By Colby Kultgen

Schedule Your Fun Before Work, How to Disconnect From Tech in 2026, and The Truth About Competition

Read online / Read time: 4 minutes

Hello friends!

Welcome to 1% Better.

The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week—no fluff, just the good stuff.

Let's get right into it.

A simple rule to prevent work from taking over your life

The most dangerous 8 words in the English language:

“I’ll do it when work gets less busy.”

I’ve caught myself saying this more times than I can count.

Trying to convince myself that one day everything will settle down. That I’ll finally have time for the trip, the hobby, the experiences I keep putting off.

But that’s just not how life works.

The reality is, you have to make time for those things. Otherwise, work will quietly take over your entire schedule.

It’s Parkinson’s Law in action:
​“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

I’ve noticed this in my own life.

When I schedule work first, it expands to consume everything.

But when I schedule something meaningful first, the opposite happens. Work compresses to fit around it.

We’ve even seen this play out at scale with the four-day workweek experiments. Companies reduced working hours, yet productivity stayed the same or even improved.

That’s why I’ve started being more intentional about putting meaningful things on the calendar first.

One framework I love comes from my friend Ben Meer, originally popularized by Jesse Itzler:

A quote about communication everyone should tattoo on their brain

I experienced this firsthand over the weekend.

A few friends and I got together for a board game night. Most of us thought it was going to be a low-key thing. Drinks, games, nothing too serious.

But one friend had a very specific expectation for the night: they wanted everyone to be fully engaged. Totally locked in to the game.

Now, it was valid for them to want that.

But the issue was that they never actually said it out loud.

So when the night naturally unfolded the way group hangouts do—side conversations, people on their phones between turns.

This friend quietly got more and more frustrated.

And eventually, it came out sideways. They blew up at someone else. Completely out of proportion to what had actually happened.

The lesson here is this: people can’t meet expectations they don’t know exist.

If something matters to you, say it.

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An article about how to disconnect from technology in 2026

​This is a super practical article about one guy’s attempt to completely overhaul his relationship with technology.

It’s definitely a bit on the extreme end of this topic.

He replaces everything from Gmail to Spotify to his Apple Watch.

But the most useful part is the simple spreadsheet he created to audit every app, device, and service in his life.

Even if you don’t go nearly that far, it’s a great exercise.

Just seeing everything laid out makes it much easier to identify what’s actually worth keeping and what isn’t.

A reminder that there's less competition than you think

Loved this from Shaan Puri:

A tweet I thought was funny

Have a great week!

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