What Resonated in 2025
Five most-read articles this year, with behind-the-scenes notes.
In 2025, I set out to write 52 articles, but I published 40. The missing 12 taught me a valuable lesson: consistency is important, but pause when you need it. I needed that break to have time to focus on other aspects of my life.
Here are the five most popular articles, based on views and new subscribers they brought. Accompanied by quotes from each, with behind-the-scenes notes.
When someone puts all their money into one risky financial asset, they may get lucky and make a lot of money. But that doesn’t make it a good decision.
Decision quality is independent of outcome quality.
Behind the scenes: This one set me out for the series of articles, as it had many possible threads to dig deeper. Its popularity was a positive boost of motivation in July and helped me keep writing consistently.
Writing what you need to decide on clarifies what the problem is.
Our memory is not the best tool for analysing the past. We subjectively interpret reality, and most importantly, we forget! We forget a lot!
Writing down everything you understand at the time of making decision is important to reflect on afterwards.
Behind the scenes: Writing about the topic made me use decision logs more often. Practice what you preach. Also, it’s so much easier to use still vivid examples, I took one from workshops that I ran right before writing it.
Trees have many roots, as with success and failure. So look for multiple root causes.
Behind the scenes: I wrote this in response to readers’ questions about Solve the Right Problem. It’s a great feeling when the conversation with people makes you answer them in the form of a follow-up. It feels great to provide a seed for a good discussion.
One of the best moments was when I no longer felt the pain, even though I knew it was still there. I had no desire to stop it. After an hour I kept sitting in the same position for a few more minutes enjoying the state when the pain did not have any effect on me, even if I knew it was there.
Behind the scenes: Being in the moment was a contributing factor to my reduced motivation to write. It pushed me to explore, both inside my mind and the outside world. I was so reluctant to sit at the keyboard and write. Maybe being happy in the moment kills the part of me that pursues goals.
You can master all the mental models, decision-making frameworks, and cognitive biases, but you won’t improve if you act too fast without taking time to think.
Behind the scenes: Pausing your reaction was one of the key takeaways while meditating, when I observe sensations and pain but don’t react. I wrote the ‘Pause’ article before going to the meditation retreat, but the aspect of delayed response is a shared theme.
The most viewed and liked guest article was for Anton Zaides‘s manager.dev:
Wrapping up 2025 for Perspectiveship based on what you read most?
It’s been about thinking clearly, pausing as a superpower, having a decision log and... becoming a monk.
Thank you for being part of this journey!
— Michał
Post Notes
Discover Weekly
In a theme of planning for 2026:
Year Compass (great for January 1st) [template]
If You Don’t Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! — Chris Williamson & Steven Bartlett [podcast]
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Nice insights into your reasoning and congratulations on that amount of valuable articles!
Really valuable roundup of decision-making principles here. The seperation of decision quality from outcome quality is something people overlook constantly—luck can mask bad process for a while. I started keeping decision logs last year and its wild how much my memory edits what I actually knew atthe time versus what felt obvious later. If nothing else, writing down the "why" in real-time stops the hindsight bias from teaching you the wrong lessons.