For me, memorizing something I’ve learned feels static—like a stamp in my head. I find it extremely hard to translate things I’ve thought about to other situations. It’s the equivalent of slightly changing an exam question and suddenly having no clue what the answer is.

Understanding consciousness has very little to do with memorization. It’s 99% doing and applying. That’s why it’s so hard for most people—unless you have that “farmer’s” mentality, where you just do something and slowly start to see the bigger picture.

Simply reading what someone else says doesn’t cut it. You have to do it yourself.

Imagine I could draw a little backpack on you, and you could see how much energy you spend. You’d pick an activity, and you would see the meter going down with every action.

Would you spend it differently?

You see, human energy is one of the most valuable resources in this universe. We have big brains—energy-efficient brains. Everybody has an energy that is so unique it will never be seen again.

In a sense, it’s the most important currency there is—the only one that really matters.

Now let’s make it practical. I have a backpack drawn on my body. I am going to watch online videos for four hours straight. Do you understand the problem?

This is remarkably hard to spot.

Some people are obsessed with the way they spend their energy. They don’t want to overspend on “low quality” with a bad return on investment. If I spend energy, I want to get something out of it. If I date somebody I like, I expect things in return—and vice versa. Overspending high-quality human energy on poor-quality online videos is out of the question. I’d rather learn how to cook.

Is worrying bad?

It isn’t. Spending energy and worrying means that you care. There is nothing wrong with worrying or overthinking. You’ll get better at it and figure out ways to actually deal with things. In that sense, that’s energy very well spent.

Examples of high-quality energy:

• good conversations with others

• good conversations with yourself

• doing something creative

• working out

• recovering from working out

• walking outside

• cleaning your house and therefore cleaning your brain

• thinking about sunshine

Examples of poor-quality energy spending:

• Social media

• Suppressing emotions

• Consuming the news excessively

• Situations where no one speaks up

I don’t think there are bad ways to spend energy, though. You can always learn from things, including social media (which is obviously not one thing). From my experience, the basics are by far the hardest part. It’s tempting to overspend on certain things or not explore new areas in your life.

Common mistakes

“Paralyzing” — this means you overspend on thinking about something and then decide not to do it. If your energy is 100, then you are spending 90 on whether you should do it or not, versus 10 actually doing it. It should be 90 doing it and 10 thinking about it.

Remember: it’s always a balance thing. You can’t always do without thinking, or only think without doing. It’s like a scale. I always take time to reflect on things. Writing about your experiences is always a good, high-quality thing to do.

I am a little worried that you might get trapped in the “if you do nothing, that is bad energy spending” trap. Doing nothing is not bad either. It truly depends on where you are in the wave. If the currents were high, then doing nothing is great. If you didn’t do anything for months, doing nothing is bad. It’s relative to previous activities.

Imagine I could draw a small backpack on your body—one that shows exactly how much energy you have left.
You choose an activity, and with every action the meter drops.

Would you spend your energy differently?

Human energy is one of the most valuable resources in the universe. We carry large, remarkably energy-efficient brains. And every person’s energy is unique—once spent, never to be seen again.

In that sense, it’s the most important currency there is.
The only one that really matters.

Now let’s make this practical.
I have that backpack drawn on my body. I decide to watch online videos for four hours straight.

Do you see the problem?

The problem is that this kind of energy loss is incredibly hard to notice.

Some people are obsessed with how they spend their energy. They don’t want to overspend on low-quality activities with a poor return on investment. If I spend energy, I want something back. If I date someone I like, I expect something in return—and vice versa. That exchange matters.

Overspending high-quality human energy on low-quality online content is, for me, out of the question. I’d rather learn how to cook.

Is worrying bad?

No.

Worrying means you care. Spending energy on worry or overthinking is not a flaw—it’s a signal. Over time, you get better at it. You learn how to think more clearly, how to act more precisely, how to actually deal with things.

In that sense, worrying can be energy very well spent.

Examples of high-quality energy use:

• good conversations with others

• good conversations with yourself

• creating something

• working out

• recovering from working out

• walking outside

• cleaning your house—and therefore cleaning your mind

• thinking about sunshine

Examples of low-quality energy use:

• social media

• suppressing emotions

• constant news consumption

I don’t believe there are truly bad ways to spend energy. You can learn from almost anything—including social media (which is obviously not one single thing). But in my experience, the basics are by far the hardest part. It’s tempting to overspend on familiar habits or to avoid exploring new parts of your life.

A common mistake

Paralysis.

This is when you spend most of your energy thinking about whether you should do something—only to never do it. If your total energy is 100, you might spend 90 on thinking and only 10 on action. It should usually be the other way around: 90 doing, 10 thinking.

But it’s always a balance.

You can’t act without reflection.
And you can’t reflect without acting.

It’s a scale. I always make time to reflect. Writing about your experiences is one of the highest-quality ways to spend energy.

One last thing.

Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that “doing nothing” is wasted energy. Doing nothing is not bad. It depends entirely on where you are in the wave. If the currents have been strong, rest is essential. If you’ve been inactive for months, rest becomes stagnation.

Energy is always relative—to what came before.

Spend it like it matters.
Because it does.

*ChatGPT sharpened

Back in the day, when ADD was still called daydreaming, life was a lot easier. You could daydream all day long. I mean, you could even think about other things while working your 9–5.

Times have changed. I took medication for a few months. The daydreaming was gone. And I missed it.

Find your own voice

My relationship with my thoughts is like friends who tell each other the truth.

This means that sometimes I flip out at my thoughts. I literally shout at them inside myself when the same thing keeps coming up and I don’t want it to. Sure, I might ask, why do you keep coming back? — but that happens after the cursing.

In the end, your thoughts are the employees, and you are the employer — the one who calls the shots.

Two principles are important:

1. Thoughts are interactive. You can talk to them, and they talk back.

2. Be careful with too many thoughts from other people. If you watch a lot of news, for example, you get fed a constant stream of other people’s thoughts — how they see the world, what they find important. Especially when you spend a lot of time alone, this can trap you in an echo chamber of negativity.

If I multiply 2×2 in real life, is it more like duplicating the original 2 (the left one), or taking another 2 from a different frame, so to say?

Numbers are too binary to describe fundamental reality.

Take two numbers: 2 and 2. Those numbers are separate—two entities, two statics. One number is here and one number is there.

Reality, a plant for instance, pulses. It pulses life. You get reflections that appear to be perfect circles, but perfect circles don’t exist in reality. That’s because numbers and math are a little bit too binary, too rigid. You try to fit nature into something it’s not; it’s never a perfect circle.

So that means that every mathematical equation that has numbers in it—2 or up—can’t describe reality in what it purely is. It’s always a bit off. That bit of being off is what looks probabilistic. But it’s not. You can map it using probability, but you’re approaching it from the wrong angle.

I mostly live in a world where numbers don’t exist. This gives you a clearer view of what reality is. It’s easier to start at the individual object, which is not perfect, and observe it, rather than trying to find generic rules—they don’t exist.

Pain and life are closely connected. If there were no end to life, there would be no pain. There would be nothing to lose, and life would be worthless.

Both religion and Buddhism mess this concept up. In religion, people believe there is a “timeless” place we go to after death. But the whole point is that things have a limit.

In Buddhism, this “nothing to lose” idea gets translated into something like attachment or clinging. That is a misinterpretation of the fact that limits are actually good. In Buddhism, many people think we suffer because we cling to things, which is… well. Pain, in that sense, is something good. It means you are alive, and you have something to lose.

If there were no life, there would be no pain.
If life were forever, there would be no pain.
They need each other, in a good way.

* Buddha’s mission was to end all suffering in the world.

Smart people immediately get worried, because this idea sounds terrible. That can’t be the goal: to end all suffering.

And besides that—a guy under a tree, ending all suffering? Come on.

Pain and life are closely connected. If life had no end, there would be no pain—because there would be nothing to lose. And if there were nothing to lose, life itself would become worthless.

Both religion and Buddhism distort this idea in different ways. In many religions, there is the belief in a timeless place we go after death. But the whole point of life is precisely that it has limits. Meaning arises because things end.

In Buddhism, this “nothing to lose” idea is translated into concepts like attachment or clinging. That, too, misses the mark. It turns a simple truth—that limits are good—into a moral flaw. Many Buddhists believe we suffer because we cling to things. But pain, in this sense, is not a mistake. Pain is a sign of life. It means you are alive, and it means there is something to lose.

Pain is not the enemy of life. It is evidence of it.

If there were no life, there would be no pain.
If life were endless, there would be no pain.
They need each other—
and that is a good thing.

*ChatGPT sharpened

** Buddha’s mission was to end all suffering in the world.

Smart people immediately get worried, because this idea sounds terrible. That can’t be the goal: to end all suffering.

And besides that—a guy under a tree, ending all suffering? Come on.

Tikkie takkie, little brainy.
I have outsmarted you.

Don’t play me at my own game.
I am too good.
Too good.

You see, you are your whole body,
your whole body at once.
Your whole body is either in a state of depression
or it is not.

The big thing,
not the small thing—
the small thing being the brain.

I did not like some thoughts in myself,
so I started attacking them from the inside,
until I realised this was telling me everything about myself:

One: I am a fighter.
Two: what you want to get rid of
is what you fear the most.

So I started hugging my most feared thoughts.
They didn’t hug back,
so I attacked again
and again
and again.

I don’t bow for no one.
No one, I say.

A depressed body is depressed in every fibre,
not in the brain.
The brain is something I carry—
literally—
like a boy carrying his ball to the soccer pitch.
That’s how I carry my brain,
with all my thoughts.

I don’t bow for no one, I say.

You see, I was in a psychosis a few years ago.
Maybe I still am.
But I am bowing for no one.
No one, I say.
Not even my own thoughts.

Yesterday my thoughts told me I was worthless.
That a helicopter was chasing me.
That the whole world could see my thoughts.
That I was on a secret mission.

And I still went to work.

I don’t bow for no one, I say.