Life Lessons

I spent my whole career building passive income. Here’s what I got wrong.

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For as long as I can remember, I wanted passive income.

Money that came in without being tied to my time or energy. Income I didn’t have to show up for. The kind of financial life where you don’t have to worry.

I think this is a universal desire for anyone who didn’t grow up rich. You see what financial stress does to a family and you make a silent promise to yourself: I’m never going to live like that.

So I built toward it for my entire adult life.

Here’s what I didn’t expect when I got there.

I still worry.

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Career Advice, Marketing

You have 47 seconds before you lose them

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Here’s something I’ve noticed about my own behavior. And I don’t necessarily like it.

When I’m in a meeting or a conversation, I drift the moment things go on too long without something interesting. My mind wanders. My hand moves toward my phone. And I catch myself thinking: wait, what did they just say?

Have you felt this too?

I think it’s because of how we’ve been conditioned. Everything we consume has been optimized to hold our attention. TV shows, movies, social media, websites; all of it engineered for dopamine hits. Short, sharp, immediately rewarding.

No wonder we reach for our phones the second something gets slow or unclear.

The research backs this up. Two decades ago, the average time someone stayed focused on a single task was around two and a half minutes. Today that number has dropped to 47 seconds.

47 seconds.

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Self-Knowledge, Thinking

The basics of becoming wise

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I recently shared an article on the basics of building wealth. A list of fundamentals to come back to when you’re starting out or when you feel stuck.

This is the companion piece. Because as Aristotle said:

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

And you can’t truly know yourself if you’re always chasing external things. Wealth without wisdom is just money. This list is about the other side of the equation.

Wisdom is harder to define than wealth. But you know it when you see it in someone.

They’re calm when others panic. They ask better questions. They don’t chase things that don’t matter. They know who they are.

That’s what this list is about. Not philosophy for its own sake. The practical habits and shifts that actually make you wiser over time.

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Life Lessons, Stoicism

Is life worse today compared to 10 years ago?

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Over the past year, there’s one conversation I feel like I’ve had almost every week.

The world is getting crazy. AI is going to take everyone’s jobs. People don’t want to work anymore. Everything is expensive. Politicians are evil.

All in the same conversation. And the conclusion is always the same: Life was better 10 years ago.

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

But here’s what I know for certain. Spending your mental energy on that question is one of the most expensive things you can do.

That’s what this article is about.

Not whether life is actually worse.

But why do we think it is, and what to do about it?

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