- The Friday Fix
- Posts
- #142. The Bad News
#142. The Bad News
Shem Opolot
October 10, 2025
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
Why should you subscribe?
I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
I comb through tonnes of self-improvement content so you don’t have to, and I distill the content into bite-sized wisdom for you
I’ll occasionally make you laugh
If this sounds good, click the subscribe button below, add your email, read my welcome email (check your spam folder or “Promotion” tabs), and follow ALL the instructions. This is important so you don’t miss future posts.
Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
You can also skim the past posts here.
Otherwise, grab a seat 🪑.
HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 Every time my wife gets a new item of clothing, she prays for it and for the person who made it. It's one of those things she does that I noticed many years ago and filed away in my short-term memory.
Or so I thought.
But then, I unboxed a new pair of shoes the other day, and I prayed for them without even thinking about it. Considering my new love of mani-pedis, scented candles, and plump pillows and how much my sense of style has changed in the past five years, marriage can really make parts of you (dis)appear, enmeshed in someone else. Like taking a spouse’s last name or hyphenating.
LIFE.
The Bad News
Every time I buy something new, in that gap of time between hitting “Place Order” and picking up the package, I’m convinced this new thing will change my life. It will make me happy.
Someone said the key to hacking adulting is to always have something to look forward to, and I think that’s good and bad. I won’t talk about the good part today, but I’ll say the bad betrays a dangerous addiction to novelty.
As a fan of novelty myself, I downloaded an app on my iPhone called “Left” earlier this year. With this app, I can display the number of days left until the end of the year or up to any date of my choosing. Don’t ask me why I got it. I’m the kind of person who would get it. I mentioned a dangerous addiction, didn’t I?
If you’re curious, this is what Left looks like.
When I downloaded Left, I told myself it wasn’t a productivity tool but an aesthetic flourish for my iPhone home screen. I wasn’t going to somehow carpe every diem now that I had it. Besides, “productivity” sucks the fun out of many things.
Life is meant to be lived, not optimized.
So I downloaded Left because I thought the widgets looked cool and, every now and then, offered some utility.
Yesterday, the utility registered when I noticed there were 84 days left in the year. Seeing that sent me into a panic, as I thought about the plans I had at the beginning of the year. I remembered two specific things I committed to: 1) to take more things off my plate and 2) to know which things to take off my plate.
The first one came from David Cain’s concept of buying everything twice. He used the example of buying a book:
When you buy a book, you pay the first price—the cost of the book—but you must also pay the second price by investing the time to actually read it.
So I challenged myself to pick up fewer new books and read the ones on my already long reading list. To see out the ideas I jotted down before embarking on new, shiny ones.
The second one came from Naval Ravikant’s feature on a podcast, where he said one of the most profound things I’ve heard this year:
“The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.”
When you combine Naval’s nugget with George Mack’s concept of High Agency, you get an infusion of potential energy I imagine is like being high on cocaine. You feel charged up, with your entire body contorting into one giant hammer, turning everything around you into a nail.
Naval added that even more important is knowing what to want.
Okay, let’s pause here. Have I somehow stumbled into talking about productivity? God forbid. I promise I’ll stay on the fringes.
Okay, so…novelty bad, but also maybe novelty good?
Those two goals were always going to be challenging for me because I struggle with the allure of novelty, as evidenced by how things went, erm, Left with the app.
And it’s an affliction many of us battle, because we don’t know what to want.
Take most of my single eligible bachelor friends in D.C., for example. I haven’t seen an area so spoiled with eligible spinsters like the DMV. But for their male counterparts, that’s the problem. Too many shiny things. Too many choices. Novelty keeps the men sleeping with their running shoes on.
Or my friends in tech (including myself), whose Notes apps are full of startup ideas, half of which begin with “Uber, but for…”
My eligible bachelors who claim to want to settle down and my tech buddies who aspire to build unicorns are united in their ambition and their lack of fruition. Many dates but no relationships; many ideas but no businesses.
And the addiction to novelty is sly, sometimes repackaging itself—undiagnosed—as some sort of attention deficit disorder. But really, it often just betrays commitment issues and a lack of discipline. At least in my case it does. I mean, sh*t, brainstorming a new idea is more exciting than choosing your accounting software and calculating your tax obligations.
But I’ll say this: give yourself some grace. It’s hard to know what you want, let alone what to want. Fortunately, figuring that out is an eternal process, similar to attaining self-awareness—impossible, but worth the journey. So, while you may not know what you want or what to want, finish what you start. If anything, because you’ll be proud of yourself for doing so. Remember, a good way to build your self-respect and, by extension, self-love, is to simply do the things you said you’d do.
THINGS.
A quote.
You’ve got to become human before the physical cravings are distinguishable from affections—just as you have to become spiritual before affections are distinguishable from charity.
A picture.
Zion turned 4 this week. Please join me in praying for him. I don’t ask for much; I just want him to grow up to be kind, smart, and generous.
WORK.
Let’s link up.
Imagine you have fairly intricate data. Here’s the fake one I made up in Google Sheets:
Now imagine you’re presenting this data, and you want someone’s input in a particular cell.
Did you know you can share a link to a specific cell? No? Here’s how:
Right-click in the cell, go down to “View more cell actions,” and then click “Get link to this cell.”
If an image helps, here you go:
For more tricks like these, take my course 😊.
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
> Hotels that are destinations all by themselves
> This site teaches you musical chords and scales
> How to move your music library from one streaming platform to another
> Write to your future self and this site will send it to you later
> Polar bears everywhere.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
Reply