The Everyday Things Method

  • Observation →

    What happened that you can verify in shelf, in channel, or in pricing.

    Includes: Assortment, packaging, claim language, placement, distribution, price moves, promo cadence

    Not: Opinions, vibes, predictions, or “everyone is talking about…”

  • Mechanism →

    Why the system produced that outcome: incentives, constraints, and tradeoffs.

    Includes: Unit economics, retailer rules, consumer effort/friction, compliance, supply constraints, attention limits

    Not: Outcomes stated as causes (“it grew because it was better”)

  • Implication

    What changed: what to watch, what’s now possible, what now harder.

    Includes: Leading indicators, second-order effects, where strategy breaks, what decisions get re-priced

    Not: Copy-this tactics, playbooks, or “do this now” prescriptions

Content Lanes

  • Primary question: What makes this category legible (or illegible) at the point of decision?

    Focus: category boundaries, usage frequency vs preference, structural reasons demand stalls

  • Primary question: Where is efficiency suppressing demand—or where is demand underwriting efficiency?

    Focus: optimization tradeoffs, premature efficiency, when “tightening” reduces growth

  • Primary question: What do people reliably do under current friction, regardless of what they say?

    Focus: convenience, cognitive load, default behaviors, where stated preference fails

  • Primary question: Given real constraints, what strategies are structurally possible—and which fail even with good execution?

    Focus: unavoidable tradeoffs, constraint-bound choices, why good intentions don’t travel through the system

  • Primary question: What does this move signal about constraints—not sentiment?

    Focus: pricing, retail moves, earnings, distribution shifts; separating noise from structure