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I’ve tried Notion, Obsidian, Things, Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, Jotter and endless other tools to keep me organised and sure, Notion has stuck around the most because we use it for client stuff, but for todo lists, all of the above are way too complicated. I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper […]
It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is. Can you tell me who? Precisely? What did they believe before they encountered your work? …
We’re born into chaos, spend our lives seeking order, and die realizing we never had control. This is the human condition. And it’s not hard to see why.
The end of the trail is usually difficult, but without the long and winding approach, there isn’t much of a mountain. The greatest hits reel and the stunning photographs leave out most of the…
Earlier this month, Virginia Sole-Smith, bestselling author of Fat Talk, published a podcast/essay titled "Nobody Cares About Your 'Health and Fitness' Journey." I'm not a premium subscriber to her Burnt Toast newsletter, I confess, so I couldn't listen or read; and it's never great to judge a book by
Google made a fortune and honed sponsored search results into an art form. The theory is that people who want the traffic the most will pay for the clicks, and of course, if the advertisers donR…
All leaders are politicians. Not all politicians are leaders
In June 1940, during the darkest period of WWII for the British, Winston Churchill gave his famously defiant “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech
Even if you believe that strategy is generally useful, it is difficult to decide that today’s the day to start writing engineering strategy. When you do start writing strategy, it’s easy write so much strategy that your organization is overwhelmed and ignores your strategy rather than investing time into understanding it.
Fortunately, these are universal problems, and there are a handful of useful mental models to avoid both extremes. This chapter covers:
If you have a series of tasks to do, it’s easier to ignore this question and simply get back to work. Doing the tasks is more efficient than coordinating the help. But if your work is a proje…
In the very small business, the freelancer knows each customer. By name, by volume, by preferences. And in the huge business, expensive software, data analysts and relentless margin seeking pushes …
According to the very first story in Herodotus’ Histories (c. 440 BC, the oldest nonfiction book in the Western Canon), King Croesus was the richest man
On My Mind Reminder: After decades of predicting and writing about the future, we end up looking either geniuses or idiots. This 1995 Newsweek article brushing off the internet as “useless” shows w…
I came across this (ironically) anonymous quote recently: “The offline world is full of sticks, but the internet only has carrots.” When we come together in groups, it can bring out the best …
One of my friends, an outstanding programmer who likes to fly under the radar, frequently tells me he admires my “ability to broadcast”. I guess he refers to the fact that I’m keeping a blog, and that I’m not afraid of writing with transparency about my adventures in software engineering. To me, it all feels natural, so his comment motivated me to explain in more detail why I’m doing what I’m doing.
The conflict is real. “Jean-Michel [Basquiat] called,” Mr. Warhol wrote in his diary on Sept. 5, 1983. “He’s afraid he’s just going to be a flash in the pan. And I told him not to worry, that he wo…
When we think about purpose, we typically think of our life’s overarching aim; our true calling; the thing we were put on earth to do. But each individual’s purpose encompasses more than this, and in fact exists across three horizons that stretch from the imminent and concrete to the distant and transcendent. In the first […]
Yesterday’s post was a little glib. Without a doubt, we add more value when we focus on the emotional labor of important work, leaving others the chance to create commodities. But the repetit…
The hard parts of what you do all day can feel fraught. It’s heavy lifting. Emergencies. Dangerous labor. The stakes are high and the work can be difficult. The important parts of what you do…
Tim Brownson points us to this recent poll of people in Great Britain. About one out of four people surveyed (of all ages) believe that they could qualify for the Olympics if they trained for the n…