By Colby Kultgen
I Built A Brain Dump Tool, Emotions That Don't Exist in English, and The Goal Is To Experience
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Hello friends!
Here is your weekly dose of 1% Better.
The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week.
Today's newsletter is sponsored by Perplexity.
1. I built a brain dump tool! - try it here
I'll be honest.
Sometimes when a potential sponsor sends me their product, it really doesn't live up to the hype.
That was NOT the case with this one.
Perplexity reached out and asked me to build something using their new powerful tool, Computer.
They told me it could spin up a working app from a plain English description, with AI agents coordinating across 19 models.
I was skeptical.
But this thing completely exceeded my expectations.
I asked it to build me a "brain dump" tool (something I've always wanted), and in under an hour I had a working app complete with:
- Four sorting buckets: To-dos, Decisions, Ideas, and Let go
- Google Calendar integration to schedule items directly
- A Journal view for stream-of-consciousness writing
- A mood detection pass that highlights the emotional tone of what you wrote
- A Pomodoro Timer and ambient noise generator (rain, ocean, café)
It turned out so good, I genuinely think I could sell it as a standalone productivity app.
So here's what I want you to do:
- Try out the Brain Dump tool. And let me know your feedback (good and bad).
- Build something of your own with Perplexity Computer. If you've ever had a "I wish there was an app for this" moment, now's the time to build it.
I've had at least 5 different readers send me this article, and after reading it I completely understand why.
The whole thing is fantastic, but this section hit me particularly hard:
I think I’ve been starved for that. Not success. Not validation. Just presence. The feeling of actually occupying my own life instead of hovering a few inches above it like a ghost. Because for years, I’ve lived like someone keeping score. Every choice secretly categorized: good decision, bad decision, step forward, step back. Even my relationships felt like investments I needed returns on. If I loved someone and it didn’t last, I’d think I wasted my time. Wasted my youth. Wasted my softness. What a terrible way to think about love, as if it’s a transaction. As if the only worthwhile affection is the one that stays forever. As if the point wasn’t simply that, for a while, two people got to feel less alone in the world.
Lately, I’ve started to suspect that nothing is actually wasted. Not the bad dates. Not the friendships that dissolved. Not the years I spent confused and insecure and trying too hard. All of it shaped the exact texture of my heart. Like water carving stone slowly, imperceptibly. If I had “won” all the time, if every person had chosen me, if every plan had worked, if I had glided through life untouched, I would be smooth and empty. Impressive maybe, but hollow. Instead, I’m dented. Scratched. Full of strange little scars. And I’m beginning to feel grateful for them. They feel like evidence. Like proof that I didn’t sit on the sidelines watching everyone else live.
3. A list of emotions that don't exist in English
This weekend I learned about the word Fjaka from my Croatian friend.
It roughly translates to "the art of doing nothing". Basically, a guilt-free state of stillness where nothing needs to be done, and you can simply exist for a moment.
This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to find more of these words that don’t have a clean English counterpart.
Here's what I compiled:
If you have any more, please send them my way!
4. A useful analogy for living a good life
I heard this over the weekend and loved it:
The best analogy that I've heard for living a good life is that each week is just a seven game series and you just gotta win four to advance.
Realistically, Sunday and Monday, those are probably losses. Friday and Saturday, probably wins. So you just gotta win two of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and you're gonna be living a good life.
Now, maybe you steal one on Sunday, you have a Sunday fun day. All of a sudden, you just need one of them. If you have a bad Friday, you're behind the eight-ball, you might wanna just chalk it up to a loss that week. It's really changed my frame of thinking and how I approach my days.
It reminded me of something I call “The Average Tuesday Rule”:
The quality of your ordinary Tuesday is the most accurate measure of your life satisfaction.
Think about it. We spend 80% of our lives on these “nothing special” days, yet we obsess over optimizing the other 20% (weekends, vacations, milestones).
But when your average Tuesday is an 8/10 it means you're pretty much guaranteed to win the week.
Because if the most ordinary day of your life is already good, you don’t need to escape your life every weekend just to feel okay.
5. The greatest tweet ever written?
😂
A few more things I'm into this week:
⏳ Visualization I found eye-opening: Why Time Flies
🗣️ Commencement speech I watched twice: Conan O’Brien Harvard Commencement Address 2026
📝 Article I found inspiring: The 100 Connections Challenge
📰 Quote that's rolling around in my head:
You can be genuinely good at work that is completely wrong for your nervous system.
P.S. I love it when you guys share stuff with me. If something made you think, laugh, or go down a rabbit hole this week, send it my way.
— Colby
