About this site

Hintessence is an independent publication launched in October 2024. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows Hintessence to continue to exist. Is this site for you?

Short version:

In times of information overload, Hintessence explores what you can do on a personal, day-to-day basis to live a better life

That's why I aim to research topics through the lens of:

• How-To Guides
• Applicable knowledge
• Mental Models
• Directives
• Heuristics
• Aphorisms
• Biases

... and distill the conclusions into non-dogmatic directives of what you can do. I use the words "guides" and "directives" interchangeably. As the world evolves and new insights are gained, it is important to emphasize that this website is always evolving and never 100 % finished. If you have a suggestion or spot a mistake, please contact me. I'm happy to hear from you.

Long version:

I made this site to solve my own problem of information overload. Being pressed for time and feeling paralyzed and confused about which information to trust and how to actually apply it to my life. The signal-to-noise-ratio is just out of balance in our modern world. In my view, the benefits of coming up with directives are:

1. It saves time: After going through the research and distilling what works best for most people, I have a handy checklist that I can come back to as a quick reference.
2. Guides that are directly applicable: Everything is about habits and systems, so it's not what you know but what you do with that knowledge. Hintessence is a shortcut. You have to take the high road yourself, though. I can't walk the path for you. I can only walk the path with you and we can share what we've learned along the way. That also means I'm not an expert and I'm not telling anybody anything. I'm here to figure stuff out.
3. Learning to navigate better through life: I write down blunt (but always non-dogmatic) directives of what you can do. But feel free to do your own research and dive deep into a topic if you are really interested or need the knowledge to improve your life, work or whatever.

My main focus is to come up with directives and sorting them by topic or by book. Some topics and especially some books just aren't made to derive directives from. Sometimes you need to learn a concept or just enjoy a book because it's inspiring. I'm not trying to come up with directives where it doesn't make any sense.

Note that the guides are highly contextual.

What about the name?

Hintessence is a wordplay on Quintessence. You'll get it by mixing up the following ingredients:

Quintessence = The essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form

...becomes...

Hint (a clue) + Essence (the true nature of anything)

= Hintessence (a hint at the essence of things)

Long after I had the idea for Hintessence, I learned that there was a thing called the commonplace book. I guess you could call it a journal nowadays, since the lines between writing down what happens in your life and keeping track of ideas, your habits and productivity has blurred. But dating back as far as ancient greece, people used commonplace books to compile knowledge, citing quotes, ideas, proverbs and much more from other authors or thinkers. It was a way to have all the good ideas or insights you collected over the years in one place. The idea might sound trivial in the modern world with all its blogs, apps and tools to store ideas and knowledge but for me, there's something about handwritten notes in a book. But to make it accessible for others, obviously the easiest and quickest way is to make a website.

So Hintessence is an open, ever-evolving online commonplace book, if you will.

The purpose of this site

The main goal of this site is not to tell you how to live, but to distill practical knowledge into actionable directives that can help you live well. In this world of information overload, it can be hard to sift through a lot of information and then put that into practice, especially when we are working and raising a family.

If you're like me, you consume a lot of information through books, blogs, podcasts and videos. And there's certainly a place for conceptual knowledge like that. But more often than not, I'm asking myself what I have actually learned and how I can apply that to my life. I started asking myself these questions in school and often found that the knowledge did nothing to improve my life. At university, I found the same to be true and became frustrated with our educational system.

I've always been curious and eager to learn stuff, so it gives me thrills to seek out the most important and applicable knowledge in a field and disregard the filler material that isn't useful. Specializing never really resonated with me. I felt like I was wrong because we live in a world of specialists and society expects everyone to eventually settle down and specialize in something. It wasn't until I heard Charlie Munger talking about the benefits of being a generalist and until I read David Epstein's book "Range" that I could embrace wanting to be a generalist rather than a specialist and see it as a strength.

The knowledge that I find useful is mostly self-taught. Distilled knowledge or practical advice that I can actually implement in my life. A person could spend the rest of his or her life learning and reading without ever putting anything to practice and still live a miserable life. So it's not how much information you consume in this lifetime, it's what you actually do with it that has the power to change your life for the better.

So with Hintessence, I'm primarily solving my own problem of distilling information overload into what I can actually do.

It is, and should be, up to you how you live your live. But there are things we can learn from people who've been there, done that. And there are also some things we can learn from science, spirituality and the mistakes others have made, so we don't have to make the same mistakes again. That's kind of how evolution works, right?

The directives on this site are not dogmatic and are not set in stone. So I'm not telling you what you should do, but rather what you can do. A shortcut, if you will. But it's never dogmatic. For me, it is also rethinking how information is researched and presented. I know that this site isn't for everybody. So if you happen to dislike the content or the way it's presented then that's OK. I'm not trying to please everybody.

I do hope that this site is useful for some people, though. I'm building the site under the principle of Kaizen: constant and never-ending improvement. So it's always evolving, never finished and forever imperfect. A continuous work in progress. Please keep that in mind when judging my efforts here.

The design

The design is simple and plain on purpose. I try to remove everything that is not necessary. This way of thinking is influenced by essentialism, minimalism or whatever you want to call it.

It's focussing on what's essential. It's focussing on the essence. I would love this site to look and feel like reading a good book. That's why the content is in the center of attention and that's why there are no fancy gimmicks.

The topics

It's quite fascinating (at least for me), to explore the intersections between science, spirituality, biographies of historical figures and everything in between: from personal development to self-help, from business to health and fitness, from the humanities to outliers and polymaths. But in the end, one question remains: What can you do with all that information to improve your life and life on earth in general? That's what I want to explore. And let's not forget that how you do something is just as important (if not more important) as what you do.

Who runs this site

Right now, this website is a one man show. I'm one person doing all the work. Ultimately, this is a creative project and I enjoy researching, connecting the dots, high level thinking and finding solutions to present information. I have high aspirations regarding the quality and correctness of the content and it is a lot of work to update and maintain all the information.

I don't claim to know everything, I'm not an expert and I'm not here to teach anybody anything, so please bear with me (and do tell me, please) if I make mistakes or don't update a page as fast as I could. I try to work as conscientous as I can, but still: Take everything you read here with a grain of salt. I do my best to research to conclude properly but I might be biased, I might lack certain information or I might just be wrong. Do your own research, conclude for yourself and do your thing.

I would love to read your feedback, so if you have any questions, suggestions on how to make the site better, critique or love letters for me, just contact me. If you're a hater, a troll or a know-it-all: I'm also happy to hear from you, but please be constructive and respectful.