If someone lacks the self-control to stop doing the thing they themselves know is killing them, that is not helplessness, and it quietly tells you how dependable they are.
Ask yourself, if you knew someone who didn't even have the very little amount of self control in order to not do something that they themselves know is going to harm them, then are they really dependable people?
Let's say the whole smoking walabaloo is a cliff.
Someone who drives off a cliff with the complete knowledge that this isn't a good idea isn't helpless. Just stupid.
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The relation between alone and lonely.
Alone and lonely aren't synonyms. Worth sitting with the difference before you blur them.
Why I stopped reading product Substacks.
Eight subscriptions ago, my product thinking was a compressed mirror of whatever Marty Cagan and Lenny Rachitsky had written that month. Then I unsubscribed, one at a time, over a single quarter. The thinking that came back was sharper, and the trade is one I am quietly recommending to anyone who will sit with it.