Life – Maybe I'm crazy

You Don’t Wait for Night. You Create It.

Life

In our world today, there is almost no difference between day and night. Obviously it gets dark, our bodies get tired, and the clock moves from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. to midnight. But nothing actually ends. The lights stay on, the internet stays on, and my office is in my house. My laptop is right there. My phone is right there. There is always another email I could answer, another idea I could explore, another problem I could solve.

I can keep going forever. And lately, I kind of have.

Over the past few months I’ve gotten into the habit of staying up until 2, 3 or even 4 in the morning. I’ve mostly thought about this as a sleep problem: I need to go to bed earlier, I need a better routine, I need more discipline. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s actually the wrong way to look at it.

Maybe my problem isn’t that I don’t know when to go to bed. Maybe I no longer know what night is.

Night used to happen to you

For most of human history, there were physical constraints that made the day end. It got dark. Shops closed. Other people went home. You couldn’t contact everyone at any moment. Even much more recently, computers lived at work or at school. You left the building and the computer stayed there. There was a physical separation between work and everything else.

Now I work from home. My office is a room in my house. The internet never closes. My phone gives me access to basically everything all the time. Darkness still arrives, but nothing else really changes.

I was listening to a book recently that mentioned night, and it made me think about how strange this is. If you fly over a city at night, it isn’t really dark. There are lights everywhere. The city may be quieter than it was during the day, but the physical distinction between day and night is much weaker than it once was.

We have slowly turned night into something we personally decide to participate in. Night begins when you turn off the lights. Night begins when you put your phone down. Night begins when you decide that the day is over.

And if you never make that decision, maybe the day just keeps going.

Yom Kippur and forced reflection

I started thinking about this more deeply on yesterday on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is, in some ways, forced reflection. You spend this enormous block of time in synagogue. You don’t eat. You say the liturgy. You repeat words that people have used for generations to examine their lives. Normal life is interrupted long enough that you can actually look at normal life.

That interruption made me realize that I don’t really have many endings in my days.

I just work.

I also realized that I struggle to prioritize my work. I don’t start the morning by deciding what actually needs to happen that day. I open my laptop and start doing things. One thing leads to another, then another, and eventually the whole day is gone.

There is no definition of what today’s work is, which means there is also no definition of when today’s work is finished.

That feels connected to another thing I’ve noticed lately: I can spend huge amounts of time chatting with Claude. It feels productive because I’m thinking, exploring, asking questions, and figuring things out. But I’m not entirely sure I’m actually doing more, or even doing higher-quality work. Sometimes it feels more like I’m trying to tame the beast.

AI removes another natural stopping point. In the past, eventually I might hit a problem I didn’t know how to solve and think, I’ll deal with this tomorrow. Now I can ask another question. Then another. Then explore another branch. There is basically no end to the amount of thinking available.

Even curiosity can turn into work.

Maybe night is a state, not a time

So I’ve been playing with a different idea: what if night isn’t really a time? What if night is a state?

The problem with saying, “Night starts at 10 p.m.,” is that absolutely nothing changes at 10 p.m. At 9:59 I’m sitting at my desk with my laptop open, my phone next to me, the lights on, and some problem in front of me. Then it becomes 10:00, and the room is identical. My brain is identical. The problem is still sitting there.

The clock has communicated a piece of information, but the world hasn’t changed.

I think I need something more physical than that. I need some transition that tells my brain that I’m no longer in the same part of the day. Maybe I need to create night.

That could mean deciding what tomorrow’s work is, closing my laptop, turning off the office light, and physically shutting the office door. My phone goes onto a charger somewhere else. The brighter lights in the house turn off. The environment changes.

Then the office is closed.

Not metaphorically. Closed.

Anything unfinished belongs to tomorrow.

Night doesn’t mean bedtime

This is the part that feels especially important to me. Night doesn’t have to mean sleep.

If I declare that night has started, I don’t necessarily have to get into bed. I could read. I could quilt. I could watch something. I could talk with my wife. I could call a friend. I could sit around and do absolutely nothing useful. Maybe I’m awake for another two hours. That’s fine.

Because the point isn’t night = I must be asleep.

The point is night = productive obligation has ended.

Another way of saying it might be: night begins when I stop trying to make progress.

I really like that distinction. During the day, I can make progress. At night, I can experience things without needing to make progress. Night isn’t the part of the day where I’m forbidden from working; it’s a part of life that has a different purpose.

That feels very different from simply imposing a bedtime on myself.

Physical rituals create states

This has also made me think differently about rituals in general. Shabbat isn’t just a particular day of the week. You light candles. You say words. You eat a meal. Things physically happen that tell you that you have entered a different state.

Leaving an office used to do something similar. You closed your computer, walked out of the building, got in the car or on the train, and went home. The transition took place in physical space. Your environment helped tell your brain that work was over.

Maybe time isn’t only a clock or a horizontal line moving endlessly from left to right. Maybe we experience time partly through states: work, home, weekend, night, morning. Rituals are what help us move from one state into another.

Without those rituals, everything blends together.

That feels particularly relevant to me because my sense of time is already not great. If the environment stays exactly the same, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. can feel surprisingly similar. So maybe the solution isn’t more information about what time it is. I already have clocks everywhere.

Maybe I need the physical world to tell me: something has changed.

Today’s work and tomorrow’s work

There is another side to this experiment. If I want the day to end, I probably need to define what the day contains.

Instead of opening my laptop in the morning and immediately beginning to work, I want to start with a question: If only three things move forward today, what are they?

Not twenty things. Three.

Then everything else has a place to live. There is today’s work, and there is tomorrow’s work. Something can be important without needing to happen today.

That also gives me a better way to think about AI. Before I disappear down some fascinating Claude rabbit hole, I can ask myself: Which of today’s three things is this helping me move forward?

Sometimes the answer will be none of them. That doesn’t mean the exploration is bad. It may be interesting and it may eventually be useful. But it isn’t necessarily today’s work.

And if I can define today’s work in the morning, maybe I can actually declare it finished at night.

The two boundaries fit together nicely:

Morning: What constitutes enough for today?

Night: Today is over.

An artificial sunset

We have a baby coming soon, so it may seem like an absurd time to be thinking about creating some perfect nighttime routine. My nights are about to change dramatically anyway. But maybe that actually makes this a better time to think about the principle rather than trying to perfect a schedule.

I’m not really trying to figure out whether bedtime should be 10:30 or 11:00. I’m trying to figure out how a day ends.

Modern life removed a lot of the external boundaries that used to answer that question for us. I’m not going to give up electricity. I’m not getting rid of the internet. I’m definitely not getting rid of computers. But maybe I can recreate one thing those older constraints gave us automatically:

An ending.

Close the laptop. Dock the phone. Turn off the office light. Close the door. Let the house change.

Whatever is left can belong to tomorrow.

Night has started.

Maybe you don’t wait for night anymore. You create it.

Insight 24-1: The Universal Blueprint for Achieving Goals

Life

It’s so simple, sitting there in plain sight. I have seen this pattern play out in so many different parts of my life, from choosing a college to getting customers for my companies. Regardless of the complicated jargon that people put on it, the underlying strategy and steps remain remarkably consistent. This insight is that this universal blueprint is applied to nearly any endeavor in life or business. Here’s how it works:

A Process

This is a process. Some may call it a campaign, a funnel, or other like names.

Define your objective (or goal, outcome, vision)
- Start by clarifying and forming a clear idea of the outcome.
- What are you promoting or pitching? What is the end goal you’re aiming for? What do you want to do?
Gather list (or audience, colleges, things)
- Identify who needs to hear your message or what needs to be determined. Collect a list of prospective things that meet specific criteria relevant to your objective.
Qualify list
- Not all prospects are created equal. Using a focused set of criteria, siphon out the prospects that most align to your objective. Sometimes, developing a ranking scale based on priority or a scoring mechanism can be helpful. This doesn’t have to be fancy or complex; the simpler, the better for everyone.
Write your message
- Draft, then redraft, then finalize your message to your qualified prospects. Leverage personalized or contextual information to enable the message to connect or catch the audience’s attention.
- Have someone else read through your message before you click send. The message should contain a tailored message that speaks directly to your target’s needs and interests.
Launch the process
- With everything in place, it’s time to go live. Start your outreach via email, phone, or other way to transmit information.
- Monitor the progress. Monitor the engagement you get with your messaging and qualified targets.
Reflect and iterate to improve this process.
- This could mean changing the qualification characteristics, the messaging content, or the entire objective.

That’s it. All kinds of “experts” will tell you their way of doing things is right in every single category of the market, but in reality, if you understand this process, each person is doing the same thing. The context is key.

Context of Goals

While the process may remain universal, the complexity of the goal may require more nuanced strategies than the steps above outline. Additional knowledge in a certain field may be required to set the criteria and evaluate the criteria against prospects. This knowledge may also require specific additional steps that support the goal.

Example – for choosing a college – simple

Define the campaign: Decide what you’re looking for in a college.
Gather your audience: Research institutions that align with your criteria.
Qualify your prospects: Narrow down to colleges that offer the programs and opportunities you need.
Craft your message: Prepare your application in a way that highlights your fit for the college.
Launch your campaign: Submit your applications and await responses.

Example – selling your business – more complicated

Define the Goal: Decide on your desired outcome for selling your business, like the sale price and buyer profile.
Gather Prospects: Identify potential buyers such as industry competitors or investors.
Qualify Prospects: Narrow down to buyers who can meet your terms and have a good reputation.
Craft Your Pitch: Prepare a compelling presentation or document highlighting your business’s value.
Launch Campaign: Reach out to your qualified prospects to negotiate and finalize the sale.

Summary

Regardless of the complexity and the need to bring additional people on with specific knowledge to support with the process, internalizing these steps gives you power to achieve your goals. By understanding these basic steps and continuing to repeat them in different areas of your life, you will gain in productivity, creativity, and happiness (through achieving more and harder goals).

The Jewish Community: How Institutions Failed its Members

Life

The Jewish community has a long and rich history, and its members have endured many challenges and triumphs. However, today, the strength of this community finds itself at a crossroads, struggling to maintain its unity and identity.

Why is this happening? It’s actually very simple: the institutions failed their members.

For any person, it’s natural for their friends to come and go. Sometimes, you have friends for life from childhood into adulthood, then other times you have friends at certain parts of your life like in college or in your 20s. As you grow up, your relationships change, and your need for connection shifts with life events. Similarly, religious movements such as the union for reform Judaism or the conservative movement, are the same way.

However, the problem arises when a person wants to have a friend, and the friend isn’t there. When a person is seeking guidance, support, and unity from a Jewish institution they once relied on now finds them lacking, that person becomes disillusioned, disconnected, and isolated.

This disconnect is not limited to any one aspect of the community. Rather, it’s a widespread problem that affects all areas of Jewish life. The institutions that were once the backbone of an individual’s life – synagogues, schools, camps, youth groups – have failed to adapt to changing times and changing needs of their members, and in doing so, have failed their members.

For example, many synagogues continue to operate as they did decades ago, with rigid schedules and limited programming that doesn’t appeal to younger generations. This leaves younger members feeling alienated and disinterested in participating in synagogue life.

Similarly, Jewish schools often teach outdated curricula and lack the resources necessary to provide a modern education. This has led to a decline in enrollment and a decrease in the quality of Jewish education.

Organizations that were once the backbone of the community have also struggled to remain relevant. Many of them focus on maintaining the status quo instead of addressing the changing needs of the community.

So, what’s the solution? It starts with acknowledging that the institutions have failed and need to change. We need to encourage innovation and creativity in Jewish life and provide resources for individuals and organizations to experiment with new ideas.

We need to focus on building a community that is inclusive, welcoming, and responsive to the needs of its members. We need to invest in education, both formal and informal, and ensure that it is relevant to the challenges facing Jewish life today.

Finally, we need to create opportunities for community members to connect with each other and build relationships. This can happen through community-wide events, social gatherings, and mentorship programs.

In conclusion, the Jewish community is facing a critical moment in its history. It’s time for us to take a hard look at the institutions that have served us in the past and recognize where they have failed. Only then can we begin to build a stronger, more vibrant Jewish community for the future.