Using AI as a purchasing tool (Part One)

Making a large and complicated purchase that includes a chain of components is never clear-cut and often involves various price structures independent of one another. Home building, projects and renovations are such perfect examples that incorporate a multitude of elements and the variability of each one of them.

If not properly handled, they can end up having a huge impact on the final cost of the project especially considering the job uniqueness and its infrequent occurrence. Early this month, I decided to build a 262’ long fence in my backyard. There was a short 45 year-old 89’ wooden fence in the south end of my garden that was totally rotten and ready to fall that I felt needed to be dealt with. 

I didn’t like it that much but was a convenient 3’ tall fence separating my property to that of the neighbor to the south. As always, one thought led to another and “while I was at it” I decided to look for a more encompassing fence, 6’ tall, that would free me of the deer invasion that we’ve suffered since 2020. This is the thought process that initiated the project. 

Tomorrow we’ll see how I turned to AI for the cost estimate….

My trick for falling asleep (Part Two)

My trick for falling asleep sounds so simple that you might say, “It can’t be true!” I’ve challenged it myself by researching deeper into the subject and found that my description of the “hyperactive brain” was spot‑on. Calling it this way is just what clinicians describe as cognitive arousal — the mind generating thoughts, associations, and narratives that keep the nervous system alert. It doesn’t require insomnia; it’s simply a mind that doesn’t downshift easily. 

The way I describe it — thoughts that grow, get loud, and become hurdles — seems to be a very accurate depiction of how mental activity can block the transition into sleep. In fact my breathing technique is not just intuitive, it’s grounded in solid science. The idea of focusing intensely on one’s breathing is essentially a form of attention anchoring, a core mechanism in meditation and in many clinical sleep interventions. 

In fact by giving my mind a single, simple task, I prevent it from spinning up new thoughts and that’s exactly what mindfulness‑based therapies aim for. By moving to slow, attentive breathing I tell my body to shift into a “rest and digest” mode. It makes my heart rate drop, decreases muscle tension, and transitions my brain toward sleep‑friendly rhythms. It also interrupts rumination loops by becoming my sole and unique focus. 

This is precisely the mechanism that breaks the chain of escalating thoughts. It’s certainly true that your years of meditation help. People who meditate regularly show faster sleep onset, lower nighttime anxiety, better emotional regulation, improved ability to redirect attention. Still that very simple technique is accessible to anyone, even without meditation experience. 

I’m not presenting this approach as a magic cure or a rigid rule. I’m just describing my experience, my struggle, my discovery and my encouragement to others. Finally, I’m not trying to force sleep, I’m just creating the conditions in which sleep can arrive on its own. Of course, much easier said than done!

My trick for falling asleep (Part One)

I’ve always struggled with falling asleep, sometimes in my bed at home, but mostly while flying overnight in planes. It’s not that I suffer from insomnia, but rather a hyperactive brain that doesn’t give me much break except when I meditate, but that’s the result of many years of practice.

No matter what kind of thoughts occupy my little mind, positive, negative, fun, scary or whatever category it falls in, it always grows, gets loud and becomes the big hurdle to my wanting to sleep. 

Still, I believe that I’m finally holding the key to quieting it down and that has to do with intensely observing my breathing to the point that it becomes my sole and unique focus. And it works. I’m sure my meditation practice comes as a great help in making me succeed, but there is no reason for anyone not to try it! 

In the next blog, I will attempt to check if my assumption holds water… or not!

More heat, less Aiguille du Midi...

Mountain erosion is not something new, but it seems to be happening much more frequently as the planet heats up and the permafrost that used to hold together high altitude peaks in the Alps and elsewhere in the world is no longer able to hold massive rock formations together. 

On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, a major rockfall occurred on the north face of the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif above Chamonix, France. Over 500,000 cubic feet of rock broke away at an altitude above 11,800 feet (3,600 meters) in the Mallory area, sending a massive plume of dust and debris down the mountain. 

This summer’s extreme heat waves destabilized high-altitude permafrost and rock walls, triggered safety checks by the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc and followed the closure of the peak's famous ice tunnel due to melting. Other iconic peaks are failing structurally too. 

On the Matterhorn, intense summer heat waves have triggered frequent, erratic rock falls. Mountain guide associations in Switzerland and Italy have repeatedly been forced to suspend guided tours on major routes (like the Hörnligrat ridge) as the traditional frost holding the pathways together is simply liquefying. 

Also, right now, scientists and residents are anxiously monitoring the Spitze Stei rock formation looming over the village of Kandersteg, Switzerland. Through decaying permafrost, the mountainside has been actively losing height and parts of it have been shifting by up to 70 centimeters (2.3 feet) per day during peak summer melt. Geologists estimate that if the unstable formation collapses all at once, it could unleash 500 to 700 million cubic feet of rock, creating a landslide that could dwarf the Blatten disaster of May 2025. 

I guess that in the end, what goes up must always go down! 

The power of curiosity (Part Three)

Of course developing curiosity is good and well but there’s also such a thing as unhealthy curiosity. Seeking answers is not automatically wisdom and can become: 

• A compulsive consumption of information 
• An intrusion into other people's lives 
• A fascination with sensationalism 
• An endless trip into internet rabbit holes 
• Collecting facts without understanding them 
• Constantly looking for novelty and being unable to concentrate 

There’s therefore novelty-seeking and genuine curiosity. Novelty says: “What's new?” Curiosity says: “What's interesting here that I don't yet understand?” The second is much more profound. Finally here might be the greatest benefit to healthy curiosity, it’s one of the best antidotes to certainty.

When we are certain we already know, the investigation stops, but when we say “I wonder…”, the door opens again. That is why I think curiosity and humility are closely related. The curious person implicitly acknowledges: “My picture of reality is incomplete,” and that realization can become increasingly valuable with age. 

If I could reduce the whole idea to one sentence, I might put it this way: Knowledge tells us what we know; curiosity keeps us aware of how much remains to be discovered. This might be one of the reasons why a genuinely curious person can remain young in mind long after seemingly becoming old.

The power of curiosity (Part Two)

For those of us who don’t leverage curiosity as we should or don’t use much of it at all, the question becomes whether curiosity can be developed throughout life? 

I personally don't think curiosity is a fixed personality trait. Sure, some of us start life naturally inquisitive. Others become curious because something awakens their interest. And curiosity can also be deliberately cultivated. In fact, there is a wonderful paradox. We don't necessarily become curious by finding interesting things, but just like the professional interviewer, we become curious by learning to look for interesting questions.

I find a useful way to cultivate it by developing a habit of asking one more question. It works like this, when we run into something interesting, don't immediately move on, instead, ask one additional question. For example: We read that unusually hot summers can influence elections, we ask ourselves how come? We discover that one political party responds differently, we ask ourselves why? 

We discover that voters don't necessarily respond to temperature rationally, we wonder what psychological mechanism is involved? Suddenly, a casual observation has become a highly informative journey. From a practical standpoint, I like nurturing and using a small habit that begins with “ I wonder…” Then, whenever something catches your attention, I formulate it as: 

• I wonder why… 
• I wonder how… 
• I wonder whether… 
• I wonder what would happen if… 

We don't have to investigate every question. That's important. Curiosity should be playful, not another stiff and stilted obligation! Let’s start developing this habit by choosing, once a day, one question and spend 10–20 minutes following it. Over several months, this can have a remarkable result. We begin to notice questions everywhere. 

Next time we’ll see that there could be some slippery slope involved with curiosity and how to stay away from it...

The power of curiosity (Part One)

Can we learn well without curiosity and what is a life without this important trait? Also can curiosity be developed along a lifetime and how can we learn how to develop a healthy dose of that trait? 

All these questions have always been part of my quest for improving my way of life and I would go even further: curiosity is not just an aid to learning; it might be the most potent of all engines of learning. A person can certainly acquire knowledge without much curiosity—through discipline, schooling, obligation, repetition, or necessity—but the quality and depth of that learning are usually different. 

Curiosity changes the way we learn. There is an important difference between: “I have to learn this.” and “I wonder why this is so?” We can say that if the first produces competence, the second can bring understanding. It’s a fact that curiosity makes us ask the questions that take us beyond the obvious: 

• Why does this happen? 
• Is that really true? 
• What would happen if…? 
• How did we come to believe this? 
• What am I missing? 
• Could there be another explanation? 
• What would convince me that I am wrong? 

That last question is particularly valuable. Healthy curiosity includes wondering about our own assumptions. Without it, learning can become largely a process in which we collect facts, opinions and experiences without continually reorganizing them into a deeper understanding. This leaves us with a pretty logical question as to what life can be without curiosity? It certainly doesn’t need to be an unhappy life. 

Some people can live a perfectly comfortable, loving and meaningful life while being relatively uncurious, but in that case something big is lost. Curiosity gives life a kind of mental freshness. It allows familiar things to become interesting again. A tree isn't simply "a tree"; it becomes a question: Why does it grow this way? Why are its leaves shaped like that? How old might it be? What is happening underground? 

Same thing with people. Instead of thinking “I know what he is like,” curiosity says: “I wonder what I don't know about him.” Even most importantly, curiosity keeps the future open. It says: “There might still be something wonderful that I haven't discovered.” That’s a particularly powerful attitude as we grow older. Aging inevitably reduces some possibilities, but curiosity continually creates new ones. 

In the next blog we’ll see how we can cultivate or re-awaken our own curiosity, so please, stay with me...