Curiosity, applied.

A closer look at why people decide what they decide, and what that means for the work trying to reach them.

Currently: building a community, writing daily case studies, open to select consulting work

Why people do what they do.

I'm Mariam, an organisational psychologist by training, and I've stayed curious about people well past where the degree ended.

That curiosity runs through consumer behaviour, but it doesn't stop there. It's also about how any of us end up being read by other people at all.

See the case studies

Why this exists

Most brand positioning work never actually gets to the person. It stays one level up, describing how a company wants to be seen, and calls that a strategy. Somewhere in the space between how a business sees itself and how someone actually decides to buy from it, the real answer sits, and most research stops short of it.

There's a version of you forming whether you're paying attention to it or not. It's built out of what you post, what you engage with, who you're seen next to, the pattern of what you choose to say and when you choose to say it. Most advice treats this like a campaign to run: stay visible, stay consistent, build the brand. I've never found that useful, mostly because what works is the authenticity of the connection which ends up resonating on a personal level or addressing a pain point, not just manufactured in board rooms with agendas and manifestos.

About me

I'm an organisational psychologist by training, though what actually stayed with me wasn't a method, it was a habit of not settling for the first explanation. Most things that look irrational up close make sense once you're willing to sit with the question longer than feels efficient. That's the actual thread here, less a subject I specialise in than a refusal to stop at “good enough.”

It shows up as a fairly stubborn relationship with my own work. I'll rewrite something four or five times if it still doesn't sound true, and at this point I trust that discomfort more than the temptation to just publish and move on. It's slower. I also think it's the only version of this worth doing.

That same curiosity doesn't stay inside work hours. A conversation, an ad, a decision someone made that doesn't quite add up, any of it can pull my attention for longer than the moment probably called for. It's not a special skill, just where my attention tends to go without being asked to.

I like sitting with a question longer than most people bother to. Most of what's on this site started that way, as something I decided was worth staying with.

What I'm building

Five threads, one thread of curiosity running through all of them.

Things I'm learning

Work

Community

Resources

Creative

Mon · Wed · Fri

Networking is Net Worth

Monday, Wednesday, Friday is networking, though I'd rather call it what it actually is: paying attention to people without calculating what they're worth to me yet.

Tue · Thu

Things I'm learning

Tuesday and Thursday is whatever I've been turning over that week: an AI-generated Monet and what it says about who gets to decide something is art, why marketing now has to work on two audiences at once, a person and the algorithm recommending them things, the lipstick effect and what it actually reveals about spending when money's tight, the fact that most of us have quietly stopped giving ourselves permission to fail at anything in public.

Saturdays

Personal notes

What I built, what didn't work, what I'm still stuck on. I'd rather document the process honestly than wait until it's presentable.

A second feed, for curation

The same instinct runs a second, separate feed on Instagram: things I found and think are worth someone else's attention.

Going deeper, on Substack

A Substack for whatever needs more room than a post allows.

Everything eventually gets organised into a reading list, by topic, not because I've read a lot, but because most of it is worth someone else's time too. The full list lives in the community.

Same structure every time. Problem, analysis, insight, recommendation, implementation, expected outcome. Not all of it is client work. Some of it is just the discipline of thinking a problem through properly instead of stopping at the first idea that sounds right.

Where this tends to be useful

Filter it by industry, by problem, by whichever angle you came here looking for. Broadly, it sits in three places: consumer and market research, the kind of synthesis that turns a pile of information into an actual decision, and the harder question of why an audience responds to one message and not another.

Consumer and market research

Customer behaviour and competitor research, turned into what a business should actually do.

Research and insights

Turning scattered data into something a team can act on.

Behaviour and marketing

Messaging and positioning research, with a behavioural read on why something isn't landing with an audience.

If there's a type of client this suits, it's someone who already suspects the answer isn't in the obvious data and hasn't had the time to go find the real one: founders, marketing teams, research teams stuck a few layers above the actual customer.

Alongside it, there's Accessline: real client work, not a case study, founder-led marketing for an accessibility audit and implementation company, mostly worked out in public on LinkedIn, including the parts that didn't work the first time.

What ends up here

What ends up here is what I'd want if I were looking for this myself: the full reading list, the case-study archive, the unglamorous notes from getting better at speaking in public, recorded and reviewed rather than pretended into competence. Mostly, conversation with people asking the same kinds of questions I am.

Opening later this year

Once there's actually enough here worth opening the door to. If you want to be there when it does, say so on the contact page.

Say so →

Resources

Where I go deeper.

LinkedIn is where an idea gets tested in its shortest form, which means it's also where it gets flattened the most. Some ideas survive that. The ones that don't get a second chance here, longer, slower, with the context a three-paragraph post never had room for.

Not everything here is trying to teach something. Some of it is just a thought I hadn't finished having when I started writing it down.

At least twice a week, whenever there's actually something worth the extra length.

Read on Substack →

Photo pending

Why people do what they do.

Why this exists

About me

Things I'm learning

Work

Community

Resources

Creative

Not because Tuesday needed a post.

Networking is Net Worth

Things I'm learning

Personal notes

A second feed, for curation

Going deeper, on Substack

One case study a day.

Where this tends to be useful

Consumer and market research

Research and insights

Behaviour and marketing

Come for the people. Stay for what you learn from them.

What ends up here

Opening later this year

Where I go deeper.

The lighter side.

Say hello.