Writer at Silicon Canals

Lachlan Brown

Co-Publisher

Lachlan Brown is a writer at Silicon Canals contributing across the Mind pillar. His background blends formal training — a Graduate Diploma in Psychological Studies from Deakin University — with a long practice of Eastern philosophy and two decades of operating businesses from scratch. He writes about high-performance routines, decision-making under pressure, and the discipline of clarity in technology work — where the patterns that govern building also govern living. He splits his time between Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City.

Profile on Brown Brothers Media →

Mind

I have no close friends and I do not say that as a confession or a complaint — I say it as the most accurate thing I know about my life right now, and I am trying to hold it with honesty rather than explanation, and some days the honesty is enough and some days it is the loneliest sentence I know how to say

In a world obsessed with squad goals and chosen families, one writer discovers that admitting to having zero close friends isn't the confession they thought it would be—it's the beginning of understanding why emptiness might actually be exactly what they need.

Apr 7, 2026

Mind

The people who look back at the end of their lives with the least regret may not be the ones who made the fewest mistakes — they may be the ones who were most present for the life they were actually living

While you're busy waiting for your "real" life to begin after you lose the weight, find the perfect partner, or hit that magic number in your bank account, the people who die with genuine peace have discovered something profound about the messy, imperfect life happening right in front of them.

Apr 6, 2026

Mind

Self-compassion after failure may predict whether someone tries again, which means being hard on yourself may not be discipline

Scientists discovered that the people who bounce back fastest from failure aren't the ones with the toughest inner critic — they're the ones who treat themselves like they would a good friend who just screwed up.

Apr 6, 2026

Mind

People who want to change their lives but rarely start may not be lazy — they may be waiting for a feeling of readiness that rarely arrives on its own

I waited three years to start writing.

Apr 6, 2026

Mind

How loneliness actually ends — and why it’s not about finding your people

There's a version of overcoming loneliness that makes for a neat story: you find your people, everything clicks, and the emptiness disappears.

Apr 6, 2026

Mind

Most people who overcame years of laziness didn’t find motivation — they found a mirror they couldn’t look away from

The whole self-improvement world runs on a lie, and it's this: that lazy people know they're lazy and just need a push.

Apr 6, 2026

News

High intelligence doesn’t protect against bad decisions – it makes people better at constructing convincing justifications for the bad decisions they were already going to make

Here's a finding that stopped me cold: a 2012 study out of Yale found that people with the highest science literacy weren't the most aligned on contested facts.

Apr 6, 2026

Mind

The most emotionally strong people may not be the ones who rarely fall apart — they’re the ones who fall apart privately, reassemble without fanfare, and rarely use their recovery as a reason for anyone else to feel guilty

While the world celebrates those who never seem to break, the truly resilient are quietly falling apart in their bedrooms, rebuilding themselves piece by piece, and showing up tomorrow without ever mentioning the war they fought alone last night.

Apr 5, 2026

Mind

Few people teach children how to know their own worth — we teach them to perform, achieve, and behave, then wonder why so many adults still measure themselves against someone else’s ruler

We spend eighteen years teaching children to earn gold stars and good grades, then wonder why they spend the next thirty years unable to feel valuable without someone else's approval.

Apr 5, 2026

News

People who often research self-improvement but rarely start may not be lazy — they may have confused the feeling of learning with the feeling of changing

I have a confession.

Apr 5, 2026

Mind

The people who are best at hiding unhappiness may not be the stoic ones or the quiet ones — they may be the ones who give others just enough warmth to avoid being looked at too closely

They're the ones who've turned kindness into camouflage, mastering the art of giving just enough light to blind everyone to the darkness they're drowning in.

Apr 5, 2026

Mind

I’m 37 and the friendships in my life that have lasted are the ones where we stopped pretending — stopped curating what we showed each other, stopped performing the version of our lives that made sense on paper — and what replaced the pretending is the best thing I have built in the last decade

The night my successful friend admitted he was falling apart over drinks was the night I realized we'd all been lying to each other for years — and what happened when we finally stopped changed everything about how I understand friendship.

Apr 5, 2026