My thinking: Mental models, philosophy and how I think about decisions, work and life

This page traces my thinking: from everyday decisions, through science, technology and philosophy, to areas that are hard to explain to people who have not experienced them.

The line is my path: mathematical olympiads at primary school, programming, preparing for the entrance exams at Charles University, studying international relations and geopolitics, a master's degree in philosophy and the year 2020. From here on, the line follows the topics I write about.

Everyday life: work, money, health, decisions, happiness

Work

Money

Health of body and mind

Decisions

Growth mindset and mistakes: why I make mistake after mistake (2024)
For me, every suboptimal decision is a mistake, even if it has good consequences. I describe what admitting a mistake looks like in practice in Why I became the recordman for admitting mistakes.
Why I became the recordman for admitting mistakes (2025)
Grit over talent: everything great I have achieved, I have achieved through perseverance (2024)

Happiness

What do you really need to be happy? (2026)
I am incredibly lucky: Charles University or nothing (2024, about 2016)
Simplicity and minimalism: why simplicity is the core of my productivity (2023)

Sciences, technology and studies

Data, statistics, psychology and technology.

The law of large numbers: why a losing decision can still be right (2023)
I used to judge decisions purely by their results; today I judge them by whether they were optimal. Growth mindset and mistakes builds on this.
Correlation vs causation: why I distrust confident talk of certainty (2025)
Poor data quality: wrong conclusions and bad decisions (2025)
Critical thinking: why we no longer think, we just consume (2025)
Is AI making us dumber? What 150 job interviews revealed (2026)
Cognitive biases: how we are manipulated without knowing it (2026)
How your attention is manipulated: the Cambridge Analytica playbook (2026)
Autism or ADHD: hyperfocus and special interests (2025)
AI and coding: AI's unexpected role in enhancing my coding skills (2024)
Vibe coding in practice: how I built a web analytics tool with AI (2025)
What is an AI agent? I built one that learns between sessions (2026)
Can AI replace human judgement, or just the work around it? (2026)

Philosophy: the love of wisdom

For me, philosophy as the love of wisdom is the gateway to the deeper layers of thinking.

What is philosophy? What I actually studied and why (2025, about 2019)
Why I chose philosophy for my master's degree, even though most of the people around me, including my family, did not understand it and did not like it. The books that changed me along the way are in The best philosophy books.
How I became a child again: from "I am convinced that" to "I am beginning to wonder" (2019, about 2017 to 2018)
This is where my thinking began to change, in my second year at university: from the conviction that everything is knowable to the question of what we can and cannot know. It continues in Doubt vs determination.
The best philosophy books: eight books from Marcus Aurelius to Heidegger (2024)
I left my job for several months to read philosophy (2026, about 2022)
In spring 2022, before my final examinations, I spent several months living only with books and my own thoughts. I write about why I cannot do this today in Why I cannot stop and think.
Why I cannot stop and think in a world that is always in a hurry (2026)
Artificial intelligence is too artificial: one compass that shows me the direction (2026)

Phenomenology and logic

How things appear to us and how to reason about them.

What is phenomenology? How I apply it in everyday life (2023)
For me, it is above all a method. I use it in marketing, in managerial decision-making and in investing.
Who was Heidegger? Martin Heidegger in plain language (2026, about 2019 to 2022)
No one had more lectures and seminars devoted to him during my studies at Charles University. I still try to use his phenomenology as a method, as I describe in What is phenomenology?
Doubt vs determination: scepticism, falsifiability and when to act (2023)
AI vs human intelligence: the real difference (2025)

Ontology

Questions about being.

Being is a burden: how to make a hard life decision (2026)
A decision that cannot be undone: to act morally and still not abandon my own path. I also write about when to stop doubting and act in Doubt vs determination.
Hegel's master-slave dialectic: are we still masters of AI, or slaves? (2026)
Meaning of life in the age of AI: the anxiety that arises when meaning disappears (2025)
I first became interested in anxiety while reading Heidegger's Being and Time at university. I write about how I went through it myself in What is the meaning of life?

What is the meaning of life? My own answer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and the way back from anxiety (2025, about 2020)
The deepest point of my path, the year 2020, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and how I got out of existential anxiety.

NEWSLETTER

What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.

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