Welcome to Verstreuen—meaning “to scatter”—where I unpack the ideas I’ve collected this week in my 🗃️ Zettelkasten, “note box,” personal knowledge management system. Here, I’ll share the highlights, insights, and stories I find interesting—and think you will too!

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🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 55 new additions to the Zettelkasten—here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 Identity through Subtraction

🟦 The Advantage of Seeing What Others Miss

🟥 How Iron Became Worth More Than Gold

We often think of identity as something we build—like stacking experiences and labels into a résumé. But lately, I’ve been wondering if it’s actually the opposite. Maybe identity isn’t created through accumulation, but through subtraction.

When we’re young, identity is all about absorption. Everything feels new—music, fashion, slang, beliefs. We try things on like outfits, experimenting with the world around us. That exploration is important.

But as I’ve gotten older, a quiet shift has started. I’m no longer collecting indiscriminately. I say no more often. I’m letting go of borrowed aesthetics, outgrowing opinions I once clung to. I care less about what fits in—and more about what fits me.

I don’t feel like I’m becoming someone new. I feel like I’m uncovering who I’ve been all along.

That’s what unbecoming means. It’s not quitting—it’s curating.

Identity isn’t a brand you craft. It’s what remains when you stop performing. It’s the constant underneath the phases.

Not just what’s true, but what’s essential. Not facts about you—but traits that resurface. The ones that need no explanation. The ones people close to you name before you ever did.

Becoming isn’t always about adding.
Sometimes, it’s about shedding everything that was never really you.

—🗃️—

Good work—whether design, writing, or strategy—starts with seeing what everyone else skims past.

So much of what’s powerful in life is hidden in plain sight. Not buried under complexity, but hidden in familiarity. We stop noticing things—not because they’re unimportant, but because we’ve seen them too many times without looking.

The best writing, design, art, ideas—they don’t add something new. They reveal something that was always there.

I think about this often when I am writing this newsletter—specifically how I can slow down and sit with a single quote or idea and expand on its deeper implications, connect broader ideas, uncover some uncommon sense and share a perspective that usually goes unnoticed.

That’s the real work, I think—not chasing novelty, but sharpening perception.

Not trying to be the loudest voice in the room, but the one that sees clearly and says something true.

Because in a world obsessed with what’s next, the most underrated advantage might just be the ability to notice what’s already there.

—🗃️—

We talk about value like it’s a fact. Like there’s a logical formula we can plug things into: utility in, price out.

But that leaves out a huge part of what defines value.

Value is belief, and our beliefs are shaped by culture, emotion, and context.

A concert ticket from 10 years ago might be trash to one person and a treasure to another. A $20 drug‑store watch tells time as accurately as a $20,000 Swiss timepiece; the difference is meaning, not mechanics.

Philosopher Robert S. Hartman described value as alignment to an “ideal”—something I explored more deeply in this earlier edition. But the key insight is this: ideals are personal, never neutral. They’re shaped by the beliefs and narratives we attach to them.

Take gold, for example.

Gold has long been seen as the ultimate symbol of value. It’s beautiful and rare—but so are other metals. What gives gold its power isn’t just its physical properties. It’s our shared belief in its meaning.

In 1813, Prussia was fighting for its survival. To fund the war, citizens—especially the aristocracy—were asked to donate their gold jewelry to support the war effort. In return, they received iron replicas engraved with the phrase:

“I gave gold for iron.”

Suddenly, iron wasn’t worthless—it was honored. Wearing it wasn’t a sign of poverty, but of sacrifice. Iron became more valuable than gold.

That’s the real lever behind value.

Not scarcity.
Not utility.
Not innovation.

Belief.

You don’t turn iron into gold through alchemy.
You do it through myth, meaning, and shared belief.

So if you want to create value, stop asking:

“How do I make this better?”

Start asking:

“What does this let people believe about themselves?”

Because in the end, the world isn’t priced by logic.
It’s priced by belief.

—🗃️—

Closing Thoughts

All three ideas echo the same principle: less but better.

This isn’t minimalism for minimalism’s sake. It’s strategic subtraction.
When you clear away what’s almost right, what’s exactly right can finally shine.

• Subtract the false to reveal the true.

• Notice the ordinary to uncover the extraordinary.

• Shape belief to create disproportionate value.

Progress doesn’t always come from adding more.
Sometimes, the quickest path forward is a bold edit.

Thanks for reading Verstreuen! 👋 Until next week -GH