The importance trap

Doing unimportant things makes you lucky

Upside decay

Why some people and some organizations never get lucky

Beware of tight feedback loops

Tight feedback loops are seductive because they give us the feeling of rapid improvement. And it’s true that in the early stages of learning a craft, tight feedback loops do help us improve quickly.

Community building in a forgotten game

Building good communities is hard. It’s easy to underestimate the benefits of a hostile environment.

Harmful Progress

Creating value can harm you.

Thoughts From The Bay

I recently visited San Francisco and met many people from a variety of tech and tech-adjacent areas. I also walked around the city and travelled to nearby Bay Area locations. I came away with several findings.

Preference changing

Preference changing takes the skill of habit formation to the next level.

Housing shortages

Housing supply is a problem in cities all over the world. What are good frameworks for understanding and solving it?

Journey to the West

Few of us bear past burdens as heavy as Fukuyama’s, but none of us can escape the ordeal.

Dimensional decoupling

Inversion asks, “what if something was the opposite?” Dimensional decoupling asks, “what if something wasn’t an opposite?”