I didn’t really know if last year was a good one or not. And at the same time, since it was the beginning of a new year, I was clueless if I had anything to look forward to. All I felt was an internal shrug.

This feeling was entirely new. In the past, I had always experienced the beginning of the year as uplifting, knowing that the last year was the best one yet, and that the next year will be even better.

This time, however, I just didn’t remember much from the previous year. And without even an idea of how to spend the next year, I was overwhelmed by so much empty space. What was different this time?

Until last year, I had always finished my yearly reflection before the new year started. It brought the previous year fresh to mind and let me truly put it behind me. And it gave me the clarity to feel uplifted by the new-year-energy.

Therefore this year I’m doing my yearly reflection earlier, so I can look forward to 12 a.m. on January 1, 2026, and feel ready.

For a few years, I’ve been sharing the yearly reflection template that I created for my friends and myself. Over 1,000 people have already downloaded it to start their new year and it makes me really happy. You can download the updated 2025/2026 for free by subscribing to this Substack:

Please share the love! Send them this link so they’ll get access to all future yearly updates, too. If you’re an existing subscriber, send me an email to marc@mental.garden and I’ll send it to you again.

I’m wishing you all the best for 2026 and beautiful holidays. Reach out to me if you have any questions or thoughts.

With gratitude,
Marc 🌱

Hey hey, a warm welcome back! The year is slowly ending, which makes it the perfect time to start the Yearly Reflection. I’ve updated it based on the feedback I received last year.

Apart from that, you may notice that this post is a bit different than usual (or you will, in a moment). I felt like I was “writing myself into a corner” with Mental Garden, which limited the things I could write about. As an experiment, I want to open it up to a wider variety of topics and see how that feels.

Let’s start with a super random post about My Favorite Salad. Enjoy!

With gratitude
– Marc 🌱

My dear friends,

Do you know those ingredients that make people say, “Woah, this person can cook!”? Like when you add lemon zest to a dish and it suddenly tastes really premium, or when you use freshly ground pepper instead of powder? I’ve meticulously collected and tested such ingredients, and the result is a dish I call My Favorite Salad.

Now, I have a confession to make. It’s no longer just “my favorite,” I’ve become addicted to it. When I prepare it, I cut each individual ingredient in absolute slowest motion to delay my satisfaction. And, my friends, it is good.

I should probably be embarrassed about being so excited about the salad (you’ve been making fun of me). The first step is admitting you have a problem; the second is convincing everyone else they also have it. In this letter, I’ll share the exact recipe for you to try yourself, including the premium ingredients I tested that turned my innocent salad-eating habit into an addiction.

Default Meals

That innocent habit is what I call default meals.

Default meals are what you eat when you don’t know what to eat. They’re the easy and fast meals with a decent taste; the meals you make when you want to “fix hunger”. In the past, my default meals were plain oats with milk, pasta with pesto, bread, and German “Eintopf” (soup).

These meals were “good enough” in the dimensions that matter to me:

1. How healthy they are

2. How much of it there is (portion size and satiety)

3. How expensive they are

4. How much time and effort you need for preparation and cleanup

5. How much you enjoy it (taste, appearance, variety, novelty)

Every meal ticks some boxes, but usually you cannot tick them all. For example, fast food is high enjoyment and little effort, but ultimately unhealthy. Soup is relatively healthy, but often lower in enjoyment. Ordering something tasty and healthy is frequently expensive and not enough.1

My goal is to max out all the dimensions of the ideal meal: healthy, cheap, filling, low effort and highly enjoyable. Since that’s rather difficult, I’ve ordered the preferences by importance: healthiness and portion size/satiety are non-negotiable; cheapness and effort are quite important; and tastiness is optional.

For most meals, I don’t care about having the best experience ever. I’d rather have a lot of something healthy and quick that tastes mediocre than something delicious that’s unhealthy. I just don’t want to feel hungry anymore. If that sounds outrageous (”Food is meant to be enjoyed!”), then why are so many of you scrolling through your phones while eating? Doesn’t sound like actively enjoying food either.

I don’t need to enjoy every meal. But that doesn’t mean I’m contra enjoyment; quite the opposite. That’s precisely why I’m obsessed with My Favorite Salad. It ticks all the boxes.

The Base Salad

This salad is healthy (mostly greens), inexpensive and filling (~5€ per portion), and easy and fast to make (some cutting, mixing, and minor cleanup).

And it’s tasty!

To make a full meal (that’s a full bowl of salad), you need:

• 1 can of chickpeas (equivalent to ~120g of dried chickpeas)

• 1 cucumber

• 400-700g tomatoes (~3-5 big ones)

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• Soy sauce (gluten-free, if possible)

[See the Appendix for some variations.]

And that’s... not yet My Favorite Salad. We have to upgrade it first.

Minor Upgrades

To make the base salad much tastier, add one or two Minor Upgrades. They have a great cost-benefit ratio, adding a lot of enjoyment for each Euro and minute spent:

• Leafy greens (e.g., lettuce, spinach, arugula)

• Mozzarella

• Olives

• Dried tomato

• Avocado

• Canned fish2

• Herbs of Provence

While these ingredients improve the salad, they won’t make you go “mhmm.” For that, you need the Premium Upgrades.

✨ Premium Upgrades ✨

Every ingredient in this section makes the salad much, much better. They are easy to prepare, healthy, affordable, and delicious, turning a boring base salad into a (literally) mouthwatering meal. Use one or two per salad.

You may laugh at these extraordinary claims, my friends. But wait until you’ve tried them! In ascending order of premiumness, here are the upgrades.

1. Onion ⭐️

Onions can be thinly sliced and/or briefly stir-fried.

Adding them raw in super-thin slices adds a sharp bite that contrasts with the mild flavor of the tomatoes. Because they’re so thin, their intensity stays tempered, giving just a hint of heat without overwhelming you.

Stir-frying them caramelizes the onion’s sugars, creating sweetness and umami and adding a savory dimension to the salad while blending into the background.

2. Garlic ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Garlic dramatically elevates the salad by adding a sharp, slightly spicy flavor. Small pieces create tiny bursts of intensity, while finely mincing or rubbing it into the dressing blends it smoothly into every bite. No matter how you use it, garlic will make your salad taste and smell vibrant and savory.

For a gentle start, mince 2 or 3 cloves through a crusher. If you don’t have a garlic press, grate the cloves instead. Personally, I like adding the garlic to the dressing so the oil spreads its flavor.

3. Flat Leaf Parsley ⭐️⭐️

As a replacement for other leafy greens, flat leaf parsley adds a bright, fresh, peppery flavor. With its rich green color, fresh scent, and subtle chew, it makes the salad feel crisp and alive.

Flat leaf parsley has a more satisfying texture and intense taste compared to the curly leaf variant. Add fresh mint or coriander to give the salad a subtly exotic flavor.

4. Ginger ⭐️⭐️

With its aromatic spiciness, ginger adds a lively heat that contrasts with sweet or mild vegetables. Its fresh, sharp scent raises the salad’s overall sensory complexity.

After washing the ginger, cut it into tiny pieces. If you don’t enjoy cutting ginger, grate it into the dressing (similar to the garlic). To complete the composition, add a bit of chili for some real spice.

Ginger pairs well with flat leaf parsley, so make sure to add them together.

5. Chicken ⭐️

Since chicken is mild on its own, it’s a strong carrier for whatever flavor you’re going for. Its neutrality works in your favor because it fills in flavor gaps in dishes that would otherwise taste bland.

When cooked well, chicken adds a firm, juicy chew that contrasts with crisp greens and soft vegetables. It gives your salad structural weight (literally something to bite into), which makes it feel more grounded and complete.

Chicken amplifies anything aromatic in your marinade. I usually marinate it with olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger, but I also like olive oil with curry paste.

6. Nuts and Seeds ⭐️⭐️

Nuts and seeds deliver a crisp, firm crunch that complements softer ingredients. Even a small sprinkle creates rhythm with each bite as you alternate between soft greens and sudden crispness. This contrast makes the salad feel more intentional and less monotonous.

When roasted, nuts and seeds bring warm, fragrant notes that lift the salad’s overall scent. Personally, I like adding roasted sunflower seeds or sesame seeds. My other favorite is roasted and salted peanuts for some added crunch.

7. Lemon Zest ⭐️

Subtle, yet effective, lemon zest adds a touch that makes people go “huh interesting.” Rather than penetrating everything with the sourness of lemon juice, lemon zest adds pure citrus oils that make an aromatic “pop”.

Take an organic lemon and grate some of the peel into the salad or dressing. Even a tiny amount shifts the entire scent profile, making it sparkly and bright. It pairs well with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce.

8. Lemon Slices ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Instead of grating the peel, try adding some slices with the peel. Cut three slices off a lemon. Then, slice those into smaller pieces, 2x2cm, and add them to the salad.

Using the whole slice instead of just the juice or zest adds three layers at once: juice, pith, and peel. The peel gives aromatic oils, the pith adds controlled bitterness, and the flesh burns with bright acidity. Biting into a slice of lemon brings these elements together all at once, which is why it feels like a sudden burst of intensity.

Adding lemon with the peel may sound strange at first because it’s unlike anything you’ve had before. However, it creates an interesting effect in your mouth. The intensity rapidly changes from soft to piercing to bitter and aromatic like a small explosion, leaving you in a surprised, satisfied state.

This is why lemon slices turned my original salad-eating habit into an addiction. The dopamine hits were just too much.

My Favorite Salad

This is My Favorite Salad. You eat it, put it into the mouth – noice.

Fundamentally, this salad is a choose your own adventure meal, flexible enough to allow you to experiment. Currently, I’m drawn to the following combination as my default meal:

• Chickpeas

• Cucumber

• Tomato

• Flat leaf parsley

• Lemon slices

And for the dressing, which I then mix and pour over the salad:

• Olive oil

• Soy sauce

• Grated ginger

• Garlic

• Hand-ground pepper

• A touch of lemon juice.

Healthy, filling, inexpensive, easy, and quick to make. Overwhelmingly tasty. Can you see why I’m so excited about it? My dear friends, give this salad a try. It’s worth it.

Maybe it will become Your Favorite Salad, too.

With love,
Marc

P.S. Be careful when adding lemon slices. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said they’re addictive.

Appendix: Variations of the Base Salad

You can replace the chickpeas with other legumes, such as beans or lentils. I really like red beans.

I usually buy the bigger and cheaper tomatoes, even though they don’t taste as good. To compensate, I add a few smaller, tastier and more expensive tomatoes.

The dressing made with olive oil and soy sauce is surprisingly tasty (the best, actually), but you can use whatever dressing you want. This is also the step where you can add various spices. If I’m only going for the base without any upgrades, I usually add freshly ground pepper and herbs of Provence to improve the taste.

A few base ingredients that change the taste and variety of greens but don’t necessarily upgrade it are:

• Carrots (ideally grated)

• Beetroot (grated)

• Bell pepper

• Mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus. Upgrade them by stir-frying them first)

I always bump into other people. Peacefully walking down the sidewalk, there’s suddenly this other person approaching. Our eyes lock and the mind games begin: ”Will you move to the left? To the right?” And then of course we run into each other.

On top of that, our predictions of where the other person goes next is wrong like 5 more times, so we awkwardly dance around like clumsy pigeons until we move past another. And in my mind, I only hear this begging question of why the fuck this keeps happening to me.

But with some people, it’s different. With them, my body subconsciously steps to the “correct” side long before we meet. No mind games, no bumping, and no begging question. And if at the last moment there’s even a small chance that we could still bump into each other, it’s not their body that moves, but mine. Ouch.

I struggle with taking up space, so I’ve been wondering if I could practice it in a low-stakes environment. So over the last few weeks, I’ve experimented with changing how I walk on sidewalks to see if I could get other people move out of my way.

Three sidewalk styles

As part of this experiment, I’m thinking of three kinds of people based on how they walk:

1. The one that always yields (”the dodger”)

2. The one that yields but often bumps into others (”the bumper“)

3. The one that never yields (”the mover”)

I’m usually a dodger or bumper. And honestly, I don’t like that. While I don’t mind making space for others, I usually feel like I’m making myself too small. I’d love to develop the freedom to fully show up.

So I’m starting with sidewalks. I’ve noticed that when someone seems to know where they’re going, then others can somehow sense this. So that’s how I start, by focusing my whole attention on where I want to go.

The first thing I noticed was that my body held itself differently. I walked with an upright spine and something I’d describe as “purpose”. I also held my head high, and as a result, I imagined my body telling everyone around me, “Beware! This person knows where they’re going!”

And… most people yielded and made space! I became a mover! After changing something small about myself, my body changed the way it moved. And in turn, the world around me changed, too. I’ve felt a sense of power when I discovered this, realizing that a single thought made other people react differently to me.

At the same time, playing this game was unbelievably exhausting. It doesn’t come naturally. I had to concentrate a lot, and there was also a lingering fear of what might happen if this didn’t work. Not to mention what other people were thinking about this idiot taking up their space.

The best sidewalk style

But is being a mover the best way to move on the sidewalk? Because being a yielder can’t possibly be nice, right? After all, it’s an expression of insecurity, so maybe others see you as weak.

Taking up space isn’t bad. To quote Jacob Collier, one of my favorite musicians: “There’s a myth about if you make yourself too big, then there’s less space for others. It’s not true. The bigger and more comfortable you feel, the bigger and more comfortable everyone else feels around you.”

While I generally agree, you also need to have awareness for other people. Otherwise, you’re like a drummer who only plays loud drum fills (i.e., takes up space). And since they can’t hear anyone else, they actively make others feel small.

I actually think there’s power in yielding. Because you can yield from a place of kindness and courteousness, or simply because you don’t want to go where others are going. At the same time, the desire to be a mover could come from a shadowy place of arrogance or the desire to dominate. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely something to be aware of.

In German we have an idiom: “Der Klügere gibt nach.” It translates to something like “The wiser one yields.” However, the German version carries a subtle irony: while it praises the wisdom of yielding in conflict, it also implies that always yielding lets the foolish rule.

So, I don’t think there’s one best way to move on the sidewalk – or in life, for that matter. But I’m certain I don’t want to live in a world of only movers, only yielders, or only bumpers. It would be an antagonistic place with lots of potential for conflict, or one with too much avoidance, or too much struggling. I’d rather live in a world where everyone has the internal freedom to decide who they want to be.

Freedom to choose

Because in the end, I believe this sidewalk exercise is about freedom. The freedom to consciously choose to yield or to dodge, to be the “wise one”. To move around, through, or into.

I sometimes observe this freedom during contact improvisation, a kind of dance. On the days when I have that freedom, I’m both a mover and a yielder, as well as a bumper. I’m not afraid of taking up space, and I enjoy making space for others, or bumping into them. Movement turns into play.

“Taking up space” implies that space is limited and that claiming it is a zero-sum game. Which necessarily makes it something to fight for, something assertive or even aggressive. But I don’t think this is always the right way to think about it, because who defines what the space even is? And who says that it can only be occupied by one person?

Instead of talking about "taking up" space, how about thinking of it as "dancing with" space?

Maybe I'm too scared to look at myself
So I paint you someone else–
On the portrait that’s supposedly me
I’m too difficult to see.

I’m an expert with strokes,
Sketching cloaks out of words.
Making traces of importance gaunt
And the meaningless profound.

I’m an expert with color,
Painting words to hide my shadows.
Wielding vulnerability to earn your trust
And hiding pigments of shame under veils of dust.

I hide behind this painting–
Glowing behind the canvas,
No longer restraining,
Screaming to be seen,
Until every pigment, every painting, every brush burns
And all that’s left is–

With my hand stained
With yesterday’s color,
I reach for a brush,
Still scared to look–
And continue to paint.

It was raining and rather cold, and the wind blew water right into my face. The street was busy, with cars loudly spraying the wet puddles behind them and people hurrying home. Their stressed eyes were invisible behind layers of scarves and fogged glasses; their clothes were as gray as the sky. Everyone was the main character in their own film, ignoring others, being there without being there.

Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds, painting gorgeous colors on the canvas of the gray sky. The light was so strong it created not one, but two rainbows.

The colors shone on everyone's faces. Smiles appeared everywhere. Fingers of different sizes pointed upwards; the cars slowed down to catch a glimpse. Strangers started talking to each other excitedly, praising this beauty of a rainbow.

For a brief moment, the rainbow brought out everyone's inner child. The colors removed the need for protective layers of scarves and worries, and everyone took a deep breath of the world around them, appreciating nature's magnificence, and beaming like the sun shining from behind.

Children understand that life is full of beauty. But we seem to forget as we grow older, and bury our inner children beneath routines and fears. Surprises, like rainbows on rainy days, are proof that they are still alive.

There are moments when your experience of the world suddenly changes in a fundamental way. Like looking up at the night sky and realizing how big everything is – and how small you are. In those moments, everything has perspective. Not only do problems seem to matter less, your experience of your surroundings has this surreal character, as if everything is more three-dimensional and the colors are much more intense. Your consciousness feels bigger than your body, which is now “just” another sensation. And there’s awe, lots of awe.

Looking at the night sky, or being in nature, seeing massive mountains and imagining how much time they took to form – or imagining you're going to die very soon, like in a year or less – many things can trigger such an experience.

But there is one particular thought that evokes this experience most strongly, and that makes me happy unlike anything else:

I shouldn’t even be here!

How improbable is it that you’re alive to begin with? And to be able to witness life as a conscious being, aware not only of beauty but of your own existence within it? For you to be conscious and to experience this, to be able to think those very thoughts!

It’s layers upon layers of improbability: your parents meeting at that precise moment in history, and then their parents before them. Thousands of ancestors, each making a choice that inevitably led to you. Our human species evolving over millions of years, surviving catastrophes that nearly wiped us out multiple times. Life itself emerging from inanimate elements and chemical reactions on early Earth. The Earth forming at just the right distance from the Sun to be habitable. And beyond that, a universe with physical constraints precisely tuned to permit atoms, stars, and the complexity of life. Yet here you are.

And you don’t just exist. You’re conscious of this world of stars, snowy mountains, and insane chemical reactions like photosynthesis. And the closer you look, the more you realize that it’s not just stacked layers of improbability that led to this very moment, it’s also stacked layers of beauty hidden in complexity.

It doesn’t stop with nature. Sometimes, I stand on a bridge and admire the railroad tracks below. Strange as it may sound, I marvel at how straight they are. At the human ingenuity that invented the technology to mine iron, process it, and then cast it into rails. And to arrange them to form a perfect line to the horizon. It makes me optimistic about our future – it’s like the rails are screaming at me: “Humans can do anything if we put our minds to it!”

Sometimes people claim that science and technology destroy the beauty of nature and existence by dissecting it, by cutting it into tiny pieces. Suddenly, a flash of lightning isn’t Magic anymore, it’s “just electricity”.

But I think it’s actually the opposite. “Just electricity” is such a complex phenomenon. Learning how many things have to happen for lightning to strike fills me with greater awe than “magic”. It’s like looking closely at a speck of dust and realizing that some of them are actually intricate works of art.

All those thoughts create this warm fuzzy feeling of cosmic awe. But these realizations are as fleeting as water running between your fingers. One moment you’re in awe, and the next you're in “get groceries, answer emails, be a person” mode. Somehow I am the product of an eternity of accidents and get mad when I miss my train.

I realize why it’s so easy to forget this – after all, a species that experienced nothing but awe would never have hunted for food or fled from predators, and would soon die out. But it’s also tragic because these thoughts can ease so much psychological suffering. Most things that bother you don’t matter in a year or so. That rejection at work? Losing your wallet? Missing the train? They suck! But it’s pretty damn unlikely to be alive in the first place. If losing my wallet is the price, I’m very happy to pay it!

All of this, the stars, the mountains, and the straight rails, none of it owes you anything. And yet, against all odds, you are here.

You shouldn’t exist. But now that you are, look around. Stay a while.

One day, you happen to be walking through the Sahara. Suddenly, the ground beneath you isn't solid, and your legs sink into a hole. You can't move your feet. You're stuck in quicksand.

Quicksand can be found around oases, where underground pools of water meet loose sand. This is a potentially lethal situation. Not because the hole will swallow you, but because the sun burns hot and slowly dries you out.1

So how do you get out again?

Your instinct tells you to fight it, to resist with everything you’ve got. To kick your legs, to somehow “swim” to solid ground. But that would be a bad idea, because the more you fight it, the more it pulls you in.

Instead, if you trust this YouTube video, the number one rule is to keep calm. You sloooowly try to move your chest toward the solid surface. And then you can sloooowly pull the rest of your body out and crawl to safety.

It's not just about sinking sand, it's everywhere. The more you fight exhaustion, the more drained you feel. The more you battle your own emotions, the more they overwhelm you. The harder you try to force yourself to be productive, the more procrastination pulls you back.

In all of these cases, resistance makes things harder. But what if, instead of fighting, you leaned into the experience? What if, like escaping quicksand, the way out wasn’t by force, but by stopping the fight?

Resistance makes it worse

Quicksand tells us something about life: Resistance makes it worse.

At the most basic level, everything is just a sensation or “sense-data”. Only your judgment makes it “good” or “bad”. For example, a pain in your leg feels bad when someone kicks you (how could they?!), but the same pain can feel quite pleasant when it comes from exercise. Your reaction is what causes your suffering.

Instead, when you say “yes” to an experience by stopping to fight it, you remove the struggle. Because when you stop resisting something, your relationship to it changes.

I’ve noticed this the most with procrastination. There are these inevitable moments when you don’t want to do something, and so you procrastinate. But you can’t really enjoy it because there’s this guilt in the back of your mind telling you that you should get back to work. So you’re in that limbo where you’re resisting the procrastination, and you’re resisting the work. The more resistance there is, the more unpleasant it becomes.

But if instead, you allow yourself to procrastinate without guilt, the struggle disappears. You take that nap, you read that book – and before long, motivation returns on its own. By giving space to the part of you that wanted to procrastinate, you dissolve the resistance. And when the resistance fades, the work becomes easy.2

Resistance amplifies, acceptance dissolves

Resistance happens when a part of you is in conflict with either reality or another part of you. For example, you may not like coldness, but the water in your shower is freezing. So you get tense and it’s all just very unpleasant.

But it doesn’t have to be like that: Maybe you’ve also experienced that when you stop resisting the cold water, your body suddenly relaxes and the water is “just cold”. Accepting reality removes the struggle.

The problem is that we often fight instead of resolving the conflict. But blindly pushing through isn’t always the answer either. The trick is to recognize that there’s resistance, and knowing when to let go and when to push through. And the only way to learn that is through experimentation.

Try it out

Since the default coping mechanism is to resist, I invite you to try out what it feels like to actively accept and resist. The next time you feel resistance, try this:

1. One time, push through for 5 minutes. Does resistance fade or intensify?

2. Another time, fully give in for 15 minutes, guilt-free. What happens?

Then compare: Which one helped you more? Which made things worse? With enough experiments, you’ll be able to see your own patterns.

So the next time you feel resistance – whether it’s towards emotions, discomfort, or quicksand – pause for a moment. Instead of fighting, try saying yes and see what happens. You might just find that the struggle disappears.

✏️ Retro

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

What are you resisting?

Try out the exercise from the article above – what happens when you resist completely vs. give in completely?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

As you may have noticed, Mental Garden has a new home on Substack. This means that you can now comment directly on the posts and also share them with friends more easily. I'd appreciate it if you'd share Mental Garden with a friend or two, just click the button below:

Share Mental Garden

Since I have a bit more on my plate at the moment, I'm also changing the frequency with which I publish new essays. Initially, I plan to release about one article per month. So see you in a few weeks!

Wishing you a great new month.

With gratitude,
Marc

A good friend is cycling across South America, enduring exhaustion, boredom, and pain – just so he can tell people he did it. When I asked if he’d still do it if no one could ever know, he hesitated. Probably not.

That stopped me. Isn’t travel supposed to be about exploration and joy? This sounded like the kid who deliberately breaks his arm just to show off the cast. Pain in exchange for attention while possibly missing out on the real joys.

Then I realized I’m doing this too. In fact, we probably all are like that, sometimes breaking our (metaphorical) bones for approval and validation. But for whom?

Who are you trying to impress?

When I asked other friends who they were trying to impress, something interesting happened: No one could tell me! It was always an opaque group of people, like "society", "people like me", or "people I respect". They are ghosts you don’t know personally – and they may not even exist.

This becomes absurd once you go through pain and suffering only to impress others. The achievements feel empty if they’re not building up to something. It's human, yes – but is this the way you want it to be?

At the same time, society tells you that you should do things primarily for yourself. Not care about the opinion of others. That, ideally, your motivation is 100% intrinsic. But we are hardwired to enjoy the attention of others, and being impressive is a great way to get it. Because sometimes it does give us meaning, like when you finally get to tell people about your adventures – your two minutes of glory about two months of suffering.

Impressiveness = hard + rare - context

So when do we find something impressive?

Something is impressive when it’s difficult to do and not many people do it. But depending on the context, it can be more or less impressive.

Impressiveness = hard + rare - context

Playing guitar is impressive to most people, unless you’re in a room full of professional musicians. Speaking three languages sounds incredible, unless you live in India, where it’s normal.

When you remove or change any of those components, it becomes less impressive:

• Hard: If you could achieve this instantly without effort, would it still matter to you?

• Rare: Would you still do it if everyone did this?

• Context: If you could never tell anyone about this accomplishment, would you still pursue it?

Chasing impressiveness is like chasing sugar. It’s a shortcut your brain loves, but it’s not the real thing you need. You don’t crave sweets for their own sake, you crave energy, nutrients, and pleasure. Impressiveness works the same way. It’s a heuristic for seeking growth (difficulty), security (scarcity), and connection (context).

Rebalancing the equation

But if being impressive is just a shortcut to some deeper needs – growth, security, and connection – then why not go straight to the source? For example:

• Growth: Learning for the sake of mastery, not status

• Security: Finding fulfillment in stability, not external validation

• Connection: Building relationships based on authenticity, not performance

I’d argue that once you take care of these needs, impressiveness becomes less of a priority, similar to how you’re less interested in sweets when you’re well-fed.

Impressiveness is a moving target. What seems remarkable today is ordinary tomorrow, and the people you try to impress are often just ghosts in your head. The ghosts don't hold your hand when you struggle. They aren't there to witness your quiet triumphs, and they won't remember you.

Only real people can do that, people who care about you, not your impressiveness.

💡 Reflecting on Impressiveness

(As always you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

Who are you trying to impress?

Can you draw a very clear mental picture of that person or group of people? Who are they, and why are you trying to impress them?

If you were the last person on earth, would you still be doing what you're doing?

If yes, what makes it worthwhile? If not, how could you change it to make it more worthwhile?

What's something impressive you've done that still retains its value?

Chasing the impressive isn't always bad – it can be a huge motivator. What accomplishments still pays off today? How are they different?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

Sending you the first few rays of sunshine from Berlin. Enjoy!

With gratitude,
Marc

Here's how I did the impossible.

I wanted to do 100 burpees in under 5 minutes. That’s 1 burpee (a pushup and squat jump) every 3 seconds. This is what doing it looked like in my head:

In other words: it looked difficult. Hard. Basically impossible. The first time I tried, it took me almost 12 minutes and I nearly died with my lungs on fire.

Over time, I pushed myself harder, got the time lower, and improved. In the span of weeks, I got it down to just under 7 minutes (still nearly dying of exhaustion every time). It seemed like I'm improving, and the difficulty went down:

But one thing remained clear: doing 100 burpees in 5 minutes was still super close to impossible.

This changed when I saw a video of someone doing it in 3 minutes and 33 seconds.

I thought 5 minutes was otherworldly and difficult. Then this guy did it in almost half the time! I was outraged!! 5 minutes was supposed to be hard, but this guy did even better!

So reluctantly my mind updated its estimate. If he could do it in 3:33, it couldn’t be that hard to do it in 5:00. Must be much easier than I thought:

The next day, I did what I thought was impossible: 100 burpees in 4:59.

Just because I watched a damn video.

Your beliefs determine the difficulty

Everything has a true difficulty (how hard it actually is for you). But you experience the difficulty based on your beliefs.

It’s personal (because something that might be trivial for you might be extremely hard for me). And of course, it changes over time as you improve (e.g. body adapting after exercising, so next time it’s easier).

For the burpees, the difficulty spectrum might have looked something like this:

So actually, it should've been easier than I thought. The green arrow was always there – while my expectations, the red arrow, moved around. But the difficulty I experienced was still as big as what I believed it to be:

That means I experienced more difficulty than was necessary!

To put it another way: Things are at least as hard as you think they are.

There's almost no upper limit to how hard something is for you, only a lower limit. The difficulty you experience is always at least the true difficulty, and after that only depends on your beliefs.

If you expect the difficulty to be higher, you’ll experience more of it.

The Magic Threshold Of Possibility

Of course there are cases where you expect the difficulty to be very high and then you “just do it” and it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.

I think this happens when the true difficulty and the expected difficulty are too far apart from each other. And once you try, you immediately realize that your expectation was wrong.

The problem is that the expectation can also be too high. This is when something seems so hard you don't even try. It's above your Magic Threshold of Possibility because it's too close to impossibility:

It's like the parable of the eagle hatching in a chicken's nest. It grows up believing it’s a chicken and that chicken can’t fly. So it comes to believe that it cannot fly either. It’s happy flapping its wings, but it never soars.

Don’t be that eagle!

How to update your difficulty

But then how do you change your expected difficulty?

The expected difficulty is a belief about yourself and the world. You use it to make predictions about the future and use those predictions to determine your actions. But the belief could be wrong, which would make your predictions and actions wrong.

Here are some ways to make those beliefs more accurate.

Studying and trying

By studying the problem and other people’s accomplishments (like watching the 3:33 burpees video), you can quickly update your beliefs if they differ too much from reality. What one person can do, another can do too.

Another way to change your belief is to just do it, to try and test it. If it shows that your belief is wrong, you’ve effectively changed it and reduced the expected difficulty.

This works both ways – if you expect something to be too easy, then learning about it and trying will bring you closer to its true difficulty.

Increasing the difficulty

Paradoxically, increasing the difficulty (e.g., choosing a harder goal) can decrease the difficulty of the thing you originally wanted to do.

If I update my goal from 5 minutes to 3:33, then 5 minutes feels like just another little milestone along the way. It's not as significant anymore. In my mind, what's really hard now is the new goal, and everything else is just a step along the way.

Introspection

You can challenge your belief about the difficulty by thinking from the opposite direction. Sometimes you don't even entertain the thought that your life could be... well, easier. So just ask:

What would this look like if it were easy?

For example, say you want to eat healthier. Maybe it's not about willpower and forcing yourself to do it. Sometimes it can be as simple as changing your environment. Like putting up a small fruit basket out where you can see it and choosing not to buy sweets – so that when you crave sugar your default behavior is to eat the fruit instead.

Your beliefs shape your reality

The truly difficult thing to realize is how many things in life this applies to It's pretty obvious with goals you set for yourself. Because goals, almost by definition, are "attainable,” even if they seem difficult.

But what about all the things that you don’t even think about because you subconsciously dismiss them as “too impossible”? The problem is that those things aren’t visible to your conscious mind. Because as the lens through which you see the world, your beliefs filter them out.

What else are you secretly capable of, but too scared to attempt? Maybe the real limit isn’t your ability. It’s your beliefs.

✏️ Retro

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

What difficult thing can you attempt next month?

And what would it look like if it were easy?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

I'm currently in Morocco, trying to find a balance between work and exploration. Next week, I'm going to the mountains and potentially also to a desert for the first time in my life.

Wishing you a great next month!

With gratitude,
Marc

Excitement is movement. But what happens when it disappears?

We chase after excitement to find fulfillment. But if it’s just another fleeting high, can you really trust it to guide your life?

Importance

Fulfillment doesn’t come from excitement alone.

Some activities are exciting but useless (like mindless social media), while others are necessary but boring (like practicing piano scales). How exciting they are doesn’t tell you if they’re important or fulfilling.

But you could spend your life only working on things that are important and still be the most miserable person in the world. And blindly following excitement isn’t the answer either: In the case of mindless social media, the excitement is hollow.

Instead, you find fulfillment when you combine excitement with importance.

Because eventually, every kind of excitement fades. And with it the energy that makes you move. Lasting fulfillment is not possible if you base it purely on excitement. Learning to play the piano may be fun and exciting for a few weeks, but without something to keep you going, it’s just plain hard and difficult.

That’s when you have to make a choice: Should you push through or should you stop?

If you always stop, you’ll be jumping from one thing to another without gaining depth. At the end of your life, you’d regret not having done something meaningful. On the other hand, low excitement could be the sign that it’s not for you.

But if instead you push through, because it feels important, you may discover something else on the other side: passion.

Learning the piano could be a stupid, temporary idea. Or it could become a passion that fulfills you for the rest of your life. Excitement opens up the possibility of finding out. If excitement is the spark that gets you started, passion is the fire that keeps you going. It makes pain and difficulty meaningful.

Fear

But how do you know if something is important in the first place?

One heuristic to find out is whether it scares you. Because often the things that scare you are the things you need to do the most.

One way to see fear is as excitement + resistance. When you’re excited, you lean into an experience. When you’re afraid, you pull away.

Fear can be a warning, but it can also be the discomfort of growth. To find out, you can ask yourself: “What would the best version of me have done in that situation?”

For me, fear is always a sign that I’m invested in a decision, and that I should do something about it. I’d regret not making the scary choice more than the consequences. If it scares you, do it.

Should You Follow Excitement?

So can you trust excitement to find fulfillment?

Yes – but only as a signal, not a destination.

Excitement is a good compass, but a bad anchor.

It’s a good compass, because it shows you what’s worth pursuing and exploring. Its absence shows you what to stay away from. But it’s a bad anchor because eventually, it will fade. The movement and the motivation it inspired won’t last, leaving you with something difficult and challenging.

In that moment, if something proves meaningful, commit to it. Because once you push through, the difficulty has the potential to turn into lasting fulfillment.

💡 Reflecting on Excitement

(As always you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

Can you recall something that started as excitement but later became a true passion?

What made the difference?

Is there something in your life right now that feels difficult but deeply meaningful?

How do you know it’s worth pushing through?

What’s a current fear in your life that might actually be a sign of growth?

How would the best version of you handle it?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

I recently followed my sense of excitement – all the way to Morocco. Struggling a lot with this decision, I've written this piece as my attempt to make sense of it.

Wishing you a great weekend 🌱

With gratitude,
Marc

This month's Retro and Planning is a few days late. I've been busy working on an essay that I really wanted to send out with this email. But it's taking longer than I thought. You'll get it in the next mail in about a week!

In this essay I'm working on, I'm wondering whether excitement is a good guide for making decisions. I'm currently struggling with a particular decision where I feel a lot of excitement in both directions. And experiencing that was so interesting that I had to explore it further!

So – thank you for your patience and have a great start to February!

With that, let’s start with the Retro and Planning ✨

✏️ Retro

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

What are you excited about this month?

Think about the different areas of your life, for example something related to friends, family, events, goals, ... Or surprises? ✨

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

See you again in a week 🤗

With gratitude,
Marc

Every week, I collect everything I've learned over the past seven days in my weekly reflections. This post is a condensed list of what I’ve learned in 2024.

I started with over 200 points, captured in over 44 individual weeklies. Then I condensed them down more and more, until I got to 90. Which is almost 100 – but better (because it's shorter). So my working title of "100 Lessons from 2024" remains the same. Please forgive me.

Of course I've learned a lot more than that, and some of the stuff in here is probably wrong. But I hope there are at least some useful bits.

This is a long post. We’ll go over the following topics:

• Personal Growth

• Social Stuff and Relationships

• Productivity and Habits

• Tech and Development

• Work and Career

• Money and Finance

• Life and Travel

• Writing, Communication and Learning

• Practical Stuff

• Insights & Reflections

Let’s go ✨

Personal Growth

1. I have learned that freedom is a great value in my life. It feels exhilarating and exciting to experience it after not feeling it for a very long time last year. Life seems to have gained a little more color and I'm wondering if this is temporary or permanent.

2. For a long period of time in 2024, I was under constant stress. And I could feel it in my body. During that time, I liked myself less, didn’t spend time with friends, didn’t feel like I had enough time to do things properly, my habits slipped, and the only thing I longed for was to read a book and take a break. Fortunately, I was able to change the situation and I’ve recovered from it. It’s interesting how many things I took for granted before (like seeing friends).

3. If I wait for "the right time" to talk about difficult topics, I often don't talk about them at all. To counteract this, a friend suggested that I ask something along the lines of, "I feel like now is not a good time, but there is something important I want to talk to you about. When do you think we could do that?" This also acts as a kind of commitment device - you've acknowledged there is something you want to talk about, so you have to talk about it eventually.

4. Psychotherapy isn't as scary as I thought. The first time I sat in a therapist's office, my thought was, "Why haven't I been here earlier?" I think a lot of stigma and the idea that it would be hard to organize kept me from doing something about it. Also, after having had trial sessions with several therapists, I understood that it matters who your therapist is. Feeling comfortable is important.

5. I love burners (=people who go to burns). So many free spirits, so many great conversations. It’s like you can skip multiple layers of superficiality and get directly to the core with them.

6. I like wearing beautiful clothes on special occasions. One night at a burn, I was given some clothes for an outfit, and I felt really handsome in it. This was a new experience for me. And then several people came up to me and said they really liked the outfit and the style. There's a part of me that loved hearing that.

Social Stuff and Relationships

7. I sometimes have trouble acknowledging that something isn't right in relationships (personal/romantic/professional) because part of me avoids confrontation. When 99% is fine, I tend to say "everything is fine" because the 1% doesn't feel important. But the 1% accumulates and then eventually too much is not fine. I know this and actively work against it - it's important for me to be aware of the 1% situations and resolve them quickly.

8. Long distance relationships are challenging. You can’t see each other most of the time, it’s expensive, it can be very intense when you finally do spend time together, and much more. Of course, not everything about it is bad, but it's a big strain on many aspects of normal life.

9. A friend of mine shared a guiding question with me that has been useful many times over the past year: "Am I doing this out of fear of loss or out of self-love?”

10. I have a strong circle of very close friends, and I’m extremely grateful for that.

11. In new places, my need to connect with other people is very strong.

12. You can feel lonely even if you have a large social circle or are in a relationship. The context determines how you feel, and when you're in new places, you don't have friends or relationships yet. Loneliness can be physically painful and extremely unpleasant.

Productivity & Habits

13. I enjoy my morning routine. Getting up at 7 a.m. and going for a walk with no other plans and then spending a long time stretching and meditating feels incredibly good. (It’s time well spent.) The way to integrate this into a long work day is to get up and go to bed early.

14. At the same time, I like to go to bed very, very late. It feels nice to be the only one up. But it also feels super shitty the next day.

15. Parkinson's Law is real.

16. Set appointments for the afternoon. Mornings are sacred for doing my routine or productive stuff.

17. Being exposed to bright light makes a huge difference on my energy levels. For example, working on the balcony or using extremely bright LEDs has improved my productivity tremendously.

18. If you don’t drink enough water you may get a headache.

19. Saying "I have self-control in context A but not in context B" is a lie I’m telling myself. Regarding food choices, I always told myself I'm good at not buying unhealthy food, but once unhealthy stuff is readily available I can't stop myself. It seems silly to me – it's just a choice I have to make.

Tech & Development

(There's some super technical stuff in here, so feel free to skip it if it's not relevant to you).

20. It might be a fascinating idea to feed my journals into an AI and to use it to uncover gaps in my thinking, or to remind me of insights I had, or to surface unconscious patterns. Or using AI as a kind of therapist. I’m not sure how to solve things like data privacy or how to fit it all in context (it’s more than 5 years of daily diaries). Still confused that something like this doesn’t already exist.

21. I’ve learned how to submit blobs to the Ethereum network (which only went live after last year’s Dencun upgrade) and then built a blob creator as a proof of concept.

22. I learned what Execution Tickets and Based Preconfs are. For most of 2024 I did not understand what they were, and I learned about them through a combination of reading stuff online, talking to people, and writing articles about it.

23. After reading Situational Awareness, I felt like I’ve understood the impact AI will have on our/my future. Again! This first happened after listening to a ton of AI podcasts around 2022. There's a tinge of sadness that these will be the last "normal" years before the world changes a lot. This sometimes kills my ambition and makes me see the kind of work I do differently. Should I optimize for other things now? Yet there is still time before that happens AND that future is still highly uncertain. I tend to forget this insight every now and then, and then I am confronted with it every few months.

24. Serverless functions can also have scaling issues. If a lot of unexpected concurrent requests come in, some of them will get dropped because the lambda can't scale up fast enough. I guess it takes some time to provision more resources as there are only 3 instances per default to handle all those requests, which then fails.

25. PayloadCMS is awesome. I’ve learned that the real effort in using a headless CMS is not the backend/CMS part, but consuming and displaying all the data on the frontend.

26. When I code new things, I usually start by testing things manually. Almost every time I have this "aha" moment where I think "dude, you should have just written tests". And once I do that, it's so easy to make progress. I kind of forget that testing isn't just "nice to have" but actually helps you develop faster.

Work & Career

27. Going from working for yourself to working full time with others really changes the structure of your days. My morning routine was kinda broken for a long time, and I had difficulties getting it back to its “ideal” state. I also had much less time than before for other things that were important to me.

28. Being paid by the hour puts you in this weird position where part of you wants to work "more" to get paid more. The incentives are kind of weird. I noticed that sometimes and then tried to ignore that desire. At the same time, the motivation for certain types of tasks is higher when you're on the clock.

29. How to win a hackathon: For the evaluation, it’s probably >80% presentation/demo and only 20% actual coding. This means that you should work on the presentation as early as possible (or have someone take care of it) instead of waiting until the last hour. Also, if you know who the judges are, tailor your presentation to them. It's also more important to have something with a "wow" factor and nice slides/frontend than nice/well-tested code.

30. On a related note, no one is going to read your code anyway. They may only glance at it for a few seconds. So it can be shitty, it just has to work or "look" like it might work. More importantly, no one will try to run it. So optimize for the right thing: a great demo.

31. Deadlines help you focus on what’s important. For example, when I was working on a hackathon project, I often thought, "This is not important to get this done, so let's move on.”

32. Organizing an event is a different experience than attending one. You don't do a lot of networking, you don't make new connections, you don't learn new things from the talks, you don't get to attend workshops and talks. At the same time, you're always a little stressed because your attention is scattered all over the place, making sure that everything is working properly. That doesn't mean it can't be a beautiful experience, but as I said, it's different.

33. VCs/investors are people too. I used to put them on a kind of pedestal. But depending on who you talk to, it can feel either super interesting (deep conversations, interesting new information, etc.) or extremely superficial ("how can you be useful to me").

34. I especially enjoy iterating on existing things rather than building something from scratch. I enjoy going from 80% to 100% more than going from 0 to 1. This seems only true in specific contexts, though.

35. "Networking" can also just mean making new friends. Optimizing for genuine human connections works really well for me, and much better than connecting with random but "useful" people.

36. How to find a job:

    1. Go to a place where you can meet in-person with people in your industry

    2. Be a nice person (you cannot skip this step)

    3. Provide value without expecting anything in return (e.g., give feedback on something)

    4. Propose working together with specific ideas of what that might look like.

• • Why this works: People want to work together with people they like.

  • If you applied online instead, you'd be filtered based on your skills. Your chances of success here are much lower if you don't have a killer resume. By the time you get to the interview stage, people want to know if you're "nice enough to work with.”

  • If you meet someone in person and you're nice, your resume won't matter as much. Instead, the person will try to rationalize why working with you would be a good idea. Instead of filtering for exceptional skills (as in an online application), your skills now have to be just good enough.

  • Some people with hiring power have confirmed this and said they try to counteract this bias, but it's hard.

37. If you're starting a new project or business with someone, be very clear about your expectations and intentions from the start. If you're not clear at the beginning, it's much harder to fix it later. It's also much harder to walk away once you're invested in it.

Money and Finances

38. It’s crazy what people put on Kleinanzeigen (the German Craigslist) for free! We got a whole kitchen that would have cost >500€ if you'd bought it at IKEA. The only thing we had to do was disassemble and transport it.

39. If you want to sell something used (on Kleinanzeigen/Craigslist), it pays not to be in a hurry. If you have a lot of time, you can even sell something for a relatively high price - people who need something badly will buy at that higher price.

40. If you are on vacation with a large group of people, splitting expenses evenly (like gas, food, etc.) leads to a kind of tragedy of the commons. It encourages buying and consuming a lot because it doesn't pay to be frugal. In a group of 8 people, buying something only costs you 1/8 of the original price, but you are still incentivized to consume 100% of it.

41. On a related note, this is maximally unfavorable if the spending habits of the group members are different. For example, I don't usually spend a lot of money on food, so I've been subsidizing everyone else's. (Someone had said: "Oh, it's so cheap here, I pay a lot less!", but this was only partially true because of our different spending habits).

42. I almost made a very silly financial mistake. I wanted to do lasik in a hospital in Bangkok, and almost chose one of the more expensive, highly advertised ones. There was another one that was more than 600€ cheaper with no apparent difference in quality. I almost stayed with the more expensive one because 600€ didn't feel like a lot of money – but only because I was anchored to a higher four-digit price in the first place.

43. I've been looking for a new roommate and have received over 100 applications in the past year. I've learned a lot about my preferences in roommates, and part of me assumes that these are at least partially universal (for example, having an organized/clean roommate). Here are my observations:

• • What doesn’t work well:

    • Saying you’re “unorganized” or “often late” – it gives me the impression that you’re unreliable

    • Activities that imply you’re loud or messy

    • Spelling mistakes

    • Oversharing (personal situation, difficulties, etc.)

    • Mentioning anything negative, such as past bad experiences living with other people. Even though I know that this is about someone else, there seems to be some Anti-Halo Effect going on where I project this onto the person that is applying

    • Saying you need a place “urgently”

    • Saying something controversial. This might work, but controversial means “most people disagree”, so it probably won't

    • Smoking

    • Adding something that is quite obviously only there because it was mentioned in the ad ⇒ this seems insincere

    • Not providing contact info. This has actually happened a few times! I can't get in touch with you this way 🤦

  • Could work

    • Long texts – they are sometimes good, sometimes bad. If they’re too long I don’t want to read them because it feels daunting (esp. considering there are a hundred other messages). If they’re too short, it feels like too little effort.

  • What likely works

    • When people seem similar to me. I think this is hard to fake and also what the whole search is about – finding someone you’ll vibe with.

    • Standing out in a positive way. Most applications read pretty much the same. So something has to be interesting, different, or "polarizing". My personal strategy for finding a room in Berlin would be to make a custom(ish) video application, write a song, draw a picture, etc. The hardest part is getting to the interview stage, and standing out will help you get there more easily.

Life and Travel

44. Having a car while traveling doesn't seem worth it to me. Yes, you get to places much easier, but then you also go to places that are harder to get to and thus spend 2-3 hours a day in the car getting there. I'd rather do other things while traveling than sit in a car.

45. Last year I did a hike on my own where I just wanted to hike and didn't have a real destination. I just wanted to arrive "somewhere" with a train station. This led me to cancel the hike at some point, which is sad in retrospect. Next time I want to have an actual destination because it might help to get over the motivational hump.

46. Taking an early morning flight (like 6am) is probably not worth it. You have to get up many hours earlier (about 4 hours depending on how far away you are from the airport), drive to the airport and then wait. Next time I'd probably pay between 20-40€ more to be on a later flight, because flying that early kills the rest of the day.

47. Working on an airplane doesn't really work for me. There's not enough space and it's hard to work for more than an hour at a time.

48. I didn't experience this before, but Ryanair (European airline) actually enforces weight and size limits sometimes. For checked baggage (at Berlin airport) there seems to be a 1kg tolerance, so if you book 10kg you can get away with 11kg. For carry-on baggage, the size should fit in those measuring baskets, but I guess a little bigger is okay. They don't check the weight of carry-on luggage.

49. The experience on long-haul flights (or any flight that isn't Ryanair?) is much better than on short-haul flights.

50. It is possible to travel for extended periods of time (i.e., more than a few months) with only a small 20-liter backpack as luggage. Clothing seems to be the thing that takes up the most space, so reducing it to one set of clothes to wear and one set to take with you reduces most of it. Clothes made from merino wool don't smell as quickly, so you can wear them longer. You can wash them while you shower and let them dry overnight. Use a microfibre towel to wring the clothes. Traveling with such a small backpack is an extremely freeing experience that I highly recommend.

51. Thailand allows you to stay for 60 days, and then you can extend for another 30 days while you're there.

52. I’ve never been to Asia before. When I arrived in Thailand, I was surprised: it's just like any other place on earth! They have houses, roads, cars, people, ... just like home!

53. If you're booking separate tickets with different airlines, try to check in after you land (at least if you have a lot of time during your layover). One of my flights was delayed and I missed another that I had already checked in for, so I couldn't change the booking and had to buy a new one.

54. Taking long distance buses/coaches for more than 4 hours is extremely uncomfortable and something I would avoid in the future.

55. From the middle of September it gets much darker and grayer in Germany. This has strong effects on my mood and energy levels.

56. Medical tourism is amazing. I went to a hospital in Bangkok, and even though I haven't been to many hospitals in my life (thank God!), this definitely redefines what I would consider a "great" hospital.

57. When you have surgery or some kind of medical procedure – or anything, really – the diagnosis stage is the most important part. This is where they figure out what exactly they'll do. If they get it wrong, you get the wrong treatment. If they get it right, you'll get the right treatment. For example with Lasik, they need to exactly figure out your current eye sight to change them. You can apply this to almost everything.

58. Many backpackers who visit Thailand aren't really backpackers. They think they're backpacking, but sometimes it's so touristy that all they get is a packaged experience. The part of exploring the country, meeting locals, being challenged, etc. is missing. They're just hanging out in a beautiful place with other tourists from their home country. It was kind of painful to see. On the other hand, this is probably still a lot of fun, so there's nothing wrong with that.

59. Life in a Buddhist monastery is very different from what I expected. Part of me expected Buddhism to be frozen in time - like they're still living the same way they did 2500 years ago. But of course they've arrived in the present, because monks are just normal people who have chosen a different lifestyle: they also use smartphones, some are addicted to social media, some eat meat (although there is a "don't kill" precept). And for some, it seems that only the surface appearances of Buddhism have remained, but not so much the actual practice.

Writing, Communication and Learning

60. Writing clarifies your thinking. It’s damn hard, but that’s only because thinking is hard.

61. I enjoy writing, but sometimes only once I'm in a flow. I also enjoy exploring topics in writing that I've discussed earlier with friends, and I think I should do more of that (i.e. take notes in discussion and turn them into essays). Still, writing is sometimes extremely painful, especially when you’re not there yet. And most of the time, you aren't.

62. Two ways to improve your writing: (1) Move paragraphs and sentences around, and (2) remove as much as possible. The first fixes the order of your thoughts so they are easier to follow. The second removes distractions.

63. Writing a good tweetstorm takes longer than expected. Letting ChatGPT do it doesn't work well (yet), and if you do it from scratch, it's a similar to writing an article.

64. I feel honored that there are people who read my essays. But a part of me just forgets about it when I hit “publish.” So when someone in real life tells me they’ve read something of mine, it almost always feels like they’ve looked into my soul. Publishing something can be scary as it's very vulnerable.

65. Proofread your email before you send it. It sounds so obvious until you make a horrible mistake. I posted an email on my personal email list last year that was full of mistakes, and I'm so embarrassed about it.

66. Someone pitched me on learning Chinese as a great way to improve my career. I’m not really interested in improving my career this way, but somehow I now want to learn Chinese.

67. Chinese has more than 1 billion native speakers. ONE BILLION! I cannot wrap my head around that number. It’s more than English.

Practical Stuff

68. Don't give your address to random people on the Internet. I got pranked in an embarrassing and funny way, but worse things could have happened.

69. I lost a package I sent to Switzerland and it didn't arrive. There was no tracking link, so I also couldn't get support. So when you send packages, pay extra for a tracking link. That way you'll know what's going on if something goes wrong.

70. When shipping to Thailand, the person delivering the package will try to call you first before delivering. So if you are shipping to Thailand, use a Thai phone number. Don't use a German phone number.

71. "What's interesting in your life right now?" is a good way to make conversations go deeper.

72. The question "What is one thing you have learned about yourself this year?" is extremely difficult to answer. It would be easier to answer "How have you grown this year?" which asks for much the same thing.

73. Driving a scooter is fun and addictive. And so fast! As someone who has only ridden bikes or been a passenger in other's cars, this was a completely new experience for me.

74. Jacob Collier is awesome. Hands down the artist I’ve listened to the most last year (and the year before that. And the year before that, and… you get the idea). PS: One of my favorite songs of the year is his cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

75. I don't usually drink alcohol because it doesn't seem worth it. One day I had a little bit at dinner. The next day I felt like I didn't have any serotonin left in my body (i.e. I felt very bad). I definitely have a strong reaction to alcohol, but this experience tells me (again) that it really isn't worth it for me.

76. I've printed a few hundred t-shirts and other items in the last year, and I've found the whole clothing printing thing highly fascinating. One thing I find extremely interesting is that you have a lot more choices in what you can print. For example, there are many more colors in real life than there are in RGB, which makes sense if you think about it. You could have a red that is bright, one that is neon, or one that has a fascinating texture. It opens up a huge range of possibilities that you don't get when you're just working on your computer. Also, printing shirts isn't as expensive as I thought it would be. Depending on the quantity and quality, you can expect to pay 10€ +/-5€ per shirt.

77. You can get blisters on your palms from doing too many pushups. (This surprised me.)

Insights & Reflections

78. Things take longer than you think they will. I've been doing a lot of renovations around my apartment this year, and I've always been wrong about how far we'd get. We usually only finished 50% of what we had planned.

79. A prompt that I found very insightful: To start defining your problems, say (out loud) "everything in my life is completely fine." Notice what objections arise.

80. It takes about two weeks to settle back in at home after you've been away for a while. The environment, the projects, the routines, etc. – these take time to rebuild and make "yours".

81. A friend of mine observed that I have a strong motivation to improve and become a better person. She asked where this comes from. That's a great question, and I don't have a good answer yet.

82. The town I grew up in is such a beautiful, idyllic place. I didn't appreciate it as a child, and now I'm very grateful for that time. Being so much closer to nature does something for my mood and well-being.

83. Last year I did another Vipassana retreat. I had forgotten how much pain your body can feel during meditation 🫠

84. Like last time, I felt that 7-10 days of meditation isn't nearly enough. Every day I longed for the whole thing to be over, but when the last day came, I could feel deeply that it wasn't enough. Next time I want to try something longer, like a month.

85. In Vipassana I realized that everyone struggles with a certain amount of mind wandering and thinking. Older people tend to have more thoughts about the past, while younger people have more thoughts about the future.

86. Being lost in thought is a great way to waste time. When you notice it, it's like realizing that you've been asleep for too long, and you're only now experiencing reality again. So you could say that extending the periods of time when you're not lost in thought is like "extending" your life – it's a kind of mental longevity.

87. When you stand on the beach and look out at the horizon, and the water plays with your feet, you can realize something very beautiful and profound: waves are like the in- and out-breath of the ocean.

88. On the flight home I realized that I'd call the earth my home now. Yes, my home is still in Berlin, and it is also still with my parents. But there is a comfort in traveling to any other place and knowing that it will be interesting and beautiful, and that I can go there whenever I want. (Provided there's enough money and/or time).

89. I was once on a plane and it looked like it was going to crash, and my brain started to "roll the credits": how grateful I am for everything I've experienced so far, for my family, friends, and all the people I've met, and so on. At that moment it would have been okay to die because I could honestly say to myself: So far, your life has been great.

90. How did I know the plane was going to crash? There was extreme turbulence and the captain was making a long, agitated announcement in a foreign language. It was pitch black. Then, as we were landing, the exit signs suddenly came on. I thought, oh, we must be in a very bad situation right now. They're probably turning them on because they think there's a non-zero chance we're going to crash. The credits rolled. But we eventually landed with no apparent problems. (I learned the next day that the exit signs are on by default during takeoff and landing.)

And that concludes the list.

I wish you a great 2025 – to a new year of making mistakes, learning and reflecting! 🌱

There is a kind of knowledge that can change your life. But this knowledge is also the hardest to attain because it cannot be taught.

You arrive at this knowledge through insights. Insights are the magic moments when you understand something on a very deep level. When something clicks and what was blurry now seems sharp and clear.

But when you hear someone try to put an insight into words, it wouldn’t be enough to evoke the same insight in you. The important part – the experience of deep understanding, the part that feels like something – that would be missing.

You’d have to do some work first. In meditation, for example, everyone has to do the work of meditating. A teacher can create conditions that make insight more likely, or find examples, stories, or metaphors that point in the general direction. But everyone must arrive on their own.

This is the fabric that wisdom is made of. But the world we live in focuses more on understanding things on an intellectual level. And it makes sense: in many situations, intellectual understanding is a great tool for solving problems. I wouldn’t want to fly an airplane built purely on intuition. But without intuition, we probably wouldn’t have airplanes at all.

Intuition and wisdom aren’t taught in school, but I would argue that they are more valuable – because they are harder to attain. It’s this kind of knowledge that will change your paradigms, the way you see the world. And because what you think and do comes from here, gaining this knowledge will change your life.

💡 Reflecting on Insights

(As always you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What’s a time when someone told you something that you brushed off but later realized was profound?

How did you come to appreciate it?

What is something you “know” but haven’t truly experienced yet?

What would experiencing it look like?

What insights do you avoid sharing because they sound “stupid” or “obvious”?

Why do you feel that way?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

What I've tried to do in this email may be a bit meta – I wanted to share my insight that intuitive knowledge is valuable. I hope my words pointed in a direction specific enough to evoke a sense of recognition in you.

Wishing you a great week.

With gratitude,
Marc

In an uncomfortably small Airbnb in Tenerife I had the idea to create my own yearly reflection, which I then worked on frantically for weeks. I then published it on the Internet.

With great success: hundreds of people downloaded and used it.

From there, I went on to send out monthly reflections on various topics, such as personal relationships, your environment, or vulnerability. My idea was to make reflection a habit.

In the beginning, the focus was mostly on challenging my own values by exploring them through questions. I loved the reflection question at the end of James Clear's 3-2-1 Newsletter and wanted to have more of that.

But now, Mental Garden has become more of a writing project for me. It's less about the reflection questions and more about the essay at the start of each email. Sometimes the questions even feel unnecessary, and I just add them because that’s what I’ve been doing for two years. Last year's essays are representative of this:

• How to listen

• Are you a thinking person or a feeling person?

• How to deal with failure emotionally

I post twice a month, and sometimes I have to force myself. This is both a blessing and a curse: The rhythm makes me sit down, and then I write something I’m quite happy with. But other times it produces something I probably should not have published at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to continue with Mental Garden. Should I just write one article per month and aim for a higher quality target? Keep the current format? Do something completely different?

Since I’m still trying to decide, I thought it might be helpful to ask you about it. Could you fill out this quick 2 minute form to help me understand how I can make Mental Garden work better for you?

Fill out form

With that, let’s start with the retro and planning ✨

✏️ Retro

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

Also the end of this year is approaching, which means it’s about time to start the yearly reflection. So if you haven’t already, check out this year’s template (available as Notion, Google Docs, and printable PDF) to get started:

Start Yearly Reflection (link removed)

On to the next two years of Mental Garden!

With gratitude,
Marc

PS: I’ve decided to discontinue Mental Garden Premium and will make all premium content in the archive public within the next few weeks. This means all past reflection questions will be public soon.

I recently had LASIK and I’m not supposed to use any screens for a week. So I'm going to avoid writing a long post – but I still wanted to send you something to think about.

Right now I’m in Bangkok for work and meeting tons of new people. Recently at a dinner someone asked me the following question: “What is a thing you’ve learned about yourself this year?”

I’m sure it was meant to be a question with an easy answer, but I found it surprisingly difficult. Because I’ve certainly grown a lot, but it was hard to put that into words.

The question is still echoing in my head, and I wanted to send it to you as well, because I enjoyed thinking about it. Here we go ✨

💡 Reflecting on what you've learned

(As always you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)

What is a thing you've learned about yourself this year?

An alternative way to phrase this question might be “In what way have you grown this year?”

🙏 Thanks!

As always, thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

This is also a great way to remind us that the end of this year is approaching and it’s time to begin the Yearly Reflection. I’ll soon start with the first section – reading through my journal for this year.

See you again (literally 😅) in two weeks.

With gratitude,
Marc

The reason I’ve been thinking a lot about questions is that in conversation, it's often not enough to be a good listener. Because you need a tool to move a conversation forward, to make it a dialogue. Questions are that tool.

So what do all good questions have in common?

Good questions are those that are enjoyable to answer.

This has several implications:

First, it loosens up the concepts of giving and receiving. The good questions are the ones where both people gain something. The person asking gains knowledge, while the person being asked enjoys the process of answering. Both people gain a deepened relationship.

Second, for questions to be enjoyable, they cannot be “boring”. This means that they must come from a place of genuine curiosity on the part of the questioner, while inspiring curiosity on the part of the answerer. A good question makes the answerer curious about their own response, and thus they start to listen to themselves.

Third, this curiosity about their own answer requires the answerer to think. This is what ultimately makes the question enjoyable – exploring and witnessing one’s own thinking together with another person to arrive at novel insights is deeply pleasurable.

There are a few ways to ask questions that I personally enjoy a lot.

One way is to ask questions that look at the topic from a different angle. You can do this by playing devil’s advocate, i.e. by looking at things from the opposite angle. An example might be “What would a critic say?” or “What would a wise person do?”

Another way is to question the underlying assumptions. When we solve problems, we usually presume a lot, thinking about implications rather than premises.

So by asking questions that focus on assumptions, you can help the other person check their thinking against reality. Examples might be “What would this look like if it were easy?” or “Is this the only way to solve this?”

And then there are questions that challenge the boundaries of your thinking by being absurd. We often think in similar patterns because of our beliefs. To break out of them, ask this kind of question.

For example, imagine someone was struggling with time management. You could ask, “How would you live your life if each day was only 12 hours long?” Or if someone was struggling financially, you might ask something like “What would you do if you only had $100 a month?” While those questions probably don’t apply to your specific situation, their answers might do. Thinking about them will help you gain new insights into your current situation.

None of these questions are “normal” – they are quirky and novel, they make you think in ways that you haven’t thought before. Your standard way of thinking doesn’t work. This makes answering them enjoyable because you start listening to yourself.

So both from the perspective of the person asking the questions, but even more from the perspective of the person answering it, you could say:

Good questions make you curious. Curiosity makes you listen.

✏️ Retro

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes.)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

What kinds of questions do you personally find most enjoyable to answer?

Why? What makes other questions feel “boring,” and how can I change those questions to be interesting?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

It's interesting to see that curiosity seems to be the underlying force of any kind of communication. Listening, asking questions, ... Anything I could come up with that has to do with communication has curiosity at its core.

And it makes sense – why else would we talk to each other?

See you again in November.

With gratitude,
Marc

When was the last time someone listened to you – truly listened?

In a world full of distractions, being a good listener is a rare superpower. And it’s one anyone can master.

There’s one quality that makes you a great listener. Best of all, it’s nothing complex or unattainable – it’s something we all have within us. Once you embrace it, you’ll never listen the same way again.

Why listen?

There are many conventional ideas about the benefits of good listening: better relationships, more effective communication, improved teamwork and leadership, personal growth, and so on.

But these are only second-order effects. They are the surface appearances of something deeper. You can have them all but would completely miss the point of why good listening is important.

Good listening is about magic.

It’s the transformative, almost mystical quality when two people truly connect through a deep sense of understanding. It opens up a space that would be inaccessible without it.

The best approximation to this magic is an excerpt from the book Momo by Michael Ende, a children’s book that is actually for adults. In one of the first chapters, he describes the effect Momo has on the people around her.

She listened in a way that made slow-witted people have flashes of inspiration. It wasn’t that she actually said anything or asked questions that put such ideas into their heads. She simply sat there and listened with the utmost attention and sympathy, fixing them with her big, dark eyes, and they suddenly became aware of ideas whose existence they had never suspected.

Momo could listen in such a way that worried and indecisive people knew their own minds from one moment to the next, or shy people felt suddenly confident and at ease, or downhearted people felt happy and hopeful. And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.

Such was Momo’s talent for listening.

– from the 2nd chapter of Momo by Michael Ende

So how does she do it? What is different when Momo listens?

What makes a great listener?

If you follow conventional advice, a great listener is someone who…

• Shows interest by nodding or giving verbal cues (e.g., “I see,” “That must be tough”).

• Paraphrases and reflects back by repeating or summarizing, such as, “So what you’re saying is…” to show they’re paying attention.

• Use open body language and mirroring by leaning slightly forward, making eye contact, and maintaining a posture that indicates openness (arms uncrossed, facing the speaker) to signal attentiveness and interest.

• … and so on, you get the idea.

But to say that someone who does all of this is a great listener is like saying that copying the movements of a great piano player is the same as making music. It’s surface behavior. If you’ve ever watched someone aggressively paraphrase another person, you’ll know it can be robotic and fake.

That’s because those behaviors are just a byproduct of great listening. The underlying qualities from which they flow are presence and empathy.

But even if you cultivate these qualities to perfection, there is still something missing. Because, while these qualities are important for good listening, there is only one that is required. A prerequisite. Necessary.

You can have the greatest presence or be the most empathetic person, and still be a poor listener. What is that missing something?

It’s curiosity.

As long as you are not curious you will not be a good listener.

Because curiosity is the source of all the other qualities. When you’re truly curious, you’re automatically present. More empathetic. More skillful. You are one of your truest, most honest, most sincere selves, because you cannot fake that. Curiosity is the source of all the other qualities.

Curiosity alone is enough to be good. Combine it with presence and empathy, and you become great.

Curiosity

So if you want to be a good listener, you first must be curious. How? And what is curiosity?

It’s both a desire and an expression of value. You become curious when you sense that something might be important to you. And you want to learn more.

For example, from a practical point of view, you’re probably curious when you meet someone who is interested in the same things you are. Or works in a similar field. Or when they might have an answer to one of your struggles. It makes you curious because it is valuable.

But you might also be curious from an emotional perspective – perhaps you simply find a person so fascinating that any interaction with them feels precious. Being in their presence becomes a sheer pleasure. Building that connection with this person is so valuable that everything they do makes you curious.

We all value something. But to be a great listener, in addition to valuing the specific topic of the conversation, you need to value human beings to a very high degree. To appreciate the other person’s accumulated knowledge and subjective experiences.

If you are not very interested in listening to someone, then you don't see their value. To start listening sincerely in these situations, you simply have to look deeper. Because everyone is interesting if you're curious enough.

Becoming a great listener

But to move from merely good to great listening, the other qualities – presence and empathy – also become important.

While becoming curious will automatically improve these, you can still deliberately practice becoming more present and empathetic.

Presence

As with trying to describe “magic” or other states of consciousness, language doesn’t seem enough to define presence. It can only point in its direction. My best attempt to describe presence is through an example.

Imagine you are at a classical concert. You hear an orchestra playing, and the piece has just ended. This is the moment when you can see and feel presence. The conductor and the musicians remain upright and attentive. Then, first the conductor relaxes, then the orchestra, and then the audience. The moment between the end of the piece and the release is pure presence.

The same kind of presence is what makes a great listener.

But great listeners don’t just listen to another person. They also listen to themselves. How does what you hear affect you? What does it do to you on an emotional level? This is extremely useful because it helps you to not react. Because if you do, for example if you take things defensively, you might break the connection.

The best way I know to develop presence is through meditation. Because you could say that meditation is already about listening – listening to your surroundings, your thoughts and sensations. It’s deliberate listening practice. (See this guide from /r/streamentry as a good place to start.)

Interestingly, the practice of being present already increases your level of curiosity. You look deeper and deeper and can't stop discovering more things to be curious about.

Empathy

If presence is about making people feel seen, empathy is about making them feel heard.

Because while presence holds space for the other person, empathy is about relating to the other person on a thinking and feeling level. This is because you see their thoughts through your own lens. You are simulating both their internal thinking and emotional state through your own perspective and experience.

One way to deliberately practice empathy is through a mindfulness practice called Metta, or loving-kindness meditation. You can think of it as developing a strong wish for the well-being and happiness of both yourself and others. This is literally training your empathy muscle.

You can find more information about Metta in the same guide I mentioned above.

Conclusion

The essence of great listening lies in one fundamental quality: curiosity. It’s the driving force behind the other qualities that make a listener truly exceptional, presence and empathy. Without curiosity, none of these matter; you simply won’t care enough.

But once you’ve ignited your curiosity, developing these qualities becomes important as well. This is what takes you from being merely good to being great.

You already are a person full of curiosity. Follow it, and you won’t listen the same way again.

💡 Reflecting on Listening

(As always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes.)

Can you recall a moment when you felt truly heard?

What made this experience special? Can you describe what the other person was doing?

When was the last time you truly listened to someone?

If it has been a while, what was different? How can you do it again?

What is one change you can make today to improve your listening?

Also, think about a situation where you'd like to experiment with deeply listening.

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

This was another piece that took some time to write. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts and if you would agree or disagree with this mental model. Just drop me a line.

Have a great start to the week.

With gratitude,
Marc

Thanks to Michelle Wu, Lina Schrott, Sofia Vanhanen, and Rico Trebeljahr for inspiring conversations and for reading drafts of this.

A few years ago, a lot of things suddenly changed: I finished my studies, quit my job, and went full time on my own projects. My life went from having an external structure to having no structure at all.

Finally, I wasn’t working on anyone else’s agenda anymore. No one telling me what to do. I could use my time however I wanted to and work on projects that were fulfilling and meaningful to me.

Or so I thought. What happened was this:

I started sleeping an enormous amount of time. Throughout the day I would watch videos and surf the web, and then meet up with friends until I went to sleep again. And only once in a while would I work a tiny bit on my projects. Boy did I struggle to get anything done!

So I had to find a way to have all this freedom and still make progress.

My friend Rico Trebeljahr was in a similar situation, and together we sat down to figure out what was going wrong. What was holding us back from being productive? And how could we support each other along the way?

What you’ll learn

This post is an exploration of the system Rico and I have developed for ourselves. We’ve been using and refining it for a couple of years.

This system works great for people who…

• Have a certain amount of freedom in how they spend their time 

• Don’t have a lot of externally imposed structure and struggle with this sometimes

• Enjoy writing or want to use writing to improve their thinking

• Are committed to personal development through deeper, regular reflection

You’ll learn how to give structure to your days, weeks, months, and even years, and how to tweak the system to make it your own.

Specifically, you’ll learn about

1. What keeps you from being productive

2. What makes a good productivity system

3. How to implement such a system in your own life

4. What additional strategies you can use to stay productivity

Where possible, I'll provide examples and templates that you can use as a starting point.

What keeps us from being productive?

After suddenly having no external structure anymore, we discovered three main challenges.

Challenge #1: If you don’t know what to do, you'll likely do nothing at all

What had changed for me was a lack of structure. I didn’t have any specific plan for what I wanted to do and when. You cannot follow a plan you haven’t made.

As a result, I wasted most of my time mindlessly doing things that weren't important to me. But when I thought about it, this was not how I really wanted to spend my life.

Challenge #2: It's often harder to accomplish something alone than with others

For the first time in my life, I was working completely on my own. The only person I was accountable to was myself.

With no one telling me what to do, I didn’t have to “deliver” anymore. The sense of external motivation was gone because no one was going to call me out when I needed it.

Challenge #3: Goals are worthless without habits

Winners and losers have the same goals, but you can only win with good habits.

I had a lot of goals during this time, but without a system to help me achieve them, they were basically worthless. I just wasn't working on them effectively because I hadn't developed habits to organize my days and weeks.

Ingredients for a productivity system that works (for me)

Now that we’ve seen the challenges, what can we do to address them?

Strategy #1: Systems and habits

In the long run, the how becomes more important than the what. It is better to focus on systems than goals  because they are effectively a multiplier.

For example, a person with a New Year’s resolution to get fit who joins a gym is not creating a system. They are likely to go a few times every now and then, but may eventually stop.

Another person with a resolution to do 10 pushups every day is probably better off. Because 10 pushups is easy AND you can grow from there. A year later, this person will probably be fitter than the other one (and already doing 100 pushups a day).

Starting at a low level and gradually increasing the difficulty is easier than directly starting at a higher level. Improving a bit each day is better than making drastic changes.

This means that our system needs to be based on regular habits, and that those habits need to start small. This provides structure, but also allows it to grow in the future.

Strategy #2: Reflecting on different timeframes

Goals are always based on a certain timeframe. I might have a goal of doing 100 pushups someday, but right now I would be very proud to do just one.

When you think in years, you are looking at the big picture of your life. If you're thinking about months, you're thinking about bigger themes. Those themes could be broken down into weekly goals. And then at the daily level, you translate those into actionable tasks.

So thinking about goals doesn't make sense without thinking about time, because each timeframe requires a different kind of reflection. They put you in a different position on the analytical vs. creative spectrum by activating different types of thinking.

But reflection is not just about setting goals. It’s also about your values, your challenges, your memories. Thinking about these things in different timeframes helps you live a much more intentional life. It also makes it easier to adjust as you go.

Strategy #3: Accountability partnerships

Accountability partners help you… stay accountable. 😅

There’s a reason why people work in teams – it’s often much easier. Having another person to help you stay on track is not only great for accountability. It’s also much more fun and motivating. And it’s useful to get someone else’s perspective on your goals and thinking.

Suddenly, you are not just doing everything for yourself anymore. You are inviting another person to be part of your journey.

How the strategies fit together

When you combine the strategies, you create a flywheel. Each part keeps the other parts running smoothly: 

You can think of the Systems (S) as the engine that powers the reflection and accountability parts. Reflection (R) is what improves the system and provides accountability to others. And external Accountability (A) keeps the system running (i.e. makes sure no one stops) and provides the feedback on your reflections.

Putting the system into practice

So combining these mechanisms creates a killer structure for keeping yourself productive and accountable. But how do you make it a reality?

As I’ve written above, the system is about regular (#1) reflection (#2) on different timeframes with built-in accountability (#3). The easiest way to do this is by reflecting once a day, week, month, and year on that period of time, and to review each other's reflections on a regular basis.

So each day you reflect on the last day and the next; each week you reflect on the last week and the next week, and so on and so forth.

In this section, I want to walk you through my personal implementation of such a system. This is a set of habits that works well for me, but it may be different for you.

Daily Reflection

• Purpose: Plan what you want to work on the next day so you know exactly what to do

• Format: Short written reflection on the day, list of (un)completed todos for today, list of todos for tomorrow

• Time investment: 2-3 minutes at the end of each day

At the end of each day, I sit down and create a list of everything I did. I then make a plan for the next day. It’s a simple plain text list, nothing fancy.

I also write a short summary about my day, which might include things like

• What I did

• Something I learned that day

• Things that are still on my mind

The daily reflection is a living document – I check things off the list throughout the day. If something urgent comes up, I simply add it to the list.

When I’m done, I send it to the accountability group on WhatsApp and save the reflection in Notion for later reference.

For me, the Daily is one of the most powerful tools to give structure and clarity to my days. I always know exactly what I want to do, which helps me to actually do those things.

Example

Here are two examples of daily reflections I’ve written over the past few days:

Daily 1

Made the decision today to cancel/reschedule the Vipassana and go to Thailand much earlier. Will leave around the XX.

Lots of orga stuff today, mostly planning a bit and a bit of chores around the flat.

Tomorrow I'll start preparing for Thailand. The decision puts the next two weeks in a different perspective – will probably prioritize other things now that I’ve got less time at home.

TODAY
DONE - Full morning routine
DONE - Write weekly
DONE - Prepare team standup
DONE - Clean bathrooms and flat
DONE - Groceries
NO - Paint room door(s?)

TOMORROW
- Full morning routine
- Buy thank you gift for landlord
- Think about+organize flights
- Tidy up tools+materials from construction work
- Cancel Lightroom
- Oculist appointment
- Call Rico?

During the day and when I write the next daily, I will add "DONE" or "NO" or some other keyword in front of the task, depending on whether I did it. If it makes sense, I'll move the unfinished tasks to tomorrow's section.

On the next day, I wrote the following:

Daily 2

Had quite an unstructured day today but full of beautiful moments. Woke up super early and took photos after not having done that for a long time, then spontaneously went to a meditation center. Then having a call with Rico. Then a bit more time for myself before some appointments.

Almost did everything I wanted to do today, only thing left is doing some cleanup here :)

TODAY
DONE - Full morning routine
DONE - Buy thank you gift for landlord
HALF - Think about+organize flights
TBD - Tidy up tools+materials from construction work
NO - Cancel Lightroom
DONE - Oculist appointment
DONE - Call Rico?

TOMORROW
- Cancel Lightroom
- Book flights
- Write Mental Garden Newsletter
- Oil the wood in the kitchen
- Paint 1-2 doors
- Go to Hell Night

Weekly Reflection

• Purpose: To reflect on the past week and set goals for the coming week

• Format: Written reflection on last and next week’s goals, lessons learned, and other elements that are important to you

• Time investment: 20-60 minutes at the end of each week

The weekly reflection is similar, except that the timeframe is longer. Every Sunday, you look at what you did last week and think about what to do the next week. This gives your week a structure and a purpose.

But because the time horizon is bigger, it’s possible to expand more on the reflection part. This is the time to think deeply about what has happened to you, to reflect on your problems, to be grateful. Your Weekly can be whatever you like, depending on what is important and helpful to you.

I’ve divided my weekly reflection into the following sections.

Summary

This is a place to collect general reflections from the week, to give a quick overview of what happened, and to connect to my progress on some broader topics. Although this is the first section, I usually write it last.

What got done?

A list of everything I’ve done during the week. I essentially go through my calendar and my daily reflections and add everything I’ve done during the week.

Lessons Learned

If I’ve had any insights during the week, I’ll write them down here. This is also the best place to reflect on failures or challenges, and to try to extract value out of it in the form of a lesson you’ve learned. This is one of my favorite sections because I get to share new knowledge with my friends.

Goals From Last Week

In this section, I copy the goals from last week and give myself a grade from 1 to 10 on how well I accomplished them. (The grading is inspired by Michael Lynch's retrospectives.) I also add some notes about progress or to justify the grade if necessary.

While this section is similar to the “What got done” section, I think this is different. Goals you haven’t completed won’t show up in the other section, and some things you’ve done weren’t in your goals section. I think I could improve this structure because of the redundancy, but so far it doesn’t bother me.

Goals For Next Week

This is again just a simple list of what I want to work on next week. Sometimes I’ll indent the list to indicate subgoals. In case this list gets too long, I’ll also make a rough schedule for the week of when to do what.

Time Tracking

Here I add a screenshot of my time tracking tool to see how much time went into what. This section helps me see what I’ve been focussing on this week.

Areas Of My Life

In this section, I rate myself on how well I'm doing in different areas from 1 to 10 (but I can't pick a 7!) This allows me to spot patterns and blind spots, and it can also act as an early warning system if a certain area is consistently not getting a good rating. (And as a data nerd, I’m really curious to analyze it later this year.)

See the image above for the areas I’m including. I’m still thinking about which other categories to add, because in this case more data is better (and it doesn’t take much time to grade yourself).

Why you can never pick a 7

I rate myself from 1 to 10, but I can't pick a 7. Why?

If something is okay or average, most people's intuitive answer is a 7. But that's a cop-out - you're not offending anyone with it, but you're also not really saying anything.

Is that 7 leaning more toward 6 (meh) or 8 (good)? The thought process here can be enlightening because it helps you to tap into your System 2 thinking.

Song Of The Week

Another fun little section that is mostly for spreading joy. Often there’s a song or artist I’ve been listening to all week, and this is my opportunity to share it. During the yearly reflection, it’s also great to rediscover old favorite songs.

Something awesome I’ve read

I just recently added this – whenever I find something interesting, I’ll add it to this list. This serves as an artifact of what I’ve been consuming over the past week, but also as a way to share it with friends.

When I’m done, I send the reflection to my friends/accountability partners. Then they add their own thoughts to it. They cheer for me, or ask questions if something is unclear. Or if it makes sense, they might even challenge me on some things. Receiving their thoughts is a big dopamine hit and one of the most rewarding parts of the whole system.

The choice of what to think about is very personal. Rico uses a different format, and it will probably be different for you, too. Maybe you want to add a gratitude section, or one about your finances? Try it out, and see what works best for you.

Example and Template

Here is a full weekly reflection on Notion. This is an actual reflection I wrote some time ago, minus some personal details.

You can find the Weekly Reflection Template I use on Notion as well.

Monthly Reflection

• Purpose: To reflect on the past month and set goals for the coming month. Provide space to think about the bigger picture

• Format: Conversation or call with accountability partner

• Time investment: 2-4 hours at the end of each month

On the analytical vs. creative spectrum, the monthly reflection leans more toward the creative side. It’s about translating your big picture into more specific and actionable goals. For me, it’s also the least structured of the reflections.

That’s because it’s essentially a deep conversation with a good friend. It’s about listening deeply and giving space to the other person, and then getting an outside perspective on it. It can be like a Pensieve Diary but with a real person listening.

We always start with a ritual of doing 30 pushups together. Then for each person, we focus on what has happened in the last month, what we might be worrying about, and what progress we’ve made. And then on how we want to spend the next month and what goals to set.

To keep the conversation focused on the most important points, we try to prepare in advance. During the conversation, we both take notes to deepen our listening and understanding. Afterwards, we reflect on the session at a meta level – discussing what went well and what could be improved next time.

Sometimes we split the monthly reflection into two sessions because they can get quite long. The length is also the reason why it seems impractical to do this with more than one person – or at least we haven’t figured out yet how to scale this.

Example and Template

Since the Monthly is a conversation, I cannot give a good example. We do take notes, but they are not ready to be shared publicly. Check out the template we use as our structure.

Yearly Reflection

• Purpose: Review the past year and plan for the next. Get a big picture view of where you are in life and where you want to go, reconnect with your values

• Format: Written reflection using guiding questions plus a conversation with your accountability partner about learnings

• Time investment: 4-8+ hours at the end of each year

The final part is the yearly reflection. Here you try to look back on the past year to understand what happened, how you feel about it, and what you can learn from it. And also to look ahead and dream big, make plans, and connect with your values. During this reflection I always tend to get really excited about the next year.

But why isn’t doing the monthly reflection enough? Aren’t we already looking at the bigger picture there?

There are a couple of differences that make the yearly reflection valuable in a different way. First, thinking about this broader timeframe puts you in another frame of mind. One that is more about dreaming big rather than executing. It’s zooming out far enough to see where you are in your life right now and where you might go. Second, it’s not a conversation, it’s something written. This generates a different set of ideas.

Example and Template

Take a look at the Yearly Reflection on Mental Garden for a more specific idea of what this could look like. It’s available as a Notion template, for Google Docs, and for printing.

Complementary Strategies

Regular reflection is the main element of this system. But there are a few other strategies that I find extremely helpful and that make the system even more effective.

Wikipedia Pacts

A Wikipedia Pact is a kind of a commitment device. It’s a rule you set for yourself, and if you don’t follow it, you lose money.

For example, “If I don’t send this email by the end of the week, I’ll have to pay $50 to Wikipedia.” This is a great way to counteract the “monkey brain”. Either by making procrastination more painful or by attaching consequences to otherwise “easy” behaviors (such as eating sweets). The accountability group keeps you responsible by checking in or just witnessing the process.

I’ve written a whole article on Wikipedia Pacts where I explore the idea a bit further.

No Procrastination Tuesdays

Sometimes there are tasks that you don’t like to do and that always get neglected somehow. To make room for these tasks, Rico has invented “No Procrastination Tuesdays”.

At the beginning of the week (e.g. during the weekly reflection), you make a list of tasks that you no longer want to procrastinate, and then choose a day and time to do them. Rico swears by Tuesdays, but I guess anything goes. 😅

Combine this with a Wikipedia pact and you have a formidable combination of accountability and external motivation (e.g. "If I don't complete these tasks by the end of Tuesday, I’ll pay $50 to Wikipedia").

Optimizing your environment

Optimizing your environment can mean two things:

• Changing how you feel by changing location

• Making good behavior easy and bad behavior hard by shaping your immediate environment

There’s a profound difference in my productivity between working in a library and working at home. My brain simply kicks into a mode that is focused on getting things done. It would be so awkward to slack off in a library, and it’s easy to study or work there.

You can also shape your environment so that it takes less willpower to do the right thing, like taking steps to make your phone less addictive, or not having unhealthy food available at home.

But that is just the physical environment. You can apply the same idea to your mental environment by taking advantage of good sleep, morning sunlight, cold exposure, meditation, caffeine, etc. These things work, so use them!

Time Tracking

While I don’t think tracking your time is necessary, I find it valuable to see where my time is going. It gives you a number that helps you compare your intuitive sense of how productive you were with something more objective.

Time management techniques

There are a few ideas that help me manage my time and energy levels.

Notice when you have the most energy and focus to work. For me (and I think for most people) this is early in the morning and late in the evening. These times are sacred, so I protect them as best as I can. Do your most important focused tasks during this time.

To get in the zone and to make it harder to procrastinate, try the Pomodoro technique. For those unfamiliar, in its most basic form you alternate between 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest. This tool helps you resist procrastination by putting all procrastinating activities into a separate time slot.

Prioritize. This is a huge topic in and of itself, and it’s something I’m often bad at. But one thing that has helped me get better is realizing that urgency is not the same as importance.

And last but not least: don’t do more than you need to to meet your own quality standards. Or in other words, don’t waste motion.

Getting Started

Now that you know more about this productivity system, you may be thinking that this takes way too long. And in a way you would be right, it does take a lot of time. But it’s worth every minute. This time investment compounds with everything else I get done.

This set of strategies has solved most of my productivity problems by giving me accountability, a space to reflect, and structure to my life. In fact, I could probably say that this system has improved my life more than anything else in the last two years.

So how do you start?

Start small and then slowly expand from there. Focus on creating a new set of habits.

To start:

1. Find an accountability partner. Send this article to 1-2 of your friends and ask them to start an accountability group together.

2. Write regular weekly reflections. Keep them as simple as possible, such as starting with last week’s and next week’s goals

3. Review each other’s weekly reflections.

This is the place from which everything else can grow. It’s the basis of your very own flywheel. 

Why start with the weekly reflection

I've found that the weekly reflection has the biggest impact while the time investment is still ok. Daily reflections are also good, but they lack that big picture view. Monthly reflections are too far apart to make them a habit. I do recommend doing the yearly reflection.

My friend Rico has also put together his own take on his productivity system. If you liked this article, you'll probably enjoy his post as well.

Last but not least, if you’ve liked this article, sign up for my email list below to get my latest posts via email.

As this email serves as a monthly reflection, I've added a bonus question below to give some thoughts on how you might want to use this for yourself. Have fun ✨

✏️ Retro

(Like always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes.)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

How could you adapt such a productivity system to your own situation?

What resonated with you, and what would you like to try? How can you commit yourself?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

This email comes later than usual because this essay went from taking an afternoon of my time to demanding my full attention for almost a week. I hope it was worth it 🤗.

Also, my friend Rico will be publishing his own version of this article soon. I might send you the link in my next email.

With gratitude,
Marc

Are you a thinking person or a feeling person?

This is a question I ask many people as I get to know them, hoping to learn something deeper about them. The interesting thing is not their answer, but their justification behind it. Which leaves me with the question: if someone intuitively answers this question, what aspect of themselves are they describing?

So what do you mean when you describe yourself as either a thinking person or a feeling person? Stop for a moment and think about this for a bit.

The best approximation I have so far is that it describes how a person perceives and makes sense of the world, meaning both externally and internally. It’s their preference for how to evaluate incoming data and what to base their decisions on.

Thinking and feeling people value different parts in personal conversations. If people prefer to interpret the world through either thinking or feeling, then they like to spend their time relating to other people in the same way. It’s a measure of what aspects of a conversation they might value. Do they like to talk about their thoughts or their emotional experiences? I definitely have friends with whom I talk mostly about our thinking side, and then others with whom it's mostly about feeling.

This is not the same as being a cold or warm person. It’s also not the same as being intellectually intelligent or emotionally intelligent. These are orthogonal but related dimensions. I suppose they can go hand in hand with this preference, but they describe something different. A thinking person can be both warm and emotionally intelligent, they just enjoy relating to the world more through thinking (and vice versa).

My guess is that most people's answer would not be one or the other, but rather a combination of the two. That's why I see it as a spectrum. Personally, I'd put myself somewhere in the middle, with a slight preference for thinking. But there are still some decisions that are based purely on intuition.

And since this is a spectrum, both aspects can be useful. Neither is inherently better or worse.

You may be a thinking person, but if you have a growing intuition that something isn’t right, you’ll likely try feeling inside more deeply to find out what’s going on. Similarly, there are benefits to thinking about a situation even if your first instinct is to trust your intuition.

Knowing your own preference and position on this spectrum can be very useful. Because with this preference comes the opportunity to consciously invite more aspects of yourself to your subjective experience.

I strongly believe that we should all try to move closer to the center of the spectrum by cultivating both parts. Because much like using both eyes instead of just one, we gain perspective on our inner and outer worlds and can make better decisions.

So how do you do that?

I think the best way is to become aware of your default position on the spectrum. And then, as you process reality, actively try to look at it through the lens of a different position. Ask different parts of yourself what they think and feel about it and what they would do. This way, you open up your experience to additional aspects of your intelligence.

So where do you see yourself on this spectrum? Are you a thinking or a feeling person?

💡 Reflecting on the thinking vs. feeling spectrum

(Like always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes.)

Where are you on the spectrum of thinking vs. feeling?

Why? Would your friends agree?

In what situations do you tend to move towards the other end of the spectrum?

What potential triggers are there?

How can you personally tap more into the other state?

In what situations would that be valuable? And which specific strategies might work for you?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

Wishing you a great weekend and a wonderful remainder of September.

With gratitude,
Marc

I’m at a few crossroads in my life right now, and things are starting to figure out themselves. There is a lot of reflecting I should be doing but that I’m not, and I’m kind of procrastinating it until “the right moment” arrives.

I’m at a place called The Garden. Lots of lush nature, fascinating people, flowing time. This seems a bit like paradise to me, a place I didn’t expect exists.

This might be a good place to do a reflection like this one. Hope you find the time and place this month to sit down and let your thoughts flow. Have fun! ✨

✏️ Retro

(Like always, you can download the Notion template to take structured notes.)

What goals did you set for yourself last month, and how well did you achieve them?

Make a list of your goals (even if they were only implicit) and score them from 1 (low) to 10 (high). You are not allowed to pick a 7. Take notes as you go.

Is there something that is blocking you?

What held you back last month? What can you do to avoid this next month?

What did you learn?

Did you learn something about yourself, your environment, or about the work you do?

🔭 Planning

What are your top 3 priorities next month?

Why are they important to you?

What goals do you set for yourself in light of these priorities?

To beat procrastination, make sure to split every higher-level goal into small subgoals.

What are potential obstacles or challenges you may face?

How can you prepare for them?

🌈 Bonus

What is a recent belief you’ve changed?

Why?

🙏 Thanks!

Thank you for being part of Mental Garden. I sincerely hope you found this email useful.

I wish you a great September full of serendipitous moments.

With gratitude,
Marc