November 1, 2026
I took full advantage of the clocks going back and actually got an extra hour of sleep. I love fall back because it often really helps.
Today’s choices for the weekly mantra from Fern are
- I handle everything mindfully
- I open up for the new
- I appreciate every small achievement
I think I most identify with the third one right now, having to take whatever small victories I can. But the first is also important. I have not been mindful the past few days. I’ve been reacting badly to everything. I need to slow way down. I keep saying that and I try but then it feels like I’m standing still which, while very uncomfortable for me, is probably what I need.
November 2, 2026
From her latest newsletter, a conversation with Lael Brainard about grocery affordability, Kyla Scanlon said this very important bit:
“In our highly individualistic society, broad, structural economic problems become the fault of the individual, when in reality, it’s the system, it’s the policy, it’s so many things that we just can’t control.”
Yup. By making our society so hyper-individualistic, you can blame the individual… and that’s just not how economics works… which is her point.
One of the most valuable lessons my parents taught me about grocery shopping was unit prices. I still use them as I make shopping decisions to this day. I like the Kitchen Table Project’s idea to make them bigger and more legible. That way shrinkflation will slow down… so tired of it! I doubt they’ll get the “mandatory shrinkflation labels” but yeah most people don’t want to make their grocery shopping a math problem, although literally everything in life IS a math problem. I couldn’t believe how small normal cream cheese has gotten! The vegan one is the same as years ago.
I was saying to Emily how her and I actually approach many things with a very different mindset. I’m all about Occam’s razor, just find the most straightforward and simplest solution and live with it. Emily wants to overengineer everything,
This is the part I’m most excited about:
“The government already buys enormous volumes of staples like milk, eggs, flour, cereal, for school lunches and military bases. The idea is to let participating private grocers buy off those same wholesale contracts that the government has and pass the purchasing savings through on a basket of staples that customers can buy, keeping only enough margin to cover costs. There is no subsidy and no government stores. I think you can think of it as a public-sector Costco Kirkland Signature.”
This seems SO OBVIOUS and is true in some countries. Hurray for cheap staples! It will also reduce waste from stuff going bad from unaffordable prices so then the prices will naturally lower just from that. (A lot of food inflation is waste BTW, it’s why I love wegman’s because they blow through stock so fast by keeping prices low and taking food that would otherwise not sell and prepare it for close to what it costs raw!) It’s INSANE how much cheaper food is in Buffalo compared to Vermont and Stamford.
November 3, 2026
Henrik Karlsson has a great article today. I have to catch up on his stuff that I’ve archived, because he’s easily one of the best writers on Substack. https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/four-useful-questions
Whenever Henrik has a problem, his wife asks him four questions to help solve it.
- Why does it feel bad?
- What is it you want to achieve here?
- What are the alternatives?
- What would make the biggest differences?
I’ll ask myself these questions too, but not always, especially the first one. Understanding WHY something FEELS bad is actually a lot more valuable than I realize.
Henrik says: “It is often quite obvious what the solution is if you just articulate precisely what is wrong with the current one.”
As for the second question: “Articulating the goal, and keeping it top of mind, makes it much easier to evaluate the options and keep yourself from drifting.”
I drift a LOT. I’m drifting right now as I sit here reading this article. Honestly, I feel like just going through my notes and talking about them sounds boring, and yet, it’s probably going to get views because I’m so all over the place that who knows what nutty thing I’ll say next that may actually help someone’s day.
Henrik sounds just like me here:
“When I’m writing, I don’t have a goal; I don’t know where I’m going. I’m unfolding, following my curiosity. Still, I find it very useful when Johanna asks me, “So what are you trying to achieve here?”
“Grappling with that question helps me articulate my values and problems and needs, the bigger picture of what I’m trying to do. And when I have that top of mind, it is easier to see if a project I’m working on is aligned with my value hierarchy, and/or if there is some version of it that would more ambitiously pursue what I’m after.”
What exactly IS my value hierarchy? That’s a really interesting thought. Actionable advice and real life experience are my pillars of content but I feel like a lot of times I just keep circling and people start experiencing the same draining feeling I get when I’m trying to come to some very unclear yet very important point. Who wants to experience that? No wonder people don’t stick around. I just bury the lede like buried treasure except no one wants to read the map.
But yes, I need to fight the tendency to grip onto the first idea I come up with so hard. I do consider alternatives. But not always as quickly as I should. Henrik actually writes down alternatives as he paces the room when he’s feeling stuck. That’s an interesting exercise.
He writes, “I’ll write down every idea I have, and then I’ll come up with prompts to make myself come up with even more… I let every stupid- and impossible-seeming idea in; there is no bouncer at this club. I just keep pouring and pouring until I break out of my defaults and get creative.”
I have lots of stupid seeming ideas. Some of them I’ve gone with and I ended up here. Sometimes they do work out. I need to give those impossible-sounding ideas more space.
Damn, this is a great article. Crazy how much I’m quoting from it.
I need to keep this especially in mind: “The best idea is almost never one of the first ideas I write down. There are better alternatives.”
That last question, “What would make the biggest difference” has to do a lot with opportunity cost, which is something I not only consider often, but perhaps, consider it for too long and find myself stuck in a feedback loop playing mobile games while I simply let the opportunity slide and just fade an entire day away…
“We will always have more problems than we have time and resources to solve. There is no way around it. We are going to have to leave a lot of important things undone. The only choice we have is whether we decide which projects are left undone, by figuring out our priorities, or leave that to chance, by sacrificing whatever projects are unfinished when time and resources dry up.”
So, you have to decide, which thing can you do to have the greatest impact? And that’s why I sit around playing mobile games because I am so chronically indecisive. (I think Anna made a video on this topic! Inspired by a Henrik Karlsson essay too!)
Perhaps Henrik is onto something I absolutely needed to hear. Clearly, things are working for him; he is a world famous essayist after all and deservedly so. I can learn a lot from him.
His footnote is especially interesting to me:
“Those of you who are familiar with my work might notice that this contradicts the point I make in one of my most read essays, namely, that the best things in my life have tended to come from unfolding, following the path of maximum interestingness, rather than pursuing a long-term goal. But the fail mode I was trying to warn against in that essay wasn’t having a goal in the vague sense Hamming gestures at here—a sense of direction, a sense for what is worth pursuing. I think that is very useful to have. What I find will mess things up for me is when I assume I know how to achieve that—what the solution will look like. I find it useful to have a sense of direction but remain agnostic and open-minded about which specific steps to take to get there—the drunk sailor will, after all, stumble upon tables he needs to get around, so he can’t be too attached to any specific plan. But a sense of direction helps, if you hold it lightly.”
I do remember Unfolding. But I don’t think that these four questions contradict what he said there. Rather what he’s getting at here is a more “big picture” sort of thing. I used to say “God is a big picture guy.” And I think that’s still a meaningful metaphor because you have to look big picture in the long run, even if you do get fascinated and bogged down a bit in the granular perhaps more than you should. I think that I may have a video essay topic here… But like Anna sometimes, I don’t know exactly what my point is… well, she always figures it out because she’s Anna. I just need to have my own takeaway, even if Anna and I think WAY too much alike. Or is it that I’m trying to realign myself a bit too much just to feel like I’m running parallel? I need to get back to that concept of perpendicular vectors, coming to the same conclusion but from a wildly different angle and with a completely different way of stating it.
…
I saw on a podcast episode description that it contains “strong language.” I know what they mean here, the use of lots of expletives and ‘harsh’ words. But I wonder if there’s a sort of “strong language” that doesn’t need a content warning, language that is actually STRONG. I want to figure out how to strengthen my own language because lately I feel like it’s been awfully flimsy.
Also, I think this could be a great episode to listen to… I do think good news is worth the effort, even if the human cost is real.
“Some people see a rule and follow it. Some people see a rule and ask what it was for. David Begnaud has built a career out of finding the second kind.”
Yeah, I want to find the second kind, too. Funny how so many rules are made with perfectly sound intentions, “good” notwithstanding, and end up costing people their very livelihood and purpose of being… fun times.
