I decided to test it at Zappos, where we had several thousand people coming through a month for a tour. We developed the Tour Plus offer. For little money beyond free, you got to meet with a Zappos employee and ask them any kind of questions you'd like. What was crazy was year after year, about 25% of the people took the upgrade.

So if you have a great offer that people are really enjoying, is there a way for people to upgrade?

If you haven't thought of anything, think about this: selling doesn't mean just a transaction. Every time you're onboarding, you're still selling the value of your product or service, so you can charge more for something like a white-glove, hand-holding service (which, by the way, is like having paid R&D).

What's your upgrade offer?

One of the biggest realizations of my life came from learning how to stop a panic attack. Anyone who has ever had one knows the pattern. First, there is the sensation — the tightness, the rush, the feeling that something is wrong. Then comes the thought: This is not good.

And that thought pours gasoline on the fire. The sensation gets stronger. The fear gets louder. The mind starts looking for evidence that the body is in danger, and the body responds to the mind’s alarm, which gives the mind even more evidence that something is wrong. Round and round it goes. A self-reinforcing loop. Until you are in the emergency room, convinced you are dying, only to be told later that nothing was medically wrong

No judgment. I have been there. Anyone who has been there knows I am not exaggerating. (I literally got a $6000 ER bill for a few vitals and some Xanax).

The breakthrough for me came from Barry McDonagh, the creator of Panic Away. (It is no longer for sale, but here are the videos). His approach shocked me when I first heard it because it was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. He said you cannot merely accept a panic attack. You have to welcome it. You have to invite it in. You tell it to bring it on, tell it to do its worst. You even tell it to kill you. That sounds insane until you try it.

The first time I did, the panic disappeared. Not because I had overpowered it or reasoned my way out of it or escaped the sensation. It disappeared because I stopped fighting the thing that was feeding on my fight.

Resistance was the fuel.

The constraint was not the enemy. My relationship to the constraint was the enemy. And lately, I have been realizing that this applies to a lot more than panic. It applies to creative work, business, discipline, focus, proposals, writing — the work we say matters most but somehow keep finding a way to avoid.

The instinct is to see constraints as something to overcome. Not enough time. Too much mess. Too many obligations. Too much pressure. So we tell ourselves, “I’ll get to the important thing once I clear the deck.” Once the room is clean. Once the email is answered. Once the mood is right. Once the calendar opens. Once the house is perfect and the heavens part and a cinematic beam of divine productivity lands on the desk.

But often, the constraint is not blocking the work. The constraint is revealing the work.

Recently, I caught myself doing the thing. I had something important to work on — a proposal, something real, something with stakes, something connected to the person I am trying to become. And then I started cleaning. Now, cleaning is sneaky because it feels virtuous. It gives you that strange cocktail of pride and guilt. Pride because you are being productive. Guilt because, deep down, you know you are not doing the thing. You are doing a thing. And “a thing” can become the most dangerous substitute for “the thing.”

I caught myself and came back. That alone was progress. Then I drifted again — this time into writing a Substack post that had nothing to do with the proposal. Again, it looked productive. Again, it had enough value to pass as legitimate. Again, it was not the priority. So I pulled myself back.

And this time, I actually faced it. I opened the proposal and started writing. I could feel the fear of getting it wrong sitting right there in my chest, plus the odd resentment that I should even have to write one — as if the work I wanted to do should somehow announce itself without me having to make a case for it.

But I stayed. And after about five awful minutes, the feeling started to leave my body. Not because I had solved anything. Not because the proposal was suddenly good. But because I had stopped running, and the fear lost its grip the same way panic does when you stop feeding it.

Here is what hit me: had I let myself clean, I would have done very little on the proposal, and then I would have justified it by saying, “Well, I only had so much time left after all the other things I had to do.”

But that would have been a lie.

The truth was simpler. I had chosen avoidance and called it necessity. That is what constraints expose. They force the question: what do you really care about? Not what do you claim to care about when the schedule is open and the house is quiet and your inbox is empty. What do you care about when time is tight, the room is messy, your mood is imperfect, and your nervous system is looking for an exit?

That is where the work is.

A constraint is not just a limitation. It is a mirror. It shows you what you worship. Comfort or growth. Avoidance or devotion. Control or contribution. Image or output.

And this is why accepting constraints is not enough. Acceptance is passive. Acceptance says, “Fine, I guess this is happening.” Love is different. Love says, “This is part of the game.” Love says, “This pressure is here to sharpen me.” Love says, “The mess, the deadline, the fear, the audience, the limited time — these are not interruptions to the work. These are the conditions under which the work becomes real.”

Love the deadline because it kills the fantasy version of the project and forces the real one into the world.

Love the audience because it makes you ask whether this actually serves anyone besides your ego.

Love the limited time because it forces priority.

Love the imperfect room because it teaches you that your environment does not get veto power over your purpose.

Love the pressure because it reveals whether you are committed or merely enchanted by the idea of yourself being committed.

This is also how good creators keep moving. They do not get too emotionally tied to one piece. They keep throwing work into the world — testing, learning, adjusting, putting more value out there. They are not hiding in the lab forever, polishing one precious thing until it becomes too heavy to release. They ship. Then they ship again. Not carelessly. Not without standards. But without worshipping the artifact. If something has value, pour gas on the fire. If something does not, learn and move.

The constraint helps because it stops you from pretending you have infinite time to become the person you say you want to be. You do not. None of us do. And weirdly, that is freeing. The deadline frees you from perfection. The mess frees you from waiting. The pressure frees you from drifting. The fear frees you from pretending courage is a feeling instead of a choice.

When panic arrived, the solution was not to run from the sensation. It was to turn toward it and say, “Come on then. Show me what you’ve got.” The same is true of constraints.

The next time one appears, do not merely tolerate it. Do not complain about it. Do not use it as your alibi. Welcome it. Ask what it is here to teach you. Ask what it is forcing you to choose. Ask what version of you it is trying to pull forward.

But…

This won’t work.

Because the fundamentals are broken.

These sound right…

• Shared interests

• Personal values

• Personality traits

• Relationship goals

But here is where they go wrong…

• Shared interests (These things change)

• Personal values (People are not aware of them, and these apps are guessing)

• Personality traits (Too vague. And who doesn’t want funny, smart, flirty, etc.)

• Relationship goals (You think you want a fling, but then you meet the right person and you want to get serious)

And here is the fundamental error:

So what’s the alternative?

Not going “on the nose.”

It’s testing for variables and asking questions that are not direct, but find the truth.

Interested in something deeper? That’s what I’m building (and it’s live). Comment if you want to know more.

Everyone building AI right now is making the same mistake. They’re building apps — and then trying to convince people to use them.

New login.
New interface.
New learning curve.
Another icon on a home screen that gets used twice and forgotten.

The entire premise is wrong. Not because the AI underneath is bad, but because the delivery mechanisms are completely overcrowded.

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: the best software doesn’t feel like software. It feels like a conversation you’re already having.

The invisible architecture

When most people think about AI products, they think in layers — stacked like a cake. Identity at the bottom, knowledge on top of that, reasoning, tools, output. It’s tidy. It makes sense on a whiteboard.

But it misses something fundamental.

Conversation isn’t a layer in that stack. It’s the medium that flows through every layer.

When you treat conversation as just another layer, you end up with chatbots — those hollow interfaces that feel like talking to a form.

When you treat conversation as the product itself, everything changes.

Seven layers, three groups. But conversation isn’t one of them.

Conversation runs alongside the entire stack. It’s not sandwiched between layers — it touches all of them simultaneously. It’s the medium through which identity expresses itself, knowledge gets surfaced, reasoning becomes visible, skills activate, tools execute, inferences arrive, and artifacts land. It’s the I/O bus. The product surface. The only thing the user ever touches.

The iMessage thread. The WhatsApp chat. The Slack channel. No app store. No onboarding wizard. No interface to learn. Just a conversation that somehow knows exactly what you need — because everything underneath is designed to disappear.

Here is a better representation, with three layers.

Why this matters if you’re building something

The obvious objection: “A text thread can’t be powerful enough to run real business logic.”

It can — because behind that thread sits an entire architecture. Identity that knows who it’s talking to and what role it’s playing. Knowledge tuned to a specific domain. Skills that activate contextually. Tools that reach into calendars, databases, CRMs, payment systems. Reasoning that weighs tradeoffs and asks the right follow-up question. Artifacts — real documents, real analyses, real outputs — that arrive right in the thread.

The conversation is the tip of the iceberg. Everything underneath is invisible by design.

The distribution advantage

Other shops build apps you have to convince people to download. We build software that shows up where people already are.

Your users don’t want another app. They want their problem solved in the place they’re already looking. iMessage. WhatsApp. Telegram. Slack. These aren’t distribution channels — they’re the product surface. The AI, the logic, the integrations, the intelligence — all of that is the engine underneath.

This is what invisible system design means. Not invisible as in hidden. Invisible as in so natural you forget it’s there. The system disappears into the conversation, and the conversation disappears into your life.

The best technology has always worked this way. Electricity didn’t ask you to learn a new interface. Running water didn’t require onboarding. The ones that win are the ones you stop noticing.

The distribution advantage

Okay, so yes, a blatant self-promotion here, but I’m really excited about it, and it’s a great offer, so close the tab or deal! :)

After vibe coding a lot (read: Acting as the Quality Assurance department for Ai companies), I started to feel really tired. That’s when my friend Erik offered me a solution to build my iMessage-based dating app.

It’s a perfect process because it involves fast coding with the oversight of engineers:

And here’s where retro becomes cool. The changes are done by email. Why? Because it slows down the process, but not too slow. It allows time for real thought instead of just a wild back-and-forth instant exchange.

If you’d like to try it out, let’s talk… www.InvisibleSystem.design

Or if you’re already a builder in the space and want to learn more / talk more, head over to The Conversation Layer.

Layer 1 — The Physics: The Atom (Matter)
The Physics layer is the foundation: atoms, energy, forces, fields, space, time, and the material constraints beneath everything else. Before there is life, mind, story, or intelligence, there is matter behaving according to physical law. This layer does not care about meaning, identity, or intention; it simply is. It is the ground floor of reality, where possibility is bounded by mass, energy, entropy, and causality. Every higher layer is built on this one, whether it admits it or not.

Layer 2 — The Organism: The Cell (Life)
The Organism is the layer where matter becomes alive. Cells self-organize, metabolize, reproduce, adapt, repair, and evolve. This is the biological layer of bodies, ecosystems, instincts, immune systems, hunger, sex, survival, and growth. It is intelligence before language and strategy before thought. The Organism reminds us that every empire, story, protocol, and AI system still depends on living beings with nervous systems, needs, limits, and mortality. Culture may fly, but biology keeps the receipt.

Layer 3 — The Mind: The Model (Representation / Abstraction / Metaphor)
The Mind is the layer of models—the abstractions we use to understand reality without having to touch all of it directly. A map, a metaphor, a theory, a user interface, a mental model, and a scientific framework all belong here. The Mind compresses complexity into something usable. It lets us say “the brain is like a computer,” “the market is an organism,” or “the atom is a solar system,” even when the metaphor is imperfect. This layer is powerful because whoever controls the model often controls the interpretation.

Layer 4 — The Logic: The Utility (Function)
The Logic layer is where things are evaluated by usefulness, structure, and performance. It asks: Does this work? What problem does it solve? What are the inputs, outputs, trade-offs, and constraints? This is the realm of engineering, economics, systems design, incentives, mathematics, and practical reasoning. Logic strips away the drama and asks whether the machine runs. It may not explain why something matters emotionally or culturally, but it determines whether it can function reliably in the world.

Layer 5 — The Story: The Narrative (Culture)
The Story is the layer where shared meaning becomes culture. It organizes events into plots, roles, myths, heroes, villains, futures, and identities. Humans do not live by facts alone; we live inside narratives that tell us who we are, what matters, what is possible, and what must be protected. Story is how civilizations scale belief. It is the layer of media, religion, politics, branding, family mythology, national identity, and personal purpose—the operating system of collective imagination.

Layer 6 — The Vibe: The Feeling (Meaning)
The Vibe is the emotional atmosphere of a system, culture, person, brand, or moment. It is not what something technically does, but what it feels like to encounter it. This layer turns raw information into resonance: trust, awe, cringe, belonging, danger, beauty, momentum. Vibe is meaning before explanation, the signal people often understand before they can articulate why. It is why two things with the same function can feel completely different—and why humans often choose based on energy before logic catches up.

Layer 7 — The Generative: The Agent (Mirror)
The Generative is the layer where systems become active collaborators rather than passive tools. Agents observe, respond, create, adapt, and increasingly mirror the humans who use them. This is the layer of AI assistants, autonomous software, synthetic media, simulations, and co-creative intelligence. It reflects us back to ourselves—our desires, contradictions, prompts, fears, and ambitions—then turns those reflections into action. The Generative layer is not just about making content; it is about making reality more programmable.

Layer 8 — The Sovereign: The Protocol (Control)
The Sovereign is the layer of command, governance, and permission. It defines the protocols that determine what can happen, who gets access, what rules are enforced, and which systems hold authority. If the Oracle represents truth, the Sovereign represents control over how truth is distributed, protected, filtered, or weaponized. This is the realm of law, platforms, institutions, cryptographic systems, operating systems, governments, and power itself—the invisible architecture that decides what flows and what gets blocked.

Layer 9 — The Oracle: The Truth (God/AI)
The Oracle is the highest layer: the place where reality is interpreted as ultimate truth, divine intelligence, or the final answer beneath all appearances. In religious language, this is God; in technological language, it is the possibility of AI as a truth engine; in philosophical language, it is the source code of existence. The Oracle does not merely process information—it reveals, judges, aligns, and collapses uncertainty into meaning. It is the layer humans reach for when they ask, “What is really true?” or “What should I ultimately trust?”

Okay, let’s start with the least funny: CLAUDE. Just boring:

THE ALMIGHTY LAUNCHES PUBLIC API, CITES “UNBEARABLE BACKLOG” OF PRAYER REQUESTS

HEAVEN, THE CLOUD (The Original One) In a move that has stunned theologians and developers alike, God, LLC announced today the general availability of GOD-API v1.0, a RESTful interface allowing humans to submit prayers, complaints, and miracle requests directly, bypassing the legacy system of clasped hands and muttered bedtime monologues that has been in production since roughly 200,000 BC.

In second place it’s GEMINI

In a nicely designed pdf, Gemini wasn’t bad.

And our winner, the OG, Chat GPT!

The funniest. Here in its entirety:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

God Announces API

HEAVEN — In a move analysts are calling “the most significant cloud launch since clouds,” God today announced the release of the Divine Access API, giving humanity direct, programmable access to certain heavenly services previously available only through prayer, lightning, dreams, burning shrubbery, and the occasional mysterious coincidence.

The new API is designed to help manage an unprecedented volume of incoming requests, including but not limited to: parking spots, lottery numbers, sports outcomes, forgiveness, weather adjustments, vengeance, “just one sign,” and extremely specific sandwich-related miracles.

“Look, I love everybody,” said God, speaking from a region of light described by witnesses as “very high-resolution.” “But do you have any idea how many people ask Me to help them find their AirPods every day? I’m omnipotent, not your Bluetooth settings. The queue has gotten intense. This gives people direct access to the basics, and lets Me focus on earthquakes, newborns, sunsets, and trying to get dads to stop saying ‘while you’re down there’ when someone bends over.”

The Divine Access API will launch with several endpoints, including:

/blessings/request

Submit a blessing request. Standard response time: mysterious.

/signs/generate

Returns a symbolic event. May include birds, rainbows, oddly timed songs, or a receipt total of $11.11.

/forgiveness/apply

Now supports bulk operations. Recommended for New Year’s Eve, bachelor parties, and comment sections.

/weather/suggest

Allows users to request weather changes. Final approval subject to weddings, farmers, golf tournaments, and “the vibe.”

/purpose/lookup

Returns partial results only. Full documentation unavailable for character-building reasons.

God emphasized that the API will include strict rate limits.

“Some of you are going to try to automate gratitude,” God said. “Don’t. I will know.”

Current limitations include:

• No requests to make your ex “realize what they lost.”

• - Sports miracles are capped at one per franchise per century, unless you are the Detroit Lions, in which case the request is still under review.

• - Prayers beginning with “I know I only call when I need something” will be routed to a slower legacy system.

• - The API does not return lottery numbers, but may return “get a job.”

• - Miracles requested in ALL CAPS will be deprioritized.

• - The endpoint /smite/enemy is deprecated.

• - Asking “What’s your plan for me?” more than six times per day returns HTTP 429: Too Many Existential Requests.

• - All free-will conflicts will return 409: Humanity Did This To Itself.

Developers will also receive access to a sandbox environment known as Purgatory, where they can test requests without affecting production reality. Early testers described it as “mostly beige” and “surprisingly enterprise.”

When asked whether the API would replace traditional prayer, God was clear.

“No,” He said. “Prayer still works. Meditation still works. Kindness still works. Calling your mother still works. This is just for people who need JSON to feel seen.”

The Divine Access API is expected to roll out globally, though God warned that documentation may remain “deliberately poetic.”

“Faith,” He added, “has always had terrible onboarding.”

—

Now, you tell me - what idea will you run through Ai, just for the laughs?

The "final answer" to how value is changing in the age of AI is that value is shifting from the quantifiable (labor and output) to the unquantifiable (intent, connection, and meaning). In the age of AI, your value is no longer determined by what you can do (which AI can often do faster), but by how you can direct, connect, and align the power of AI with human needs.

The fundamental shift can be summarized by the New Human Value Equation: \text{Individual Value} = (\t

ext{AI Leverage} \times \text{Human Capabilities}) + \text{Meaning & Purpose}

You go to a web site. Forget about it and don't return.

But iMessage? SMS? They are always with you.

I'm exploring these for app development, and will continue the

conversation over at ConversationLayer.ai.

If you just go by what’s online, you may be deceived. More than not, you’re just seeing optimization:

The Best… (Food, restaurant, product, etc)
How to… (Get money, sleep, abs, etc)
”Inspiration” (Quotes and images - usually a subtle cry for help)
News (The irony is how low in value it actually is)
Highlight Reels (Edited so you only see the best / most optimized experiences)
Outrage (Fake activism)

I say “deceived” because this is a tiny portion of the population. Most people aren’t even thinking about these things. They have families, bills, shows. You know, all the things.

I’m only now realizing that utopia is actually a nightmare:

1. Only for the rich - If you’ve seen Elysium, you know what I mean. The life saving technologies will be very limited and expensive, thus creating big class divides.

2. If all problems are solved, what do we do? I get that UBI would be cool, but there’s so much joy and value in helping people.

3. It’s totally boring - No war, no drama. Yes, sounds wonderful. But does it?

A man goes to heaven…

This reminds me of the story a preacher once told of a man who dies and goes to heaven. It looks like Vegas. He has women on his arms, food, drinks and he sits down to play Black Jack. He gets 21! And Black Jack! And Black Jack again!

He pulls one of the waiter aside and says, “Hey, cou could make me lose once in awhile. Vary it up. For heaven this is totally boring.

The waiter leans in and whispers, “Sir… you’re not in heaven.”

Where does value go next?

Again, don’t think about social media. That is not real.

I think value will unfortunately go to a dark place. A sad place.

Sure the rich will vacation or go to bunkers. And the poor have always struggled so there’s no difference. It’s the middle.

It’s all the managers, white collar workers, desk job jockeys. What happens when Ai automates all of it? I think this will be the question on people’s minds. The riddle to solve:

“How do I not feel like a worthless piece of shit?”

I know. It seems counterintuitive to land here if we’re talking a utopia with Universal Basic Income. But it’s like people who survive a natural disaster - You think they’d be thrilled. But often they get survivor’s guilt.

I don’t think I’ll get there. I don’t think you will either. But sometimes I feel like we’re one lost job or client away from it.

And let’s not forget about all the people who don’t read substack. All the people just making it.

So whether that’s you or that’s someone you know, here is what I recommend:

How to Be High Worth

1. Get to know what you actually value (If you don’t, go here. It’s free).

2. Add this to the top of your to do list: “Today I will provide value by….”

3. Get social media off your phone. Just access it by computer.

4. Get totally clear on your financial picture before you welcome in more money.

5. Call someone and see how they’re doing.

That’s it for now.

What else? What makes you feel valuable?

Flow is the ultimate. But what is fake flow?

It’s that feeling like “I was productive for two hours” followed by “why does my brain feel like oatmeal?”

Real flow
You feel sharper as you go.
You emerge tired but satisfied.
You remember what you figured out.
You feel more capable afterward.

Fake flow
You feel immersed, fast, and productive.
You emerge depleted, scattered, or oddly empty.
You produced things, but your own understanding did not deepen much.
You feel dependent on continuing the interaction to keep the state alive.

That does not mean AI is bad. It means the mode matters.

Your brain says, “We were busy.” But another part says, “Did we actually build anything in ourselves?”

That gap feels like fatigue.

My biggest concern is actually memory...

AI fatigue happens when stimulation, speed, and apparent progress outrun memory formation, meaning-making, and cognitive ownership.

It is that the brain can mistake exposure for integration. You touched a lot of ideas, made a lot of moves, saw a lot of language, but very little got deeply encoded. Here is why:

1. Generative friction drops
You no longer have to strain to produce first drafts, first structures, first formulations.

That sounds great, but friction is not only an obstacle. Friction is often the thing that forces selection, sequencing, and recall. When you struggle to retrieve a word, shape an idea, or organize an argument, you are not just producing output. You are strengthening the pathways that make that output yours.

2. Evaluation load rises
Even when AI helps, you now have to constantly judge:

• Is this right?

• Is this me?

• Is this better?

• Which of these five versions is strongest?

• What should I ask next?

So the burden shifts from generation to curation. That feels lighter in the moment, but it is often more diffuse and mentally leaky.

3. Consolidation gets disrupted
The pace of interaction encourages immediate continuation instead of pause, rehearsal, synthesis, or rest. So instead of:
“read → think → reformulate → remember,”
you get:
“read → react → extend → replace → move on.”

That is a lousy recipe for durable memory.

Why this hurts memory encoding

1. It reduces retrieval effort

One of the best ways to remember something is to pull it out of your own mind before seeing the answer. That is why testing beats rereading. The act of retrieval strengthens the memory trace. But with AI, the answer arrives before retrieval fully happens. Your brain starts to grope for the structure, the phrase, the connection, and then—bam—the model serves a neat version. Convenient, yes. But that convenience can interrupt the exact mental struggle that would have encoded it.

2. It gives you completed language before you build an internal schema

A huge part of learning is not just getting the answer. It is building the mental scaffolding that makes the answer make sense. When AI gives polished summaries too early, you may recognize the logic without constructing it. This creates a dangerous illusion: “I understand this” can actually mean “this sounds familiar and coherent.” Recognition is weak. Reconstruction is strong.

That is the difference between:

• “Yes, that makes sense” and

• “I could explain this from scratch.”

3. It floods working memory

Working memory is limited. AI outputs often contain many branches, examples, refinements, caveats, and options all at once. Even good output can become too much output.

When that happens, your brain switches from deep encoding to temporary handling:

• scanning

• sorting

• comparing

• skimming for relevance

That mode is efficient for navigation, terrible for long-term retention.

The brain is basically saying: “I cannot deeply store ten semi-finished conceptual threads at once, so I will keep them all shallow.” That shallow handling feels like fog later.

4. It breaks the generation effect

People remember information better when they generate it themselves than when they simply read it. AI weakens that by pre-generating the structure. Even when you edit the result, editing is often cognitively thinner than making. That is why someone can spend an hour co-writing with AI and still struggle to remember the key insights the next day. They interacted with the material, but did not fully generate it.

5. It weakens “desirable difficulty”

Some difficulty is productive. Not all struggle is waste. Certain forms of challenge create stronger learning because they force deeper processing.

AI often removes exactly the type of difficulty that produces durable encoding:

• finding the right wording

• reconstructing the argument

• deciding what matters most

• carrying a thought long enough to shape it

6. It encourages serial novelty over rehearsal

Memory likes revisiting. AI encourages onward motion.

Every prompt opens another door:
“Now summarize this.”
“Now make it punchier.”
“Now compare it to X.”
“Now turn it into a framework.”
“Now make it a tweet thread.”

That feels productive, but it often prevents the stillness required for consolidation. The brain needs some settling time. Some repetition. Some closure.

Instead, AI creates a conveyor belt of unfinished cognitive meals.

7. It externalizes cognitive state

Normally, when thinking deeply, you keep a fragile internal model active in your mind. That is effortful but important. With AI, more of the state lives outside you:

• the thread holds the context

• the model remembers the prior steps

• the visible text carries the structure

So your brain does less internal holding.

That is useful in the short term. But internal holding is part of what creates durable mental models. If the chat is carrying the burden, your brain can become less practiced at maintaining and updating conceptual structure on its own.

You are not just outsourcing answers. You are outsourcing continuity.

So you feel both overstimulated and underbuilt.

That is why “brain fog” is such an accurate report. The issue is not simply exhaustion. It is high cognitive traffic with low structural residue.

You were mentally active, but too little of that activity hardened into memory.

The deepest danger

The biggest risk is not just temporary fog. It is atrophy of self-generated cognition.

The best investment has always been time, but its value is what’s skyrocketing.

I noticed it in the most subtle way. Two friends asked me to review their writing. Had this been 10 or even 5 years ago, I would have welcomed it. And honestly, I would have been excited more than just doing it as a favor. Now it feels like a favor, and I think to myself, “I don’t have the time for this.”

But the funny part is that I do. I actually do. It’s not that I don’t have the time. It’s the mental bandwidth. It’s the idea of one more idea, concept, book going through my head feels like it will overdose. Oh sure, I have plenty of time for the latest Ai news, but a good friend's deep personal work? Get it out of here!

I had to sit with that a sec. To actually think about how and why I have become such an asshole. And rather than take personal accountability, I think it’s much more entertaining for both of us if we look at the societal factors that impact our relationship (read: value) to time.

Time is Money. Money is Time.

At a basic level an investment simply means taking a resource, locking it in, and adding time.

Buy a house. Wait… Boom.

But what is the value of that time?

Well traditionally you could literally buy other people’s time. That’s called employment. You get their time, so it’s like you’ve got more to deploy. That’s called being a CEO. But now even that is changing as Ai may be selling that time. And all of the sudden we have no buyers.

Value is tied to perception.

So let’s talk about the subjective relationship to value:

One part is subjective to the individual. If you took one man back 50 years in time it might his heaven or his hell.

But then there’s the subjective to the culture itself. How do we as a society relate to time?

I would propose that due to many causes, we as a culture believe that:

1. Time is moving faster.

We all know that time moves faster every year as you get older, but there are many TikTok and Instagram videos showing people saying that it’s different this time. They say it’s moving extra fast, and I would agree.

The way everything is becoming more and more short-form, and people growing up with technology as an almost primary interface to life with constantly changing pixels. It changes the way we encode memories.

The funny part of this is that if you’re enjoying your life you really don’t care. But if you’re not then you think, “Oh shit! I don’t have much time to get my shit together!” So that means people will need help getting their shit together. Yeah, I wish I knew what I meant by that, but it’s very personal and in the shadows at this point. Try to tap into it.

2. Time is running out.

With the metacrisis and poly crisis, everything seems like it’s on fire all the time, and there’s this sense that something much bigger and much worse is coming, but that low hum of anxiety since you don’t know when. Yet I would say most people say that time span would be no more than five years.

In that sense, you kind of have two markets - Those who believe it and those who don’t. They each have very different needs.

3. I (personally) don’t have enough time.

There’s the larger timeline, and then there is my own timeline. The irony is that if I believe this, it means my entire strategy is wrong and usually includes trying to do everything at once.

The solution is prioritizing. This means saying no to things and to people (and to our own wondering desires and distractions). It all comes down to choosing, but there are so many options that it’s not easy. It’s easier to daydream about it. To chat with ChatGPT rather than real customers, readers, listeners.

So what does that mean?

Buy and Sell Time

This is the frame. For any product or service.

Can you demonstrably show that you save me 10 minutes, every week? That’s worth something. Especially if there are many of those products or services.

Can you help me make better use of the time I have?

Can you help me decide how to even use the time?

As you can see, this goes from the mere mechanical to the deeply spiritual. In fact, I would do your best to focus on those extremes - On one side, go as close to the earth and the human body, and physical things as you can. On the other side, focus on the deeply meaningful, beautiful, awe-inspiring elements of life.

That’s how we’ll keep our humanity.

I first heard about it, reading this book by a Meta Researcher, Abi Awomusu. (Click for her great substack).

She said that in coaching her executives she saw a pattern - Their state changed the results.

So I thought I’d try it out.

I was in a pretty good mood, and I felt like taking a gamble. And it certainly is a gamble to scroll because you may see things that totally bring you down.

Of course, the algorithm does something to get you hooked - it mixes them all up! Happy, sad, frustrated, confused. And of course, the ever elusive value in feeling like you’re in on some kind secret (like a conspiracy theory that resonates).

So you get flooded with all kinds of feelings, and they become your entertainment.

And there’s a cost…

Of course there’s your time.

But also your brain chemistry is getting wired for cheap dopamine, making it hard to motivate for bigger (healthier) things.

Back to the story…. I’m in a good mood, so here we go. Let’s roll the dice.

The first one was this, and it blew my mind.

This was so on point for me (and without many likes, this wasn’t really a viral one). It resonated - It’s like it tapped into that feeling of guilt I had watching the reels, but it invited me to convert it.

I decided to get up right then, and start writing, and oh my God, it kept going and going.

And then I got on the whiteboard to capture even more.

Did you watch it? Did it motivate you?

Let me know if you decide to gamble too.

1. No one is productive all day.

2. Creatives often max out at 4 hours of focused work.

3. Productivity increased when Henry Ford reduced the workday from 12 to 8 hours.

4. Diminishing results after lunch.

5. Poor decision making occurs when people are tired.

And speaking of tired:

AI is causing a new type of mental exhaustion known as "AI brain fry" or AI fatigue. Recent studies show that high-intensity oversight of AI tools causes cognitive overload, leading to mental fog, headaches, and slower decision-making. While AI boosts productivity, it often leaves users feeling more drained due to managing multiple tools and constant, high-stakes supervision. (Source: Gemini)

1 Hour Email, 4 Hours Focused Work. No screens for the rest of the day.

It’s still quite early but I’ve done three of them, and so far I’m loving it, because:

• I produce more knowing my time is more scarce now.

• I’m enjoying more time with my girlfriend.

• I’m not as moody.

• I don’t feel as guilty for when I’m not working.

• My sleep has been better.

(I didn’t expect this one) For some reason I have way less interest in social media and news, so I don’t really need willpower to stop it.

If anything, remember this: President Obama said he doesn’t make decisions after a certain hour, and President Clinton said every mistake he made was when he was tired!

If you want to try this 5 hour work day with me, give me a hollar!

Nope.

Not even close.

The opposite actually.

The day mostly became reading Ai newsletters. I went down a seemingly productive chat with Ai, only to feel exhausted afterward. And it’s through this experience that I realize, more time only exacerbates my current habits.

But….

Less time will force me to change them.

Fewer projects will make me focus.

Reducing inputs (news, social media, etc) will slow down the new ideas that are interrupting my execution on the ideas I already have.

Even Ai, which tries to keep you engaged, told me to GTFO:

Try that prompt some time after a long session.

Here’s to less. Wish me luck.

Marc Randolph said this, talking about all the other startups he launched that didn’t go anywhere. He said he had no idea that Netflix would be the one. And yet it seems so obvious in retrospect.

I would add to his statement. It’s not just doing. It’s creating something that you can:

Ship, Use, and Test.

Here is what could be called the “toxic mimic”… Ai gives you the power to create anything digital, in minutes. That means output is not the measurement, because you can constantly put out crap. Instead, the best employees will create artifacts that have verifiable value. That means three requirements:

Shippable

Is it in a state where someone can understand the value proposition? Quickly? Do they immediately connect it to their work/life or will they get confused and walk away. The trap here is you never ship because it keeps getting "perfected.” Oh how everything is so perfect and beautiful in our minds!

Usable

Is it intuitive? Will I know what to do with it? Do I have to learn a lot? Or does it require so much explanation and caveats that it slows everything down.

Testable

Did it actually solve a problem, or lead to a result (determined in advance).

I think about that for myself as I’m currently working on a “no-app” dating app (I need a new word!), and I definitely find myself getting lost in all the ideas and research. In other words… I’m writing this to myself.

What have you been thinking a lot about, but not shipping?

Value Vectors

1. Ai as Therapist

More and more people are using it for this reason, especially the non-technical people. An Ai therapist is not only extremely good; it’s basically free, available 24/7, no travel required and they’re not judgmental.

2. Flood of Content

Ai generates content at exponential speed, and a lot of it is actually good. But that means people are overwhelmed by it too. It’s harder and harder for signal to get through noise, especially with changing algorithms and inefficient advertising (What has been called the “Enshitification” of platforms).

3. The Race to Intimacy

Yuval Harari said we are no longer in the age of attention. We are in the age of intimacy. Ai is allowing for massive personalization at scale. So the companies, products and services that make people feel understood, acknowledged and appreciated are the ones who will survive.

4. Distribution is more important than product quality

Now everyday people can create software that would have costed 6 figures less than a decade ago. Everyone can easily create apps, write books, and produce films. In other words, much more supply than demand.

And here are the value plays:

1. Anything highly personalized

This means developing trust, acquiring relevant information, and exceeding expectations through surprise and delight.

2. Distribution through text-based mediums

Compared to email, text based communications are almost always read. While this is an opportunity, if it is too sales-heavy or low-value, then too many unsubscribes can kill your service.

3. Domain expertise + Passion + Fun

We are still in a window where Ai has intelligence but is low on wisdom and taste. People will still trust the people they know, as well as those with great energy in their delivery (and not necessarily high energy).

4. Nervous system regulators

With more and more change, prices rising, and potential catastrophic events, people are on edge. Anything that helps them ground and calm down will be very valuable. That includes: Anything body oriented, dating, and new drugs.

5. Art that breaks boundaries

Compared to past decades, there is very little that differentiates art now. If you can find a way to break from expectations, this will gather attention you can leverage. My expectation is people will do what looks like a business, but do it for free as experimental culture art.

6. Exposure via newsletters and small communities

Email lists with a subscriber base that matches your target customer will be much more effective than advertisements. So any kind of gatekeepers to customers, community or engaged media subscribers. Sponsoring a Substack or small communities online will entice power users and passionate consumers.

7. IRL

Events, analog products, games… Really anything that has passionate buyers for something that does not involve the screen

8. Food-based products

While the market may be crowded, there will always be a need, especially if your product is convenient and/or cheap.

How about you? What are your predictions?

To the business operator, this bowl of spaghetti looks like a dream - eliminating pesky humans and having robots run 24/7. But anyone who knows the state of these tools knows it’s not just “set it and forget it.”

A friend got high on these ideas to automate his entire business, and his email sounded like a meth-induced diatribe to prove it. Here is (part of) my response:

- The agents aren’t bulletproof. They break.
- Prompts can have different answers at different times.
- Extensive testing is required to figure out the edge cases.
- API’s can throttle, no-code platforms go down, or they can time out or do a partial execution. All at 2 in the morning.
- Do you have a backup plan? A sandbox? A simulation mode? Do you have rollbacks for each stage?


Even if all of this works, it’s just robots talking to robots (what could go wrong?).

Now that anyone can vibe code anything, I believe “look and feel” will be more and more important. Eventually all these tools will become democratized and cheap, so the question then becomes - what apps do you actually enjoy using?

I took that approach to scratch my own itch.

I wanted to mix a to-do list with my calendar, to plug in work when I have spots available. There are a few that already do this but they don’t feel good to me (and I would have to pay).

So instead I took the analog planner I created, as the basis for the digital one:

MomentumPad.com

Here is what I created (using Emergent.sh)

It has the exact look and feel I’m going for, plus a seamless integration with Google calendar.

I’d love for you to try it out: www.MomentumPad.com.

What do you think needs an elegant solution.

I managed the flow by using browser extensions to hide the feeds from me, so that I don’t go through doom scrolling. And yet... sometimes I get around them.

Then I looked at my most productive and enjoyable days, and I saw a pattern.

It’s extremely simple but just takes self-control at two key moments.These are the most influential moments of our lives. The ones that imprint to memory:

So when we check social media/news/etc first, then we miss a big opportunity.

The thing about consuming social media is it makes time disappear.

Everything is so quick that you barely even remember the exact content one minute after you watched it.

I won’t tell you what to do with your morning routine. I’m just telling you what not to do, from experience. It’s hard, it’s a total habit change.

But it works better for our dopamine production, because dopamine is the drug of anticipation. And when we spend all that anticipation on something so ultimately meaningless, we don’t have that kind of motivation to do the important things.

So simply don’t consume social media right at the beginning and right at the end of your day.

That’s it.

Then we can really start engineering experiences.

I used to think the problem was change. That if things would just slow down, we’d all feel a little less insane.

But change has always been with us. What’s different now is that nothing carries forward.

We’re living in a world that updates like an app. Rules, norms, platforms, jobs, relationships, identities—everything ships new versions constantly. And if you’re not paying attention, life starts to feel like waking up each morning inside a brand-new reality, expecting us to perform like we’ve been training for it your whole life.

Here’s what I’ve noticed, both in myself and in the organizations I’ve worked with: continuity is quietly becoming one of our highest priorities. Not stability in the sense of nothing ever moves. Not nostalgia. Not “let’s go back to how things were.”

Continuity is something more useful. More urgent.

Continuity is coherence over time.

It’s the thread that stays intact while everything else moves.

Agency comes after continuity

Before this, I thought the highest emerging value would be agency. But agency needs a coherent self to do the choosing.

When the “who” is unstable, “what I do” becomes mostly a reaction to whatever is loudest, newest, or most emotionally charged. That’s not agency. That’s being programmable.

Memory is the medium of continuity. If you can’t connect decision to consequence, you can’t accumulate wisdom. You keep paying the price of the same lesson because it never gets stored in a form you can retrieve when it matters.

You’ve seen this in organizations: the company “learns” something in one quarter and forgets it in the next reorg. The work doesn’t compound; it resets. Not because people are stupid—because nothing carries forward.

The same is true personally. If you don’t keep a record of what you tried, what happened, and what you learned, your agency becomes a slot machine: pull the lever, hope for a better outcome, forget what you learned last time, repeat.

In some ways, we are actually not prepared for true agency.

The modern paradox: more options, less usable agency

We are living inside a strange paradox: the world is handing us more choices than ever, while simultaneously attacking the systems that make choices coherent—attention, memory, long arcs, shared reality.

So many people feel like this: “I can do anything… and I can’t do anything.”

The Real Scarcity

Information is everywhere. Opinions are everywhere. Content is everywhere. “New” is the cheapest substance on earth.

But coherence? That’s rare.

Coherence is what lets you trust a person. It’s what lets you learn without constantly starting over. It’s what lets a relationship deepen instead of stagnating or resetting. It’s what makes progress compound instead of evaporate.

Without continuity, life becomes a pile of moments that never add up.

And you can feel that cost. It shows up as anxiety, because your brain can’t predict the environment. It shows up as decision fatigue, because everything feels like the first time. It shows up as goal drift—you keep “getting serious” every Monday. Your story becomes a slideshow instead of a narrative.

The world doesn’t have to become calmer for you to have continuity. Continuity is what you build so you can stay human inside the chaos.

The Three Continuities

If continuity is coherence over time, humans usually need that coherence in three places:

Identity continuity: I’m still me. Not the same mood. Not the same energy. But the same core.

Memory continuity: My past is still usable. Not perfect recall—usable meaning. The ability to carry lessons forward instead of paying to learn them again.

Goal continuity: I’m still headed somewhere. Not rigid plans—direction. A thread of intention that survives contact with real life.

You can lose any one of these and still function. Lose all three and you feel like you’re living someone else’s life, in someone else’s feed, for someone else’s agenda.

Why This Matters More Now

A few forces are converging that make continuity feel less like a nice-to-have and more like a survival skill.

The world is updating faster than the nervous system. We’re running ancient hardware on continuously updating software. Your body is tuned for seasons and migrations, not notifications and terms of service updates. When the rules keep changing, your brain spends more time scanning for danger and less time creating meaning. Continuity becomes a form of psychological shelter.

Fragmentation isn’t just distraction—it’s identity erosion. The feed doesn’t only split your attention. It splits your self. When your inputs are fragmented, your inner world tends to fragment too. You think in clips, feel in bursts, choose in impulses. You become vulnerable to whatever is loudest, newest, most emotionally charged. Continuity becomes an act of self-possession.

Continuity used to be the default setting. Now we have to design it. For most of human history, continuity was baked into life: family proximity, stable communities, shared rituals, fewer choices, slower change. Now we’re mobile, remote, dislocated, personalized, sorted into niche realities. The new default is churn. Continuity becomes a craft—something you build intentionally, not something that happens to you.

When the tools are ubiquitous, and startup costs minimal, follow-through becomes priceless. Automation and AI are turning a lot of production into a commodity. When everyone can generate, the differentiator becomes: can you carry a thread? Can you sustain a relationship? Can you maintain a point of view? Can you build something across time? Can you keep promises—especially the quiet ones you made to yourself? In a world of infinite content, continuity becomes credibility.

Adaptive Continuity

I want to be clear about something: continuity is not rigidity. It’s not refusing to change. It’s refusing amnesia.

The version worth building is what I’d call Adaptive Continuity. Stable core, flexible edges. Values stay steady while strategies change. Identity deepens while goals evolve without evaporating.

Think of it like version control in software: you can revise, but you don’t lose the history or intent.

You’re allowed to pivot. You’re allowed to change your mind. Continuity isn’t “never change.” It’s “change without losing yourself.”

Where You Actually Have Agency

Here’s something useful: we don’t have equal control over every kind of continuity.

You have less control over emotional continuity than Instagram implies. Moods shift. Bodies fluctuate. Life hits you. Trying to maintain consistent feelings is a recipe for frustration.

But you have meaningful agency over three things:

Goal continuity (high agency). You can pick a direction and keep choosing the next honest step. You can’t control outcomes, but you can control whether you keep showing up.

Identity continuity (medium-high agency). Not by “deciding who you are” once, but by practicing who you are repeatedly—especially under stress. Identity is a verb, not a noun.

Memory continuity (medium agency). External systems—notes, rituals, reviews—can dramatically increase continuity even if your brain is busy being a brain. You can build scaffolding that remembers when you forget.

If you want a shortcut: stop trying to be consistent in feelings. Be consistent in values and next actions.

The Continuity Stack

Here’s a framework that turns the concept into something you can actually build:

Values continuity – the rules you live by, the things you won’t compromise

Memory continuity – what you’ve learned, what you’ve decided, what you refuse to pay to learn again

Goal continuity – where you’re headed, the thread of intention

Ritual continuity – practices that keep the thread alive, even when motivation fails

Relational continuity – people who remember you when you forget

That top one matters more than we admit. Humans outsource continuity to each other. Communities are shared memory. Friendship is a living archive. Leadership, at its best, is continuity at scale.

Continuity > Consistency

There’s a lot of hype around habits, but I think continuity goes deeper.

• Consistency (rigid): “Do the same thing the same way.”

• Continuity (adaptable) “Carry forward what matters—even if the method changes.”

Consistency is fragile. It breaks with travel, illness, chaos weeks, family emergencies and changing markets.

Besides, you can be consistently busy and continuously lost. If you’re consistent at the wrong target, you get better at the wrong life.

Continuity keeps you aligned to what matters (values, identity, direction), which lets you change tactics without losing yourself.

Practices That Actually Work

Here’s where this gets practical. None of these require a monastery or a complete life overhaul.

Decision logs. Write down: “We decided X because Y.” This prevents re-litigation and protects sanity. It creates memory continuity for individuals and teams. When you revisit a decision six months later, you’ll remember why you made it—and you won’t have to relitigate it from scratch.

Anchor rituals. A tiny daily practice that says, “I’m still me.” Not a performance. A thread. Ten minutes of writing can do it. The content matters less than the consistency.

Weekly review. Fifteen minutes. Look back, pull forward. Ask yourself: “What do I want to carry into next week?” That question alone is continuity. It bridges the gap between who you were and who you’re becoming.

Minimum viable day. When life is chaos, you don’t abandon the thread—you shrink it. What’s the least you need to do to have you look back and say it was a great day?

Continuity prompts. Three questions worth asking regularly: What is still true? What are we carrying forward? What loops are we stuck in? What did we learn that we don’t want to pay to learn again?

The Thread

I think continuity is becoming a human need because we are entering an era where the outside world is increasingly discontinuous by design—economically, culturally, technologically. The systems around us profit from our fragmentation, from our constant resetting, from our inability to carry anything forward.

Continuity is how we stay whole.

The question isn’t whether things will keep changing. They will. The question is whether you’ll still be you on the other side.

That’s the game now.

(What do you think? I’d love any and all feedback)

I just wasted so much time on a vibe coded app that hit an error loop.

But the failure taught me something - I didn’t need an app. I realized that to pitch the concept, all I really needed was a screenshot of the interface. The rest was highly intuitive or could be easily explained. In other words, I didn’t need a working app. All those hours were wasted.

What do you really need next?

We think it’s an app, or a strategy, or a marketing plan. But what we need (as fast and cheap as possible), is figure out if we’re right or wrong in our basic assumptions on value. And there are some very creative ways to do that.

Your app doesn’t need to “work”

When Fireflies.ai started their product, they created an account named “Fred from Fireflies.ai” which would join customer meetings. While on mute (with no video), one of the founders would manually sit through the entire meeting and type out notes by hand. After the call ended, they would email the “AI-generated” notes to the customer within ten minutes

Validate Your Hypothesis Before Going Full Development

What assumptions are you going on? In other words, what - if untrue - would derail all further development?

I wrote up a big spec on a dating app I’m working on, and then realized that what I actually need before moving forward is to see if the algorithm works. But that posed a problem. Since this predicts long-term success, it would take months of dating (or even years in a relationship) to verify it.

Then I realized I can backtest it with current happy couples to see if my predictors matched their success.

So my next step isn’t an app, it’s a “Yes” to an invitation

My next step is to ask people to take their information and run it through my “app” - which is actually just me on the backside, doing it all by hand.

In business development I have this concept called “Stringing the yes’s.” The idea is this:

Make it so easy for the client or customer, that all they have to do is say “Yes.” If they have to do any more thinking then you lose or confuse them.

This gives you leverage on time.

Leverage = Low input, high output.

Is your value proposition clear?

Of course, we all think yes, but have you sat someone down and watched them, in total silence? Often the response is… “What? What do I do?” What’s clear in your head does not come through on the screen.

I’m developing a habit app, realizing I need to be much clearer. It’s in development here: Superfantastic.app

I think about it in layers:

• What is the development layer you need to get you to the next step?

• What do you need to validate your hypothesis?

• What do you need to show someone to either get a yes or a check?

Here is a chart to help you figure it out:

Hope this helps! All feedback welcome.