We all have a ridiculous number of thoughts everyday. Most are invisible. Most of the rest are like a highly repetitive radio station. But there’s the occasional thing – a quote, an observation, an insight, a dream, an idea, that is worth sieving out of my brain. In 2025, I wrote down about 2000 notes. Here’s 100 of them, in loosely chronological order.

1. Being sad is natural, it’s not a crime.
2. What thing will you make into a problem next?
3. Go for a walk at dawn or dusk
4. It’s actually a good thing to not know what to do next
5. One of the things the body likes the least is to be ignored 
6. Flirting: The pleasure is saying “I think you’re hot” without saying it.
7. Instead of asking “are you ok”.. we should be saying “what incredible thing you’re doing. How can I help?” – Marienne Williamson
8. If you don’t follow pop culture, you start to sound naive. I say “did you see that touchdown?” and my friend says “he’s a horrible human being”
9. In what way is it useful or important to explain the ‘true nature’ of reality? 
10. More than you’d think, people just want to vent. 
11. Watch the urge to show off around a mentor, expert, guide, or therapist
12. One of the best feelings is ‘having each others back’
13. Spiritual teachers have taken on an incredible burden: dealing with the questions from spiritual seekers
14. “If you have two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other.” – Chinese
15. Months of dedicated training : + 20 watts. Skull bandana: + 20 watts 
16. I realize that if a car creeps up behind you the simplest thing to do is slow down and let it pass. The car gets what it wants. You get what you want. 
17. In what circumstances did their current behaviour make sense? – Alain de Botton
18. Yawning is usually a nervous tick rather than a good signal of tiredness.
19. Addicted: You never get what you think you’ll get. And once you’re past it, you don’t want what you wanted.
20. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! – Carl Jung
21. A child is poking at a bee. A Spanish nanny is urging him to “Leave it alone. It’s beautiful.” 
22. They say Emperor Tai understood the universe by understanding people.
23. I have received more than enough good advice in my life, but so often, all I’ve heard is scolding and patronizing. 
24. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” – Seneca 
25. Imagine you’ve just realized you are dead. Imagine you’ve just realized you are alive.
26. Little kids walking themselves to school: Some are being kids, some are being their parents.
27. A perfect ad: A sign stuck on a fence next to a fresh paved driveway reads “Hot Bitumen Driveways + Phone number”. 
28. Therapy is like someone gently pointing out a tattoo on your arm that you forgot you had.
29. “It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
30. Once you stop complaining to other people, there’s no one left to complain to. 
31. One of the best qualities of a teammate is initiative
32. “To be able to laugh at yourself can be just as liberating as to cry over yourself.”
33. A psychopath is someone who gets everything their ego wants.
34. If you want to feel less tired, stop looking at the clock.
35. Popular business books will say stuff like “what we need is resilient systems not people.” It’s a clear/interesting/memorable idea, but it’s not necessarily the truth
36. Resistance to ‘hell’ is the shortest path to it. – A.H. Almaas. 
37. We all have beliefs about change.
38. The person you wished would notice you, probably wishes they were noticed by someone else.
39. Concentration drifts if a book is too simple, or too hard. Absorption happens in the middle.
40. I suffer when I think I’m either over or under-utilised
41. An outdoor cat … knows how to suppress his chasing instinct. He isn’t a slave to rapid motion (like a laser pointer). – Temple Grandin
42. How to experience politics: Try and ask multiple different people for the same thing.
43. Ask someone to dance if you can see that they really want to dance 
44. In the age of social media, a photo you take for its own sake, for your own library, is like an act of rebellion.
45. There’s great energy stored in your most avoided to-do task 
46. Only once I had realized that it’s easier to just accept an invite than avoiding, that’s when I stopped getting invited to stuff
47. I stopped drinking orange juice when I asked myself, when would I ever want to sit down and eat 6 oranges in a row?
48. Every frustration is just a frustration.
49. People tend to speed up after they’ve been forced to slow down and wait for someone 
50. Just believing a story, or just believing a theory won’t help you. It could be true or it could be false. Even if you believe a true story, simply believing it, changes nothing. – Yuval Noah Harari
51. Your words, drawings are exactly as “good” as they can be. They are what they are. They also naturally show your personality.
52. Schools, churches and houses seem to be much more alive when there are people inside
53. People who are paranoid and conspiratorial have a very unfortunate mix of imagination and negative beliefs.
54. When the Angels sing for God, they play Bach, but when they sing for themselves they play Mozart, and God eavesdrops —Karl Barth
55. Look out at the world around you and imagine you’ve just committed a crime and will soon be going to jail. How does this change how you perceive the world?
56. A mood, by its transient nature shows one that all unpleasant emotion is transient 
57. An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.” – Ian McEwan
58. There basically needs to be intent behind every line you draw, every word you write. This probably contributes to ‘writers block’. 
59. No feeling can be captured or contained.
60. A beautiful woman can distract a man from the greatest sights on earth
61. Realizing people aren’t listening to you can work wonders for your communication skills
62. “Escaping from yourself is not possible. Where will you go?” – Osho
63. Rather than feel envious about someone’s travels, imagine their trip as required for their mental wellbeing.
64. America is a nation of willpower. Use it or get steamrolled by it.
65. Seeing your shadow is a bit like noticing a house on a street you walk down all the time.
66. Travel can feel so joyous because we find ourselves walking outside somewhere at 10am on a Monday, rather than inside, in the same place we always are.
67. Sometimes nothing can be done. But nothing can ever be done when you’re scared 
68. My grandfather used to bet on his hand without looking at his cards.
69. Would you rather die poor, or die wanting to be rich?
70. You should never ask an ex-professional athlete weight loss tips
71. Consciousness is the capacity to suffer  – Yuval Noah Harari
72. It’s hard for a hoarder to keep a diamond ring safe, when they treat old magazines like diamonds
73. “When I see guys texting (in the gym) they’re not serious… (it’s) Mickey Mouse stuff.” – Arnold
74. The greatest gift is not getting what you wanted, but no longer wanting it.
75. It’s hard to find something if you weren’t paying attention when you last touched it. 
76. Blame is a way to avoid true failure. If you ‘fail’ but blame someone, it doesn’t count.
77. Look at what you’re cleaning from a different angle.
78. Don’t worry about someone forcing you to face something, you should worry because no one will ever force you to face something. 
79. “Honestly, it’s good to be alive. It’s quite exciting.” – Dreams (1990)
80. Most of the frustration between generations is inability to be heard.
81. “He played piano and he sang at Auschwitz… he used to tell me “Mr. Roth, sing as if you life depended on it.” – David Lee Roth
82. American football is sort of simulated war. To get peace, someone needs to lose (ties don’t count)
83. “I’ll tell you what freedom is: No fear. Like Tom fucking Cruise.” – One Battle After Another (2025)
84. Most people will be pretty good at hiding the stuff that stresses them. 
85. Maybe from the perspective of the distant future, we are living in an incredible golden age
86. The idea behind singing the next line purposefully not rhyming is like drawing or making a collage that looks bad 
87. Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. – Robert Anton Wilson
88. A basic experience of freedom: stop a habit
89. “Jet lag is your soul being dragged around by your body.” – William Gibson
90. Sorry I didn’t notice you judging me / Oh sorry I forgot to judge you.
91. “If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.” – Einstein 
92. Assume anything you know has the chance to be able to be known by others. 
93. It is a completely different quality when a man shapes an object compared to a machine.
94. There’s almost never a good reason to interrupt.
95. Adults have closed minds. They think they are watching everything. They aren’t watching. They have got a routine way of looking. – Milton H. Erickson
96. In business, we use words as a tool to get stuff done. Sometimes they are used to persuade, but usually one wants to ensure words aren’t getting in the way of your communication
97. Rather than complain “oh I haven’t done this since I was a kid or teenager”, we should be grateful: “oh thanks to my younger self I’ve already got a good starting point. 
98. You’re inevitable
99. The only good thing about YouTube videos that really piss you off, is the recognition that they really piss you off.
100. When you fixate too much on yourself or your personality then it just becomes unbearable