8 Modern Insights That Will Surprise You

Sharing what I learned from the conglomeration of content I've consumed recently.

Jun 03, 2026

I recently created an Apple Note called Echo Improvement with a heading title “What did I learn from that?”

This is to begin a healthy practice of pausing before consuming another podcast or YouTube video and taking a moment to recall what I learned from the content I just consumed.

This will not only help me learn better (because learning is repeated recall, not repeated exposure), but it will also help me have a great stack of notes each week to write an Echo Improvement post with.

So this week’s post consists of insights from 3 podcasts and 2 YouTube videos. The titles and links can be found at the bottom of this post. Real quickly, yes, I realize AI can do what I am about to do much quicker than me, but I like to think not as well as me. Also, the point is to give you a human-written quality read with my own views and opinions woven in. Okay, let’s begin.

1. “Wow, life has gone so slow.” Said NO ONE EVER

As we know, time flies. You enter high school, then you blink and you’re in college, then you blink and you’re in a job or running a business, then you blink and you’re married. One day we will wake up, walk to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and go, “Wow, that went by fast.” As we look at our wrinkled skin, grey hair, and drooping face (I know, a bit morbid).

That same mind that can’t believe high school already flew by is the one telling you compound interest is “too far away.” When people think about investing, they think, “Yeah, but that return is way down the road.” Which is fair, but is it really that far? If you invest a good chunk of dough into a Roth IRA, or even just a low-cost index fund in your early twenties, by the time you have kids or your kids have kids, you could very realistically be a millionaire. If the decades go by as fast as we all agree they do, then the payoff is a lot closer than it feels. Do with that information what you will.

2. Talent or Passion

Most people say to follow your passion. Most of the people that tell you that are already rich, and only some of them got there by following their passion. It is also possible they just became passionate about the lifestyle they got from their competence in a field and called that a passion.

Much better advice would be to look for signals of a talent, whether that’s writing, analysis, design, management, etc. If we think about the top earners in any field, they are the top earners because, in terms of their skills, they are in the top 10% or higher. If you can find something you are naturally good at and apply the 10,000 iteration rule, you will find yourself in the top 10% (or even top 1%) of that thing, which usually means you are now a top earner (assuming it isn’t some low-leverage, low-demand skill). Find a talent the market actually wants, then stack the reps.

3. Is forgetting actually useful?

If you couldn’t forget much of your life and remembered almost everything, would you be happier? I would venture to guess no. There are a couple of people out there with a condition called hyperthymesia, also known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM). It is a rare condition where a person can recall an enormous number of personal life events in vivid, automatic detail, especially from their own past. These people can often tell you what they were doing, feeling, and even minor details for specific dates going back to childhood without deliberately trying to remember. That includes every painful, embarrassing, and bad memory.

When put into that lens, forgetting certain aspects of your childhood or that person that rejected you years ago is actually a positive. The next time you get reminded of an unpleasant memory, be grateful that you forgot it, and be glad you will likely forget it again.

4. How do we find meaning in our world?

This question is not so simple. It comes down to how you define meaning. Is meaning finding your purpose, achieving goals and dreams, simply enjoying your existence, or finding God? Meaning can also be used in different ways: Was that book meaningful to you? What does persistence mean? What do you mean when you say that? Not only is the connotation hard to interpret, but when we try to find it and understand it, it seems to slip through our fingers.

Nevertheless, the question is a fascinating one to pose, and I think it is about to get a lot louder. As AI takes over more of the work people built their identity around, and as algorithms quietly eat people’s days through doomscrolling, the old default sources of meaning are getting pulled out from under us. Add the declining birth rate worldwide and you have a generation that will have to answer this on purpose rather than by inheritance. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you. I just wanted to encourage you to start thinking about and discussing these questions more. The answers will become more sought after and important in the coming years.

5. The anti-optimization movement

This one is a meme and concept popularized by Marc Andreessen, and the actual name for it is “retard maxing” (yes, you read that right). It comes from the “maxing” meme trend on social media stemming from the looks maxing meme. If you are not familiar with the looks maxing meme, it is an over-optimization of your looks, sometimes to an extreme point, coupled with a certain level of obsession. Retard maxing is basically the opposite. It is about not being someone who is overthinking, intellectualizing, and ruminating all the time. It is a pro-action ethic dressed in deliberately provocative language. From a first-principles level, it can be modeled as: treating life as an iterative experiment with high action frequency and low emotional rumination per trial.

It is not “ignorance is bliss” or bragging about being stupid. Nor is it pure recklessness and not handling your responsibilities and dealing with the consequences of your actions. Rather, it is a movement focused on getting people biased towards taking action and doing the basics that just work. Here are some examples:

Work: Go to work, do a decent job, don’t obsess about “dream careers,” don’t catastrophize setbacks, keep stacking competent days.

Fitness: Go to the gym, lift something heavy, don’t over-engineer programs or count every rep, just keep showing up.

Relationships: Ask people out, text first, walk away from toxic situations without endless autopsies, surround yourself with people who energize you.

Creativity/business: Ship messy work, throw things at the wall, let the market and your own taste refine you instead of waiting for perfect readiness.

As you can see, it is a rather healthy and positive movement/meme, wrapped in a somewhat despicable (but for sure comical) name.

6. Is Sunscreen actually bad for you?

Chris Williamson asked, is sunscreen killing us or not, then Dr. Andrew Huberman proceeded to give a jargon-filled, extensive explanation that still had me questioning the answer to the original, seemingly simple question. Allow me to distill the answer for you to best digest the information.

No, sunscreen is not killing us. It is simply a matter of avoiding too much UV exposure with the proper timing as to when you go outside (ideally during the morning or evening when the UV has dropped, check your weather app). Clothes are your primary defense against UV, so if you still want some sun, which is good for you in moderation, then you can wear thinner material clothing that allows UV to go through it. Mineral sunscreens seem to be the safer bet, specifically zinc oxide sunscreens, which may not rub in as well, but there are some brands that do. The chemicals found in standard sunscreens like oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, avobenzone, octinoxate, and anything with added benzene or high benzophenone risk raise enough concern that I think they are worth being selective about. Based on the evidence, these are legitimate red flags that justify more testing and justify avoiding specific ingredients and formats, especially when you have alternatives. They are NOT yet definitive proof that “sunscreen is causing cancer in humans at population scale.”

SO TL;DR from Huberman’s lens: UV is definitely bad in excess. Some chemical sunscreens raise enough mechanistic and exposure concerns that you should be choosy, not nihilistic. Mineral sunscreens plus shade, clothing, and smart timing are a robust, low-regret strategy.

7. Three questions to ask to better understand anything

What does this mean? (logic)
How do we know? (evidence)
Why does it matter? (utility)

You can try that string of questions for just about anything. A word, an SOP, something your significant other said to you at dinner, a news headline, some claim on Instagram reels, any requirement or rule, etc. I have been playing around with these questions all week, and they have helped me think clearer and come to smarter conclusions.

8. Why Reading Most Books Is A Waste Of Time

We are at a point in time where most books are just okay. In fact, you can walk into a bookstore, pick up any book, read the cover (front and back), maybe the first and last chapter, and get the gist of it. You should try it sometime with a book someone recommends you. I bet doing that, coupled with some rational fill-in-the-blanks level of thinking, will teach you all you need to know from that book without spending the time reading it. Skim-reading books is also a good practice when you identify a pattern emerging of: main idea of the book from the first 1-3 chapters + various examples, metaphors, analogies, and stories to drive that point home + a restatement of that main idea with some new added details in the last 1-3 chapters.

So here is my actual thesis: be ruthlessly selective. There are a lot of crap books out there, so be picky about what you read. A good practice is to read what you love to read, until you love reading. Then just follow your curiosity and challenge yourself with a tougher read occasionally. Be quick to drop books that follow that formula above, or at the very least skim-read them. Articles are arguably better than most books now because a well-written article can tell you everything you need (and sometimes more) about a topic in a shorter amount of time than a full book can. Since the length is shorter, it is also more probable you will be able to remember any examples, metaphors, analogies, and stories that do drive that point home. We also now have AI that has largely solved search, so any confusing idea, topic, or word can be easily understood with a simple prompt. Deep research tools from AIs with the correct prompt can also make fascinating and accurate articles to read.

Although, I still believe reading is the highest ROI habit you can build in a sea of distracted people. Remember I wrote, “Why Reading Most Books Is A Waste Of Time” not “Why Reading Books Is A Waste of Time.” Finding an intellectually invigorating book is worth reading time and time again. When you do find a book worth your time, don’t be afraid to come back to it. That is way better than jumping to some new, but average book.

I could go on and on about this topic because of the era of social media, podcasts, audiobooks, and YouTube videos that we find ourselves in. To claim you must read books to learn or win now is a joke. The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.

Whew! There you have it. I think this is a healthy practice and truly embodies Echo Improvement. I aggregate all the ‘self-help’ content I learn that week into a good Substack post. By doing so, I understand what I learned better because I write about it and spend the time recalling the information. This practice will likely slow my rate of consumption but increase my knowledge on what I have consumed. Learning is repeated recall, not repeated exposure. That same idea applies to anything you truly want to understand. It is also why active reading with notes and highlighting is much better than simply reading normally. Or even why professors at universities encourage students to take notes during lectures.

If you want a simple test to see if you should pick up a habit like this (even if it doesn’t become a Substack), just think of the last book you read, podcast you listened to, or video you watched, and ask yourself the following: What did I learn from that? If you can’t recall and accurately articulate at least 3 things, then I strongly encourage you to do more active learning and slow your consumption rate.

Thanks for reading, let me know if you all enjoyed this format. Over the coming weeks I am going to keep feeling out how I want this Substack to flow. I want it to have some sort of repeatable format, while still leaving room for the occasional essay or article off-format that I am inspired to write.

Cheers,

Payton