Today, Remember This

Every time you say “I’ll deal with that later,” you’re assigning work to an employee who already has plans: your future self. A short reflection on procrastination, Future You, and the difference between scheduling something for later and simply dumping it there. The question to take with you: What's something you've been repeatedly assigning to your future self that one of you is eventual...

When something isn't working, what are you supposed to do? Sometimes the answer is obvious: stop, change course and try something completely different. But sometimes the answer is almost exactly the opposite. Keep going. Find the bottleneck. Maybe even do more of what you're already doing. I’ve been thinking about this because one of our cats, Emmy, developed a habit of pooing directly bes...

I have this bad habit of trying to permanently solve tiny problems. If the same inconvenience happens twice, apparently I need a system. A new process. Maybe something from Amazon whose sole purpose is ensuring I never have to think about this problem again. My morning coffee has become a ridiculous example. I’ve carefully optimized the kettle, grinder, scale and pour-over itself — and yet every m...

I have a bad habit of making plans for the absolute best version of myself. Peak Neil wakes up rested. He's motivated. He makes sensible decisions. He sticks to the plan. Unfortunately, his attendance record is pretty terrible. Lately I've been getting up at 6 a.m. to work out, edit these videos, take care of plants, or just enjoy an hour of silence before the kids wake up (...!). Some mor...

Sometimes finishing what you started is perseverance. And sometimes it's just letting a version of yourself with less information keep making decisions for you. I’ve been thinking about this after forcing myself through far too much of a book I hated, repeatedly trying to enjoy Ted Lasso, and — more significantly — realizing that a five-year journal I once loved has gradually become another ti...

Sometimes the best way to stick to a rule is to deliberately make room for an exception. Case in point: I eat vegan almost all the time. But every Saturday morning, I make the same decidedly non-vegan pancakes I’ve been making with my kids for years. I’ve tried substitutes and different recipes. They’re...fine. But eventually I decided that maybe this one tradition doesn’t need optimizing. And, st...

Every meaningful decision costs us something: all the other possibilities we could have chosen instead. This week marks twelve years since I moved from Scotland to the United States. I’m glad I made that choice—but every now and then, I still wonder about the version of my life where I stayed. The trouble is, the lives we didn't choose have an unfair advantage. We experience every boring Monda...

Somewhere in the world, someone remembers a version of you that doesn't exist anymore. An old friend might still picture you at seventeen. A former coworker remembers the person you were ten years ago. And somewhere, someone may have an extremely outdated mental picture of your personality, your priorities — or even your moustache. The strange part is that we're doing exactly the same thin...

Some of the things you do all the time right now, you’ll eventually do for the last time — and chances are, you won’t know it when it happens. With my son starting kindergarten this week, I’ve been thinking about firsts, lasts, and all the ordinary little chapters of life that end without ceremony. The last time you carry your child upstairs. The last night in your childhood bedroom. The last conv...

How do you know how much you can handle? Usually, only by being forced to handle it. After an unexpectedly painful barefoot walk around a scorching Texas water park, I started thinking about the limits we assume we have — and what all the difficult things we've already survived can actually tell us about them. Every challenge you've made it through has established only a *minimum*. You kno...

What actually shapes your life? We usually answer that question with our intentions, values, or the stories we tell about ourselves. But...there's another record furtively keeping score in the background: your calendar. Looking back through old calendars made me realize that they remember things I don't — and sometimes reveal a version of me that's both more honest and more surprising...

Some of the hardest days of our lives slowly fade into bullet-point headlines. "I moved house." "I finished grad school." "I had a newborn." "I broke my arm." (!) We remember that they happened. But...we tend to forget what they actually felt like. Maybe that's a kindness. But it also means we sometimes forget just how much our past selves carried — and...

We spend every day, our whole lives, inside our own minds. Everyone else — even the people who love us most — only sees brief glimpses of that experience. The version that escapes outside ourselves. Sometimes, this means our loved ones miss the mark on knowing what we care about, what we've been striving towards. It doesn't necessarily mean they care any less than we had hoped. It might ju...

Sometimes, the fastest way to make progress isn't adding more options or exploring more avenues. Sometimes, it's taking them away. This episode tells the strange true story of my hermit crab, Pinchy, who suddenly abandoned his shell — and the surprisingly effective solution known as the "naked crab protocol." It basically(!) ended up changing the way I think about decision-making...

Some healthy habits are surprisingly difficult to evaluate. I've worn fitness trackers, tried supplements, experimented with sleep monitors, and gradually abandoned some while keeping others. But here's the uncomfortable question I keep returning to: how do I actually know the ones I've kept are working? This isn't really a video about fish oil or creatine. It's about the small...

We like to imagine that, first, we consciously decide to do something...and then our brain carries it out. Neuroscience suggests that the real story might be far stranger than that. In this reflection, I explore one of the most fascinating experiments ever performed on the human mind (IMO...)—and why it changed the way I, and others, think about consciousness.

We usually imagine heroes as people who slay dragons, save kingdoms, or change the course of history. Most of us answer emails, forget to move the laundry, and wonder what we're doing with our lives. But what if those aren't opposing ideas? Inspired by this week's Hidden Brain podcast, this reflection explores why psychologists think viewing our lives as unfolding stories may help us navigate diff...

A TikTok convinced me to give some of my groceries a bath in white vinegar. I assumed it was internet nonsense. Confusingly, annoyingly, weirdly... it worked. It got me thinking about how often I judge ideas by where they came from instead of whether they're actually true. — Today, Remember This is a short daily reflection about the small ideas that quietly shape our lives. New episodes every week...

We spend a lot of time worrying about the things we do on autopilot. Maybe the question isn't how to get rid of it. That seems not too realistic. Millions of years of evolution to fight, that sort of thing. Maybe the real question is how to assess what we've actually taught it! — Today, Remember This is a short daily reflection about the small ideas that shape our lives. New episodes every...

We all receive advice about how to care for plants. Bright light. Water when the soil dries. Don't overdo it. Sometimes I wish life came with little care labels too. This week, a struggling fern reminded me why the environment we choose matters more than we often realise.

A phone call I dreaded for months ended up taking less than five minutes and saved me $400. Why did I put it off for so long!? It made me wonder how often the anticipation of something I fear will be difficult is far worse than the thing itself. A reflection on avoidance, anxiety, and the hidden cost of putting things off. A question to take with you: what's one small thing you've been avoiding —...

At 18, I won a bottle of Scotch whisky and decided to save it for a special occasion. More than ten years later, I finally opened it, to celebrate Burns Night, a Scottish holiday honoring Robert Burns. By then, it had been ruined. It's a story that's stayed with me — not because of the whisky itself, but because it makes me wonder how often we postpone the very things we're hoping to enjoy. Maybe...

Sometimes we assume that if something isn't working, we simply need to try harder. More effort. More time. More resources. But what if we're trying to solve the wrong problem? A reflection on stubborn flower beds, invisible causes, and why asking better questions often matters more than finding faster answers. A question to take with you: when has changing your perspective on a problem been the ke...

Some of our fears get vanquished the moment we face them. Others turn out to be completely justified. A reflection on anxiety, uncertainty, exposure, and...raisins. How do we know which fears deserve to be challenged, and which deserve to be...well, feared? A question to take with you: what's something that wasn't nearly as bad as you expected? And what's something that turned out to b...

We often assume that the oldest ideas are the most authentic. But history tells a different story. An internet rabbit hole about modern Druids led me to rethink what makes a tradition meaningful—and why the wisdom that lasts is almost never preserved perfectly. Perhaps traditions don't survive because every generation protects them from change. Perhaps they survive because every generation res...