Welcome to the first Sunday of 2026, everyone! I’m trusting everyone had a great holiday season, and we’re all geared up and ready to get back to work. 2026 will be a great year, so we may as well kick off the first week of the year with our best foot forward.

News breaking on a Saturday is rarely a good thing for the Sunday Edition. News anchors predictably cut to the most polarizing and demeaning questions in an attempt to push one side of a story. Social media floods with expert takes from non-expert positions. One person celebrates and the other shouts in agony.

My comment:

When I do a tax return, I probably weigh between 50 and 100 variables. “What if?” questions, “How much?” scenarios. You get the idea. How many questions does your physician ask you about a particular malady before they attempt a diagnosis? You’ll note that every single professional in the world leads every professional answer with “Well, you see, it depends.” Depends on what? Variables.

So, if your body or your tax return require numerous questions and answers before diagnosis or filing, is it reasonable to assess a geopolitical event on one reason only?

When someone says, “This is because of XYZ and XYZ only”, it’s far more likely that person doesn’t know the right questions to ask, the appropriate variables to weigh, or the correct consequences to ponder.

Nothing, absolutely nothing in life, is as easily answered as it seems. Nothing is ever obvious. If someone says something is obvious, it’s more likely they want to use this to hold over you and gain power over you.

Watch, wait, and listen. Then watch, wait, and listen some more. Maybe you’ll have an 1/8th of the story after you’ve repeated this cycle 10 times.

I read this parable in Morgan Housel’s The Art of Spending this week. It’s likely a popular parable, as I’ve heard it before.

One of the most powerful money tales is the parable of the Mexican fisherman. An American businessman visits Mexico and meets a local fisherman. The American is shocked to learn the fisherman only works a few hours a day. “What do you do with the rest of your time?” the American asks. “I sleep late, hang out with my family, read, take naps, and play guitar with my friends,” the fisherman says. “You’re doing this all wrong. I have an idea,” says the American. “You should work all day. Borrow money and buy another boat. Hire more fishermen to work for you. You could make so much money you’ll be retired in ten years.” “What would I do in retirement?” the fisherman asks. “You could sleep late, hang out with your family, read, take naps, and play guitar with your friends,” says the American.

Oh, good one!

There is one core difference between the American’s version of retirement and the Mexican fishermen’s version of life:

In the Mexican fishermen’s version, only one person gets to experience sleeping late, hanging out with friends, reading, and more: the fisherman. In the American’s version of retirement, (and under altruistic assumptions because the other side gets the altruistic benefit of the doubt), the Mexican fisherman and his colleagues and employees also get to sleep late, hanging out with family, read, take naps, and more.

The parable is designed to poke fun at the extra work, investment, and delayed gratification the American is presenting. But in the American picture, the extra work, investment, and delayed gratification ensures there is a far larger community to experience the benefits of retirement.

Human beings have presumably been around a long time. We’ve successfully weeded out many terrible actions; actions that limited human advancement for millennia. If investment, delayed gratification, and hard work produced terrible things for humanity, those traits would have been weeded out long ago.

Don’t underestimate the American’s dream in the parable. It’s more than worth delaying reading, taking naps, and hanging out with friends in the short term if it changes numerous lives in the long run.

Clinical Productivity

My friend Aly has started up a blog to satisfy a long-held dream of his. I imagine it’s going to be largely focused on physicians and managing a practice in the long run, but I’m sure there will be nuggets for everyone to digest. Aly is a super smart guy, so it’s best to glean what you can when he writes.

Meeting Aly has been a fun little story (to me, at least). Aly found my writing on The Sweet Setup years ago, and I may (or may not) have influenced a few of his technology purchases over the years (and certainly most recently). Fast-forward and we end up living pretty close to each other, operating in our careers and lives along the way. Meeting each other was coincidental, like so many friendships developed through the web. But it’s the discovery of another tech geek that has me giggling. We can speak in tech geek language — “You can write in Markdown” made perfect sense to the two of us but had our wives confused — and we’ve both tested various tech workflows over the years.

This has been one of the most rewarding parts about writing online. Writing keeps your mind sharp, yes. It gives you a platform to explore and discuss ideas, yes. But more than anything, writing here on The Newsprint has led me to meet so many remarkable people.

If you’ve been a long-time reader, reach out! I’d love to start up a conversation. Who knows — maybe you live just down the road.

My 2025 App of the Year: MyMind

Here’s a quick plug for my blog post this week. Here is a little blurb of my glowing review of MyMind:

Midway through 2025, after four or five months of using MyMind, I found a somewhat-competing app I thought might be able to replace MyMind for a fraction of the cost. I used that app for a month or so. Throughout that month, I would add something to the competing app, and I would add it to MyMind. I couldn’t let go of MyMind. I was unable to overcome MyMind’s design and ease of use. MyMind is so good, I left and came back.

It’s expensive, but MyMind is a phenomenal app worthy of your download.

“Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new.”

— Matthew Dicks

The Second Cup

Clicks Communicator

You’ve surely seen a bunch on the pre-announcement of this interesting device. For now, I’ll wait until actual reviews hit the web. But count me intrigued — I have never once uttered the words “software keyboards are better than hardware keyboards” since I retired my BlackBerry Tour in 2011. I’m excited to read what people think of this device in the coming months.

Viwoods AiPaper Reader Colour

In the spirit of discovering devices that are dedicated to one particular thing and one particular thing only, this e-reader device from Viwoods looks like a great RSS, Readwise/read-later, and e-reading device for your bag.

By the time we’re done, we’re going to be carrying messenger bags filled to the brim with task-specific devices like a reMarkable, a Viwoods, and a Clicks, when an iPhone can replace them all.

Here were a few things I shared from the past week. If you want to stay on top of the list throughout the week, don’t be afraid to subscribe via RSS.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

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