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A major shift has happened.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve coached and talked to thousands of people—in calls, DMs, emails, and comments on our social posts.
And we’ve started to notice something unsettling.
It started with people asking us the usual questions—people trying to get a bit more clarity:
- “What topic should I write about?”
- “Which type of business should I start?”
- “Should I stay in my job or try something new?”
But then, the uncertainty accelerated.
People started asking us to make their decisions FOR them:
- “I’m overwhelmed by options—how do I even choose? What would you do?”
- “I feel like everyone else has this online writing thing figured out. What am I missing?”
- “Time is running out. What should I even focus on now? My job or my side hustle?”
And over the last 3 months, people seem to be getting more frantic—as if they can’t trust themselves anymore:
- “I’m scared of wasting the next 2-3 years on the wrong business. How do I avoid that?”
- “I’m torn between multiple options and I don’t know who to listen to. I’m scared about committing to the wrong thing!”
- “I keep getting excited about a new writing project but then talking myself out of it. Why?”
In other words, people are more uncertain than ever, they’re way more distracted, and they’re making far less progress. And it’s keeping them spinning, stuck in the same place for months, even years on end.
And once this became clear to us, we realized something:
There is a recession sweeping through modern life.
But this isn’t a financial one.
It’s a Clarity Recession—and it's everywhere you look:
- That friend who's been "thinking about" starting their business for 2 years.
- Your colleague who spends every lunch break researching career moves but never makes the leap.
- The person in your DMs asking for your 47th opinion on a decision they already know the answer to.
Sound familiar?
People are paralyzed by choices that should be simple.
And they’re drowning in options that all feel “good enough” but they don’t know which one to pick.
This isn't because they’re weak or they lack ambition.
This is happening at a societal level and the data, to be honest, is SCARY:
The average person consumes 34GB of content daily. That’s 100,000+ words. Every. Single. Day.
To put that in perspective, someone living in the 1500s consumed less information in their ENTIRE LIFETIME than you consume before lunch on a Tuesday.
But it gets worse:
- We spend 2.5+ hours every day scrolling social media. That's 38 full days per year spent consuming, not creating, living, or deciding.
- Our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds (2000) to 8 seconds (2025).
- AI usage is going through the roof, with people outsourcing all their thinking and decision-making to AI.
We've become experts at crafting the perfect ChatGPT prompt to ask for advice…
But we've forgotten how to sit with a decision and trust ourselves.
In other words, we're drowning in input but we lack the CLARITY to make a decision and actually make progress.
This is why we’re living through a Clarity Recession.
And this surfaces in people’s lives in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways:
- 47 browser tabs to research a decision they could have been made in 10 minutes.
- "Thinking about" that career move for 6 months but they haven't taken a single action.
- Asking ChatGPT, Google, Reddit, their friends, emailing that podcast host—everyone except asking themselves.
- Consuming another course, book, podcast—hoping THIS will be the thing that makes it clear.
People know what they should do, but they keep looking for permission, validation, and certainty.
The pattern is always the same:
- They consume…
- Then they overthink…
- Which means they delay the decision…
- So they reach for more content to “help” them make it…
And they repeat this cycle over and over again.
And there’s a huge cost to this vicious cycle.
People feel stressed and overwhelmed.
But the real cost is what's NOT happening in their life:
- The city they haven't moved to.
- The business they haven't started.
- The habit they haven't committed to.
- The fitness regime they haven't kickstarted.
- The relationship conversation they haven't had.
Meanwhile, life is passing them by.
And if this sounds life you…
Here’s the good news.
It’s not your fault.
You're not broken, indecisive, or lacking something “fundamental.”
You're operating in an environment literally engineered to keep you confused, consuming, and stuck:
- Every platform profits from your attention.
- Every company selling you a “quick fix” benefits from your uncertainty.
- Every algorithm is optimized to keep you scrolling, refreshing, and scrolling some more.
So it’s no wonder you feel like this!
You're responding exactly how the system designed you to respond.
But what if you could break this doom loop and take another path?
What if you could climb your way out of the Clarity Recession?
Over the next 7 days, we’re going to break down:
- Why this Clarity Recession is happening (and why it's getting worse)
- Why traditional "decision-making frameworks" don't work anymore
- What actually DOES work in the age of the Clarity Recession
And tons more.
You need a system to help you cut through all this noise, trust yourself again, and start making decisions that actually move your life forward.
Can’t wait to share more with you,
—Dickie & Cole
PS - In tomorrow’s email, we’ll also share a sneak peek of how we’re personally fighting against this Clarity Recession.
So, here’s the subject line of that email (so you can be on the lookout for it tomorrow):
[Day 1] What’s causing the Clarity Recession?
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PPS - You’ll get the next email tomorrow around 8 AM EST.
Chat then!
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