What If You've Already Won?

This past weekend I moved into a beautiful new home — emphasis on the “moved,” not the “beautiful.” The home is beautiful, yes, but moving… is certainly not. You don’t live in your new home, you slowly excavate yourself into it through a series of IKEA hex wrenches, misplaced Allen keys, and half-unpacked boxes labeled “miscellaneous” which, if we’re honest, should just say “why do I have this?”

And yet, in the middle of that blur, the universe sent me a nudge.

Two, actually.

The first came from Simon Sinek on the Modern Wisdom podcast. The idea was almost too simple to accept:

You can wake up and call it. Declare the scoreboard final. That everything from this point forward is bonus time.

Then, Oliver Burkeman dropped this into my inbox:

Okay, universe. I get it. I’m listening.

The Chase That Never Ends

If you’re reading this newsletter, chances are you’re already one of the “try-hards.” You optimize. You reflect. You read newsletters that use phrases like “optimize” and “reflect.” You’ve likely spent a not-insignificant portion of your life wondering whether you’re doing enough. And if not, what app, habit stack, or atomic principle might fix that.

It’s easy to default to chasing top 0.1% outcomes. It’s baked into the psychology of ambitious people. But here’s the kicker: you don’t need 0.1% to get most of the rewards. Most of what people want — peace of mind, financial stability, creative expression, important relationships — shows up around the top 10% mark.

Getting to the 0.1% tier comes at a cost. Usually invisible until it’s too late:

• Your health, because your sleep score has been replaced by your revenue dashboard.

• Your relationships, because “date night” became “networking drinks.”

• Your mind, because silence is now just wasted opportunity.

The irony? Many top 0.1%ers want their old life back. The one with board games and boredom. The one you’re rushing to escape.

The Productivity-Industrial Complex Never Hands You A “Certificate of Good Enough”

This is why Burkeman’s newsletter caught me. It offers something hustle culture never does: permission.

Not permission to give up. Permission to stop acting like joy needs to be purchased with pain. Permission to stop collecting merit badges from imaginary institutions like “The Academy of Doing Your Best.”

There’s no prize for spending your Sunday optimizing your Notion dashboard.

The productivity-industrial complex doesn’t want you to believe you’ve done enough — because your insecurity is great for engagement metrics.

That’s what makes Sinek’s advice feel rebellious: Just decide you’ve already won.

Not because you’re perfect. But because you’re here. You made it. Your life contains things worth savouring — and it’s okay to start doing that now.

Serendipity in the Chaos

I don’t believe in signs from the universe, generally. I believe in noise-canceling headphones and caffeine and maybe the collective wisdom of podcasts.

But I’ll admit, something about encountering both of these ideas in the same week that I was buried under moving boxes, trying to navigate toddler routines and new-home chaos, felt… poetic.

It reminded me that while my environment was in disarray, my life was, in fact, beautiful. Not perfect. Not fully optimized. But beautiful. A life I would have gladly traded up for five years ago.

And yet I still feel behind.

I’m not actually behind. I’m just measuring myself with someone else’s ruler.

You Can Win Sooner

Here’s a dangerous idea: What if you chose to win earlier in the game?

What if you stopped at 80% of your potential and spent the rest of that energy enjoying your life? Playing the long game. Learning the guitar badly. Walking slowly. Sitting on porches. Eating sourdough with people you love.

Not because you’re lazy. Because you’re free.

Top 0.1% means squeezing joy out of your life to signal that you’re worthy of it.

Top 10% means claiming joy because you’re already there.

And you are.

Words I Wish I Wrote

Links & Learnings

• Battle of the Joshes.

• More advice from Simon Sinek.

• The optimal amount of money actually.

Psst… DSTLLD has a podcast now, too. I know — like the world needs another podcast, right? But here’s the thing: if you can tolerate my written rambles, you’ll probably find my in-person yammering… well, moderately tolerable. It’s basically me and a guest chatting about the same offbeat stuff you read here, except now you get to hear me stumble over big words in real time. I’m not saying it’s the greatest thing in the universe (trust me, I’ve listened to it), but if you like DSTLLD, there’s a good chance you won’t hate it. Win-win! Subscribe or follow on your favourite podcast platform:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple

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PHOTW: Don’t bring your toddler to pack up a moving truck.