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The Limits of Devotion

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Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work. (Read the archives). Not subscribed? Learn more and sign up. Your primary job is time allocation. Nothing is permanent. Some things are just renewed faster than they decay. We want the naturally perfect relationship, but the ones that endure are renewed each morning. Here’s the paradox: fragility plus daily care outlasts strength plus neglect. The cast-iron pan seasoned daily outlives the new nonstick. The handwritten menu, which changes daily, outlasts the laminated one. You can only optimize so much, but you can care forever. Efficiency has limits, devotion doesn’t. Complexity increases because adding is easy and removing is dangerous. Whenever there’s a problem, we add: a new person, requirement, or process. We never subtract. Why? Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product … someon

The Limits of Devotion No. 649 – October 5, 2025 Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work. ( Read the archives ). Not subscribed? Learn more and sign up . Tiny Thoughts Your primary job is time allocation. Nothing is permanent. Some things are just renewed faster than they decay. We want the naturally perfect relationship, but the ones that endure are renewed each morning. Here’s the paradox: fragility plus daily care outlasts strength plus neglect. The cast-iron pan seasoned daily outlives the new nonstick. The han

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