01

Philosophy.

I think the body and the mind are the same instrument played in two registers. You can't sharpen one and neglect the other for long — eventually both go dull.

The thinkers I keep returning to are the practical ones. Rumi, when I want to remember why. Marcus Aurelius, when I need to stop complaining. Naval, when I want to compress an idea into a sentence.

Most days, philosophy for me looks like one question: What would the version of me I respect do right now? Then doing that. The repetition is the practice.

Currently reading
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius. Slowly. Again.
Returning idea
"Be the version you respect."
Cuts through most of the noise.
02

Time.

I don't have a productivity system. I have a posture toward time: protect the morning, batch the noisy stuff, end the day on something I built rather than something I consumed.

The hard part isn't filling time. The hard part is choosing what not to do. Most of my real progress in the last year came from things I cut, not things I added.

My week has shape: deep work mornings, training, one cooking session, one design session for paid work, one for portfolio. The rest is whitespace I refuse to fill.

Deep work window
6:30 – 10:30 AM
No phone. No email. No meetings.
Cut this year
Most social media
Kept LinkedIn for work, Behance/Dribbble for craft.
Daily ritual
30 min reading, no screen
Before bed. Paper books only.
03

Goals.

I write goals down because the act of naming them makes them real. The list below is the working version — short enough to remember, specific enough to know when I'm cheating.

The 5-year arc is to be the kind of designer who's also a builder, the kind of body that's strong at 40, and the kind of mind that hasn't stopped learning. Everything below feeds that.

01
2026
Land a full-time design role I'm proud to talk about.
In progress
02
2026
Reach 100 pushups unbroken. Train every day without exception.
Active
03
2026
Build and ship one personal product, end-to-end.
Planning
04
2027
Bench 1.5×, deadlift 2×, run a sub-22 5K.
Tracking
05
5 years
Be known for one thing — by name, not by employer.
North star
06
10 years
Build a small studio that does work I'd want to hire for.
North star