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You don't have to solve the majority of hard problems you encounter in either business, design, or programming. Almost all of them can be restated as an easy problem, if you dare question the assumptions, reweigh the trade-offs, and stop diving after sunk cost. Above all the other principles at 37signals, this is our key to keeping the...

Developers are systems thinkers and yet, most measures of developer productivity are metrics-based, instead of systems-based. In this post, Sourcegraph co-founder and CTO Beyang Liu presents five charts that visualize what really matters for developer productivity.

I’m not sure exactly when I became addicted to the news. But I clearly remember the time before I was checking the latest developments in the world three times per day (or four or five!). I remember momentous events like 9/11 or the swine flu pandemic from an era before being hooked into an IV feed of BREAKING NEWS. World events that r...

Several years ago there was an entrepreneur that I’d meet with regularly. As is custom, I’d ask the standard meeting intro, “How are things going?” Now, with 99% of the peop…

I’ve started thinking more and more about addiction. I am not, in the classic sense, in any way an addict. But I think my addictions are taking up too much of my life. I first realised how co…

Our brains employ two modes of thinking to tackle any large task: focused and diffuse. Both are equally valuable but serve very different purposes. To do your best work, you need to master both.

Last week I was asked about some of my current goals and I replied that I’m more focused on systems and processes to achieve desired outcomes. Goals are important insomuch as you need to deci…

It started as a measure of efficiency for the production of goods and services. Somehow, along the way, many of us have become addicted to productivity.

You’re one among millions, not one in a million.

"documentaries about other psychopaths and dirtbags"

Umm… It’s been an eventful couple of months. I broke up with my girlfriend of 5+ years, I went from being a designer to a developer, and I learned how to be a slightly better human in the process.

Apophenia is the tendency to detect patterns that do not exist. Also known as patternicity, apophenia occurs when we try to make predictions, or seek answers, based on unrelated events.

Psychological reactance is a reflex reaction to being told what to do, or feeling that your freedom is under threat. It can occur in personal, professional or social settings when you feel that you need to regain a sense of control over your autonomy.

The problem with emotional reasoning is that it can lead to worsening feelings of anxiety, fear or worry in situations that are already stressful.

I think I am at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for productivity tips.  So I decided to just write them all down in one place. Compound growth gets...

You can have generalist knowledge or a generalist skill set — not both.

How to prioritize at work early in your career.

Separate the “job to be done” from the the job you think you want

This newsletter was originally published on Substack and archived here for posterity.

A Lesson in Mimetic Relationship Dynamics

Game analogies can be helpful when you're playing to win. But there's a limit to how useful they can be when thinking about life.

There's a saying commonly attributed to Charlie Munger that goes 'Take a Simple Idea and Take It Seriously'. Work out all the implications. Seek out all the case studies. Here's a story of two investors who did exactly that.

I find it a little difficult to believe that expertise is 'merely' pattern-matching. And yet it seems to have resulted in the some of my best learning outcomes over the past year. A look at my scepticism, in the context of several ideas we've covered in this blog.

There are 3 kinds of non-fiction book: 💁‍♀️ narrative, 🌳 tree, and 🌿 branch. Not every non-fiction book is worth reading, and not every book should be read the same way. These categories explain why.

Why the best way to get a reading speedup is to read a lot about some specific topic.

Everything that's helped me read a book a week, even with a full-time job.