Why did you stop practicing?
We talking about practice. Not a game. Not a game.
You first notice it on an afternoon walk — a skateboarder at Tompkins Square Park, attempting the same trick two dozen times before finally nailing it. When was the last time you deliberately practiced anything? Not performed, not delivered, not shipped—but practiced, with the sole purpose of getting better.
Becoming an adult has revealed itself to you through three realizations: everyone is winging it, nobody will make decisions for you, and somewhere along the way, you stopped practicing. This third revelation creeps up on you slowly, until one day you're 30 and realize it all at once: something fundamental has shifted. You exist in a state of perpetual performance.
You crossed the stage with your diploma, entered the workforce, and silently committed to a lifetime of "learning on the job," in a professional world fixated on experience over skill. Resumes showcase roles, not mastery. Performance reviews measure outcomes, not growth. The structured skill-building of your earlier years has vanished, replaced by an endless series of deliverables as you accumulate the job description definition of “experience.” What happened to deciding to get better? You've lost sight of the fact that trying to improve through practice isn't just about acquiring skill, but about acquiring self.
When you wanted to win the state championship at 16, you tried to make 100 six-foot putts in a row. When you were learning to code, you built useless apps that no one would ever see. When you began writing, you filled journals no one would read. The outcome didn't matter, the repetition did. Now, you've tricked yourself into believing that everything must have utility.
By 30, your identity has begun to calcify around what you do, not how you get better. You are proud of your achievements and your routine, despite its glaring absence of any resembling practice. The result is complacency — a sense that you've arrived somewhere, when in fact, you were merely propelled forward by a moving walkway.
There are corners of adult life where practice remains sacred. You recognize it at yoga, where they don't call it "doing yoga" but "practicing yoga." The identity of a yogi is tied to the practice more than the results. Your first headstand, your first full crow — these are milestones, not endpoints. It seems to be only in these edge cases that you realize the pursuit is the destination, and how few pursuits you’re on.
The most prolific understand that mastery does not come from sporadic performance. The depth of their work isn't born from talent or inspiration alone, but from the unglamorous hours spent refining the same movements, the same techniques, until excellence becomes inevitable.
You are reminded of what made you not just skilled, but a good person — building discipline, work ethic, and patience. Understanding delayed gratification, being humbled through non-linear progress, committing to something beyond the immediate dopamine hit. As a young person, "getting better" was part of your identity. And even though you didn't have the language for it, you found purpose in that pursuit.
By only ever performing without getting back to the fundamentals, you let time pass you by. Your skills plateau. Your creativity stagnates. Your relationship with your craft becomes transactional.
You tell yourself you don't have time to practice anymore. Meanwhile, the reality of what you make time for is alarming. You've forgotten the particular satisfaction that comes from being methodical about getting better. The quiet pride after a practice session where something finally clicked. The way time disappeared when you were deeply focused on mastering a specific technique. The permission to be imperfect because you were in process, not production.
You feel like an impostor when the quality of your output is not progressing at the same rate as your career, when you only perform without practice. So why don’t you practice more?
One of the prevailing narratives of this year — fueled by AI and "vibe coding" — is that "you can just do things." And that's never been more true or more important to remember. You have agency. But along the way, you forgot that you can just do things over and over and over and over just to try to get better and find meaning in that incremental improvement.
"Practice makes perfect." Remember that? The decay of practice is not inevitable. Those milestones you once chased were never finish lines, but permission slips to begin the truly meaningful work. The skateboarder in the park understands something essential: the joy lives in the repetition, in the suck. The vibe has shifted. Striving for excellence is back. What will you practice today?
The Case For Nike
I’ve written before about how much I appreciate Bobby Hundreds’s writing. This post is from September, but I just got around to reading it. (I’d left it in my inbox so I wouldn’t forget.) While its specific focus is on the recent travails at Nike, I found myself more engrossed by the macro topics around where we are as a culture and what brand means in our current time. —Justin
I Went Undercover in Crypto’s Answer to Squid Game. It Nearly Broke Me
Crypto: The Game was originally positioned as digital survivor, but Squid Game might be the better analogy. It’s cool to see how compelling of a game Dylan, Tyler, and Bryan were able to build — and then build again two more times. And a great write-up from a journalist who went Jefferey Goldberg mode (almost undetected) to report on the most recent season of the game. A rare case of crypto journalism that doesn’t feel so negatively framed. —Andrew
ABUNDANCE! With Ezra Klein | Plain English with Derek Thompson
Unless you live on a different podcast planet than me, you’ve seen Ezra and/or Derek making their rounds on your favorite podcast: Conversations with Tyler, Bari Weiss, Doom Scroll, Lex Fridman. This was the first one I listened to and I immediately went out and got the book. I think you’ll get the gist of the movement, which I am big fan of, from this pod alone. I also recommend Joe Weisenthal’s critique (Just a Read).—Andrew
Who Created The First Sign Museum In New York City?
I’m a sucker for a good sign. So this profile of David Barnett and his quest to rescue classic New York signage from the landfill was a great example of the YouTube algorithmic arrow hitting the bull’s eye. The Noble Signs co-founder is embarking on what I would definitely call a noble mission and is preserving a lot of eye candy along the way. —Justin
Nuclear War — Annie Jacobsen
Shoutout (more than just a) friend Brian for this book rec.
Per my five-star Goodreads review: If the concept of this book is interesting to you, it’s hard to imagine a better execution. But that’s a big IF. Fear intertwined with resignation to the inevitable but mostly utter fear at the chance this ever comes to be. Please let me not be so unlucky as to survive a scenario like this. —Andrew
i'm here for the return of earnestness, earnestly.
So true.