Sutterfaction

Friction: What Are We Losing by Making Life Easier? On effort, discomfort, technology and the things that make life meaningful. What happens when we start removing friction from almost everything? A teenager on an e-bike can travel further with less physical effort. Dinner can arrive at the front door without us walking to the restaurant. A map means we rarely have to get lost. A screen means we r...

What if we're too quick to replace things? A jacket gets a hole. A phone gets old. A pair of shoes starts looking tired. The easy answer is often to replace them. But the more interesting question might be what happens before we make that decision. What creates the desire for something new? What are we hoping it will change? And what happens when the small cycle of desire, purchase and temporary s...

Where is home? I’ve lived in different countries, spent six months travelling, and often chosen to stay somewhere long enough to experience what it actually feels like to live there. I love the perspective that comes from being somewhere unfamiliar. You see different ways of living, question assumptions you didn't realise you had, and sometimes discover a different version of yourself. But it has...

Friendship: What Is Friendship For? Episode 40 of Sutterfaction: Philosophy for the Good Life Why do adult friendships quietly disappear? Sometimes there is no falling out. No dramatic ending. Life simply changes. Work gets busier. Children arrive. People move. Ambitions shift. Energy changes. Values change. One day you realise you haven't spoken to someone you once spoke to every day. But perhaps...

Enough: How Do You Know When You Have Enough? More is everywhere. But where is enough? Money. Work. Fitness. Achievement. Adventure. Information. Growth. Ambition. Modern life is remarkably good at telling us what to pursue, but much less interested in telling us when to stop. In this episode, Evan Sutter explores the idea of enough and why it might be one of the more difficult questions we can as...

Attention: What Owns Your Attention Owns Your Life Where is your attention right now? It's a simple question, but perhaps not such a simple one. Following last week's conversation about mortality, Evan explores what happens when we turn our attention towards attention itself. We might believe we're choosing where to place it, but how often is something else holding the flashlight? A notification....

In this episode Evan explores: Why we tend to treat death as something distant and abstract. What a minor health scare can reveal about the fragility of life. Why contemplating mortality can actually make life feel more vivid. The strange Western discomfort around talking about people who have died. How other cultures can offer different ways of keeping the dead present in everyday life. Why knowi...

Evan explores: Why we often confuse activity with engagement. Whether boredom is sometimes a form of restlessness. What a nine-month experiment in removing external distractions taught him about stillness. Why travelling, achieving and constantly doing more don't necessarily make us feel more alive. The difference between wanting something and needing it right now. How to recognise the emotions un...

In this episode, Evan explores: Why adulthood and seriousness aren't the same thing. The hidden cost of chasing certainty. Lessons learned across corporate life, entrepreneurship and fatherhood. Why children navigate uncertainty differently from adults. The connection between curiosity, playfulness and resilience. A memorable lesson from a ninety-year-old friend who reinvented his favourite sport...

Show Notes Episode 34 — The Strength of a Balanced Life For a long time I believed the answer was always more . More work. More training. More discipline. More hours. The problem is that extremes often work—at least for a while. They can build companies, finish ultramarathons, and produce remarkable results. But they rarely produce a sustainable life. In this episode, I reflect on something I've s...

In this episode: Why external success can hide an unhealthy life. The startup story that completely reframed my thinking about ambition. What building SwiftReporter continues to teach me about stress and presence. The moment my daughter pulled me away from my phone—and why it still stays with me. What paddling the Hunter River taught me about struggle, patience, and control. The simple life lesson...

Key Takeaways & Chapters The Toddler’s Focus: Why children are born with a relentless curiosity that adults eventually trade for rigid self-defense. Lessons from the Monastery: How stripping away modern complexity, technology, and constant chatter exposes the rules we never consciously chose. The Cuban Paradox: Breaking the illusion that great output requires sacrificing deep presence with fam...

In this episode, we cover: The Metric Trap: Why we default to measuring money and growth instead of the actual quality of our lives. The Condition of Ambition: Why building cool, difficult things is essential to feeling alive—but only if you don't lose your peripheral vision in the process. The SF Founder Dilemma: A look at how financial abundance does not protect you from living a completely exha...

In This Episode, We Cover: The Illusion of a Scattered Life: Why moving in multiple directions isn't a lack of focus, but a collection of raw materials. The Hidden Thread: The core lesson connecting social enterprise in Colombia, international keynotes, and building SaaS platforms. The Ultimate Metric: The powerful shift from asking "What am I building?" to "What am I modeling?" * Reclassifying Yo...

In this episode, we cover: The Danger of Beginnings: Why constantly chasing the "spark" of new ideas is just another version of the pleasure trap. The Hunter River Metaphor: Why the obstacles in your path aren't stopping the journey—they are the journey. The Illusion of the Finished Product: Why comparing your unfinished reality to someone else’s polished success is destroying your peace of mind....

The Invisible Season One of the hardest parts of building anything meaningful is accepting the gap between effort and evidence. We live in a world that celebrates visible outcomes: The launch. The achievement. The milestone. The finished product. But most things that matter spend a long time invisible. A business before it becomes successful. A skill before it becomes obvious. A relationship befor...

In this episode: Why "I should be further ahead by now" might be one of the most damaging thoughts we carry The unexpected lessons from paddling 470km down the Hunter River Why progress doesn't always look like progress The hidden work behind building businesses How fatherhood changes your understanding of growth and patience The danger of comparing reality to an imaginary timeline Learning to wor...

In This Episode The unexpected lesson from a 470km river journey Why frustration often comes from the gap between expectations and reality The phrase that quietly creates unnecessary suffering: "I should be further ahead by now" What the Hunter River taught me about business and entrepreneurship How fatherhood reinforced the same lesson Why adaptation often matters more than persistence The modern...

We all want our kids to be happy. We want them to be healthy. To be creative and curious. Interested and interesting. We want them to be liked, to form strong and beautiful friendships, to do well at school, and to have options. We want to hear them laugh, smile, think independently and critically, to be open, kind and full of joy. And, of course, so much of this is out of our control as parents a...

In this 30-minute discussion, various relevant subjects will be covered, such as technology, consumerism, capitalism, entertainment, competition, and success. The argument presented is that these factors make it significantly more challenging for individuals in the modern Western world to lead a good, healthy life. Supported by research and ideas from renowned thinkers like Socrates, Thich Nhat Ha...

Welcome back, this is the Sutterfaction podcast. The show about looking deeper into society and culture, politics, current affairs, conditioning, and all that is around us, so we can then look deeper with more clarity and awareness into our own lives - so, we can enjoy our lives more - more deeply, more authentically, more vibrantly.  In this episode we go around the grounds to get a unique l...

This is a very cool and important talk that will examine the wealth vs health conflict. It will look at how to: -Eat better, move better, think better -Find balance -Enjoy your life -Create a new recipe for optimum physical and mental health. -Find meaning at work -Make better use of your finite time. For many of us, when we think of preparing for retirement, we think somewhat automatically about...

Learning for a job or merely to advance your career is too often one dimensional and rigid, the other - learning for life - is interconnected, holistic and open, and then it flows into all areas of our lives. And, afterall, a life well lived, a good life, has to be connected. Our world is full of people with great careers and financial success, who are miserable in almost all other areas. They lin...

To construct a life worth living - a connected, interesting, interested and fulfilled life - we need to examine and explore everything outside and inside of us , and perhaps with a greater emphasis on the inside. We can tend to think of exploring in an external sense and think travel in this way is all the exploration we need. Travel is great, but in this day and age even this beautiful tool of se...

In each moment it is fascinating to observe just how many choices we are making. These choices shape our lives, our characters, our capacities. And, of course everything around us influences these choices. But, how many are really our own, and how many are merely the result of our schooling, the media, the TV shows and advertising we consume, even the area we happened to grow up in.  And, how...