The Curious Engineer

Seth's Blog

2020–2022

1,143 posts

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2022 376

December 2022

  1. The world as it is
  2. Learning in the new year
  3. Logic is a special case
  4. Insightful data is called information
  5. All jokes are inside jokes
  6. Scale and the small business (freelancer grid)
  7. How long is forever?
  8. Our dreaming opportunity
  9. Stories, standards, and the point
  10. Protecting the sore spot
  11. It’s not what you deserve, but it is what it is
  12. Switching gears
  13. Where’s the grid?
  14. Boundaries are levers
  15. Staring at decisions
  16. The next big thing
  17. Slow modems
  18. Little screens and productivity
  19. Prompt engineering
  20. Sooner or later…
  21. It was only a matter of time
  22. And what if you can’t tell?
  23. Attention, trust and GPT3
  24. Don’t let a story get in the way
  25. The best job you ever had
  26. “You’re right”
  27. The eggplants before Richard Nixon
  28. The Massie Effect
  29. Expertise
  30. When we look in the mirror
  31. Confidence doesn’t help win the lottery
  32. Accounting (and small business)
  33. The reasons search seems to be getting worse
  34. Books for your solstice
  35. All the marbles (and quick money)

November 2022

  1. My pickup truck is faster than your Ferrari
  2. Don’t rush
  3. Vast vs specific
  4. 4 D Chess
  5. You left out the all caps part
  6. A paradox of status and power
  7. An antidote
  8. How long is “never”?
  9. People problems are complicated problems
  10. Contracts and power
  11. No competition
  12. Micropayments for content
  13. Some thoughts on Mastodon
  14. Sorry/thanks
  15. Neither here nor there
  16. Now on mastodon
  17. But how will it fail?
  18. Whining and status
  19. Palliative care
  20. Placebos and objective reality
  21. The leaf blower parable
  22. Always/Never
  23. Did the ad work?
  24. Using your tickets
  25. As soon as possible
  26. “I can’t go for that”
  27. The long road
  28. The hodgepodge is normal
  29. Habits are not needs
  30. Fair and square
  31. No good ideas?
  32. Gatekeepers and judgment

October 2022

  1. Circus peanuts don’t contain nuts
  2. The opportunity to be wrong
  3. Sticking just the right amount
  4. Handy, cheap and willing
  5. With certainty
  6. Giving it a second thought
  7. It’s not the last mile
  8. Perfect might be the enemy of good in group dynamics and choice making
  9. How many good days?
  10. Product idea: Talking discs
  11. Resale value
  12. Dawani’s Law
  13. The obligation of the honest skeptic
  14. The paradox of big
  15. Your autobiography
  16. Selling a company
  17. “I’m not that smart”
  18. We forgot to choose
  19. “America’s favorite pie”
  20. The small world questions
  21. The uncanny valley of scale
  22. Without reservations
  23. Compared to what
  24. The invisibility paradox
  25. Points of view
  26. A lot is a choice
  27. For the upgrade
  28. Steady state and the trigger for change
  29. Front of house/back of house
  30. “What’s on tonight?”
  31. For the good of the community
  32. The way it’s done

September 2022

  1. Novelty vs action
  2. Extensions and souvenirs
  3. Logistics vs (and) innovation
  4. Retribution, revenge, and especially, remorse
  5. Social pressure
  6. The parts between
  7. White glove service
  8. The chief hype officer
  9. The beef tax
  10. Is there a word for that?
  11. “It’s just not that good”
  12. Easy in/Easy out
  13. The last 1%
  14. “And we also”
  15. The grassroots
  16. Talking about money
  17. Feature creep
  18. The proximity hack
  19. Who cares?
  20. A reallocation of respect
  21. What does it mean to be smart?
  22. Fake-aceuticals
  23. But first, we need to talk about it
  24. Constraints are a gift
  25. The treatment of bystanders
  26. Getting the hull shape right
  27. The speed of change
  28. Cultural distress (and consumerism)
  29. The last minute
  30. Don’t blame the mouse

August 2022

  1. The advice gap
  2. Unbeatable vs perfect
  3. “How can I help?”
  4. Unprepared, as always
  5. Revisionism
  6. “A good study”
  7. And when we disagree…
  8. The Association
  9. Startup costs
  10. Five true statements we don’t hear very often
  11. Opportunity is now disorganized
  12. Just that one scarce resource
  13. Clues that you might not be trying hard enough
  14. When they don’t know what they’re talking about…
  15. More than your share
  16. Finding persistent invisible systems
  17. Expectation and delight
  18. Ownership and responsibility
  19. Synchronization can be distracting
  20. Naysayers (and the grifters)
  21. The wisdom of the water tower
  22. “When do we get to the marketing part?”
  23. Indispensable or irreplaceable
  24. Absolute and relative
  25. In Bhutan, they dream of rainbows
  26. Crickets
  27. What to count
  28. Waiting for a miracle?
  29. Time and focus and energy
  30. Unavailable options
  31. How long will this take?

July 2022

  1. A good spec
  2. Strength through resilience
  3. Our stories are all we really know
  4. When we need to show our work
  5. Management with intent
  6. Joining the Carbon Almanac Network
  7. Shadows and light
  8. Paths not taken
  9. Dependable
  10. Bestseller energy
  11. I believe things that aren’t true
  12. Getting stuck on the title
  13. The likable brand (or person)
  14. Detachment and commitment
  15. Are you an autodidact?
  16. Where do jobs come from?
  17. Little billboards
  18. The crossroads
  19. The correlation
  20. Who will you share it with?
  21. Intentional design (and complicated systems)
  22. It’s easier when you know
  23. “Knock, knock”
  24. Best [insert] ever
  25. With/for/to
  26. Office gossip
  27. The practice effect
  28. “Do you have a plan?”
  29. Significant hurdles
  30. Demand responsibility
  31. Two kinds of good cooks
  32. 10 reps
  33. Starting with agreement

June 2022

  1. Compounded luck
  2. “And then what happens”
  3. Snake handling
  4. What makes it a profession?
  5. When you feel like it
  6. But what’s your budget?
  7. The kindness bonus
  8. “Could be better”
  9. Fear and footnotes
  10. Thoughts on the solstice
  11. The rise of placebos
  12. The arc of history
  13. Acceptance vs. ennui
  14. Carrying benefits
  15. Carrying costs
  16. Some questions
  17. Problems now (problems later)
  18. Handmade, original and significant
  19. Push vs. pull
  20. The coyote’s anguish
  21. Marketing vs. promotion
  22. Are you smart?
  23. Scale vs. Speed: Why organizations slow down
  24. Paying extra
  25. What are things like around here?
  26. Skepticism and Denial
  27. Interested vs. interesting
  28. The next train
  29. Failing in the trough
  30. In search of hypocrites

May 2022

  1. The delay
  2. Personal responsibility
  3. Expressing something
  4. Craft and imperfection
  5. How change happens
  6. Switching your search engine
  7. Classical music and documentaries
  8. Looking at taxes
  9. Sharp language
  10. The smallest viable audience
  11. The department of bad behavior
  12. Switch before perfect
  13. False metrics appearing real
  14. Possibility is fragile
  15. The grandstanders
  16. Please share the extra with a friend
  17. Newbies welcome
  18. Everyone else is
  19. Data, information and decisions
  20. Five beats
  21. The post-industrial collision
  22. “…somebody else will.”
  23. The ones who didn’t help
  24. But where are the secret recipes?
  25. Resilient markets
  26. Defining the enemy
  27. Half baked
  28. Going for baroque
  29. Full out
  30. Preaching to the choir
  31. Sunk costs at work
  32. Read to your kids/read to your parents

April 2022

  1. Making our decisions
  2. “The market has spoken”
  3. Our areas of expertise
  4. Two kinds of useful help
  5. Yelling “fire”
  6. The answer imperative
  7. The win-win fallacy
  8. “Because it’s more convenient”
  9. The traffic metaphors
  10. Words that matter
  11. Defender of the brand
  12. Cooperative enthusiasm
  13. Coiling ropes
  14. Asking and daring
  15. The resolution of communication
  16. Things to feel bad about
  17. Two things we say to kids
  18. Rethinking categories of media
  19. Generation C
  20. Not impossible
  21. The worst
  22. Convenience and boredom
  23. When the gauge is broken
  24. An opportunity for significant organizations
  25. And maybe it’s enough
  26. Modern marketing and hustle
  27. The surprising thing about expectations
  28. Anytimed
  29. Catastrophization
  30. “Not a heavy lift”

March 2022

  1. The physical therapy metaphor
  2. Testing new ideas
  3. The hospitality systems gap
  4. Re-calibrating
  5. Speeding up for the red light
  6. Expertise vs Attitude
  7. Where do symbols live?
  8. The power of TK
  9. The cake mix insight
  10. The lurkers
  11. Peak customer service and the hospitality mindset
  12. The things you can’t see
  13. Question authority
  14. Inside the bubble
  15. How should we celebrate your day?
  16. The hobgoblin of fidelity
  17. All the best
  18. Assuming other people have it too
  19. Reply all
  20. The easy measurements
  21. Start with someone else’s work
  22. On the hook
  23. Calculating the last minute
  24. Three problems of healthcare
  25. The million-dollar gap
  26. The leap
  27. Show us your work
  28. Wayfinding
  29. Outsourcing
  30. Continuous incremental improvement
  31. Encouragement and reassurance

February 2022

  1. One sigh per yes
  2. Chaos, connection and industrial systems
  3. Difficult problems
  4. Common pitfalls and myths of the new economy
  5. Be careful what you wish for
  6. A little more or a little less
  7. A second opinion
  8. Sales and the story of money
  9. Begrudgingly
  10. Who chooses?
  11. The Oxford comma, trap
  12. Our new project
  13. Don’t guard your luck
  14. Open field running
  15. Invent a new holiday
  16. The thing about a gold rush
  17. “We don’t care” (you won’t let us)
  18. “We were wrong”
  19. Marked cards
  20. It’s easy to do (if you know how to do it)
  21. Limitless
  22. The stale green light
  23. In defense of non-interactive media
  24. In or out
  25. Reality isn’t optimized
  26. Happy groundhog’s day
  27. The trough of inefficiency
  28. In temporary residence

January 2022

  1. On schedule
  2. Broken links
  3. Books for the journey
  4. The asking price
  5. Crowded markets
  6. Innovation and domain knowledge
  7. “Here we go again”
  8. Ostracodish
  9. Personal velocity
  10. The control/responsibility matrix
  11. Your responsibility preference
  12. Your control preference
  13. Fear of strangers
  14. The myth about the apples
  15. “The dog ate my homework”
  16. “The way things are”
  17. Who’s responsible?
  18. Harsh feedback
  19. Portfolio thinking
  20. Harder, easier and more convenient
  21. CB radio
  22. Flow (and progress)
  23. Dancing with status roles
  24. Speed limits
  25. Coming soon
  26. Progress
  27. Shipping creative work
  28. Laser noise
  29. Defensive/offensive/actual
  30. Generative hobbies
  31. Time doesn’t scale
  32. Might as well quit

2021 383

December 2021

  1. Don’t waste the good days
  2. Which errors to focus on?
  3. The two choices for anyone with a new idea
  4. Choice vs. convenience
  5. Best behavior
  6. Recipes
  7. Lead by leading
  8. Value capture (and the minibar)
  9. What did you expect?
  10. The problems with churlishness
  11. Intricate systems
  12. When the future arrives
  13. Cobbled together
  14. All the stuff
  15. Novacula Occami
  16. And when is the shift over?
  17. Blaming the weather is a trap
  18. Akimbo updates
  19. Write a better spec
  20. Someone to take care of it
  21. Secret conspiracies and public systems
  22. Cultural half-life
  23. The Wizard and the Prophet
  24. Do you have a tuner?
  25. Accuracy and precision
  26. Very good at a simple game
  27. The pyramid of modern marketing
  28. Perhaps it’s worth throwing it out today
  29. Uybj
  30. Do you feel rich?
  31. Customer service is free
  32. Chief Apology Officer

November 2021

  1. The lifeguard hack
  2. The oracle
  3. A Scrabble hack
  4. Under the circumstances
  5. Finding your voice
  6. So many accidents
  7. Books unread
  8. Marketing as a service
  9. A freelancer’s dilemma
  10. Aimless clicking
  11. The right tool for the job
  12. The expertise gap
  13. The CEO of you
  14. Prove them right or prove them wrong
  15. The stairstep and the curve
  16. Pushing, pulling and leading
  17. Snowflakes and fingerprints
  18. In search of poka-yokes
  19. The online collection at seths.store
  20. Reading scripts and pushing buttons
  21. Together
  22. Your big idea
  23. School vs. progress
  24. The thing about the oxygen mask
  25. Optimism is a tool
  26. Kinds of projects
  27. What’s the appropriate resolution?
  28. Truth is elusive, but it isn’t evasive
  29. Who will criticize your dreams?
  30. The next big idea
  31. Let’s vote on it
  32. Leadership is a choice
  33. “You’re either with us or against us”

October 2021

  1. New problems, old problems
  2. The simple but difficult marketing flip
  3. The point of maximum leverage
  4. Fill before empty
  5. Effort toward quality
  6. Entitlement
  7. Customer service is free
  8. Sunday driver
  9. Art with intent
  10. Afraid of afraid
  11. What will you leave behind?
  12. The test kitchen mindsets
  13. “They were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew”
  14. An illusion of scale
  15. Effort 2
  16. The hedonic buffet
  17. Zero percent market share
  18. Contagious commerce
  19. A future of retail
  20. Swap the line
  21. Shift your tech time horizon
  22. Life by anecdote
  23. “In it together”
  24. Crowding the pan
  25. Tools for modern citizens
  26. When they ask you to lead, will you be ready?
  27. Superfamous
  28. Lucky charms
  29. Tasks or initiatives?
  30. The two mistakes around competition
  31. When did you decide?
  32. Predictability

September 2021

  1. First come, first served
  2. Seeing the continuum
  3. The chance you’ve been waiting for
  4. “But of course!”
  5. On doing the reading
  6. All the answers
  7. The Goldilocks fallacy
  8. When in doubt, look for the fear
  9. Defending change (or the status quo)
  10. Messing with Strathern’s Law
  11. Labor and value
  12. Gift cards, serial numbers and hard technology
  13. Raining on your picnic (on your birthday)
  14. The programmatic ask
  15. The simple market
  16. Copy design
  17. Appropriate risk
  18. Respecting their time
  19. Assume that both are true
  20. We are not astronomers
  21. Fuzzy type
  22. Speculation is the new luxury good
  23. The modern curriculum
  24. Intentional connection in the digital office
  25. Creativity and leadership
  26. Simple connection tools
  27. Write something
  28. Instead
  29. Negative marginal cost
  30. Urgent cultural change
  31. We get what the business model wants

August 2021

  1. Great ideas always sound like they’re far too soon
  2. How’d they do it without you?
  3. Is TikTok powerful?
  4. Feature requests for monopolists
  5. Cyber-realists
  6. The nesting bowls
  7. The inevitable decline of fully open platforms
  8. Solving for stress
  9. Which problem are we solving?
  10. “Can we get a puppy?”
  11. In it for the money
  12. Start with the easy tests
  13. Mollified
  14. The next best click
  15. Time dilation
  16. Discipline vs. fairness
  17. Speed bumps
  18. Variability, industrialization and hating your job
  19. The half-life of culture
  20. Making a difference (making a point)
  21. Developing a picture
  22. Thoughts on your book cover
  23. Leveling up isn’t easy
  24. The two train illusion
  25. Limiting data in search of information
  26. Not what you asked for, but just what you needed
  27. The end of the office
  28. The specific yes and the meandering no
  29. Not for Diana
  30. The modern expediter
  31. Clocks 2
  32. In between a total loss and an endless expense

July 2021

  1. Easily confused
  2. Fresh herbs
  3. “Make the sign bigger!”
  4. Progress is a trade
  5. Narrative and feelings
  6. Bad arithmetic classes persuade people to not like math
  7. “Let the market fix it”
  8. Improving what’s not there
  9. “I don’t want to play”
  10. “I did the thing that was…”
  11. Yadda, yadda, yadda
  12. Directed marketing
  13. Initiative takes effort
  14. Seeing and believing
  15. All at once vs. chronic
  16. A plan for ‘wrong’
  17. Copycat industrialism
  18. A return to cottage work
  19. A coaching paradox
  20. Magnetic or sticky?
  21. Good writing is cheaper than special effects
  22. The current and the wind
  23. Abracadabra
  24. Old-school snobs
  25. What did you learn on vacation?
  26. The focus on the last thing
  27. Customer development
  28. Rigor and Rigid
  29. From/to
  30. Lines and curves
  31. Folk typography
  32. Use your hips

June 2021

  1. The market is a listening device
  2. Luck is not a strategy
  3. What’s new?
  4. Anecdotes are not science
  5. Furious/curious
  6. When the objections change
  7. How much does a mistake cost?
  8. The wayfinding premium
  9. Self-conception
  10. A new decision based on new information
  11. Busy (and reliable)
  12. What do other people deserve?
  13. In control
  14. Non-machinable surcharge
  15. Lucky breaks
  16. Abstain from abstaining
  17. Five useful questions
  18. False equivalencies
  19. The airline mile hoax
  20. Disenchantment
  21. “No problem” is a problem
  22. Over the circumstances
  23. Two ways to challenge the status quo
  24. Lessons learned the hard way
  25. KAR 120C
  26. Production values
  27. The benefit of the doubt
  28. The reciprocity hustle
  29. Monarchists
  30. “We’ll fix it in post”
  31. Commencement is today
  32. Meeting nullification

May 2021

  1. Identity and ideas
  2. A long lead time
  3. “Take your time”
  4. How to miss a deadline
  5. How (not) to miss a deadline
  6. Date certain
  7. Sunk costs, creativity and your Practice
  8. Industrial scale and brittleness
  9. The consequence
  10. Code words
  11. The right amount of time
  12. The urgent changes
  13. Insignificant digits
  14. Wholesale and retail
  15. To stay the same
  16. “That’s not fair”
  17. Good fences
  18. Conventional and famous
  19. Starting and finishing
  20. Denialism is not skepticism
  21. Magic, persistence, imagination and more
  22. Selling hours
  23. Faster! Faster?
  24. Why the blockchain matters
  25. Jargon vs. lingo
  26. Mouth to mouth resuscitation
  27. Shortages, momentum and the search for meaning
  28. The benefit of the doubt
  29. The weather problem
  30. “But how will you know?”
  31. An alternative to hustle
  32. When it doesn’t work out
  33. Compared to what?

April 2021

  1. Confusing identity with strategy
  2. Uncountable
  3. Knowing it can be done
  4. You can’t beat the algorithm
  5. Decoding the sign
  6. Untenable
  7. Competition vs. activation
  8. The host’s rules
  9. Ending it gracefully
  10. The discard pile
  11. The map is not the territory
  12. Unsponsored
  13. Backward about coming forward
  14. Investments and expenses
  15. Everyone is rational
  16. Bad Company
  17. Can you see it?
  18. “You’re not that good”
  19. Identity is often used against us
  20. All things being equal
  21. The plan for day 100
  22. Perfect is not the same as perfectionism
  23. “What’s the hard part?”
  24. Fixing Zoom calls: Looking better and feeling better
  25. Jobs to be done
  26. Getting better
  27. Enrollment
  28. Three kinds of ‘fied’
  29. All at once and quite suddenly!
  30. The 30-foot rule
  31. No fooling

March 2021

  1. Errors in personification
  2. A thing about ‘normal’
  3. Screwdriver clarity
  4. Celebrity Art (priceless/worthless)
  5. Price, wants, needs and the perils of urgent
  6. Cons at scale
  7. And who are you really?
  8. Certainty, accuracy and leadership
  9. Public companies are too often out of alignment
  10. The confusion about “sorry”
  11. “Perfect or we’re not going”
  12. Ten reasons to write a book
  13. Resilience
  14. The dance between the long tail and the short head
  15. The things we go back to
  16. The revolution in online learning
  17. Technical generations
  18. In search of amusement
  19. The fish, the sea and the barrel
  20. Voting for Fela
  21. Practical elegance
  22. What does it stand for?
  23. “Well, it seems great to me”
  24. The cataclysmic breakdown of networked systems
  25. The sixth layer
  26. NFTs are a dangerous trap
  27. “I’m just browsing”
  28. The most important meal of the day
  29. The weight of repetitive tasks
  30. A seat at the table
  31. A letter to your future self
  32. Avocado time

February 2021

  1. “Count me in”
  2. Tilting at windmills
  3. The order of operations
  4. Grievance and possibility
  5. Ranking the unrankable
  6. The reverse value/luxury curve
  7. That might not be the right question
  8. Careful what you wish for
  9. The end of dumb pipes
  10. Algorithms give or they take
  11. An abundance of caution
  12. Publishers, curation and algorithms
  13. What does it mean to do well in school?
  14. The opportunity of the laggards
  15. March is going to be dark chocolate month around here
  16. Your big break
  17. Flavors of indies
  18. The easy way down
  19. Avoid the clown suit
  20. Living on the delta
  21. The last thing and the first thing
  22. The surprising problem with ranked-choice voting
  23. Taking action
  24. Toward nimble
  25. Blaming the user
  26. I’m just doing my job
  27. Circles, networks and the trust layer
  28. A simple missing word
  29. Egomania vs. ego strength
  30. Chasing the cool kids
  31. Strategy and tactics and Powerpoint

January 2021

  1. The stuff in the margins
  2. Belief and knowledge
  3. Panes of glass
  4. The coordinators
  5. Asking for the second favor
  6. Useful redundancy
  7. Famous conductors
  8. The pinging
  9. Your big idea
  10. Each one leads to more
  11. The trap of busy
  12. Tolerance
  13. Arguments and outcomes
  14. Three types of kindness
  15. Pleasing the unpleasable
  16. Is mood a gift or a skill?
  17. The difficult choice of disappointment
  18. Born to run (things)
  19. Burned out/burned in
  20. Shipping creative work
  21. Choose your Jones wisely
  22. Understanding “popular”
  23. Natural technique doesn’t exist
  24. Gravel tennis
  25. Why isn’t there a line at the library?
  26. The tumblehome
  27. Mode switching
  28. Pain is real
  29. The ruts
  30. Infrastructure
  31. 2030
  32. A simple 2 x 2 for choices

2020 384

December 2020

  1. Toward better
  2. A different urgency
  3. Bonus: A game design history…
  4. The most important blog post
  5. If you don’t know you have it…
  6. Stand up and fight
  7. Amplify possibility
  8. The two levers of modernity
  9. Reasons people donate
  10. Fortunately
  11. The seeds we plant
  12. Did it do what it was supposed to do?
  13. Guests, hosts and landlords
  14. Hiding ideas
  15. Beyond a shadow
  16. “The way we’ve always done it”
  17. Blunders and mistakes
  18. What’s your game?
  19. New decisions
  20. The problem with a mic drop
  21. A place to write
  22. Seeing differently
  23. The paradox of discernment
  24. Whining
  25. Jot
  26. Welcome and problems
  27. Predicting the future
  28. On getting a fancy MBA…
  29. Trading trust for attention
  30. Treats
  31. Insulation from the user experience
  32. Generalizations work (until they don’t)
  33. Understanding the automatic self
  34. Shopping is not the same as buying

November 2020

  1. The monopoly distinction
  2. The persistence of hierarchy and status roles
  3. More popular (and cheap, too)
  4. Contradictory answers to obvious questions
  5. The grateful pumpkin
  6. Butterfly hunting
  7. Subconscious pre-filtering
  8. Today is Worldwide Backup Day
  9. Smart, generous and kind
  10. Are you stalling?
  11. Qarrtsiluni
  12. A paradox of community, belief and reality
  13. Entitlement fails
  14. The ocean is made of drops
  15. “Until further notice”
  16. The right answer
  17. If it were easy…
  18. Where is your ifthen?
  19. The incoming
  20. The gift of results
  21. Second cousins
  22. A theatre of dominance
  23. Launches and orbits
  24. One difference between science and art
  25. Principle is inconvenient
  26. And a pony at your birthday party
  27. The words matter
  28. The unspoken questions
  29. The spaces in-between
  30. A new book and some excitement to go with it
  31. The useful crisis
  32. What do you get and what does it cost?
  33. Omission, commission and the places in between

October 2020

  1. Absolute value
  2. A/B/C and the problem with skipping a step
  3. The successful scientist
  4. “All anecdote and no data”
  5. Back in the tube
  6. Misgivings
  7. Popular vs. good
  8. The thing about sunk costs
  9. Big business vs. small business
  10. “That’s not what I meant”
  11. Cross the bridge and join the dragons
  12. The limited-edition pre-launch of The Practice
  13. “I hate this restaurant”
  14. Better and cheaper
  15. Unacceptable
  16. Two kinds of limbo
  17. We like what we choose
  18. Two kinds of momentum
  19. Show no work
  20. The power of community and the trap of opt-out
  21. Persistently irrational
  22. Figure and ground
  23. It turns out that ‘beiger’ isn’t a word
  24. Agreeable
  25. Attitudes are skills
  26. The cold open
  27. The clarity (and risk) of graphs
  28. Better clients
  29. The first rule of the game
  30. What does it mean to be smart?
  31. Walking away from the idée fixe
  32. The arc and the arch
  33. “Well, that’s a dumb idea”

September 2020

  1. Lottery thinking
  2. Professional wrestling
  3. Here I am
  4. “What time is your flight?”
  5. The magic of trade-offs
  6. One at a time, over and over
  7. When can we talk about our systems?
  8. What does “shortly” mean?
  9. Dancing with belief
  10. Crossing from the early adopters to a larger group
  11. Time to get back to magic
  12. “Is that the most important thing?”
  13. Getting the joke
  14. Questions for the founder
  15. The absurdity of a Scrabble hierarchy
  16. Are you a marketer?
  17. Bad choices
  18. “Taking” lessons
  19. In support of the hard-working teacher
  20. The honest mistake vs. the intentional act
  21. “Because” vs. “and”
  22. Who is good at discovery?
  23. Self-directed, project-based learning
  24. Toward tired
  25. Optimism as a choice
  26. Earned crankiness
  27. Filling a bottomless hole
  28. What’s your agenda?
  29. Efficient or productive?
  30. A new normal

August 2020

  1. Famous colleges
  2. Date certain
  3. Systemic problems
  4. Destinations, risks and journeys
  5. Small adjustments
  6. Far away is difficult
  7. The relativity of time
  8. From education to learning
  9. Profit taking is lazy
  10. Situational gravity
  11. The opposite of confidence
  12. Toward a Zoom agreement
  13. The best available option
  14. Like a surgeon
  15. Cheating
  16. Spreading like wildflowers
  17. Wants and needs
  18. Amplify your strengths
  19. Noodling
  20. Rejected!
  21. The Sunday circular
  22. An extraordinary book
  23. Selling your time
  24. Simple tips for security and serial numbers
  25. Don’t waste the lesson
  26. Drop in
  27. What do you own?
  28. Posing for selfies
  29. Shipping creative work
  30. Two kinds of decisions worth focusing on
  31. Steal the time from comfort
  32. A too-simple answer to a complicated problem

July 2020

  1. Weasel decisions
  2. What will you do with the time you save?
  3. The do-it-yourself at-home surgery kit
  4. The non-urgent advance
  5. Deliberately lo-fi
  6. Esprit de l’escalier is overrated
  7. Defending the status quo
  8. Money costs money
  9. Keys on the ground
  10. Varieties of disbelief
  11. Fake deadlines
  12. Doom scrolling
  13. Commercial vulnerability
  14. Inventing narratives
  15. The benefit of the doubt
  16. FOMO and KIMO
  17. Professionals, hacks and amateurs
  18. What’s your story?
  19. Undoing the toxic myth of exclusion and scarcity
  20. None of the above
  21. Systems design and the front line
  22. Sixty orbits
  23. Take good notes
  24. The magic of the countdown
  25. The 100 hour asset
  26. The difference between patina and cruft
  27. “It might not be for you”
  28. Are we part of us?
  29. Wasting second place
  30. Our top story
  31. Stolen ideas

June 2020

  1. The simple cure for writer’s block
  2. Choices
  3. How many moons?
  4. The stolen address book
  5. Useful explanations of reality
  6. Everybody else
  7. Should schools reward skills or talent?
  8. Voices vs. noise
  9. What’s at the front of the line?
  10. Picky vs difficult
  11. “That’s a good idea”
  12. Too long delayed
  13. A simple fork in the road
  14. The dominant culture
  15. Creation/recognition
  16. Worthy adversaries and useful allies
  17. Measuring systems
  18. Krulak’s law
  19. Invisible insulation
  20. Fill in the blanks
  21. Which bridges?
  22. Getting what the customers asked for
  23. Without ambiguity: Black Lives Matter
  24. Don’t give up
  25. Listening is difficult
  26. The truth about rubylith
  27. Average is not the same as typical
  28. Maybe everyone else isn’t faking it
  29. Stuck on enormity
  30. I can’t imagine
  31. Justice and dignity, too often in short supply
  32. Consider a gap year

May 2020

  1. Meeting spec (doing the minimum)
  2. Applying effort
  3. Leaky roofs
  4. Three paths for a soloist
  5. Dancing with tools
  6. Your defining moment
  7. Craftspeople and time
  8. A small business isn’t simply a little version of a big business
  9. A community of practice
  10. Waiting and worrying
  11. Smart-adjacent
  12. “I’ve dealt with this before”
  13. Pique blindness
  14. Alternatives to perfect
  15. But what if it works?
  16. Bridges and tunnels
  17. Cost and value
  18. The moral imagination
  19. When is it too soon?
  20. And there’s a story at the heart of it
  21. Clusters
  22. Following in the footsteps of those that came before
  23. Seeing dominance and affiliation in politics
  24. And when does it get boring?
  25. The downside of authority
  26. A situation vs a slog
  27. Books for spring
  28. What kind of org?
  29. Forward
  30. More information is a competitive advantage, but it’s not enough
  31. Reality as an organizing principle

April 2020

  1. Today’s special
  2. Self, community and motivation
  3. Thoughts on “I’m bored”
  4. And now, what’s next?
  5. A Sunday book reading
  6. Bulletins vs bulletin boards
  7. What brings out the best in you?
  8. “I tweaked a few things”
  9. New effort vs Old effort
  10. The Fremen principle
  11. The bootstrapper creates value
  12. Don’t know (can’t know)
  13. Beware of experience asymmetry
  14. On predicting the future
  15. The message and the messenger
  16. All models are wrong, some models are useful
  17. What do you make?
  18. Toward better
  19. “But we were comfortable”
  20. You’re surrounded
  21. The unheard voices
  22. Monopoly and network effects
  23. But what could you learn instead?
  24. The panopticon
  25. Helping leaders in college reboot
  26. The lifelong fan
  27. Enough little things
  28. Acknowledgments 2020
  29. The semiotics of face masks
  30. How would you like things to be?
  31. Taking it very seriously

March 2020

  1. Portfolio school: Get better clients
  2. Genc
  3. “I’ll go with my principles tomorrow”
  4. Communicating online (the big leaps)
  5. Generous isn’t always the same as free
  6. Is everything going to be okay?
  7. Let’s do it together
  8. You are your clips
  9. Moods and actions
  10. Fill in the blanks
  11. Day trading emotions
  12. Calm also has a coefficient
  13. Today
  14. Raft up!
  15. The conversation
  16. Public health
  17. The ‘should’ Olympics
  18. React, respond or initiate?
  19. Homemade science
  20. “Say yes to everything”
  21. Work from home
  22. Of course it’s a difficult problem
  23. Stuck at home
  24. When it’s chaos around here
  25. Uncertainty, risk and change
  26. Under new management
  27. The end of handshakes?
  28. The problem for freelancers
  29. Shared objective reality
  30. The paradox of selfishness
  31. The difference between data and information
  32. Thoughts on a virus
  33. The magic wand store
  34. Rhetorical questions about tipping

February 2020

  1. The days in between
  2. “What should we remember?”
  3. “So far”/”Not yet”
  4. What does ‘better’ mean?
  5. Overwhelmed is a choice
  6. What’s a fellowship?
  7. Wasting it
  8. Time shifting
  9. Action figures
  10. Just getting through the day
  11. The free market is elusive
  12. The ones who disagree with you
  13. But what does “this” do?
  14. Painting fakes and singing covers
  15. Toward perfect
  16. You can’t say you can’t play
  17. How we do things around here
  18. Borrowed time
  19. The bad client/clueless boss trap
  20. Unaided awareness
  21. Information wants to be free*
  22. The imbalance between media and advertisers
  23. “There are several reasons”
  24. Skill vs Talent
  25. What’s it for? a simple example
  26. Will you join us? A new workshop for creatives
  27. “But I can see it!”
  28. Something’s more interesting than this
  29. Again and again and again
  30. Greater than the sum of the parts

January 2020

  1. Zooming in–The magic of looking more closely
  2. “This will change your mind”
  3. Choosing to be a citizen
  4. In search of reciprocity
  5. Luck on demand
  6. Cars, houses and TVs
  7. Awareness vs. experience
  8. Obese dogs
  9. The only one who has heard all of it
  10. As simple as necessary (but not simpler)
  11. The imprecision of “am”
  12. And it bends toward justice
  13. Everyone is doing their best
  14. Better than real
  15. The Dolittle effect
  16. Long-term vs short-term
  17. Confusing hunger and thirst
  18. Interaction debt
  19. Fixing your email promo folder
  20. The perfect argument
  21. Compromise
  22. The dominant media narrative of the day
  23. Look in the obvious places first
  24. Falling behind vs. streaks
  25. Patient Capital: How long is the long run?
  26. “What is this sentence supposed to do?”
  27. Yes, marketing does matter
  28. The end of ‘someone’
  29. Toward resilience
  30. The essential quality of the boogie-man
  31. Priorities
  32. Seeing clearly in 2020
  33. A box of infinity

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