The patterns that don’t change

How cognitive preferences shape the way we think, decide, and live

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With two small children at home, the holidays are certainly not a restful time for me. Even so, something about the year ending creates more space for thinking. While some people spend this time looking ahead, imagining who they want to become or what they want to change, I tend to look back.

Not just at the past year, but at who I’ve been for most of my adult life. What’s coming into focus more clearly than ever are my cognitive patterns. Not new ones, but familiar ones – the patterns I’ve carried for decades. The way I make decisions. The way I solve problems. The way I respond to stress.

Some of those patterns have served me well, while others have made things harder than they needed to be. And even after years of external change – different careers, different relationships, different countries – my thinking itself hasn’t shifted very much. I still default to the same impulse to find the larger picture. I still struggle with small, tedious tasks. I still feel friction when things become overly linear.

Since discovering this work a decade ago, I’ve been slowly learning how to live in closer alignment with the patterns of my mind. Not by trying to change how I think, but by shaping my life around it.

Cognitive awareness isn’t about self-improvement in the usual sense, but about coherence – about bringing the inner logic of how we think into better alignment with the lives we build around it.

We’re heading to the beach after I send this. Michaela and I will chat while the children play in the sand. We’ll talk about the books we’re reading and the ideas that have been quietly occupying our minds – the kind of conversation that only happens when our thinking has space to unfold naturally.

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This is from my Dec 31, 2025 newsletter. Sign up here to receive future issues.