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There's a difference between what's cool and what's meaningful

There's a difference between what's cool and what's meaningful

In this issue: a friendly reminder that the year isn't over yet, navigating imposter syndrome, why it's important to let it go, and the best gut-check on realizing how deeply you understand something.

PJ Milani
November 19, 2025

🤔 INTERESTING

Visual metaphor by milaniCREATIVE.art illustrating end-of-year motivation. A vertical candle labeled with months of 2025 burns down to November and December. The melted wax forms a new candle, symbolizing “lessons learned” and “opportunity.” This inspiring image encourages viewers to make the most of the final months of the year. Perfect for content on productivity, year-end planning, and mindset coaching.

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Friendly reminder: The year is not over yet. Let's get after it. 💪

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📐 DESIGN

In this short clip with my buddy, psychologist and executive coach, Corey Wilks, we dig into navigating perfectionism and imposter syndrome.

For me, the breakthrough came from shifting the frame of the problem. The goal is never to be perfect. I've got 3 rules for the type of work I create (and encourage my students to make) that have served me well.

And when I'm in rooms where I feel like an outsider looking in, I remind myself there's a difference between what's cool and what's meaningful.

🔮 ENCHANTING

Our hero is sinking underwater while holding onto a heavy rock, symbolizing a burden. In the next frame, our hero has let go of the rock and is swimming toward the surface. Text reads: “Sometimes… it’s better to let go.” Illustrated by milanicreative.art. Conceptual metaphor for releasing what drags you down in order to move forward in life.

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We become what we refuse to release.

I had a friend who used to collect scars like they were stamps. As if he was curating a museum of hurts and betrayals.

Don’t get me wrong. He was justified.

But over time, it distorted into a weird paradox.
Holding the pain validated his story.
But the pain then became the story.

The thing is pain can be a teacher. But it’s meant to visit, not move in. And you can acknowledge the hurt without making it your home.

It’s possible the things we can’t release have already released us. We're just the last to know.

🧠 ANALOGY

Illustration by milaniCREATIVE.art. Title above reads “How Deeply You Understand.” The illustration shows three bookshelf levels, almost like a horizontal bar graph with books on each shelf labeled “Reading,” “Doing,” and “Teaching,” each filled with progressively more books. The visual metaphor highlights how understanding increases from reading to doing to teaching.

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❝

Teaching others teaches yourself.

Chinese proverb

🤓 WHAT I’M READING NOW

“Unflattening” by Nick Sousanis

I recently discovered “Unflattening” by Nick Sousanis, the first dissertation at Columbia written entirely as a comic book! The book asks a simple but radical question: what if words and images worked together hand-in-hand in meaning-making? Each page is an experiment in visual thinking, a reminder that perception isn’t fixed.

Beautifully illustrated

Another black-and-white illustrated page from the book Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Imaginative and bold.

For anyone who's ever struggled to explain a complex idea with words alone, this book feels like permission to think differently. I find myself pausing to savor the metaphors in the book the way one would linger over a perfect piece of otoro sushi. 🤤

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