despite the language barrier—reinforces our belief that we can handle the unknown, and we build evidence of our capability.

This confidence transfers to other areas of life. The person who successfully navigated Tokyo’s subway system without speaking Japanese brings that same resourcefulness to work challenges. The traveler who found shelter during an unexpected storm in the Alps approaches business setbacks with similar calm problem-solving. The traveler who got the car towed in the middle of Highway 15 and still made it to the party in Vegas learned how to tell great stories.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.— it’s about purpose. Instead of agonizing about what others might think of you or your work, concentrate on the unique perspective you bring

Accepting imperfections

Confidence is often misunderstood as unwavering self-assurance. However, true confidence comes from accepting our imperfections. No human is always wise or without their blind side.

I have been a fool before, and I will be a fool again. Bruegel’s “Dutch Proverbs” visually captures this idea - a chaotic canvas where everyone engages in foolish acts. This perspective should free us from the paralyzing fear of embarrassment. It’s normal to feel foolish the first time we try something new. Practice builds confidence.

The harmony of confidence

“Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing.” Great thought exercise by Alan Watts.

Treating yourself as a wave means understanding you can’t make a mistake, whatever you do. Even seemingly disastrous choices will, as he said, “all come out in the wash one way or another.”

Through this acceptance comes genuine confidence, not the brash certainty that never doubts, but the quiet knowledge that you’ll navigate whatever comes.

Like Hokusai’s Great Wave, true confidence has both power and grace.

It comes from many sources: what we possess, what we can do, who we are, and who stands beside us. Each type serves a purpose.

Confidence from things provides stability. Confidence from abilities creates capability. Confidence in oneself offers resilience. Confidence from others gives us support. Together, they form a complete picture.

The wave doesn’t question its purpose or path. It simply flows with natural power, adapting to every shore it meets.

Embrace natural imperfections, accumulate meaningful experience, and trust our ability to navigate the unknown.

Once you realize the value you bring to other people’s lives, confidence is no longer about self-promotion, in fact, confidence is no longer the right word — it’s about purpose. Instead of agonizing about what others might think of you or your work, concentrate on the unique perspective you bring.