Taylin John Simmonds

I finally admit defeat. I downloaded app blockers for social media, YouTube, music, even my Kindle. Not to be more productive. Because I felt like an addict craving digital crack candy and I was becoming someone I didn’t recognize. The only things I allow from 7am to 7pm: walk, meditate, exercise, write, call my mom. Four days in and I already feel like I came back home to myself. If you think you’re strong enough to not need this, that’s exactly what I said too.

Every hour you spend scrolling is an hour that won't exist in your memory tomorrow. It could have been a game of Uno with your mom. An insight from an aged book. The feeling of accomplishment from writing something that just poured out of you. The question isn't whether you know this. It's whether you'll act like you do.

No one taught me the skills that actually matter. Not a professor, course, or mentor. I taught myself. Badly, then obsessively, then in ways I struggle to explain. The quirks that make you irreplaceable are the things that can't be taught. Only discovered.

I live a quiet, slow life. And I’ve visited 12 countries I live a quiet, slow life. And I surf waves that terrify me I live a quiet, slow life. And I’m building a biz I’ll be proud of in 10 years Quiet doesn’t mean no excitement You just stop confusing adrenaline for ambition

2016: productize your knowledge 2026: productize your skills

People spend 16 years learning the same things as everyone else in a classroom and then wonder why they feel replaceable. That’s math. The stuff that makes you impossible to replace is always self-taught. It has to be. If it was assigned, everyone else learned it too.

Today, I make more per month from my paid newsletter than I did as a college teacher working 40 hours a week I started 4 years ago thinking it would take 10. I'm not going to tell you it's a sure thing. But if you gave it 5 honest years your odds are better than you think

Stop apologizing for not posting every day. The people who do have trained themselves to not feel the drop in their stomach when they publish something beneath them. You still feel it. Protect that. It's the reason someone will read your work twice.

One thing I'm convinced of: you can't trust the beliefs of anyone whose career depends on being liked. Celebrities, influencers, politicians. Their opinions aren't opinions. They're survival strategies. The only beliefs worth trusting cost something to hold.

Multi-passionate people are built to be polymaths, but most never become one because nobody told them the missing piece isn't more curiosity. It's staying. Showing up to the same craft on the days it bores you. Living inside it long enough that it starts talking back to you. That's when your interests stop being hobbies and start connecting into a body of work nobody else could build.

A sign of maturity mistaken for immaturity: You stop needing everyone to see the world the way you do. Not because you stop caring about your own beliefs. Because your inner world finally got big enough to hold more than just yourself.

I've been building something kind of obsessive in private: A Claude Project that helps me figure out what I actually believe. Writing. Morality. Identity. Spirituality. All of it, everything important to me. Each one combines until it slowly becomes a unified worldview. I do it on the treadmill, warming up at the gym, and it's the most fun I've had in years. Here's what it looks like and why it's changed how I write:

Working 12 to 15 hours a day doesn't mean you want it bad enough. It means you're a psychopath. The most successful people I've seen work 4-6 focused hours, then go surf and drink a beer. They just do it every single day for years. Nobody's going to clap for that. But it's real, and it's available to ambitious people who aren't insecure.

You don't notice the book that changes your life. Not at first. It just sits there quietly until one day you realize you stopped eating potato chips, texting your ex, and blaming everyone else. You can't even remember deciding to stop. You just did. That's what the right book does. It doesn't teach you something new. It quietly rearranges something old.

You hit publish and immediately wished you'd waited one more day. You always do. I always do too. Everyone says post every day. But your taste won't let you. And that's the reason your work is worth reading in the first place.

Everyone chasing money is chasing freedom. But what is freedom without a craft you care about, people you laugh with, and a family who smiles when you walk in the front door? The loneliest people I've seen aren't broke. They're the ones who won the wrong game.

You said yes again. To the job, the coffee meeting, Friday night vodka sodas (yuck). You already know you'll regret it by tomorrow. So why? Because saying no means finding out who you are without them. Do it anyway. The people worth keeping will still be there.

The people I respect most don't just read philosophy. They live it. You can feel it in how they make decisions, what they refuse to rush, what they protect with their time. They didn't just collect ideas. They let the ideas change how they move through the world.