Micro Misconcepts The summit illusion 14th August 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org From me Self-improvement is an infinite game. Like knowledge, the improved state is provisional. Each time you improve yourself, your models of the world improve with you, which is exactly what lets you see problems that were previously invisible. The more you grow, the more you see what you don't yet know. This is why you can be objectively better but still feel behind. The gap between where you are and where...
14 days ago • 1 min read
Micro Misconcepts Comfort costs more 7th August 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org From me Front-load the pain. It costs more today but leads to less aggregate pain across your lifetime. Time is neutral. It amplifies whatever trajectory you're already on. Confront the pain and time compounds that into resilience. Avoid it and time compounds that into bitterness, fear, or regret. Read the full piece → From others Jerzy Gregorek on the cost of the easy choice: "Hard choices, easy life. Easy...
21 days ago • 1 min read
Micro Misconcepts Confidently wrong 31st July 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org Note: I've been thinking about how to help you get the highest return from your finite life resources. So this week, I'm trying something new, a more compressed version focused on communicating an idea in fewer words and less time. Let me know what you think. From me When you outsource your own thinking, you place too much certainty in someone else's knowledge. When you mistake your confidence for competence, you...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Micro Misconcepts The good lives you never see 24th July 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org Take a moment to picture what success looks like to you. A person, an outcome, a life you've watched from a distance and quietly decided you want. Now ask where that picture came from. For most of us, it's a scroll. Someone we've never met, doing something we admire, appearing again and again until it stopped looking like one example and started looking like the answer. The pull is real. You do want the...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Micro Misconcepts Optimal looks different for everyone 17th July 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org For most of my twenties, I was chasing the “optimal” morning routine. Sunlight within minutes of waking, at least 500mL of water, some form of movement, a little meditation, a cold shower, and caffeine delayed by however long the latest study recommended. Even on the one morning David and I could actually slow down, I'd sit there with a coffee in hand, anxiously waiting for a number on a clock to...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Micro Misconcepts The marginal utility of a better cup of coffee 10th July 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org David and I are specialty coffee enthusiasts. Over the years we've put together a real setup. An Aeropress, a Kaffelogic for home roasting, a Flair Pro 2 for manual espresso, a DF64 grinder, a V60, a Subminimal NanoFoamer, a Hario Switch, and most recently an OXO brewer for soup shots. With this collection, we can make almost any coffee you'd want. But there's also plenty of coffee gear...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Micro Misconcepts Striving from sufficiency 3rd July 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org A couple of weeks ago, I came across a line from author James Clear I haven't stopped thinking about. "A lovely blend: Always reaching. Already enough." It touches on a tension most of us feel and treat as a binary choice. Contentment or ambition. As if choosing contentment would lead to complacency. But what if the two are not mutually exclusive? What if the reaching actually gets better once you already feel...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Micro Misconcepts What money actually is 26th June 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org Before money, people traded goods directly. Apples for eggs. Cattle for fabric. It worked, but only to an extent. Some goods were perishable. Some were difficult to transport. And prices were impossible to standardise. So we invented coins. Then paper. Then digital accounts. Each iteration lighter, easier to carry, easier to transact, but also one abstraction further from the original value it represented. Money...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Micro Misconcepts Rules of thumb 19th June 2026 | Read on misconcepts.org In 2020, friends and family were urging us to buy a house. Nearly everyone around us was buying. House prices were surging. The message was clear: get in before you miss out. We chose to miss out. Buying property as a good investment is one of the most widely held rules of thumb of our generation. And that was exactly why we paused. People love a good rule of thumb. They feel like inherited wisdom, passed down through...
2 months ago • 2 min read