3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

I can’t stop thinking about this lesson since I read a line from Gottman & Silver, 1999 - “People experience your behaviour, not your intentions.”

An uncomfortable truth is that almost nobody gets to see your intentions except you - everyone else just experiences the consequences.

And good intentions don’t erase bad outcomes.

Reliable relationships aren’t built on loving plans, they’re built on predictable behaviour...

If I repeatedly miss your birthday because I'm busy, you still feel forgotten.

If I constantly cancel plans because work got hectic, you still eat dinner alone.

If I desperately wanted to make you happy but filled your life with chaos, you’re still the one cleaning it up.

Let’s bucket this into three ways people let us down:

1 - Some people don’t want to do good for you.
​That’s indifference or malice. They’re actively trying to make your life harder, or simply don’t give a shit.

2 - Some people want to do good but aren’t capable.
​That’s incompetence. A skill issue. They don’t have the emotional maturity, judgement, consistency or capacity to produce the outcome they genuinely want to produce.

3 - Some people want to do good but don’t make you a priority.
​That’s neglect. A lifestyle limitation. Life gets in the way. Work always comes first. They genuinely care about you, but somehow you always end up last.

From the actor’s perspective, those three situations feel completely different but in the recipient’s experience, they create the exact same wound.

This is why people so often defend harmful behaviour by pointing toward intentions - “They’re a good person.” “They really care.” “They’re trying.” “They didn’t mean it.”

Maybe all of those things are true, but none of them necessarily make your life any better.

They can love you, they can care about you, they can desperately want the best for you.

And they can still make your life worse.

Those ideas are not contradictory.

Some of the most dangerous people to have in your life aren’t your enemies. They’re well-intentioned people who consistently make your life worse while promising to improve it.

This is where people confuse morality with boundaries.

Morally and legally, intentions matter.

The difference between manslaughter and murder exists for a reason - someone who accidentally kills another person while texting at the wheel is different from someone who deliberately swerves onto the pavement.

But your boundaries exist for a different purpose than the legal system - the law exists to judge the perpetrator, your boundaries exist to protect the victim.

If you’re crossing the street and somebody runs you over, whether they were malicious, incompetent or reckless matters enormously when deciding how they should be punished.

The outcome in both scenarios is a dead human, and whether the driver meant to kill you or not is of little comfort to you.

The law rightly cares about intentions. Your personal life experiences consequences.

Intentions tell you who someone wanted to be while behaviour tells you what it’s actually like to have them in your life.

And you are not obliged to become the collateral damage of someone else’s good intentions.

— h/t Alex Hormozi

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent.
​

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
David Senra - host of the best business podcast and voracious consumer of biographies drops a ton of lessons from histories greatest thinkers. Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Thursday.
Annie Jacobsen - what would a deadly global bioweapon release look like minute by minute? Terrifying and fascinating.

Saturday.
Stephen Porges - the creator of Polyvagal Theory on why you feel nervous and overwhelmed all the time and how to make it stop.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
​Most men are ass guys. Some ass guys are boob guys too.

A 2026 study of 395 Norwegian men identified distinct groups of male preferences for female body parts:

73% are focused on both breasts and buttocks.
18% prioritise buttocks alone.
9% were “Body-Unoriented”.

Basically, researchers found no "breasts-only" group, concluding that buttocks serve as a primary, foundational preference, often complemented by breasts.

“Buttocks may occupy a more central and stable role than breasts in male mate preferences.

This suggests that men value breasts, but primarily when paired with buttocks.

Specifically, we identified a distinct subgroup of men who showed a marked preference for buttocks, but no corresponding subgroup that prioritised breasts exclusively, as ratings of breasts persistently co-occurred with high ratings of buttocks.

Put more plainly; men may derive sufficient cues related to youth, fertility, nutritional status, and developmental stability by observing the buttocks alone.

In this context, breasts appear to serve a complementary rather than primary role.”

h/t - Buttocks or Breasts? Identifying Latent Subgroups in Male Preferences for Female Bodily Features.

2.
​Everything is hard and no one cares.

“I’m sorry that accomplishing your dreams wasn’t fast, easy and risk-free.” — Alex Hormozi

3.
​America is a big country, not many people fly around it.

In 2025, fewer than half of Americans (45%) got on an airplane. — Adam Mastroianni

LIFE HACK

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Enjoy a productive upper decky.

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​
Big love,
Chris x

Try my productivity drink Neutonic.
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PS
New MW merch drops very soon. Pepper your angus <3