The course didn’t fall short because the math was wrong; in fact, the math was too precise and therefore suspicious. For a whole semester, we pretended that the rational, entirely self-interested, utility-maximizing man (homo economicus) exists, and made him the center of economic models.

Of course, he doesn’t exist. No rational man should support a war in the Middle East that’s choking our supply of oil, but here we are. Also, ask your friend who doesn’t have savings but has money for the most recent iPhone (on credit), or the one who stays in bad jobs out of pride.

Eleven years later, I’d find myself reading economics more critically, but this time as a full-on participant (or victim) of it rather than one reading the charts. As a consumer, an investor, and a small-business operator, I no longer see the economy as theoretical. It has become (and I think it always has been) political, emotional, and crazy personal.

Our late Chairman at Evident, Paul Bograd, taught us a lot about behavioral economics, mostly about the fact that humans have egos, identities, trauma, weird incentives, and social pressures all operating at once.

That framing reshaped how I read economics so much that instead of asking whether a model was elegant, I started asking whether it “survived the test of reality” (borrowing from Morgan Housel).

If you want to understand your day-to-day contact with the economy, this is my recommended reading list.

Das Kapital, Karl Marx

Oh wow, what, we start with some light tibak reading?

Yes, bro, but please put ideology aside and focus on structure. Labor, ownership, and surplus determine who absorbs risk and who extracts value. Many people will disagree with Marx’s endgame.

But after this book, you cannot talk about markets without also talking about power. And if you’ve ever been on the losing end of an imbalance, as a worker, a tenant, or a small operator, you’ll recognize the machinery.

To quote a contemporary philosopher named Billie Eilish (lol): “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? Whoosh.

Zero to One, Peter Thiel

Full disclosure: I don’t like Peter Thiel.

This book is a manual for building creative monopolies, aka capital formation on steroids, written for people who are ambitious enough and morally flexible enough to attempt it. He spends a number of pages dunking on competition and openly sneering at social enterprises. I love social enterprises.

Thiel’s core claim is that the ultimate business win is monopoly power. Which, incidentally, is exactly why monopolies are not supposed to exist in competitive markets. That said, there are useful insights here, particularly on technology, differentiation, and how real companies are actually built.

Just read it knowing whose worldview you are borrowing from, and at what cost.

Most of us cannot afford this cost.

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Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu & Robinson

This book gave me language for something I’d felt intuitively working in public affairs: economies don’t fail because people are lazy or cultures are flawed; they fail because of extractive institutions run by greedy people.

The key insight here is that economic growth should be buttressed by ethical institutions.

Property rights, rule of law, accountability, and inclusion aren’t “nice to have” but are in fact part of the economic infrastructure. The authors explain why economic reform is sometimes so hard: because those who benefit from bad rules have no incentive to change them.

You only need to look at the most glaring live case in the Philippines. No person of consequence has been put in jail for flood control ghost projects.

The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

This book really sends homo economicus straight to the kanal.

We assume that by default, people are optimizing for returns, but they are not. They’re optimizing for safety, status, belonging, and emotional regulation. “Irrational” financial behaviors have a basis, and most people aren’t really bad at money; they’re just responding to their lived experiences.

This is the quickest book to read in this set, but it is the one that makes you look inward the most.

The Alternative, Nick Romeo

This was my final read for 2025, and it’s not an easy one to put down because it is very practical from an organizational standpoint. The critique of capitalism is that it is primarily unjust and exploitative, and there is no way to remove yourself from it without economic isolation.

Well, there is. The book shows, through well-documented case studies, that economically just systems already exist in pockets, quietly prioritizing dignity, resilience, and equity. For example, cooperatives vs. corporations as enterprise structures, how to manage trusts that are built to serve a purpose, and proper wage ratios across organizations. Most of these are implementable in our tiny company of just 50 people.

It has reframed “alternative economics” for me, far from a radical disruption, but just a bunch of high-potential experiments (if you have a good leadership team).

Maybe, just maybe, economic fairness is just a design problem.

Reading the economy won’t always give answers. What it gives you instead are sharper questions about work, money, power, growth, and the systems you’re already embedded in. And in a world where economic decisions shape almost every aspect of our lives, refusing to ask those questions is just too risky.

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I’ve tried many ways to process this year’s chaos (especially the parts none of us could control), but there is absolutely no sane or logical method for making sense of it. So instead of forcing logic, I decided to just fuck it, be happy.

Here is my personal strat-planning guide for 2026. The intention is to plan for happiness because being happy amidst this chaos is productive, strategic, and essential.

Part 1. A 3x3 audit of everything you did great/your highlights reel

Before you attempt to architect a happier 2026, you need to review the receipts. This section is divided into three parts: the internal work, your attempt to expand your world, and the effective rituals for grounding and sanity. Sample (fictional) answers in parentheses.

Doing the work

• Where did you show growth, restraint, or upgraded emotional skills? (I finally learned how to ask for help without feeling burdensome or small)

• What did you do that made you quietly proud?

• What accomplishments felt earned, not accidental?

Touching grass

• What conversations, places, or ideas energized you? (I saw a 76-year-old woman crushing those Hyrox wall balls)

• What experiences made your world feel a little bigger this time?

• What activities made an hour feel full in the best way?

Staying sane

• What rituals helped you regulate, reset, or breathe again? (Reading for 45 minutes first thing in the morning)

• What moments made you feel genuinely grateful or present?

• Which relationships or communities made you feel supported, steady, and held?

Part 2. 3x3 - Your Bingo Card

Part 2 is the Bingo Card itself. This is where you name a few ideas for progress, a few for curiosity, and a few for basic human sanity. Take a cue from Part 1 and reflect on the quality of the experiences/interactions, so you can make it part of the following year.

Note that these are tiny upgrades and not sweeping transformations because we don’t want to be part of the January gym crowd. Make them manageable, humane, and low-pressure (for y’all avoidants JK).

Three things for progress

• One thing I’ll continue improving (Continue Hyrox training on Saturdays 1-3 PM at Gym X)

• One habit I’ll formalize

• One tiny upgrade with the potential to compound over time

Three things for curiosity

• One thing I want more of (Conversations with strangers whose jobs I don’t understand)

• One thing I want to try

• One thing I want to learn

Three things for sanity

• One thing I’ll protect (My reading time and snuggle time with fur children)

• One thing I’ll simplify

• One thing I’ll ask for (support, time, space)

Part 3. Systems and Resources

Part 3 is where intentions (should) turn into infrastructure.

This is the section that helps you create the conditions for your Bingo Card to actually happen, rather than relying on motivation or hope. Think of it as giving your future self a supported runway for the year ahead.

• Set time and energy. Give your plans a home on your calendar with specific dates and times, so they become an appointment rather than a vague aspiration. “Someday” needs to have a date: daily Spanish practice, weekly Hyrox classes, or that annual physical you avoid until the HR manager alerts you.

• Procure the tools and set up (physical) space. You can start with the free ones. An app, a book, running shoes, or software that makes your habits easier to manage. To quit smoking back in 2020, I used the Smoke Free App (and joined a community of quitters on Facebook). And then I replaced the lighter and ashtray with a cart full of snacks.

• Involve the community. Invite people into the process. Friends, mentors, trainers, coworkers, group chats, or even that one overly enthusiastic classmate can turn a lonely goal into something supported, witnessed, and occasionally lovingly bullied into existence.

• Allocate money. Look at the costs attached to the life you want and plug the costs into a working budget.

So that’s the whole experiment: a tiny strat-planning system for happiness, sanity, and only the amount of productivity required to remain employed.

If you use it, please tell me what landed and what absolutely did not.

This is a prototype, and your feedback is the only way it evolves into something real.

Good luck, babe!

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Fully processing the learnings took longer than it should, but alas, we are here in another strat season. To help you make things mildly/pleasantly chaotic, spicy, and fresh, allow me to introduce an anti-planning paradigm.

It is especially useful for creative organizations trying to see beyond the next quarter and take the longer view on policy, business, and tbh, life.

Determinism vs Emergence

Here’s the gist. In futures thinking, there are two big camps for how we deal with tomorrow:

• The deterministic, “with enough data, we can predict anything” camp. The future is kind of set. Think trendlines, forecasts, and optimization. It’s tidy, logical, and great for when tomorrow looks a lot like yesterday or today.

• Anticipation for emergence camp. This one says the future is messy, unknowable, and sometimes absurd. Instead of forcing predictions, it asks us to imagine different tomorrows and to diversify the kinds of futures we prepare for.

Neither is “better.”

And there is wisdom in knowing when to forecast and when to imagine futures.

How to imagine

Foresight workshops force you to imagine. If we try to summarize how it’s done, we see three big components:

• Reveal. Start by surfacing the hopes and fears we usually push into the background. A common exercise is to imagine a faraway future, say, 2050, and describe what we see. Often, participants end up sketching shinier, more advanced versions of what already exists.

• Reframe. From there, we push further. The goal is to introduce scenarios that feel unusual, sometimes unsettling, to stretch our sense of what’s possible, for better or worse. Think of a total collapse of ocean ecosystems, a world where pets are granted voting rights, or a time when life expectancy has doubled and people no longer die from diseases.

• Rethink. This stage is about making sense of the strange futures explored. Instead of treating them as wild thought experiments, we connect the dots: what signals in the present could actually point us toward these possibilities?

  What trade-offs, risks, or opportunities might they reveal? By mapping the web of dependencies, technological, social, environmental, and political, we begin to see not just what could happen, but what it would take to get there, and how today’s choices ripple into tomorrow. This is where imagination meets strategy.

Which means that we can actively pursue the most ideal futures. Take note, FUTURES with an ‘s.’

In an anti-planning paradigm, success isn’t about getting the forecast right. It’s about staying limber and cultivating the ability to pivot when the unlikely, or the downright bizarre, actually happens. There are many futures, and in them, many surprises.

The course I took in 2023 tackled many tools, some I remember, most I do not.

But when the program ended, I was merely thankful that the future is not set, and that, most of all, I have today.

If you’ve ever taken on a gig, you know the great feeling that comes with getting paid after wrapping up a project. In my early professional years, I picked up freelance writing because the money came easily if you were fast enough.

My dudes, today’s platforms are far from the unsecured client agreements we used to seal via SMS in 2009.

A profile of the raketero/raketera

About 9.9 million Filipinos were engaged in gig work in 2022. That's nearly a quarter of our 44-million-strong workforce, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. We probably have more now, with some earning dollars and servicing clients from two other continents.

While there’s no consensus (yet) on the definition of gig work or the gig worker, the World Bank uses the term “non-standard employment” to describe jobs that fall outside the usual parameters of fixed hours, fixed pay, and fixed benefits. Here in the Philippines, we merely have a broad categorization composed of:

• Location-based gig workers: Who handle tasks that require being physically present in a specific place to deliver the service (e.g., ride-hailing, photography, aircon cleaning, hair and make-up, fitness coaching)

• Non-location-based gigworkers: Who take on remote tasks (e.g., consulting, social media management)

For most workers (61%), gig work remains a secondary income stream rather than the main hustle. Nearly 4 in 10 gig workers are aged 25–34, and those with higher education tend to prefer non-location-based work. Many turn to gig work for extra income, flexible schedules and locations, and the chance to accelerate financial goals, whether for savings or retirement.

The earnings can swing wildly. IPSOS says there’s a 10% to 30% pay volatility, but despite that, 78% of respondents said they are satisfied with the freedom and potential that gig work offers. In an ideal setting, gig work makes people feel respected and rewarded for their ability to deliver.

This, in fact, is aligned with my experience.

Things can get better

The beauty of the gig economy is that the rules aren’t fixed (yet). We’re still shaping a model that balances social protections with the very thing that makes gig work attractive, which is flexibility.

Gig workers have been clear that they don’t want to be boxed into traditional rules or forced to clock minimum hours. What they do want is a supportive system where:

• Earnings are transparent and aligned with market rates

• Platforms (whether Upwork or Grab) clearly break down fees and payments

• Social protections (healthcare, retirement savings) are available on an opt-in basis

• Registration and compliance are simple and accessible

• Upskilling opportunities are within reach

Honestly, I think that’s enough policy guidance. All of these things are basic.

Anything more risks drowning workers and platforms alike in needless compliance, one that shifts energy away from productivity and growth, and back into paperwork.

Power to you, gig worker!

The gig economy is a rising tide.

It’s changing (or has changed) how we work, earn, and plan our lives. There’s no surprise it’s booming, because people have goals they want to reach faster, expenses a single job can’t cover, and responsibilities (like caring for family) that demand more flexibility than a 9-to-5 could ever allow.

If you have not tried it yet, engaging in gig work for purposes other than cash flow can turn it into a hedge against uncertainty and a platform for self-determination.

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In my own domestic world, there’s cooking–a skill that pays staggering dividends in the form of nutrition and community. I learned how to cut up a chicken in June of 2020 from a now 12-year-old New York Times YouTube video. The world was on lockdown, the restaurants were closed, and delivery portions were often for sharing, sometimes expensive, or often unhealthy–or all three.

People like me, who lived alone, were bound to eat the same things over and over again until we learned what to do with vegetables and raw protein.

Believe it or not, Gallup has home-cook archetypes

Every year, Gallup teams up with Cookpad to run the Global Analysis of Cooking Around the World, a study that peeks into kitchens everywhere to see how, and how often, people cook.

The findings paint an interesting picture. Across the globe, people cook about 6.4 meals a week and eat around 10 meals at home. But the habits change depending on where you look. In Northern, Southern, and Western Europe, for instance, people are busy in the kitchen nearly eight times a week. In the Arab states, the number drops to fewer than five.

Women cook nearly twice as often as men—about eight meals compared to four.

But beyond how much people cook is the question of how much they enjoy it. About 58% of people say they like cooking, though the joy is more common among women.

I’m part of the Joyful Chefs club, and together, we form 36% of the global cooking population who do about 9 meals a week (and honestly, if I include the 11 PM shredded elote and easy kimbap snacks, I do more than 9).

There are Seasoned Culinarians (13%), often older adults, who cook the most at nearly ten meals a week; the Home Cooking Professionals (12%), full-time workers who still make room for cooking; and the Reluctant Cooks (17%), who see it as a chore and cook only about five times a week.

And lastly, we have Crowded Kitchen Cooks (7%), who prepare meals for big households.

There is joy in cooking. It is the closest thing we have to a science lab.

If we do it right, we get rewarded with great food.

Lifetime returns

The lifetime ROI is detailed in another interesting paper called Scientifically Supported Links Between Cooking and Well-being done by the Nature Strategy Reports, commissioned by Ajinomoto, and published in February 2024.

The study says that people who cook at home tend to eat more nutrient-dense foods and fewer ultra-processed ones. But the benefits aren’t automatic, and they depend on the ingredients and cooking methods (chicken breasts being infinitely better than chicken nuggets, and stewing being way better than frying).

You get the drift. Fry everything in palm or corn oil, and the health benefits. If you build meals around vegetables, legumes, lean proteins, and whole grains, the return multiplies.

I absolutely get the love for some processed foods, and I do have a Nongshim Shin Ramyun addiction–but cooking allows me to add nutrient density to it with the inclusion of sesame oil, shiitake, enoki, silken tofu, bokchoy, some gochujang, and milk.

Nutrient-rich diets have been linked to reduced inflammation and improved mood. But there’s a quicker psychological return.

Cooking, even in its simplest form, builds a sense of self-efficacy. The quiet satisfaction of turning raw ingredients into a meal is itself a powerful antidote to feeling powerless. And it is exactly what I felt after successfully making my first pot of kimchi jiggae in September of 2023.

Cooking is control.

When you cook, you decide the portion sizes. You choose whether that pan gets a drizzle of oil or a heavy pour, whether your salad dressing is a quick squeeze of lemon and olive oil or a pre-made packet loaded with sugar.

TBH, the little decisions compound over weeks, months, years. They add up to better energy and cleaner lab results (for real, my bloodwork results right now are way better than when I was 26 years old).

Cooking isn’t just about what you eat today; it’s about stacking nutritional advantages that quietly pay dividends for decades.

So yeah, stir the pot.

It will help you live longer and better.

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You know that if you live in 2025, almost everything is measured and consequently optimized: travel and delivery times, connection speed, app load time, decision-making on trades, as well as tickets closed in Jira, calories burned, engagement rates, clicks, and credit scores.

Usually, the faster the better.

Social acceleration means technology is moving faster than ever, and it’s reshaping our norms and institutions along the way. What follows is our desperate, day-to-day attempt to keep up with the pace of life.

Want a bad example?

In 2008, we still believed in chance encounters, the run-ins that felt meant to be. When Tinder went live in 2012 and then Bumble in 2014, the slow rituals of meeting and getting to know someone got reduced to swipes, and then came the rise of roster dating. When I hear my Gen Z kids say “I’m tired of dating,” I sometimes assume it’s because they have four people stuck in the talking stage, and at least one first date a week. Lol.

The faster we go, the more disconnected we feel.

Inertia

There are many reasons we keep getting pulled back into acceleration, even when we try to slow down. Institutions are built to reward speed. In media, for instance, the outlet that breaks the story first gets the clicks and the views. Depth and nuance, if they arrive at all, usually come later. Competition drives the same dynamic: the companies that move faster often dominate their markets.

This creates a self-reinforcing loop where slowing down can feel like dropping out (as in the case of Yahoo, Kodak, and Multiply).

I learned that the hard way as a young professional in the 2010s.

I bought a BlackBerry so I could reply to emails faster. Naturally, my company rewarded that “efficiency” with (surpriseee) more work. The faster I responded, the faster people expected me to respond. The motto of the decade was: work hard, work fast, work more. And I worked harder than a horse on roids.

At first, hustling did give me some financial stability and the ego boost from LinkedIn recruiters.

But underneath it all was a constant hum of disquiet. Even when technology gave me more time, I filled that time with more tasks. On “rest” days, I would pack my schedule with activities, meet-ups, and errands until there was nothing restful about them.

By the summer of 2017, I had burned out completely.

I quit my job. I ran trails to my heart’s content, and endeavoured to start over.

Resonance and small acts of rebellion

Social acceleration is baked into modern life. Unless you go full Thoreau and retreat to the woods, it’s almost impossible to escape. But you can push back in small but meaningful ways.

• Take the scenic route. Challenge the belief that faster is better. In his keynote, Rory Sutherland asks: if you had to travel from one place to another, would you choose the quickest route or the scenic one? And if you saved 45 minutes on the fast route, how would you really use that extra time?

• For once, wear a watch that only tells the time, not an over-engineered data screen. Stop measuring everything. Your life (and your fitness) won’t collapse if you don’t track your steps for a week. It won’t even collapse if you don’t track them for ten years. Measure only what truly matters, not what apps or wearables tell you to.

• Choose gardening. Or any form of slow activity like cooking, Gunpla assembly, or Warhammer painting. These aren’t just hobbies, they’re acts of resistance. They carve out a space where acceleration can’t reach you.

And so, we go back to resonance.

Resonance is the opposite of the numb, rushed, disconnected feeling that comes from living in constant acceleration. Hartmut Rosa says it is about connection and transformation, whereby the world “answers” you when you engage with it slowly and attentively.

So today, HGRT would like to raise a question: How would you like to rebel?

I don’t know where he got the name. I’m not even sure if he liked me (and tbh, he did not look grateful for the food). But I liked Jordan. He was fat, and he had the face of a warlord.

Most days, feeding the community cats is a happy exercise, a ritual that is inconsequential but weirdly important. Then there are days like July 5, when I find myself wondering: if other people can be so careless with the lives I’m trying to protect, why should I even bother doing it?

So, why do we even bother?

Apparently, we’re not alone in that question. In the UK, a study called Time Well Spent (commissioned by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, or NCVO for people who like acronyms) asked thousands of people why they volunteer.

And it turns out, most people aren’t trying to save the world. Some top motivations include:

• “I wanted to improve things/help people” (40%)

• “The cause was important to me” (34%)

• And then—somewhat hilariously—“I had spare time” (31%).

There are many other reasons, and the list goes up to more than 10, but a full third of volunteers got involved simply because they had spare time. And it was true for me back in 2024.

It’s very far from all-consuming altruism. It’s a whim I came to like, and then love.

Another framework called the Volunteer Functions Inventory outlines (in a very structured way) the different reasons people step up: to express values, gain knowledge, build careers, find community, boost their self-esteem, and create a sense of purpose.

In other words, volunteering is personal, functional, and practical—and a viable engine to protect or nurture a part of the world that you hold dear.

And in my case, it was an ungrateful tabby. RIP, king.

The showing up spectrum

In one of my writing sprints (I am delulu about mainstreaming social good, hence these exercises lol), I created a five-stage funnel that charts where people land depending on their season of life, mental load, and willingness to leave the house.

1. Unaware, apathetic, and apolitical. These are the folks tuned out of social issues, not because they’re bad people, but because life feels overwhelming enough as it is. Survival mode > saving the world. Their attention is elsewhere: bills, burnout, maybe just binge-watching.
   “IDK, IDC.” / “I’m just trying to get through the week.”

2. Curious and sympathetic. They’re not deep in the trenches, but their heart’s in the right place. They want to help, just not all the time. Ideal for low-effort, drop-in, feel-good engagements that don’t require a huge commitment.
   “I care, but life is busy. Can I just show up sometimes?”

3. The activated changemaker. These people are hands-on, mission-aligned, and action-oriented. Whether it’s volunteering, organizing, or donating time and skills, they’re already making moves. They just need the right cause, structure, or community to plug into.
   “I’ll spend my weekends doing something that matters.”
   (Ex. Your friend, Valerie, who feeds and rescues stray cats in BGC)

4. The social good champion. They’ve made social impact their main hustle, not just a side interest. They’re entrepreneurs, advocates, educators—dedicated to building a better world, one long-term solution at a time. Give them resources, networks, and visibility—they’ll run with it.
   “This is my life’s work.” (Ex. Your friend, Kate, who just opened her zero-waste store and dreams of scaling)

5. The powers that be. They’re the funders, policymakers, execs, and leaders with the power to shift systems. They care—and they know their best play isn’t showing up to clean-up drives, it’s opening doors, writing checks, and moving big levers.
   “I have wealth, position, influence—I’ll help from the top.” (Ex. Your boy Bill Gates, who is going all in fighting disease and poverty)

Becoming a full-on social good champion usually takes a big shift, something life-changing like a realization of your purpose, maybe an awakening. Or a meltdown in S&R, god knows.

But the jump from curious to active? I think that’s very simple. Don’t start with “change the world” because you will choke, and it will be ugly.

Just show up once.

Maybe that’s how it begins, and maybe that’s enough.

I was deep into trail ultras between 2017 and 2019. That was peak obsession. I would run with a filthy, sunburnt crew from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. during training season. We would take naps under trees, pick and eat wild fruits, swim to cool down, and come down the trailhead covered in dust (or mud) and stink.

We didn’t race to hit a PR (that’s so basic), we ran to be swallowed by the trail.

We pretended to curse the long climbs that heat up and then harden the quads and relished bombing the downhills, half-flying and half out of control, knowing full well that all it takes is one misstep to land a bloody face plant.

I loved those days.

Those of us who were unhinged enough would eventually attempt 100-milers. I did not. These days, I’m saving up what’s left of my knee cartilage, doing just one 50k race every the end of the year.

Comfort crisis who?

Michael Easter talked in detail about a comfort crisis (tl;dr we’re too comfortable for our own good. To become stronger, happier, and more alive, we need to do hard things on purpose).

The popular formula is: stress + rest = growth. The mechanism behind it is a slow but consistent adjustment of thresholds.

Planning and pain thresholds

If your legs and lungs are used to running high-elevation 50ks within 10 to 11 hours, a once-daunting 21k becomes a relaxed, routine fun run. Pain tolerance isn’t something we’re born with; we need to train for it–slowly, incrementally.

When the blister pops, when the cramps become relentless, when vision blurs out (literally, some people go temporarily blind during long races), repeated and strategic exposure teaches the body how to stay calm when things start to hurt.

Many things can still go wrong despite all the careful planning with cold weather gear, food, hydration, pace, relative to elevation, distance, and terrain.

That’s because reality has no obligation to stick to anyone’s plan.

The mountain weather shifts (really fast if I may say), river crossings get violent, animals show up, and an injury from 10 years ago can resurface.

When the plans fall apart, the pain threshold is the emergency battery that enables someone to move forward and dig deeper. Because, my dudes, standing still while deep in the mountains is a sure way to get unalived.

Ask the bodies in the Everest death zone.

Lose time and lose it well

Losing all sense of time in an induced flow state is meditative. It’s a hyper-present condition where only the next breath or the next step matters. Jonel Mendoza, editor of Frontrunner Magazine, and race director of the King of the Mountain series for a long, long time would tell us noobs one thing: one foot in front of the other.

I find this really funny because “one foot in front of the other” is very different when you’re gunning for a sub-20-minute 5k vs. when you’ve seen the sunrise twice in a 40-hour trail race. Both experiences are sublime.

So why do we do it?

Because doing hard things brings us home to ourselves. Trail ultras just happen to be the metaphor that I relate to the most. But it doesn’t have to be running.

You don’t have to climb a mountain or chase a cutoff time to reclaim your edge. Just find something that scares you a little and demands your full attention.

Let it stretch you.

Let it hurt a little.

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Let’s review the three usual suspects:

• Shame and secrecy (Hiya)

• Fear of being judged as money-obsessed (Mukhang pera)

• Avoiding conflict to preserve social harmony (Toxic pakikisama)

Now, here’s how those dynamics play out in real life:

Procrastinating on money learning

You have access to financial apps, free explainer content on every possible channel, and even friends who know their stuff. But you still put it off, not because you're lazy, but because you're ashamed to be seen as irresponsible or behind. These are some of the internal and external scripts you may have heard or said:

• “I don’t really get it, so maybe it’s not for me.” (“Hindi ko kasi gets, so wag na lang.”)

• “I’ll deal with it when I’m already rich.” (“Saka na, pag mayaman na ako.”

• “It’s embarrassing, I should already know this at my age.” (“Nakakahiya, ang tanda ko na, wala pa rin akong alam.”)

This isn’t about access. It’s more about permitting yourself to be a beginner.

Downplaying your financial goals

You want to save 6-digits. You’re budgeting, investing, or seeking smarter ways to grow money, but you hesitate to talk about it because you don’t want to seem overly ambitious, aggressive, or too focused on money. It becomes counterproductive when you’re surrounded by people with low agency who say things like:

“Money isn’t everything.” (“Hindi naman lahat tungkol sa pera.”)

Instead of being supported, your goals shrink in response to other people’s discomfort or lack of ambition.

Balato

Balato is supposed to be a joyful gesture and a way to share blessings, usually after a windfall like a bonus or lottery win. But it becomes toxic when people feel entitled to your money, as if it’s a social obligation. What starts as generosity turns into pressure. At its worst, it becomes emotional extortion, an unfounded entitlement to your money.

No charging back

You cover the bill for food, rides, groceries, and Jung Kook tickets because you have the card or the app. But when it’s time to ask for payment back, you hesitate because you don’t want to seem gipit or overly concerned about money.

Eventually, people start to expect it, and you become the default payer in your group, not by choice, but because asking to split costs immediately feels too awkward.

What now

The above list isn’t exhaustive. But seriously, my dudes, it’s 2025.

If we really want to take full advantage of the financial tools available to us, like digital wallets, investing platforms, real-time bank transfers, and new ways to evaluate credit, we also need to shift the way we think and talk about money.

That means being clear about our goals, our boundaries, and our wealth-building strategy. And it means staying open to learning, no matter how late we feel we’re starting. Not to impress anyone, but to build better habits and more sustainable financial relationships.

So here’s the thing: I wrote this e-book back in 2023, then updated it in 2024 (yeah, it’s kinda old now, considering how much the economy has changed). I wrote it because I was bored. I used to sell it—and I’m sorry to the folks who paid for it—but I still think it’s useful.

If you think a friend needs it, feel free to share.

Download Fckn Money (2024 Edition)

When the global economy hit pause in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the knee-jerk reaction of most governments was to roll out cash aid.

Here in the Philippines, we put together a decent PHP 200 billion (approx. USD 4 billion) to support about 18 million households. A big chunk of that aid money was funneled through the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP).

It was a great idea, except for a tiny problem: the government had no cash delivery mechanism.

Then we got a brief

Back then, our agency was running a USAID-funded financial inclusion campaign focused on expanding access to transaction accounts (bank accounts, e-wallets) and addressing cyber-insecurity issues.

When the cash delivery challenge landed on our table as a campaign brief, we suddenly became part of a multi-agency fire drill (because the economy was on fire lol) to help get cash into people’s hands without breaking quarantine and/or the internet.

Our delivery machine was called ReliefAgad (which translates to “immediate relief”), something done by the really smart nerds of DEVCON, in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and USAID.

ReliefAgad worked as an easy-to-deploy platform to collect beneficiary data via barcode or manual entry, then connect that info to e-payment systems like GCash, PayMaya, and bank accounts. Out of 4 million ReliefAgad signups, about 1.2 million people set up transaction accounts to receive their aid money (ayuda).

I thought: well, that was good impact. A clean, measurable number. Fast-forward to 2025 and boy did we see some pretty huge (and honestly, super great) changes:

• Connectivity is better. Internet infrastructure is more stable, making it easier to access financial services.

• KYC (Know-Your-Customer) is simpler. Banks now only require one ID for setting up new accounts. (Requiring two was a massive barrier to some)

• Fintech reach is wide. We clearly have some platform frontrunners. GCash now has around 94 million users. Maya is in the 44–50 million range. Coins.ph has about 18 million. All of which are platforms that offer more than just savings products.

• Interoperability is real. Thanks to the National Retail Payment System (NRPS), we can now send and receive money across wallets and banks through InstaPay, PESONet, and—my personal favorite—QR Ph. No more juggling apps, although some banks still charge unreasonable transaction fees, it almost feels like extortion.

• Security has improved. OTPs, biometrics, real-time alerts—these are now standard features. Just recently, the Central Bank of the Philippines ordered banks to move away from OTPs in favor of more secure authentication methods.

• Financial literacy efforts have multiplied. BSP, banks, and e-wallets all run their financial literacy programs.

• Financial products are slowly going mainstream. Insurance, investments, credit, lifestyle bundles—you name it, it’s a tap away. GCash alone reported ₱6 trillion in gross transaction value back in 2022.

Infrastructure-wise, we’ve come a long way. The rails are there, but we know that financial inclusion isn’t just about systems, access, or availability. It’s also about usage and behavior. And culture. And emotion. Despite all this progress, a layer of resistance remains:

The last barrier isn’t tech. It’s us.

Read in full: The Financial Life of Filipinos: Insights into Wealth Distribution and Financial Literacy in the Philippines.

• Shame and secrecy (Hiya): We don’t talk about money because we’re embarrassed. Embarrassed to admit we fell for a scam. Embarrassed by how little (or how much) is in our bank account.

• Fear of judgment (Mukhang pera): Talking about money feels gross. Wanting more of it feels greedy. So we downplay our ambition (and with it, the means to generate more income).

• Conflict avoidance (Pakikisama): We’d rather keep the peace than say no. So we lend money we can’t afford to lose. We bankroll family events with borrowed funds. We avoid conversations that matter.

We don’t talk about money enough. And because of that, we’re missing out on what money is really for.

Now what?

Part 2 comes out next week!

The premise was interesting: you can run on a different operating system that rebels against a world obsessed with results and the many forms of success measurement (KPI, OKR, ROI, NPS, GMW, nasty three-letter curses). It outlines two paths: linear versus experimental. Ladder versus loop.

We know this too well.

In one corner, you feed the compulsion to get things right the first time, climb fast, optimize, and make things look effortless, like you have 55 years of experience at the ripe old age of 37. In the other, you bask in the productive chaos of trying things just to see what happens.

The second bit is about reclaiming trial and error as the default mode for growth, especially when we're wired to get queasy on the "error" part. There is no substitute for actually reading the book, so do it. “Tiny Experiments” has a nice way of organizing ideas, but I’ll dump mine based on resonance.

Not all time is created equal

We all have the same 24 hours as Beyonce (that is a universal truth), but a minute-by-minute measure of time is a bad way to determine its value.

One hour of deep focus or creative flow is not the same as an hour spent spiraling through bad news or switching between tabs. For every creative, entrepreneur, and strategist, we need to protect and relish our good hours.

We will get disrupted, and things will break

When things break, when the weaknesses of our systems get exposed, when things don’t go as planned, we are forced to change. And the book says:

“The degree to which you are forced to change defines the magnitude of the disruption.”

Change feels like your place in this world, which you fought hard for, is being challenged or taken. If we stay rigid, we will also break, but if we learn to dance with disruption, we will stay longer in the game and increase our odds of winning.

Learn in public

This is one of my favorite lines in the book. If you are a millennial who suddenly became important at work, this is for you:

“Learning in public is the opposite of pretending you have everything figured out.”

Sharing while you’re still figuring it out is the bravest form of learning. It’s also the most generous. HGRT was born out of this premise. You can learn, change your opinions, and you don’t have to be burdened by what people say for updating your world view.

Commit to curiosity

The point isn’t to be right all the time, it’s to stay open. Curiosity doesn’t need tidy outcomes, final answers, and well-behaved data. Le Cunff says that if you take an experimental view of life, it’s hard to take failure personally.

And if that is the case, you don’t have to be afraid of being wrong.

—D

Share How to Greet a Rising Tide

VUCA was a useful label until it got disrupted (well, a little).

Jamais Cascio, an American futurist, coined a new term in 2020: BANI — brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible. He argued that VUCA had become too ubiquitous. BANI, on the other hand, captured our emotional chaos— the anxious realization that the systems we rely on (supply chains, democracies, even daily routines) are fragile as hell.

Just. Yikes.

And then in 2022, Oxford crowned “permacrisis” as its word of the year, a nod to the never-ending soup of instability, where crises overlap and amplify each other. There are so many ways to label this era. VUCA. BANI. Permacrisis.

For millennials who are just trying to live a life, this has been the emotional flavor of our adulthood: a constant low-key dread, with the occasional, full-blown what the actual f***, the world is a hot mess.

In simple everyday terms: “Should I get mad over the price of onions today, or do I have enough bandwidth to nurse my climate anxiety?”

But there’s something I learned that helped me calm the f*** down a little bit.

A University of Chicago researcher named Suzanne Kobasa introduced the idea of cognitive hardiness as early as the 1970s. It is a resilience trait found in people who handle stress well. It boils down to three Cs:

• Commitment – Staying curious. Choosing to stay engaged, even when things are absurd

• Control – Believing you can influence how things play out (at least a little)

• Challenge – Seeing change not as a threat, but as the baseline state of being

I discovered this concept in 2019, and it became my anchor during the pandemic. Especially the last C: Challenge.

Accepting that change is the norm flips your perspective. It makes the chaos feel less personal. Less like you’re failing, and more like yas, this is just what it means to be alive right now.

It also helps you reframe discomfort as data — signals about what in your system needs reinforcing, or rethinking.

And it nudges you to find your people — the challenge-positive ones. The experimenters, side questers, open collaborators who try things just because they’re curious.

The ones who don’t need complete information to move forward.

The ones who have just enough energy to try.

The flux and uncertainty of this world can be both thrilling and anxiety-inducing. So, here at HGRT, you’ll find modern wisdom, practical systems, mental models, and schools of thought—tools to help you navigate the waves instead of getting caught in the undertow.

A great TikTok philosopher once said that being rigid in the face of volatility is toxic. Well then, like it or deny it, volatility is the norm—so let us all hold hands, calm the f*** down, and learn.

- D