About

For a long time, I thought I was building something complicated.

A philosophy.

A system for thinking.

A collection of tools for understanding yourself, questioning assumptions, exploring different perspectives, making better decisions, and navigating reality a little more intelligently.

And I am.

But somewhere in the middle of building all of this, I realized there was a considerably simpler explanation:

I'm tired of solving everyone else's problems.

Lol.

Apparently, that's part of the grand origin story.

So I started trying to put the way I think through problems on paper.

Not so you can think like me.

So eventually, you won't need me.

Most of Us Were Taught What to Think

We're taught what to memorize.

What to believe.

What success looks like.

What we're supposed to want.

What to fear.

What the acceptable answers are.

But very few of us are deliberately taught what to do when life hands us a giant tangled ball of thoughts, emotions, assumptions, competing perspectives, incomplete information, and absolutely no obvious answer.

That's the territory I'm interested in.

How do you slow the thing down?

How do you separate what happened from what you think happened?

How do you notice what you're assuming?

How do you take your emotions seriously without automatically treating them as truth?

How do you look through another perspective without pretending every perspective is equally correct?

How do you recognize when there isn't a perfect answer?

And eventually:

How do you decide what the hell you're going to do?

That's Big Brother Perspective.

I'm Not Here to Give You My Answers

I have plenty of them.

You'll find them scattered throughout my writing.

Some will probably make sense to you.

Some might piss you off.

Some I'll eventually discover were incomplete and come back to fix.

Good.

Because the goal isn't agreement.

The goal is becoming better at producing your own answers.

I'll show you how I approach problems.

I'll give you questions I've found useful.

I'll tell you stories from roads I've already traveled.

I'll show you where I screwed things up, what surprised me, what things actually cost once I was living them, and where I've changed my mind.

Sometimes I'll simply turn around from a little farther up the trail and yell:

“HEY. WATCH OUT FOR THIS PART.”

But you still decide where you're going.

That's the point.

Welcome to the Mental Workshop

The Mental Workshop is where all of this becomes practical.

It's where I take the machinery I've spent years using inside my own head and put it on the table where you can actually see it, question it, use it, change it, and eventually make it your own.

The tools are designed to help you slow down, capture what's happening, examine it from different angles, understand what's underneath it, interrupt automatic reactions, and turn better thinking back into real life.

Not endless thinking.

Not intellectual masturbation.

Not sitting at the bottom of the mountain for twelve years making sure your backpack is organized perfectly.

Thinking has to eventually become living.

Prepare.

Look carefully.

Understand what you're signing up for.

Then fucking move.

Borrow My Experience. Don't Copy My Life.

I've taken some long roads.

Some unnecessarily long roads.

There are things I've spent years learning that I sincerely wish somebody farther ahead had explained to me before I started.

That's one reason stories are such an important part of this work.

I can't tell you what your road will look like.

But I can give you a glimpse of mine.

Sometimes seeing ten percent farther ahead is enough to notice a cost you hadn't considered, prepare for something you didn't know was coming, avoid a mistake, or realize:

Yep. I understand the price better now. I still want it.

Good.

We need people willing to climb mountains.

I just think they deserve to know a little more about what might be waiting halfway up.

This Work Will Keep Changing

Reality keeps teaching.

So I intend to keep learning.

These workbooks and tools aren't monuments I'm carving into stone and defending for the rest of my life. They're living works.

I use them.

I test them.

I question them.

I find holes in them.

People show me things I hadn't considered.

Life occasionally walks into the workshop and knocks something off the fucking table.

And when I find a better way to explain or build something, I'll improve it.

That's why you'll see versions attached to the work.

The goal isn't to endlessly produce more.

It's to make what already exists increasingly useful.

My Promise

I won't pretend certainty where I don't have it.

I won't ask you to adopt my worldview.

I'll try to distinguish what I know from what I think.

I'll tell you when I'm still figuring something out.

I'll change my mind when reality gives me a good enough reason.

I'll show you the potholes I've encountered without pretending everyone travels the same road.

And I'll keep trying to make this work more useful, honest, and independent of the person who created it.

Because ultimately, I don't want you coming back forever asking:

“What should I do?”

I want you to eventually be able to sit down with yourself and say:

“Alright. Let's figure out what the fuck is actually going on here.”

Put it on the table.

Slow it down.

Look at it honestly.

Turn it around.

Understand what you're choosing.

Decide what you're willing to carry.

Then go live.

And if you're still stuck?

Fine.

Pull up a chair.

We'll look at the bastard together.

Welcome to Big Brother Perspective.

Welcome to The Mental Workshop.

Come think with me.