Many of us feel like we’re drowning in invisible complexity. So I wanted to hit pause and ask a simple question: What are 1-3 decisions that could dramatically simplify my life in 2026? To explore that, I invited five long-time listener favorites: Maria Popova, Morgan Housel, Cal Newport, Craig Mod, and Debbie Millman.This episode is brought to you by:Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/timHelix Sleep premium mattresses: HelixSleep.com/TimTimestamps:[00:00:00] Start.[00:01:49] Maria Popova[00:02:04] The Cherish Quotient: Stop giving hours to people who rank as “fine.”[00:03:15] When you apologize for your priorities, you’re apologizing for your life. Stop![00:04:41] Morgan Housel[00:04:50] The do-nothing thesis: Be average long enough and you’ll end up in the top 1%.[00:08:42] Read more history, fewer forecasts — and watch the news lose its power over you.[00:09:32] How Stephen King’s 11/22/63 illustrates the futility of prediction.[00:12:21] Cal Newport[00:12:36] What deserves a “yes” when the default is “no?”[00:16:38] Deep Work sells two million copies and creates a schizophrenic double life.[00:19:07] The unifying insight: Both careers were always about technology and human flourishing.[00:24:07] Craig Mod[00:24:46] How quitting alcohol has been Craig’s highest-ROI decision.[00:27:13] Therapy after a decade of sobriety: The cliché that actually cleared the water.[00:30:27] The compounding interest that comes from committing to one craft.[00:33:09] Debbie Millman[00:34:30] How being offered the CEO seat at her company led to four months of paralysis.[00:36:10] The sentence that broke the spell: “If it takes four months, you probably don’t want it.”[00:37:38] Ambition changes shape: Validation isn’t fulfillment, and power isn’t purpose.More about today's guests:Maria Popova (@mariapopova) thinks and writes about our search for meaning, lensed sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (