notes from liguria, italy

Do You Really Know What You Want?

By Margherita Patrone - Sept 5, 2026 - 4 min read - Issue #10

I am writing this on my way home from Valencia.I have spent the last few days at ESOMAR, surrounded by people whose job, in one way or another, is to understand people.What they think.What they want.What they buy.What they might do next.And for an industry that has spent decades asking people questions, there was one sentence that stayed with me.Stan Sthanunathan said:“Everybody lies. The age of asking is over, and the age of listening and observing has begun.”
Everybody lies.It sounds rather brutal.But I have been thinking about it ever since.Because perhaps lying is not always about deliberately saying something that is untrue.Sometimes, we simply do not know ourselves as well as we think we do.What we say and what we do
Article content
Years ago, someone gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten:Listen to what people say, but look at what they do.At the time, I thought it was quite cynical.Now I think there is something very human about it.We can genuinely believe that we are going to exercise more, spend less time on our phones, change jobs, save money, see our friends more often or finally start that thing we have been thinking about.We are not necessarily being dishonest when we say it.We mean it.But wanting something and behaving accordingly are two different things.Behavioural science has a name for this: the intention-behaviour gap.There is also the distinction between stated and revealed preferences.What we say we prefer is one thing.What our behaviour reveals is another.And sometimes, if you really want to understand someone, observing that difference can tell you more than another question ever could.It made me wonder what would happen if we applied the same thinking to ourselves.Look at the evidence
I am quite disciplined by nature.If I tell myself I am going to do something, I usually do it.But I do not think I was simply born this way.Over the years, I have deliberately built routines and repeated them until they have become part of my life.Every morning, I meditate and exercise.I do it at home in Liguria.I do it when I am in London.And this week, I did it in my hotel room in Valencia.Not because I wake up every morning feeling extraordinarily motivated.Sometimes I would much rather stay in bed.But I have repeated the behaviour enough times that there is very little discussion left to have with myself.I just do it.And I have started to think that this is one of the quiet ways we build trust in ourselves.Not through what we tell ourselves we are going to do, but through the evidence we accumulate over time.One morning does not tell you very much.Neither does one bad morning.But hundreds of mornings start to tell a story.The same is true of writing.I decided I wanted to write consistently, so I started writing consistently.This newsletter arrives every week because, little by little, writing it has become part of the rhythm of my life.I do not say this because I think everyone should exercise every morning or write a newsletter every week.There are thousands of things I do not do.What interests me is the relationship between repetition and identity.Perhaps we spend too much time asking ourselves:Who do I want to become?And not enough time asking:What am I repeatedly doing?Because our behaviour leaves clues.But there is something else
Article content
For a long time, I thought consistency was mostly about discipline.If something mattered enough, you made it happen.And I still believe there is truth in that.But moving back to Italy has made me realise that there is another part of the equation.Environment.Since coming home, some of the things I value most have become strangely effortless.I want to be outside, and the sea is there.I want to move, and I can walk straight from my house into nature.I want to cook, and food here is woven into everyday life.I want to spend time with the people I love, and many of them are close.I want space to think, and life somehow feels quieter.None of these things requires me to become more disciplined.They simply happen more naturally because the environment around me supports them.And this has changed the way I think about personal growth.We often assume that becoming the person we want to be requires adding something.More discipline.More motivation.A better morning routine.Another goal.Another system.But perhaps sometimes the question is not:How can I try harder?Perhaps it is:How can I build a life in which the things that matter to me require less effort?The life around us
There is a concept in behavioural science that I particularly love: friction.Small changes in our environment can make a behaviour easier or harder.Put something within reach and we are more likely to use it.Add a few extra steps and we become less likely to bother.It sounds almost too simple.But I wonder how much of our lives works exactly like this.There are places, relationships, routines and environments that create friction between us and the person we want to be.And there are others that quietly remove it.Perhaps this is part of what I have been feeling since returning to Liguria.I have not become someone else.If anything, I feel more like myself.The difference is that I am no longer using quite as much energy trying to fit myself into a life that does not feel natural to me.There is less noise.And when there is less noise, it becomes easier to hear what matters.Observe yourself
I left Valencia thinking about the future of market research.I am arriving home thinking about something much more personal.Maybe Stan is right.Perhaps we should ask a little less and observe a little more.Including when the person we are trying to understand is ourselves.Look at what you repeatedly make time for.Look at what you protect when life becomes busy.Look at the people you keep returning to.Look at where your energy naturally goes.Look at the things you have continued doing long after the initial enthusiasm disappeared.And also look at your environment.What does your life make easy?What does it make unnecessarily difficult?Because perhaps understanding ourselves requires both.Looking at what we do.And looking at the conditions in which we are trying to do it.Sometimes we need discipline.Sometimes we need repetition.And sometimes we need to change the environment around us so that living the way we want becomes a little more natural.So this week, instead of asking you what you want, I want to leave you with a different question:If you stopped listening to what you say you value and simply observed the way you live, what would you discover?A late-summer note, written somewhere between Valencia and the Italian Riviera.Until next Saturday,
Margherita