hell is just you and no one else

+ some other thoughts

by Mitchell Toy

1. I find it funny how Substack has slurs for short blog posts, which is why I’m doing something that might be considered even more tacky and low-brow. I’m writing a list this month. Zigging while others zag was always pleasurable to me for some reason.

2. I think there are better and more fun ways to spend the sacred gift of free time than writing personal essays. I think there are better and more fun ways to use the internet than to introspect in public. I’m a little tired of all the introspection I’ve done over the past years and I want to focus on the external world more. I was inspired by the ancient maxim “Know thyself”, and while I think this is useful, I don’t believe that introspection is the right method for achieving it. I believe that the less you think of yourself, the better you’ll feel. Someone described hell as inability to step outside of yourself, as being drowned in your own self-absorption, as being strangled by your own narcissism. Sartre said that hell is other people, but I think hell is just you and nobody else. I’m immensely grateful for becoming a parent because my daughter is the most responsible for the fact that I’m less self-absorbed as a person. I think that if kids don’t pull you out out of your own self-absorption, I don’t think anything will.

3. Speaking of low-brow, I’ve recently read “Excellent Advice for Living” by Kevin Kelly and I really enjoyed it. It’s a book of aphorisms. Reading “Generally, say less than necessary”, advice that suggests doing what I have been unconsciously doing has made me laugh out loud. Some other gems include: “For every good thing you love ask yourself what your proper dose is”, “The very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse”, “The rich have money. The wealthy have time. It is easier to become wealthy than rich.”, “Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.” Of course, there are also plenty of things I disagree to various degrees, like “To be remarkable, read books”. Meh. If anything, I think collectively, we overvalue the benefits of reading books. Getting a little tired of the narrative that just reading books makes you some sort of genius. But also, after reading this book, I’ve realized that I’ve never regretted reading a book written by elderly people, even quite modern books like this, which are riskier with regards to quality. I think we as a society in general have lost respect for the elderly and stopped listening to what they have to tell us and I don’t think that’s good.

4. I’m currently reading “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt and I really enjoy it. With this book, I laughed after reading this: “Likewise, exposure to words related to the elderly makes people walk more slowly; words related to professors make people smarter at the game of Trivial Pursuit; and words related to soccer hooligans make people dumber.” So here goes. Beauty. Goodness. Truth. Harmony. Excellence. Haidt then explains how these effects are present even if these words are flashed on a screen for just a few hundredths of a second. Which immediately gave me ideas to build some sort of app that does this. You would configure it and describe your goals, like say wanting to improve the quality of your work, and it then sits in the background and in random intervals flashes the words related to quality on your screen and you don’t even perceive it consciously.

5. I’ve “tweeted” this about two months ago:

   Since then I’ve been waking up at [redacted] every day like clockwork. I’m surprised that this had such an effect and am wondering what I should mock myself about next as it’s obviously a motivation engine for me.

6. Consistently waking up at [redacted] has once again confirmed that following advice from Charlie Munger is generally a good thing to do. His “give yourself an hour each day” has been on my mind as I’ve been doing this. I also can’t stop thinking about Ben Franklin’s “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. It’s so beautiful. Like a little poem. So yes. I’ve been waking up early and I don’t want to share how early because if I do share how early it will sound like I’m bragging and that’s not the point. The point is that starting a day with some time for whatever I want to do, before the world starts expecting things from me has been absolutely marvelous. I don’t use any alarms, I just wake up very early on my own.

7. This made me realize the following: I’ve realized long time ago that one of the key ingredients for having an “optimal experience” kind of day for me is waking up early. However, in the past I’ve spent a lot of effort in trying to force myself to wake up early with the alarms. Past me would probably look at my current wake up schedule and ask something like “How did you become so disciplined?” And he would probably be surprised if I told him that it was quite easy to do actually because I used motivation and excitement and inspiration instead of alarms. See, I’m working on projects that excite me, so I don’t have to discipline myself to wake up early just because. These projects are the fuel for what looks like discipline from the outside.

8. And this makes me think once again about Niklas Luhmann and how he said that he only did what was easy and fun to him. So I would ask my past self who is a striver for unachievable discipline “Have you considered how being a drill sergeant towards yourself is actually counter-productive to achieving what you want? Have you considered that brute-forcing is not always the right strategy? Have you asked yourself what compels you to force yourself to do something instead of just doing what is enjoyable for you to do because it’s fun and it feels like play and you feel fulfilled and glad that you did it afterwards? Try to find the “flow”. What makes time disappear? Do that more. Believe me, you can find the time for it if you realize (a) how seriously you should take your gut feeling when doing something, (b) how important this is and (c) how much it influences everything else. Don’t sleepwalk through life.”

9. Be me. Start the list by telling everyone how tired you are of self-analysis and how you’d like to look at the external instead of internal world and then follow the proclamation with 8 (eight) paragraphs of self-analysis. That’s rich.

10. Speaking of, I recently saw this tweet and I keep thinking about it.

    

    Kevin Naughton Jr.@KevinNaughtonJr

    what does it mean that normal people want to retire and ultra rich people want to keep working https://t.co/ncyvVcfMSW

    

    Bearly AI @bearlyai

    Sergey Brin says retiring in January 2020 was the “worst decision”. He planned to sit at cafes and read about physics all day but started “spiralling”. So, he went back to Google’s office to work with the Gemini team and says “the technical, creative output was very rewarding.” https://t.co/ate9xL1X0U

    2:52 PM · Dec 15, 2025

    ---

    22 Likes

    I think most people wrongly assume that rich people keep working because they are motivated by greed. I don’t think that that explains it. What explains it is that the alternative is not particularly attractive. I don’t know who would enjoy just laying on the beach somewhere all the time instead of working on something meaningful and fulfilling. I think a lot of people (myself included) are attracted to the idea of becoming financially independent not realizing how disorienting it is for people who actually achieve it and how often it leads to some sort of depression. I think we would probably still be using sticks and stones if there wasn’t this healthy drive to strive for things. This was a great read on the topic: I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life.

11. What happened to Sergey Brin reading physics is exactly what would happen to me if I just read and wrote all day. Which sometimes makes me wonder what I’m doing on the platform that is famous for how easy it makes you to make a living out of writing. I don’t want to make a living out of writing. I don’t ever want to turn it into a job. I just want to build things. (Says he who hasn’t built anything meaningful for a while. I’m working on it, trust me.)

12. I keep hearing “competence is fun” and it’s embarrassing that I’ve only recently realized that that is the essence of Nietzsche’s will to power. I thought naively that it was about becoming powerful in conventional tyrant du jour kind of way.

13. Would you look at it? What a number to end a list on. Let’s do it, let’s not force it beyond what’s necessary.

P.S.: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family. May 2026 be the best year yet for you. As always, thank you for reading.