Choose what to let slide
Learn why contrast renews wonder, optimism protects fragile ideas, and choosing where to satisfice while letting some things slide frees focus for what matters.
September 6, 2025 - Issue #134 - read online
👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.
This week’s reflections:
🌗 You mind craves contrast
🌻 Choose to believe the future can be great
🔧 Simple technique, big difference
🤷🏻 Choose what to let slide
🌗 You mind craves contrast
When you go on a vacation, eventually, maybe after 2-3 weeks, it becomes normal to you. You get bored. It’s not a “vacation” anymore. It’s normal life. You want to get back to work. You want to do something, anything, that is just a bit more novel and interesting. Your mind craves balance, but not in the common sense of living a flat and miserable life. Your mind craves contrast.
Over time, the peaks flatten. That is not failure. It is how perception works.
Wonder is driven by contrast. Your attention lights up when expectations are broken, and it dims as sameness piles up.
Contrast shapes how we see and remember. Big shifts jolt us awake. Small shifts slide by because the brain notices difference more than repetition.
When novelty fades, the vacation effect fades with it. What you crave is not endless comfort. You crave fresh edges to notice and explore, the kind of contrast that makes things sparkle again.
Do not chase bigger highs. Play with rhythm. Build routines that steady you. Break them on purpose to give your mind new edges to grip. Try one big adventure and one small one each week. Short, frequent breaks often recharge more than a single long one because they add recurring contrast instead of a single spike that fades into normal.
🌻 Choose to believe the future can be great
Pessimism is cheap. It asks nothing of you. Optimism takes work. It must be chosen and renewed.
Adopt these assumptions:
The future can be great. Real optimism is not denial. It faces reality and still believes we can help build something better.
Most people mean well. Hope is a social risk. You only discover reciprocity by extending trust. Take calculated risks in relationships to unlock richer connections and rewards.
Ideas are fragile and need care. Protect early ideas long enough to test them. Welcome uncertainty as a partner in creativity. Run pre-mortems to expose blind spots without sliding into cynicism. Iterate in public so community can strengthen what works.
This is a discipline. Each day, choose to believe the future can be great. Choose to trust that most people intend good. Shelter fragile ideas until they are strong enough to matter.
🔧 Simple technique, big difference
When you are asking people to do something, lead with a recommendation of when it should be done by. Be explicit about this, but open to negotiation. It's such a simple technique, but when you compound its usage over a year at a big company, you will be amazed at the difference it makes.
🤷🏻 Choose what to let slide
Not everything in life needs to be maximized. The insecure overachiever struggles to stop, convinced that if something can be optimized, it must be. When you care about everything equally, you dilute what truly matters.
Choose what to let slide. Decide in advance where “good enough” is truly enough. Miss the airline points. Ignore the minor inconveniences. Preserve energy for the few things that deserve excellence.
Clearing small tasks never ends. The real skill is not-doing. Leave a few decks uncleared so you can focus on what matters now.
Satisficing beats maximizing for most decisions. Set a standard, choose, and move on. Save your best for the domains where excellence is essential.
Focus requires subtraction. You do not need more time. You need fewer commitments and deeper attention. Perfection has a cost. Spend it where it counts. Do not chase productivity porn if you are working on the wrong problems. Relax control where outcomes do not matter. Direct intensity toward the precious few that do.
🇵🇸 If you want to support my work, commit to donating €5/month to the children of Gaza—living in what is now the deadliest place on Earth.
🎵 Music I’m listening to
You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:
🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶
🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs
🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house
🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house
🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house
🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit
🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments
Previously on Pursuit:
