For most of 2025, I had opinions about everything. AI is overhyped. Remote work is a myth. Most strategy decks are fiction dressed up as vision. I had a take ready before I even finished reading the thing.
But somewhere around October, I noticed something. The opinions were coming too fast. Faster than I could actually think. And I started wondering if that was a feature or a bug.
It's a bug.
An opinion is easy to have. You read something, feel a twinge of agreement or resistance, and the take assembles itself. Honesty is harder. Honesty means sitting with something long enough to notice when you don't know. When you've changed your mind. When you were wrong for reasons you're still figuring out.
The difference between an opinion and an honest observation is roughly the difference between performance and thinking. One is for the room. The other is for you.
I spent a lot of 2025 writing for the room. LinkedIn posts designed to be shareable. Substack essays with conclusions that arrived too neatly. Takes I'd already had before I sat down to write them. And I don't regret any of it — writing in public is still one of the best things I've done. But I think I'm ready to try something different.
Next year, I want to write more slowly. Be wrong more visibly. Hold fewer things as settled. Start from 'I'm not sure' more often.
Not because uncertainty is a virtue. But because honesty — the kind where you actually report what you see, not what you think you should see — is the only kind of writing that has ever changed the way I think.
That feels like a better goal than having good takes.