i introduced my girlfriend to invincible a few months ago.
it was a rewatch for me. i already knew every twist. every punch that was coming. every “holy shit” moment that made me stare at the credits the first time around. but she didn’t.
and watching her watch it for the first time became its own kind of experience. i’d glance over during certain scenes. not to spoil anything, just to catch the reaction.
the gasp when something BRUTAL happened. the way she’d get attached to a character i already knew the fate of. the “wait, WHAT” at the end of episode one. don’t worry, i won’t spoil it for you.
and i found myself feeling something i didn’t expect: i was learning more the second time through than i did the first. because now i wasn’t just consuming. i was paying attention to what made it work. why that scene landed. why that character decision hit. why the pacing at the end of the season felt so earned.
this is what i do.
i log roughly 200 films a year on letterboxd. and i watch more tv than movies, so you can imagine how much time we’re actually talking about here.
PS everyone should have a letterboxd! let’s be mutuals there.
it looks like a hobby. it looks like entertainment. and for a long time, i kind of let it sit in that box too. the thing i did after work when i was too tired to be productive. the guilty pleasure.
but here’s the thing i keep coming back to: the hours i spend with stories i love are not a break from my creative work.
they ARE the work.
every show, every film, every game you get lost in is teaching you something. pacing. emotional payoff. how to earn a reaction. how to build tension and release it. how to make someone care about something that isn’t real. the people who build the strongest creative instincts didn’t learn it from business books. they learned it from paying attention to what moved them.
and most of us have been trained to feel guilty about that.
we’ve been taught there’s a hierarchy of what “counts” as learning. books count. courses count. podcasts about productivity count. but the show you binged until 2am? the game you lost a whole weekend to? that’s consumption, not education. entertainment, not fuel. and that framework is wrong in both directions.
I shared a post last week to the inner circle of builders, the 4 files that make ai actually useful for your business. If you’re interested in checking it out, there’s the link.
Now back to the letter
plenty of business books are garbage.
i know this because i’ve read them. i know you’ve read them too.
they recycle the same three ideas with different branding and call it a new framework. you close the book, you feel accomplished, and two weeks later you couldn’t tell someone the thesis if they put a gun to your head. but nobody questions whether reading it was a good use of time because “reading” sits on the right side of the hierarchy.
meanwhile, the person who watches great tv instinctively understands storytelling in a way that can’t be taught. they know when something feels earned versus unearned.
they know when a moment is rushed. they know what it feels like to be let down by a finale that didn’t pay off what it set up. they’ve experienced it hundreds of times, across genres, across formats, across decades of storytelling. that pattern recognition is not theoretical. it’s visceral.
and it’s worth more than any framework.
i noticed this in my own work before i had words for it. there are creative decisions i’ve made in branding, in writing, in client pitches that didn’t come from a strategy book. they came from somewhere else. a pacing decision i stole from a show i loved. a way of building tension before a reveal that i picked up from a game. a way of earning an emotional moment that i absorbed from a film i’ve watched five times. i only knew how to do these things because i’d seen them done well in stories i actually cared about.
i call this taste-driven learning.
your taste is not a distraction from your work. it IS your work. every show you binge, every film you rewatch, every game you sink hours into is building an instinct. an instinct for what works. for what moves people. for what lands emotionally and what falls flat. that instinct cannot be copied. it can’t be taught in a course. it’s yours because it’s built on the specific things that pulled YOU in, that made YOU feel something, that YOU couldn’t stop thinking about.
the guilt is the only thing holding you back from using it.
so how do you actually turn your obsessions into a creative advantage?
first: kill the guilt. it’s the real waste of energy.
the guilt loop goes like this: you watch something you love, you feel bad about it, you promise to be “more productive” tomorrow, tomorrow comes and you’re drained, so you watch something, feel bad, repeat. the guilt is what turns a useful input into a drain. it’s like running your engine while parked. you’re burning fuel and going nowhere.
i used to feel this all the time. i’d finish a season of something incredible, feel genuinely moved, and then immediately feel the guilt creep in. “you should be reading. you should be working. you should be doing something that looks productive.”
but the shame was never about the consumption. it was about what i’d been told consumption was supposed to look like.
let it go. stop apologising for liking what you like. the things you love are not a problem to solve. they’re fuel you haven’t learned to use yet.
second: watch like a student once in a while, not just a consumer.
most of the time, you should just enjoy the thing. that’s the whole point. but when something hits you, when a scene grabs you by the chest, when a character decision makes you pause, when a story turn catches you off guard, ask yourself one question: why did that land?
one minute of curiosity turns consumption into curriculum.
i did this on the invincible rewatch. there’s a specific moment in season one, no spoilers, where the show does something brutal and then just. lets it sit. no music. no dialogue. no relief. it holds you in the discomfort long enough that you feel it in your body. and i thought: that’s pacing. that’s restraint. that’s a creator who trusts their audience enough to not overexplain. i think about that moment every time i’m tempted to over-narrate something in my own writing.
you don’t need to analyse everything. you just need to notice what moves you.
third: build a taste library, not a reading list.
a reading list is what you’re supposed to consume. it’s obligation dressed up as discipline. a taste library is what you actually love. it’s the shows you can’t stop thinking about. the films you rewatch every year. the games you lose yourself in. the stuff that pulls you without anyone telling you it should.
follow the pull. if you’re obsessed with a certain director, watch their entire filmography. if a genre keeps grabbing you, go deeper into it. your taste is trying to tell you something about who you are as a creative. listen to it.
your taste is a compass, not a distraction. the needle points toward what you’re meant to make.
fourth: remix what moves you.
this is where taste becomes output. take something you learned from a story you loved and apply it to your own work. not copying. translating. if a show taught you something about pacing, use it in your next newsletter. if a game taught you about world-building, use it in how you present your brand. if a film taught you about earning an emotional moment, use it in how you tell your own story.
i’ve done this more times than i can count. a client pitch where i structured the narrative like a season arc. a newsletter where i borrowed the tension-release rhythm of a show i loved. a brand story where i built the world before i introduced the product because a game taught me that context makes the reveal matter.
the people who build the strongest creative instincts aren’t the ones who read the most books. they’re the ones who paid attention to what moved them and figured out how to use it.
your netflix queue is not a guilty pleasure. your letterboxd history is not a distraction. your steam library is not a waste of time.
it’s all curriculum. you just haven’t been treating it that way.
now if you’ll excuse me, i have season two of invincible to rewatch with someone who has no idea what’s coming.
reply and tell me: what’s one show, film, or game that taught you something you still use? i actually want to know.
— mike