Espresso Shots 12-28-25

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• 3 Ways Smart People Stay Stuck in Failing Patterns. I've been a long-time follower of Anne-Laure Le Cunff and her fantastic work at Ness Labs, including her book, Tiny Experiments. In this short video, Anne-Laure explores three different cognitive scripts that are traps we fall into: The Sequel Script, The Crowdpleaser Script and the Epic Script. 'The problem with cognitive scripts is when we use them to make more important decisions in our lives, in our careers, in our relationships, instead of asking ourselves, is that really what I want to do, is that my decision, we let our choices being driven by those stories that we have internalized by those scripts that tell us how we're supposed to behave in a certain situation.'
• Full Presence Is Terrifying. The word that's been fumbling around in my brain for 2026 is availability, so this article resonated with my current state of mind. 'I have been thinking a lot about presence recently. Often, we are there—hanging with a friend, or watching a movie, or by ourselves, wherever—but we are not really there. Because we are also somewhere else. To be fully present is to be a full self. To fully exist. To fully interact with something or someone. To take up space and contribute back to it. Presence exists on a spectrum. Perhaps 100 percent presence is and always has been rare, but there are gradations, and it feels like often these days, I, and many of us, do not get anywhere near full-presence.' Don't focus on making yourself valuable - but available - to talk about mistakes, hopes, struggles, all with being present.
• I Killed Color on My Phone. The Result Shocked Me.. I haven't gone this far yet, but it's interesting to read how the shift from color to greyscale has provided this author with a release of the pressure around phone dependence. 'The moment I switched, I no longer felt an urgent need to look at my iPhone — an urge that I hadn't known was so strong until it was gone. I experienced a full-bodied sense of relief when the colors faded to gray.'
• We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die. An interesting interview with Umberto Eco (who coined the concept of an 'anti-library') regarding why we make lists. '‌We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.' (Hat tip to Austin Kleon's post - Making the Year Endless - for this link).
• When Tech Stopped Being For Us. Oof - nailed it. 'Somewhere along the way, tech stopped being a tool we wielded and became a system that wields us. This wasn't an accident. It was a business model optimization.'
• Trains Cancelled Over Fake Bridge Collapse Image. This one came up in a fellowship call I was on last week, but highlights the dangers of trusting what we see in 2025 (and I suspect will get worse in the next year). 'Trains were halted after a suspected AI-generated picture that seemed to show major damage to a bridge appeared on social media following an earthquake. The tremor, which struck on Wednesday night, was felt across Lancashire and the southern Lake District. Network Rail said it was made aware of the image which appeared to show major damage to Carlisle Bridge in Lancaster at 00:30 GMT and stopped rail services across the bridge while safety inspections were carried out. A BBC journalist ran the image through an AI chatbot which identified key spots that may have been manipulated.'
• The Arctic Island That's Reclaiming Time. 'Inspired by the extreme periods of light and dark, in late spring 2019, a group of locals signed a petition to make the village the first 'time-free zone,' a place where anyone could buy groceries, cut grass, or eat dinner no matter the time.' Interesting post on the observations of living in a place without time, along with the problems and reality of the undertaking.
• Proximalism. 'Proximalism asserts that human life thrives within proximal spheres—spaces where relationships are tangible, accountability is personal, and power is distributed among people who know each other's names, families, and stories. This isn't just about geography; it’s about the fundamental unit of human organization that our psychology and biology are designed for.' Over the last 18 months living on an island away from the mainland, has definitely had an impact on my thinking around locally sourced food, local communities, and the human connections that surround the people that choose to live a quieter life.
• Family Futures. A lovely retrospective of days gone by and a thought piece on what technology we let into our lives. 'The era of the personal computer is misnamed because they weren’t really personal computers - they were family computers. Big chunky things. Yelling up and down the stairs to see if anyone was on the phone before going online. You could feel where the internet came from - the pings and bloops of the dialup sound traveling across the phone lines - the same phone lines you could see crisscrossing above you as you walk down the street on the way to school.'
• Why Do People Leave Comments on OpenBenches?. I love what the OpenBench project has been up to (and have contributed many of the random benches) up here on San Juan Island. 'There are blue plaques to commemorate the famous and influential figures of the past. For everyone else, there are memorial benches. A quiet reminder of the people gone but not forgotten.' A great post on some of the comments they have received on the bench pictures. 'Hundreds of people sharing connections. Wanting to express their feelings. Understanding the terrible pain of loss and the hope that, someday, someone will think fondly of us.'
• The Creative Power of Constraints. I've long been a fan of 'through constraint you find freedom' - 'Don't bother spending time thinking about all the things; focus on thinking about the things that matter most.' I particularly enjoyed this lens on the creativity aspect of it - 'Constraints are the primordial soup from which creativity arises. These constraints can be imposed on the creator or devised by the creator themselves. Most commonly, they are a combination of both.'
• Why Working Quickly Is More Important Than It Seems. I disagree with this post, but I am always interested in understanding or exploring different work patterns. For some time now, I've seen the 'move fast and break things' thinking often results in lots of broken things. This piece posits 'Part of the activation energy required to start any task comes from the picture you get in your head when you imagine doing it. It may not be that going for a run is actually costly, but if it feels costly, if the picture in your head looks like a slog, then you will need a bigger expenditure of will to lace up.' Interesting perspective.
• Give It Five Minutes. An older post, but a great reminder of why five minutes is significant, and references essential Steve Jobs thoughts on the fragility of ideas. 'Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.' With that, 'Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.'
• It's What I Do. 'It’s what I do. You see, it’s a phrase I use myself. Particularly when it comes to various aspects of technology, it is, indeed, what I do. I think the reason that phrase spoke to me is that I often use it when people are surprised or impressed by what they see as some feat of technical wizardry. Not to minimize the skills or knowledge needed, but to me, it’s just what I do.' I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I do as of late, and where the focus needs to be on: Critical thinking, curiosity, storytelling, writing, and availability.
• Track a Flight on Your iPhone. While I have a lifetime plan for Flighty, I had no idea you could track flights in Apple Messages and Spotlight search.

Amor Fati ✌🏻