I have plenty of techniques and activities I have learnt over the decades to deal with anxiety and stress 🤓. Whenever you run a business, anxiety is your best friend: it drives you forward, warns you of upcoming challenges, and at the same time keeps you human and grounded in your human needs.

There is one tip that I was never able to make into a “routine” myself, but every time I try it again I am mind-blown by its efficacy, maybe you can do better than me: welcome to paced breathing.

Breathing is something we do passively without thinking about it. When we interfere with this natural pattern, either during the inhale, hold, or exhale phase, we “wake up” our nervous system to listen and be attentive. Try for yourself for 4-5 breaths 👇

What just happened? By putting an emphasis on a longer exhale you have engaged the parasympathetic system (the one that controls “rest and digest”) and promoted deeper relaxation 😌. In these modern times, with the amount of inputs thrown at us, we are constantly stimulating, through shallow breathing patterns, the “fight and flight” system. Even when we are not consciously stressed, by breathing a certain way our mind and body register stress signals.

There are a few other methods that I mention for completeness so that you can do further research:

• 📦 Box Breathing: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds (though the nose) and hold again for 4 seconds before the next inhale.

• 🧘 Relaxing Breath: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 6 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds.

• 🪖 4-7-8 Variant: same as the relaxing breath, just a stronger hold.

Don’t Panic instructions:

1. 🔰 First timers: just try a couple of breaths.

2. 🩻 Keep your back straight.

3. 🫁 Inhale for 4s through the nose.

4. ⏸️ Hold for 6s (let it go if you feel too rigid).

5. 😮‍💨 Exhale for 8s through the mouth.

6. 🫄If you notice your breaths being shallow, try to focus on raising your belly button.

7. ➕ Increase progressively until you can do a 2-3 minutes.

Your weekly tip: Sometimes our breathing is signalling stress to our body. Slow down: inhale for 4s, hold for 6s and exhale for 8s. Do a couple rounds and you should feel more relaxed.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who may be stressed🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Then once, the following happened: I had a connecting flight from Dubai to Rome via Amsterdam: all on the same airline (if case you are interested…KLM 🙄). Guess what? The flight from Dubai arrived in Amsterdam 1.5 hrs late. I reached the gate and the Amsterdam-Rome flight had already departed 🤦‍♂️. Through no fault of my own, I missed the connection.

They rebooked me on a much later flight. I was annoyed because it disrupted my schedule and work, but after I calmed down I decided to explore the airport (Schiphol is pretty cool). Given that I had so much time, I discovered you can pretty much run your life from many modern airports. Some have sleeping pods for naps, some have good spas (Bangalore’s new terminal and Ho Chi Minh City’s airport are good examples), and many even have hotels if you need to stay overnight. I slept at an airport hotel once in Colombo and wow: it’s a game changer to wake up, shower, have a proper breakfast and get aboard 😎. The only thing I have not seen yet is a gym, but I do not think we are far from that becoming common. Modern airports are micro-cities where you can carry on with your life without major disruption.

This experience made me realized that instead of constantly rushing on a tight schedule, and adding stress to my mind and body as I cross time zones, I now go to the airport a few hours early. I no longer distinguish strictly between international and domestic flights, but if you do want to set different rules, make sure there is at least a one hour difference between the buffer you decide for yourself. Generally for domestic flights you don’t go through immigration and security checks are less crowded, so it’s overkill if you do like me and go a lot early. If your laptop is enough to do your work, I’d still argue go early.

There is a downside. Airports want you to arrive early so you spend more time there. They are designed to encourage you to open your wallet and buy goods and services that often offer worse price/quality ratio than in the city.

Your weekly tip: Flying is stressful for the mind and body. Do not add to it by trying to nail perfect timing or race the traffic. Go early and chill.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who travels🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

It’s easy, especially if you tend to overthink, to start weighing countless variables and factors, both foreseen and unforeseen, until you end up in a state of analysis paralysis.

This is a good reminder of one of the best computer science classes I had at university. During a software engineering course, our professor said, “When dealing with complex requirements, make sure to keep it simple. Actually, make sure to keep it simple, stupid.” Coming from a generally serious professor who rarely cracked a joke, that sentence stuck with me. I later discovered it’s attributed to Lockheed aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson.

The anecdote goes that, when designing a jet aircraft, Kelly threw a bunch of tools on the table and asked his design team to make sure the jet they were building could be repaired using only those tools and nothing else. That reflects a typical combat situation, where not everything will be available. Keep it simple, stupid, or you may lose the battle.

I’m in a similar situation now: a handful of tools and the risk of over-engineering a solution that I’m going to change again soon anyway. As highlighted in the last tip, “Be water, my friend” is another angle from which to look at it. Being flexible right now, is more important than making the perfect decision.

Your weekly tip: Many popular sayings capture the idea that “done is better than perfect”. So keep it simple, stupid, and move on to the next thing.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who overthinks 🫰(feel free to send it back to me 🤡)

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Don’t Panic 😱

The end of history illusion is a cognitive bias that affects people of all ages. In the original study published in Science, participants ranged from 18 to 68 years old. In plain English, the bias goes like this:

It’s easier to remember the person you used to be than to imagine the person you’ll become.

If you think you’re immune, think again. This bias is linked to several limitations in how our brains work. A few of them:

• 🧠 Memory needs data: The past self is easier to access because memory gives us real examples, emotions, and stories to hold onto. We can recall who we were, but we can’t recall who we haven’t yet become.

• 🔮 Imagination is blurry: The future self has to be constructed from scratch, but the brain struggles to simulate detailed future preferences, values, and identities.

• 📌 Present moment projection: Current feelings, tastes, and priorities are treated as if they’re more stable than they really are. What feels important today gets projected into the future as if were permanent.

• 🧩 Need for coherence: The mind prefers a stable, coherent identity. Believing “this is who I am” feels psychologically safer than admitting that our values, goals, and personality may keep shifting.

• 🚫 Blindness to the unknown: Many future changes come from events we cannot yet predict, like new relationships, loss, work changes, illness, success, failure, or aging. Because we cannot imagine these clearly, we underestimate their impact.

• ✨ Feeling "finished”: We generally like to believe we’ve grown into a wiser, better version of ourselves and that we have done most of the work.

I’ve seen this bias at play in my own life more times than I can count. At 15, I promised myself I would first become a billionaire☝️ and only then buy a house. Today the last thing I want to do is buy a house and lock myself into one place. Or take the first time I visited Dubai, I thought: “Wow, this is the future…clean, safe, luxurious. I could see myself living here”. Four years later, after actually living there, I was describing it as one of the most inhumane places on Earth (great for holidays though! 🎢).

I’d argue life is a lifelong journey of figuring yourself out. There is no final You.

Your weekly tip: Embrace change → it’s inevitable. Forgive your past mistakes, that was a different You. Leave room for optionality in long-term decisions. You may feel you won’t change, but you will. Be water, my friend.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who thinks too rigidly. Things change 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Gut health, in particular, is so complex that some consider it almost an ecosystem in itself. Trillions (yep, you read that correctly) of micro-organisms live there 🦠 and co-operate with your body to help keep you alive while you keep feeding them. This evolutionary strategy is known as mutualistic symbiosis. We hunt for food, and part of it goes to them. In return, they help keep our digestive system working, break down certain compounds for us, and get rewarded with the nutrients they need to survive: it’s a good deal.

Research in this field is still developing, but we already know something our mums intuitively knew: eat a variety of vegetables and fruits. The American Gut Project, which started in 2012 and involved around 15,000 participants, continues today under the Microsetta Initiative.

Taking care of your gut is crucial as it plays a significant role in many key functions of our organism:

• 🥗 Digestion & Fermentation: Breaks down food your body can’t fully digest, especially fibre, turning it into useful compounds.

• ⚡ Nutrient Absorption: Helps your body absorb nutrients and supports the production of certain vitamins and metabolites.

• 🛡️ Immune Defence: Trains and regulates the immune system, helping it react to threats without overreacting.

• 🧱 Gut Barrier: Supports the intestinal lining, helping keep useful nutrients in and harmful substances out.

• 🦠 Microbial Balance: Keeps harmful microbes in check by competing for space and resources.

• 🧠 Gut-Brain Axis: Sends chemical and nerve signals that can influence mood, stress, appetite, and energy.

  • This is often underrated but you can intuitively feel it when you eat processed foods or overdo carbs without enough fibre → brain fog 😶‍🌫️

So, what’s the main takeaway from the study so far? In simple terms, consuming around 30 different plant types per week is linked to a richer, more diverse gut microbiome, which is generally considered a marker of better gut ecosystem resilience and overall gut health. And that’s exactly what we want, so that all the functions above 👆 can work well.

As mentioned in the last tip, I’ve bypassed the nutrition problem almost completely. The restaurant that prepares my meals already factors in this requirement. Some weeks, we may still fall short by a few items, and that’s when I usually add an extra fruit salad or a yoghurt-based bowl.

Your weekly tip: Aim for around 30 plant-based items per week. This can include a diverse mix of vegetables 🥦, fruits 🍎, legumes 🫘, whole grains 🌾, nuts 🥜, seeds 🌻, herbs 🌿, spices 🌶️, and aromatics 🧄. When you include all these categories, it’s easier than it sounds. But if you’re currently below this number, you may consider adjusting your diet.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who is realising gas too frequently 🫢🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

From the 20th century onward, with the advent of industrialization and global trade, most of us began purchasing food through (super)markets, where that trust factor is not as strong. The 24/7 access we expect to all types of food, even when they’re out of season, means our food often comes from a wide range of distant places, where transport safety and shelf life become concerns. At the same time, we’ve gradually become worse at using our own senses to judge food quality.

In roughly 200 years, we still haven’t found a perfect solution to this problem. The closest system we have is called the Codex Alimentarius, a collection of international standards, guidelines and codes of practice that are generally voluntary unless adopted into law. The EU has clearer and more harmonised consumer food-labelling rules than other jurisdictions, but there is still work to be done.

As we move through increasingly uncertain historical times, understanding how this works will become even more important, both to keep yourself safe and to reduce food waste (and, as a result, your grocery bill).

So what do we have for now?

• 🔝 Best Before (or BB): Consume before this date if you want to ensure the product’s freshness (taste, texture, smell, crunchiness)

  • Food is generally still safe to consume after this date.

• 🗓️ Use By: Do not consume after this date, especially if it’s fresh food (e.g. meat), ready-to-eat food, or packaged fresh food (e.g. salad).

  • Food may still be safe to eat, but if you can’t confidently rely on your senses, you should not eat it.

• 🧑‍🔬 Sell By: You may bump into this on eggs or milk, it’s not really for the end consumer but for the food distributor to know when to remove from shelf if unsold.

One caveat: these dates are generally set by the food business operator and/or the manufacturer. Of course, it’s in their best interest to choose appropriate dates, because either the product won’t taste good anymore (and you won’t buy it again), or it may be harmful to your health, which can lead to legal consequences.

The real “hack” is to avoid overstocking fresh food. Try to buy only what you need for a few days, eat it while it’s fresh, and then restock. Instead of stockpiling fresh food, you can rely more on canned and frozen items, since their shelf life is much longer and they often remain safe past expiration dates if properly stored and unopened.

Personally, for the last few years, I’ve been in the fortunate position of outsourcing this problem, since I have a restaurant preparing and delivering all my meals daily (fresh, not packaged!). But in the rare cases when I do cook for myself, I still follow these guidelines.

Your weekly tip: For the best taste, consume food by its Best Before date. For safety, especially with fresh food, consume it by its Use By date. Avoid buying fresh food in bulk, and encourage yourself to shop more frequently.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who stocks food like a supermarket 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

For something done so frequently, you’d expect most of us to have an efficient setup. If that were true, there would be no tip today: welcome to clipboard history 📜.

Have you ever copied something, then copied something else… only to realize you need the first thing again? Most people work around this by creating a temporary note/document and dumping everything there.

If you work in tech (like me), clipboard history is non‑negotiable. We’re copying and pasting constantly, and I want quick access to anything I copied: not just today, but even a week ago. Example: I needed a link I had sent to a friend and remembered it had something to do with “debtors”.

How to get clipboard history:

•  MacOS: Clipboard history isn’t built in, so you’ll need a dedicated app 😭

• 🪟 Windows: Clipboard history is built in (a crappy one 😅). Turn it on via Settings → System → Clipboard. A quick tutorial here.

• 😎 If you are cool (me): Raycast has, in my opinion, the best clipboard history right now. The basics are free; if you want to keep history forever (like I do), you’ll need the paid plan. Windows folks can get it here.

There are plenty of alternatives, just make sure you choose a modern clipboard manager, because it comes with useful extras like previews, search, filters, and more. When I say “modern”, take a look at the short Raycast video below (I know I know…I really think it’s a great product otherwise I wouldn’t insist) to see what I mean 👇

One last example: while I was writing today’s tip, I had to do a bit of copy-pasting myself…

Your weekly tip: If your work involves a computer, start using clipboard history. Push through the initial friction, future you will thank you. You’ll work faster and you’ll be far less likely to lose something important you copied.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who works with a computer (I guess 90% of them?!) 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Sleep is one of the topics dear to most people in the audience. Many of you struggle with poor quality sleep and are actively trying to find solutions. I have been playing around with loads of variables when it comes to sleep and I can say that in my life, apart from a few stressful moments, I have always slept well 🤞. I’ll share what has worked for me, in typical Don’t Panic style: one practical tip at a time!

One of the best changes I have made to my routine was to introduce a 30-min buffer before going to sleep. During my first few years building my business, I remember literally shutting down the laptop and, still with a “burning” feeling in my eyes 🫩(dryness from staring at a screen for too long), going straight to brush my teeth and sleep. I thought it was efficient and responsible as I wasn’t wasting time watching some TV series I would forget about in a few weeks, but instead maximizing my time allocated to sleep.

When I started living by myself I was free to make tweaks to my environment and routine, and decided to introduce a 30/45-min gap between closing the laptop and sleeping. During this phase I mainly:

• 🚰 Stop drinking water

• 💡 Switching off most lights and/or dim them

• 🪥 Brush my teeth

• 🧖 Skincare routine

• ❄️ Switch on AC/cool down room temperature

• 📖 Read a book and/or journal

I will expand on these specific actions in the future but the most important is that the wind down:

• 🌚 Shift towards sleep: Gently signals your body to transition into sleep mode, making the process feel natural rather than abrupt

• 🥱 Melatonin release: Avoids suppressing the melatonin your brain is already naturally releasing and gives more time for its distribution

• 😵‍💫 Eye relaxation: Reduces the strain on your eyes accumulated from hours of staring at screens, helping them relax before rest

• 🧠 Mental decompression: Gradually quiets the mental engagement that keeps your brain wired, making it easier to let go of the day

Sometimes I am travelling or overwhelmed by work and can’t do all of the above. At least, I always make sure that I switch off any screen at least 30 minutes before sleep. When I do so I can see a significant difference in sleep quality (i.e. longer deep sleep duration), any time I don’t do it I can notice and I always tell myself “never again I am going to sacrifice my wind down routine” 🤞. Just for context, I spend ~12 hours staring at a screen throughout the day.

As some of you already know, there are loads of supplements (e.g. melatonin, magnesium etc.) to help your body fall asleep. I personally think such things should be a last resort if you have tried everything else, because we don’t really understand sleep well enough to grasp the implications of anything we introduce that affects that equilibrium.

Your weekly tip: try adding a wind-down routine. Avoid starting at a screen at least 30-min before heading to bed (yep, this includes watching TV). Even if your sleep doesn’t improve, your eyes will be thankful.

Don’t forget to send this tip to a friend that struggles with their sleep 🫰

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I also (in)evitably got into the habit of regularly using a cologne (I prefer something lighter), especially when going to fancy places, whether it was Dubai Mall or a high-end restaurant.

I immediately noticed that spraying it on my neck would irritate my skin and cause a burning sensation. There wouldn’t be any visible marks, so I assumed it was “normal.” Later on, I looked into it and discovered that perfumes are not always skin’s best friends, especially for individuals with sensitive skin. They can cause:

• 😖 Irritation: Ingredients like alcohol or certain fragrance compounds (e.g. citrus oils) can cause itching or irritation.

• 🤧 Allergic reactions: Some people may be allergic to specific perfume ingredients (e.g. linalool, limonene, benzyl alcohol), which can lead to rashes.

• ☀️ Photosensitivity: Certain fragrances (e.g. citrus-based or bergamot notes) can make skin more sensitive to sunlight, potentially causing burns or hyperpigmentation when exposed to UV rays. Imagine that in Dubai’s weather.

• 🌵Dryness: The alcohol in perfumes can dry out the skin, especially if applied frequently.

Even if you don’t experience obvious irritation, it’s still worth being mindful about where and how often you apply perfume. Fragrances can be harsh on the skin over time, especially on delicate areas like the neck (thin skin). There are now plenty of alternatives on the market, including alcohol-free perfumes, solid perfumes, and cream-based fragrances. These options can feel gentler on the skin because they often avoid the high alcohol content found in traditional sprays, which is usually what causes that immediate stinging or dryness.

If you’re in doubt, the safer approach is to simply spray perfume on your clothes. The downsides are a less powerful fragrance, since your skin doesn’t “react” with the perfume, and the risk of damaging the garment. Make sure to test it on a hidden area before committing to this approach.

If you really want to keep spraying around your neck, wrists, etc., make sure your skin is properly moisturized, and if possible, avoid direct sunlight exposure on those areas.

Your weekly tip: We all want to smell good, especially in social settings. Either opt to spray your perfume on your clothing, or if you want to keep spraying directly on your skin, choose an alcohol-free perfume or at least make sure to moisturize your skin, as that will act as a protective barrier.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who smells too nice, chances are they’re damaging their own skin 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

I was recently building an alternative to Loom a tool that lets you seamlessly record your desktop and add your beautiful face to the video. It’s used for tutorials, sales presentations and the like.

While building it, I realized the player wasn’t showing the video duration. I found that frustrating, because you don’t really know how long the video will play. So I decided to ask AI to integrate that part. Here’s what I asked:

In the player display the total time of the video so that user can see how much is left

Here is the before 👇

And here is the after 👇

Do you notice anything different? We finally have the duration in place, but we also have a purple color that popped up, the font has changed, we no longer see the three dots next to the fullscreen button, and the control buttons are now below instead of above. I didn’t request any of these changes 🤷‍♂️.

Why did this happen?

• ㊙️ Lack of meaning: AI doesn’t really understand what I asked. It breaks the text down into tokens and generates the most likely continuation given its training and the provided context.

• 🎲 Stochastic model: AI is not deterministic. If I send the same prompt again, next time it might turn the bar red because it has “seen it” on YouTube, or it might add the duration like I asked without any extra changes. You can’t predict exactly what you’ll get back.

• 🧑‍🏫 Assertive: To keep you engaged, AI often gives answers confidently, without expressing doubt, so you don’t question its authority and instead feel like you’re working with an expert that knows everything.

So when I asked it to add the duration, it parsed the request, “reconstructed” the surrounding code, and gave me the closest answer it could. Keep in mind: even when you ask “sum 2 + 2” AI doesn’t understand the question, it has simply learned that the pattern 2 + 2 is typically followed by 4.

Of course, the companies building these models know their weaknesses and work hard to reduce them, for example, by making certain associations more deterministic so you don’t start doubting whether these models are actually intelligent. Despite being useful, they are not actually “smart”. A bit like the smartphone (see what I did there? Smart isn’t it?!).

Your weekly tip: As you use more and more AI in your life, remember that the underlying models are non‑deterministic. They don’t really understand what you mean. It feels like magic, but it’s not: they’re just very accurate prediction machines. Don’t throw your brain away yet 👉 it’ll be handy the next time a prediction goes off the rails.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who’s addicted to AI, maybe they can use it with a bit more awareness 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

What I found interesting is how we ended up with the “10.000 steps a day” target in the first place. In 1964, around the time of the Tokyo Olympics, a Japanese company seized the opportunity to market a pedometer called Manpo-kei. The product team had to choose a target number for users, and eventually settled on 10.000 because it was catchy, memorable, and even looked visually appealing in Japanese (😅).

After that launch, countless apps and products adopted this magical number and, long before influencers were a thing, shaped the habits of millions of people around the world. And yet, we had to wait until around 2019 to see studies clearly highlighting the actual correlation between step count and health. Pretty insane, isn’t it?

You might think today’s tip would be to check your sources and question the things you follow religiously in life, but we’ve already covered that 👇

So today, I want to focus on a practical suggestion: make sure you move every day. We are biological machines meant to move, not sedentary pieces of furniture meant to consume. Especially now that “office” work is so common, using step count as a minimum daily activity target is a helpful benchmark. If your step count stays well below the recommended range for years, you’re essentially trading comfort and convenience for your long-term health.

These days, you can track your steps with almost any smartwatch. Most smartphones also have motion sensors. Or maybe you can get a 20$ pedometer! 😂

And, to prove that I walk the walk (pun intended), here is my step count for the past year 🚶

Your weekly tip: Aim for around 8.000 steps per day. You can achieve this with roughly 70-80 minutes of walking (a bit more if you are a 🐢). You don’t have to do it all at once, feel free to break it up throughout the day.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who doesn’t move much. At the very least, get them to walk the walk 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

If you look back at your intentions for this year, most likely you are falling short in one aspect or another. Not because you are not capable, but because it’s human to not be able to accomplish everything we aim for. When this happens, our brains are wired to convince us to give up. Why? Because the brain evolved, for most of its evolutionary history, in an environment scarce of resources, so only brains that were very careful with resource and energy allocation were able to survive. As soon as the brain senses the struggle, if it’s not tied to immediate survival, it starts considering the energy spent not worth the potential reward.

So now what? Your biology is doing its best to convince you that: it’s not a big deal that you didn’t progress much as per your plans, that it’s okay, and that you will figure it out later or worse, it will suggest you give up altogether and move the goalposts to something else. The last one is the most dangerous: you keep moving the goalposts to feel good and avoid facing the harsh reality, as you get to start fresh on a new goal you haven’t failed at (yet 🤡). Imagine living a life where every time you fall short on something you wanted to do, you pivot so that you don’t feel bad and get to “start again”. You’ll spend an entire lifetime not accomplishing anything, just briefly chasing one thing after another (if that keeps you happy, by all means keep doing it, just make sure you are doing it with awareness).

For the rest of us who would still like to move forward, what can we do? Behavioural psychology would suggest:

• ❓Explore the why → Reconnect with why you set your goal in the first place. Why is this important to you? If you want to lose weight, why is that meaningful? Do you want to look better for yourself? Feel better?

• 💡 Is it still relevant? → Things change and it’s normal to adapt the plan: in fact, being adaptable is a core skill for a human being. Just make sure you are not falling for your own brain’s traps.

• 🔍 Learn from the (lack of) progress → If it’s something you really want to accomplish but haven’t been effective at, try to be very specific about why that’s happening. What can you learn from it so that you can improve in the coming weeks?

Personally, I struggle with this as much as anyone else. My “whys” are generally very strong and I follow a routine that helps keep my actions “relevant” (more on this in a future tip 🔮). Where I still need to improve is focusing on learning and iterating on my mistakes, because attributing the lack of progress to myself (e.g. I should push harder, that’s why it’s not working) is the default option, rather than something that enables further action (e.g. Why is this happening? What can I do to fix it?). The first approach is so vague that it doesn’t contain much actionable information; the second one challenges me to be specific and really think about why things are not moving: Were my expectations wrong from the get go? Am I not taking the right steps? Am I lacking some specific knowledge?

Your weekly tip: If you feel you are falling short on your goals, make sure to reconnect with them. Why do you have these goals in the first place? Are they still relevant? What can you learn from how things have gone so far? Write a full page with all these thoughts, and for the last point, be specific enough that it becomes self-evident where the problem lies and why you are stuck.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who is struggling to move forward 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Let me be clear: as much as I may have personal views on wars, religion, and other topics, Don’t Panic is meant to be neutral. Any suggestion or tip should be applicable regardless of your nationality, political views, or religion. Some tips may be gender-specific or involve other personal criteria, but those considerations will always be science-based (e.g. the amount of sunscreen you should apply depends on your skin tone). I’ll do my best to highlight those nuances. Alright, enough with the disclaimers, let’s get going!

On the 1st of March, missiles struck a primary school in Minab, southern Iran, killing at least 153 people, mostly children, and wounding nearly 100 more. An Iranian acquaintance I met in Dubai shared a reel on Instagram claiming this was carried out by Iranian forces to be blamed on US and Israeli military. Out of curiosity, I opened the comments section and, between 80% bots and 20% real users, it was nearly impossible to gauge the overall sentiment or understand who believed what.

This episode made me reflect on the countless times I’ve come across information, especially on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, that was complete nonsense and easily fact-checkable. We live in a world where so much happens every second that no individual can possibly keep up, and given our biological limitations, we probably shouldn’t even try.

I chose this specific example because it represents perhaps the worst category of misinformation. Deception, false information, and propaganda are tools of war, used by all parties involved. During an ongoing conflict, contradictory narratives can coexist simultaneously, and it’s extremely difficult to witness a tragedy and immediately arrive at an explanation that holds up from every angle.

This person works in a luxury salon in Dubai: I wouldn’t consider him naive, he is still someone successful that managed to grow his career abroad. Now, imagine the vast number of people with even less critical thinking tools. We are living in a world where our information sources are so fast at delivering garbage entertaining content that our opinions, as a consequence, become low-quality too. I started to feel a little hopeless, until I reminded myself that the last thing we should do is give up → Don’t Panic.

Here are my non-science-backed suggestions on how to navigate this:

• 🗞️ Cut the news: Traditional media has repeatedly proven itself to be a vehicle for propaganda, regardless of where in the world you live. If you enjoy biased narratives, by all means keep watching your favourite TV channel or reading your favourite newspaper.

• 🗑️ Trash information from social media: It’s not worth it. You’re getting one useful piece of information for every hundred reels you scroll through. You are trading your time and mental clarity for noise.

• 🔻 Reduce your information overload: Your brain was never designed to process global events 24/7. Did you know there is an ongoing civil war in Myanmar that has displaced approximately 3 million people, with around 15 million requiring humanitarian assistance?

• 🏢 Follow international and independent sources: Some organisations and independent journalists genuinely strive to remain objective and report truthfully. I remain cautious, as access to reliable information is increasingly restricted but they are still a better starting point.

• 🗣️ Talk with your community: This is, for me, the most valuable approach. Many times a thoughtful conversation with a friend has helped me refine or even completely change my point of view, especially when they pointed me to a credible source I could verify myself.

As you can see, I don’t have a perfect recipe or a definitive solution. Access to trustworthy, unmanipulated information is one of the biggest challenges we face today, and I hope this has been an opportunity to reflect on how it shapes our lives, our thinking, and the way we show up in the world.

Your weekly tip: Be mindful of the information you feed your brain, especially when it comes from traditional or social media. Practice arguing both for and against your own point of view. Don’t overwhelm yourself with everything happening in the world 24/7 but when something matters to you, talk about it with the people around you. Your world may be small, but it’s the one that truly counts.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend and spark a conversation 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

If you’re a millennial like me (or from an earlier generation), you might be used to saving photos on some kind of hard drive, either on your computer or on an external drive. Back in the day, we even stored them on CD/DVD… yeah unbelievable, I know.

Recently, I found an old smartphone of mine. I charged it, switched it on, and surprisingly it still worked (kudos to Sony’s engineering 🇯🇵). While I was checking its contents, I realized I had never made a backup. So I connected the phone to my laptop and extracted all the photos. This is what I found 👇

About 90% of the photos on my old phone were corrupted. I was genuinely sad: they were mostly high-school photos and memories I wanted to revisit and share with friends. So I promised myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again 🙏.

Here’s what’s going on (keeping it simple). Most “modern” storage like SSDs, SD cards, and USB sticks use NAND flash memory, which is what makes these devices small and silent. To store data, flash memory essentially keeps electrical charge in tiny cells. Those charge levels are what represent the “0”s and “1”s.

Over long periods without power, that stored charge can slowly leak. When enough “0”s and “1”s drift, parts of your file can change and that’s when corruption can happen. In other words: your photo’s representation in 0s and 1s is no longer the same string that originally encoded the image, so you end up with a mix of “garbage” and your photo… or sometimes a file that won’t open at all.

What’s the best way to tackle this? A few options:

• 🔌 Plug in your SSD drive/USB stick/SD card → If not “permanently” at least once a year (I’d suggest more often) to reduce the risk of long-term data loss.

• 🧲 Store important files on a magnetic drive → Yep, those bulky, slower, noisier ones. They store data magnetically rather than as electrical charge, so long-term “shelf” storage tends to be safer (though they can still fail, so don’t treat them as immortal).

• ☁️ Store files in the cloud → Cloud providers like iCloud (Apple) or Google Drive (Android) handle a lot of durability concerns for you. I’m not a big fan of this because of privacy trade-offs, but it’s a trade-off many people are willing to make. Over the long run, this is also a costlier option.

  • Some folks do a “cloud-ish” version of this for photos by posting everything on Facebook/Instagram. I don’t think that’s a great idea: you’re ultimately at the mercy of those companies 👮.

Personally, I do the following: I store my photos/files on two small SSDs (main + redundancy in case one fails or gets lost), plus iCloud for photos I take “on the go” with my phone since I travel frequently. At the end of each year, I move the important stuff from iCloud and my SSDs onto a magnetic hard drive (HDD) that holds most of my long-term files and photos.

I’d like to improve this setup by adding a backup for that main HDD too but I’ll be honest, it starts to feel like a bit much… even though, as a computer scientist, I know it’s the right thing to do.

Your weekly tip: If you have important photos and files you want to keep long-term, store them on a magnetic hard drive (HDD) in combination with a cloud service. If you prefer convenience and don’t want to spend on cloud costs or value your privacy rely on SSDs, SD cards, or USB sticks but make sure you plug them in regularly.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend who takes a lot of pictures 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Your heart has one crucial job, 24/7 with no holidays (🥲): to pump blood throughout your body so nutrients and oxygen reach their destination. This happens even when you’re completely still: about 5L of blood need to circulate per minute at rest.

Resting heart rate measures how many beats per minute your heart produces when you’re not physically stressed, for example when you working on your laptop or doing “Netflix and chill” 🍿. It turns out this number is a strong predictor of longevity, often better than blood pressure or amount of physical activity1.

A lower resting heart rate means your heart can distribute the target ~5L of blood per minute with fewer beats. Fewer beats mean a heart that stays healthier and “younger”, with less overall stress on your system: a win–win. If you’re unfit, your heart needs to work much harder to meet that target, causing wear and tear. Think of it like a leaky engine: it takes more energy to get from point A to point B.

How low should your resting heart rate be? For the general healthy adults (< 60 yrs old), here’s a quick reference:

• 🟢 < 60 bpm: Generally considered protective for brain age and longevity in non-sedentary adults.

• 🟡 70 bpm: Identified as the lowest risk point for vascular dementia.

• 🔴 80 bpm: Frequently categorized as a high-risk group for cardiovascular disease and mortality.

• 🏥 > 80 bpm: Please book a visit with your doctor 😅

If you are wondering how to calculate your resting heart rate, most smartwatches track this for you. I use an Apple Watch and can find the data in Apple Health → Heart. Here is my current situation:

I wear my smartwatch on a daily basis so this metric has been recorded for me for years now. I generally have a look every three months but as you can see it’s been pretty consistent. If you never tracked it, it’s a good idea to have a monthly routine and then you switch to a less proactive approach like mine.

Your weekly tip: Keep an eye on your heart health. Track your resting heart rate at least once a month and aim for around ~60 bpm. If you’re consistently >80 bpm, consider seeing a doctor to review your personal situation.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend whose heart you care about 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

In my quest for early retirement, one critical piece of the puzzle was managing my money. I kept my framework simple: spend as little as possible and invest as much as I could. This approach paid off but not many people are willing to sacrifice for 10–15 years to achieve that goal. Most prefer a more balanced approach.

This is what led many personal finance advisors to think deeply about this problem and come up with countless strategies and frameworks. In the spirit of Don’t Panic (yours truly 🫶), we’ll focus on the one that is most widely accepted as the best overall for most cases. Personal finance, as the name suggests, is personal. So always assess your own situation and feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any doubts.

In 2005, US Senator Elizabeth Warren, former law professor and bankruptcy expert, wrote a book titled All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, where she introduced the 50/30/20 budgeting rule. Her goal was to help American families from the working class build wealth. This rule helps you allocate your money as soon as you receive a paycheck.

Let’s break it down:

• 🏠 50% Needs: housing, bills, groceries etc.

• 🎡 30% Wants: movie ticket, a new dress you don’t really need, etc.

• 🏦 20% Savings: paying off debt, investing, etc.

One important caveat Elizabeth mentioned is that “needs” and “wants” are individual. An example? I generally categorize my gym membership as a need, whereas some people would consider it a want. My rationale is that I don’t want to live a life without exercise. Could I work out at a park without a gym membership? Sure, but that’s not my cup of tea and I wouldn’t exercise if I didn’t have a gym. Make sure the categories reflect your true needs and wants.

Here are some example breakdown based on income (after-tax 👮)

Your weekly tip: Confused about how to best allocate your money? Divide your net (after tax) income into needs (50%), wants (30%) and savings (20%) and spend accordingly.

Don’t forget to share this tip with a friend: you don’t want them to be broke 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

The traditional path was clear: work hard until 65, then get a pension, travel, and enjoy life until you die. Your “reward” for surviving all those years? A few weeks of vacation each year from your generous employer. Ridiculous, isn’t it? You’re literally spending your best years working.

As we step into 2026, the situation is only getting worse. In the EU, only four countries (🇨🇿 , 🇵🇱 , 🇷🇴 , 🇪🇸 ) offer average pensions that cover the average retirement expenses. And yes, this excludes the dream of traveling the world you had in your 30s.

Most public pensions and social security systems are financially unsustainable across developed economies. Why? Falling birth rates mean fewer young workers are paying taxes to support retirees, and people are living much longer, so pension funds need to be distributed for a much longer time horizon than originally planned for.

Enough with the rant. So what can we do? Instead of relying on government pensions, take control of your financial future. This is where the FIRE movement comes in: invest your money so it works for you instead of sitting idle.

Based on the Trinity Study we have a base framework to start with:

• Invest your surplus money in the stock market

• Hold a mix of stocks and bonds depending on your age and risk tolerance

• Safely withdraw 3-4% of your portfolio annually

• Your portfolio should last at least 30 years

Now, how much do you need to invest? Divide your annual expenses by 4% (or 3% for a more conservative approach).

If your monthly expenses are $3,000, your annual expenses are $36,000. Dividing that by 4% (or 0.04) 👇

That’s the amount you’d need invested to sustain your current lifestyle indefinitely. If you use another currency the system works the same just make sure you calculate the annual expenses in your own currency (e.g. EUR, INR, VND etc.).

Here’s a quick table with example costs of living and corresponding FIRE numbers for a single person enjoying a comfortable middle-class lifestyle (no dependants):

FIRE is a complex topic with many nuances, but I’ve simplified it here so anyone can follow along even without a finance background. Feel free to drop your questions in the comments! If you’re interested, I’ll share deeper dives soon: other investment options beyond stocks, whether you have to hit your FIRE number or can retire earlier, and more.

Your weekly tip: If you don’t want to work until you are 65, figure out your FIRE number. Divide your annual expenses by 4% and get a sense of how much you would need to invest to retire ✌️.

Don’t forget to share this with a friend: we’re all in this together. Don’t sell your life to your employer. You only get one. 🙏

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Don’t Panic 😱

Now, back to the main program. When I was a kid, I used to shower and shampoo my hair daily. Little did I know about how much damage I was causing to my hair: stripping natural oils, causing dryness and weakening it. I am amazed at how many daily habits go unexplained and that’s why Don’t Panic was born!

Later in life, I had a chance to talk with a hair care doctor while helping him building the website for his clinic. During a casual chat, he helped me understand several mistakes I was doing with my hair. In the spirit of this newsletter, we’ll tackle one aspect at a time. Today, we start with: why do we use shampoo in the first place? 🧴

The primary goal of shampoo is to treat your scalp, and secondarily, your hair. Here are some key benefits:

• Cleansing of scalp and hair: Removes dirt, oil, sweat, dead skin cells, and environmental pollutants from scalp and hair.

• Prevents buildup: Helps maintain scalp health by cleansing away buildup that can cause irritation or dandruff.

• Prepares for conditioning: Prepares hair for conditioning (we will talk about it in the future) and styling by making it clean and manageable.

• Additional benefits: Some shampoos also provide additional benefits like moisturizing, strengthening, color protection, or treating specific scalp conditions.

Buildup, oil, and sweat accumulate in the hair follicles, not on your hair strands! This was my first big misconception. The key to haircare is to take care of your scalp first, and that’s exactly what shampoo is designed to do. So, next time you shampoo, be sure to apply it to your scalp and massage it in, rather than just on your hair strands. Most people apply it on the top of their head and then proceed in circular motions from there. If you have visited a hair salon, you may have seen them applying it this way

Your weekly tip: Apply shampoo on the scalp, not on the hair. Massage it into your scalp for 30-60s, then rinse thoroughly. This is enough to clean also the dirt that deposit on your hair strands without causing excess dryness.

Don’t forget to forward this tip to a friend, maybe someone bald 👴 who might be underestimating the importance of shampooing their scalp just because they no longer have hair 🙏

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Don’t Panic 😱

Recently, I visited the best dentist in Thailand (yes, the entire country!) a privilege I could afford. She’s the head of the dental department, an adorable lady about to retire with decades of experience. She found some minor gum inflammation but otherwise gave me a perfect score. It’s always been like this for me, thanks to good genetics.

As I was about to proudly leave her clinic, she told me “Before you go, I can see that you are not brushing properly let me show you”. She took a plastic model of a mouth and a toothbrush, then gave me a demo on how I should actually brush. The scene was hilarious: it felt like going back to school, with this sweet aunty explaining something I should have learned from my parents as a kid.

It turns out, for three decades, I have been brushing the wrong way ☠️.

The main goal when brushing is to remove food residues from your mouth so they don’t decay and become a feast for germs. Secondly, brushing helps kill germs and wash them away.

If you are like me (and, to be fair, like most people) you hold your toothbrush horizontally, brushing left and right across your teeth, then the tops. But this misses the most important spot where food deposits accumulate: the intersection between your teeth and gums. The best way to clean this area is to hold your toothbrush at a 45° angle and gently brush in a circular motion. For the outer surfaces, brush horizontally; for the inner surfaces, brush vertically but still with the brush angled.

It’s hard to explain the motions in writing, so here’s a quick 15s video tutorial. Don’t worry, this doesn’t count as brain rot!

I’ve been following this technique for two months now, and I can honestly say my oral health has improved dramatically. My mouth feels cleaner overall, and I feel less risk of enamel erosion. Dentists do study this technique, if you are curious to learn more look for modified bass method 🎸.

Your weekly tip: Incline your toothbrush at 45°, softly and gently move in circulation motions as you brush. Don’t brush directly on your teeth! If you’re unsure, ask your dentist to give you a demo 🧑‍🏫

Don’t forget to forward this tip to a friend who, like me, thought they were a black belt at brushing 🫰

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Don’t Panic 😱

Fast forward to today and I am personally charging my phone every day. If I’m out taking lots of photos and videos, I might even have to charge it twice in one day. If you guessed I own an iPhone…well, you’d be correct 🤡 (long live Android on this aspect, although the situation isn’t much better).

Having owned many phones, from the pre-smartphone era, to Android, and finally landing on iOS: I’ve tried them all. One question I’ve always asked myself is: What’s the best way to keep the battery “healthy” for as long as possible? Because generally, I’d buy a new phone whenever the battery started dying too quickly.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the years:

• 🔌 Using your phone while charging doesn’t harm the battery health. The phone might heat up a bit, but as long as it stays within a normal temperature range, it’s fine. If it gets too hot (like when I was walking under the Dubai sun 🐪), your phone will warn you.

• 🤳 Picking up a phone, using it and putting it back on charge is perfectly fine. I use a convenient magnetic stand o charge my phone and smartwatch, so I often take it off to use and then put it back to charge.

• 👮 Phones automatically suspend charging to preserve battery health. Older batteries required caution when charging overnight, but today’s phones handle this by stopping the charge when the battery is full. Feel free to charge overnight without worry. For extra safety, you can change your battery settings to charge up to 85%.

• 🛜 Wireless and wired charging are equally safe for your battery. I had a gut feeling that wireless charging was worse, but that’s just a myth.

So basically, you can pretty much do whatever you want. Modern batteries and phones have solved most of the user experience issues we used to worry about.

Let me close with an anecdote before your weekly tip. You may have noticed that the battery charge lasts much longer going from 100% → 99% and from 1% → ☠️. Why is that? It’s all about user experience!

• Phone makers realized many users were frustrated seeing their phone drop immediately from 100% → 99% after a full charge, so the phone doesn’t truly reach 100%. Also, that initial 1% actually covers more than the other percentages.

• The last stretch from 1% → 🪫 is a critical moment when users might panic with lots to do before the phone dies. To help, phone makers intentionally extend the duration of that 1%, so you’re really using about 4-5% of the battery, giving you enough time to finish important tasks (like paying a bill 😛).

Your weekly tip: Charge your phone however you like. Use it while charging or not, it’s all up to you. Just avoid fully discharging the battery, as that shortens its lifespan. Once your battery drops below 20%, start thinking about charging, and definitely plug in when you’re down to 1-2%.

Make sure to forward this tip to a friend who can’t live without their phone 🫰

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See you next week, until then…

Don’t Panic 😱