Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
I stay up late to catch up on my day and the catching up puts me further behind. The clock reads close to 1am and I'm still scrolling.
Show Notes
I stay up late to catch up on my day and the catching up puts me further behind. The clock reads close to 1am and I'm still scrolling.
Featuring: Haruki Murakami, Charles Duhigg, Bill Wilson, Bob Smith, Paul Volcker, Jeff Bezos
Brought to you by:
Trends.vc: Discover new markets and opportunities.
HeadsUp: Know when your competitors move. Before your customers do.
Multi: Turn any content into a YouTube video.
Where to find Dru:
I write an essay daily. Get them free
Follow me on X
Watch my video essays on YouTube
Follow Dru's Notes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.
Creators and Guests
What is Dru's Notes?
One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.
"Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything."
Charles Duhigg
I stay up late to catch up on my day and the catching up puts me further behind. The clock reads close to 1am and I'm still scrolling.
The deal I made with myself was screens off by ten.
Then ten comes and goes and I keep scrolling, keep reading, keep telling myself the next thing is the last thing.
Late off the screen means late to sleep. Late to sleep means a late start the next day. A late morning eats into the afternoon and by evening I'm behind, so I reach for the screen to catch up.
And then it's 1am again.
Each late night makes the next late night easier and the next early night harder.
In May 1935 a stock speculator named Bill Wilson paced the lobby of Akron's Mayflower Hotel. The business trip that brought him there collapsed and the hotel bar was open.
He drank at night, woke up sick and the only cure that worked was another drink.
For years he promised to stop and broke the promise, the same way I promise myself ten and watch it slide to 1am.
He walked past the bar to a phone booth and worked through a church directory until one call led him to another alcoholic, a surgeon named Bob Smith. The two kept the break small enough to hold: stay sober one day at a time. Their meetings grew into Alcoholics Anonymous.
In 1979 the whole United States got stuck in a loop.
Inflation hit 13 percent that year: prices climbed partly because people expected them to keep climbing. Workers asked for raises to cover next year's prices. Companies raised prices to cover the raises.
Paul Volcker took over the Federal Reserve that August and pushed the country's interest rates to 20 percent.
- Farmers drove tractors to Washington and blockaded the Federal Reserve building.
- Car dealers sent coffins filled with the keys of unsold cars.
- Builders mailed him two-by-fours.
He held the rates high for three years. Breaking my loop takes closing a laptop by ten.
By 1983 inflation was near 3 percent and the expectations ran in reverse: people planned on stable prices and the planning kept them stable.
Around 2010 Sears got stuck in the loop. It closed stores to save money, lost the shoppers who used those stores, then closed more stores to cover the lost sales. Around 3,400 stores became five.
In 2001 Jeff Bezos sketched the same loop running the other way on a napkin:
1. Lower prices bring more customers.
2. More customers attract more sellers.
3. More sales spread the cost of the warehouses.
4. Cheaper operations fund lower prices.
Step 4 restarts step 1.
The press calls what happened to Sears a doom loop. Bezos named his napkin sketch the flywheel. Same loop. The direction is the only difference.
Your credit card runs the same loop.
Pay the minimum and the interest compounds against you. Pay anything above the minimum and the direction flips: each extra dollar shrinks next month's interest, which frees up more dollars, which shrink it faster.
My screen loop runs on the same kind of input: what time I get off.
Most nights I lose. One night I got off at ten.
The next morning started on time. That left slack in the evening and the slack made the next night easier to close.
Momentum works for whoever sets the direction.
What can you cut to get your momentum pointing in the right direction?
(Replacements for the opening of "Sears closed stores to save money..." The jolt: every other story enters on a time anchor and this one enters cold. Verified: the closure wave ran from around 2010. Current text stays until Dru picks.)
1. Sears started closing stores around 2010 to save money, lost the shoppers who used those stores, then closed more to cover the lost sales.
2. Around 2010 Sears got stuck in the loop. It closed stores to save money, lost the shoppers who used those stores, then closed more stores to cover the lost sales. (CHOSEN, in body)
3. The United States broke its loop. Sears rode its own down. Around 2010 it started closing stores to save money, lost the shoppers who used those stores, then closed more to cover the lost sales.
4. A company can get stuck the same way a country did. Around 2010 Sears began closing stores to save money, lost the shoppers who used those stores, then closed more stores to cover the lost sales.
(Order question, raised 2026-07-24: with 2010 on the page the story order runs 1935, 1979, 2010, 2001. Dru could see it either way; kept Order A as the simpler change. Order B stays documented if he flips later: Bezos (2001) before Sears (2010), with "running the other way" moving to the Sears entry.)
(Replacements for "His loop was drinking to relieve what the drinking caused." Round-1 slate rejected 2026-07-24: four versions of the same sentence with nouns swapped. Round 2 shows the circle instead of labeling it. All facts documented in AA history: night drinking, morning sickness and shakes, the morning drink as the only relief.)
1. A drink calmed his shakes. The shakes came from the drink.
2. He drank at night, woke up sick and the only cure that worked was another drink. (CHOSEN, in body)
3. Each morning a drink was the only thing that calmed the shakes the night's drinking gave him.
4. The hangover hurt until he drank again and drinking again bought him the next hangover.
(Dru picked #3 on 2026-07-24; installed in the body.)
1. A loop pays whoever breaks it. (prior line)
2. One cut turns a doom loop into a flywheel.
3. Momentum works for whoever sets the direction. (CHOSEN, in body)
4. Break the loop once and the compounding switches sides.
5. The same momentum that dragged you down can push you up.