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Larson argues that a long career is managed through pace, and that steady investment in people, prestige, profit, and learning compounds over decades.
Read the original of A forty-year career. (opens in a new tab)Nielsen argues that great blog posts come from listening for what the people around you already feel but haven’t said, then writing it down.
Read the original of Blogging & Listening (opens in a new tab)Fradkin argues that analysts drive decisions by telling stories, so their real job is pushing the company to want better stories than lazy averages.
Read the original of Data Science Is About Telling Better Stories (opens in a new tab)Ango argues that every design is a set of tradeoffs, and the best products are openly opinionated about what they choose to be bad at.
Read the original of Design is compromise (opens in a new tab)Somers argues that the phrase “it turns out” lets writers skip the argument between two beliefs while readers trust them anyway.
Read the original of It turns out (opens in a new tab)Somers argues that everyone should write, because knowing you will write makes you notice more and turns daily life into a source of questions.
Read the original of More people should write (opens in a new tab)Li argues that the reasons he chose Databricks, hard infrastructure problems, lasting demand for big data, and good colleagues, still held four years later.
Read the original of Reflecting on Four Years at Databricks (opens in a new tab)Somers argues that working quickly matters beyond output, because fast work feels cheap to start, so you take on more and keep getting faster.
Read the original of Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (opens in a new tab)Traynor argues that no product change is small, since even a character limit raises questions about errors, design, copy, and edge cases.
Read the original of There are no small changes (opens in a new tab)Quirk argues that the moment a new project suddenly feels overwhelming is when it finally meets reality, which means your impact is about to spike.
Read the original of When it gets complicated is when your impact is spiking (opens in a new tab)Bennett argues that on a new team you should spend two weeks writing down everything that seems weird before fixing anything, so you pick the right fights.
Read the original of Why you need a “WTF Notebook” (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that once an early startup has users, it needs light structure like cycles and goals to keep momentum instead of going in circles.
Read the original of Building at the early stage (opens in a new tab)McKenzie argues that engineers should describe themselves by the revenue and savings they create, since that is what companies actually pay for.
Read the original of Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that cheap building doesn’t make features cheap to carry, since every addition brings lasting complexity, failure modes, and support costs.
Read the original of Every feature should earn its place (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that ambition grows in rooms where people take each other’s goals seriously, and that being the best means asking more of yourself.
Read the original of Room for ambition (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that startups should publish regular changelogs, a low-effort habit that builds momentum, draws users and recruits, and keeps investors close.
Read the original of Startups, Write Changelogs (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that early profitability isn’t unambitious but a way to control your destiny, letting founders build for customers instead of investors.
Read the original of The profitable startup (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that as AI agents take over execution, teams must stay close to customers and the work, since that learning is what makes products good.
Read the original of Tools Are Getting Better. Are We? (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that quality is rare because people choose cost and ease over craft, and that caring about it is a daily choice anyone can make.
Read the original of Why is quality so rare? (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that better tools make solo founding possible but a trusted partner is still worth finding, comparing going alone to a wilderness survival show.
Read the original of You could do it alone (opens in a new tab)Saarinen argues that great products need one person with taste who obsesses over every detail, because branding can’t fake a soul in software.
Read the original of Your Product Needs a Soul (opens in a new tab)Beck argues that new engineers are judged not by tasks completed but by signals that they will make the people around them more productive.
Read the original of Hey, N00b, We Didn’t Hire You to Complete Tasks (opens in a new tab)Timber argues that technological progress creates new risks along with wealth, and that organizations decline in two ways: slow rust from neglect and spreading mold from infection.
Read the original of Mold, Rust and the Risk Society (opens in a new tab)Prather argues that clean data alone can’t produce a winning strategy, which takes insight and curiosity, though analysts are well placed to supply both.
Read the original of The Fallacy of Data-Driven Strategy (opens in a new tab)Sinclair argues that a month of bad returns can’t statistically prove a trading edge is gone, so traders should update their trust in it probabilistically.
Read the original of Why You Can’t Tell if Your Strategy “Stopped Working” (Statistically Speaking) (opens in a new tab)Yorgey argues that intuition comes from struggling through concrete examples, so handing someone your hard-won abstraction rarely transfers the understanding.
Read the original of Abstraction, intuition, and the “monad tutorial fallacy” (opens in a new tab)Wei argues that Amazon’s low margins are a deliberate strategy, not irrationality, building scale and defenses that high-margin rivals like Apple can’t easily match.
Read the original of Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins (opens in a new tab)Spiekermann argues that obsessive attention to detail isn’t unusual but simply what every craft demands, and users sense its absence even when they can’t name it.
Read the original of Being obsessive about detail is being normal (opens in a new tab)Miller argues that each extra digit of precision costs about a hundred times more data and compute, so chasing precision past what a decision needs is a fool’s errand.
Read the original of Big Data and the Price-Precision Curve (opens in a new tab)Nielsen argues that good blogging often means stating what seems obvious to you but nobody else is saying, or loudly agreeing with whoever already did.
Read the original of Blogging Can Just Be Stating The Obvious (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that writing your own career narrative beats chasing the next promotion, because it steers you toward work that’s uniquely valuable to you.
Read the original of Career narratives. (opens in a new tab)Krishnan argues that a company’s speed of operating and learning decides its success, and that how soon a promised follow-up actually happens reveals that speed.
Read the original of Clock speed (opens in a new tab)Fortnow argues that computational difficulty acts like friction, and that making computation too easy creates problems in privacy, markets, and politics.
Read the original of Complexity as Friction (opens in a new tab)Fournier argues that asking for advice is an underused way to build relationships, since it signals respect and gives you outside eyes on your blind spots.
Read the original of Debug your Career: Ask for Advice (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that performance systems built on ladders, designations, and calibrations are a manager’s most valuable lever for shaping culture and performance.
Read the original of Designations, levels and calibrations. (opens in a new tab)Kogan argues that starting with the simple tools you already have lets you begin sooner, learn what you need, and avoid committing before you have experience.
Read the original of Do it in jeans first (opens in a new tab)Nagele argues that using your own product isn’t enough, because teams stop seeing rarely visited areas like onboarding, which shape customers’ first impressions.
Read the original of Dogfooding is not enough (opens in a new tab)Krishnan argues that a new executive should spend the first weeks meeting everyone one-on-one and listening, then write up what they learned to set direction.
Read the original of First 30 days (opens in a new tab)Evans argues that good work doesn’t get recognized automatically, so a running brag document helps your manager, your reviews, and your own reflection.
Read the original of Get your work recognized: write a brag document (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that getting into the rooms where decisions happen is an ongoing skill, and that you should leave any room that isn’t worth your time.
Read the original of Getting in the room. (opens in a new tab)Schenkelman argues that career growth comes from opportunities, skills, and sponsors working together, since the biggest decisions about you get made when you’re not in the room.
Read the original of How to achieve career growth: opportunities, skills & sponsors (opens in a new tab)Krishnan argues that busy, influential people do read cold email, so a good one is short, makes clear who you are, and ends with a low-friction ask.
Read the original of How to write a cold email (opens in a new tab)Miller argues that more data yields sharply diminishing returns, since information grows with the square root of sample size and extra precision rarely changes a decision.
Read the original of In Praise of Small Data (opens in a new tab)Singh argues that new grads grow fastest by becoming experts in something small, owning the problems around them, and getting comfortable having opinions.
Read the original of Increase your slope (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that managers learn fastest by treating their peers as their first team, turning a quiet rivalry into real collaboration.
Read the original of Make your peers your first team. (opens in a new tab)Peng argues that a data analysis without a coherent story usually has flaws in the analysis itself, and a good one closes every door a skeptic might open.
Read the original of Narrative Failure in Data Analysis (opens in a new tab)Kogan argues that startups rarely need to create a new category and do better positioning into an existing or emerging one, letting their impact reshape it.
Read the original of No New Categories (opens in a new tab)Krishnan collects real investor objections to Dropbox, Airbnb, Google, and others, showing that great companies often look unfundable at first.
Read the original of Not fundable (opens in a new tab)Larson summarizes Rumelt’s argument that good strategy is rare and bad strategy common, and that learning to tell them apart sharpens your own decisions.
Read the original of Notes from “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.” (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that an inclusive organization gives people both opportunity, meaning access to growth and success, and membership, meaning room to be themselves.
Read the original of Opportunity & Membership. (opens in a new tab)Larson argues that partnering with your manager means each of you knowing the other’s problems, priorities, and constraints, and refreshing that picture regularly.
Read the original of Partnering with your manager (opens in a new tab)Kogan argues that startups win over confused buyers by describing the outcome customers actually want, not abstract category language about the product.
Read the original of Say something people want (opens in a new tab)Kogan argues that simple systems, like the ones that let a tiny crew run a giant container ship, break less and get fixed faster, so startups should favor them.
Read the original of Simple Systems Have Less Downtime (opens in a new tab)Traynor argues that teams without a clear plan default to low-effort, low-impact snacks, and that real impact comes from committing to high-effort strategic work.
Read the original of The first rule of prioritization: No snacking (opens in a new tab)Basbøll argues that the ideal paragraph supports one clear claim in about a minute of a knowledgeable reader’s attention, and takes the writer far longer to make.
Read the original of The Ideal Paragraph (opens in a new tab)Larson lists the common ways engineering managers stall, from managing only down or only up to seeing nothing but problems.
Read the original of Ways Engineering Managers Get Stuck (opens in a new tab)Roizen argues that good negotiators know their numbers, build allies on the other side, and let the other party claim a win, as she learned dealing with Jobs.
Read the original of What I Learned Negotiating With Steve Jobs (opens in a new tab)Skycak argues that deliberate practice means isolating a weak subskill and getting feedback sharp enough to correct it, since hours alone change nothing.
Read the original of If your practice does not expose weaknesses specific enough to correct, you are just practicing staying the same. (opens in a new tab)Graham argues that cheap, abundant possessions have quietly become a burden, so owning less makes life lighter than most people realize.
Read the original of Stuff (opens in a new tab)Urban argues that real procrastinators can’t just decide to stop, because an impulse for instant gratification keeps overriding the part of them that plans.
Read the original of Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (opens in a new tab)Rieseberg argues that ambition is now the main limit on what people get out of AI models, and shares techniques for believing bigger things are possible.
Read the original of How to be more ambitious: A tutorial for humans with models (opens in a new tab)Lee argues that cold emails to billionaires get answered when they establish competence, make a clear ask, admit self-interest, and show extra effort.
Read the original of The art of cold-emailing a billionaire (opens in a new tab)Torenberg argues that the best career strategy is building a personal moat, a rare and legible set of advantages that compounds over time.
Read the original of Build Personal Moats (opens in a new tab)Janelle argues that becoming more starts with accepting you are already enough, and that constant comparison only keeps you losing contests nobody else sees.
Read the original of how to be okay with being who you are (opens in a new tab)Bahat argues that the best introductions start with a short email he can forward as-is, written in your own voice so the receiver can easily opt in.
Read the original of Introductions and the “forward intro email” (opens in a new tab)Torenberg argues that a failed startup rarely hurts your career and teaches 0-to-1 skills that working at a Series A company never will.
Read the original of Starting a Company is Less Risky Than You Think (opens in a new tab)Torenberg argues that starting a company caps your downside while generating optionality, whereas prestige jobs like Goldman Sachs quietly cap your upside.
Read the original of Take Asymmetric Bets (opens in a new tab)Sunil argues that career optionality is narrower than it looks, carrying real opportunity costs and an expiration date, much like a financial option.
Read the original of Dissecting Career Optionality (opens in a new tab)Graham argues that procrastination can’t be cured, only done well, by putting off small stuff to work on the big things that actually matter.
Read the original of Good and Bad Procrastination (opens in a new tab)Graham argues that a startup succeeds if it starts with good people, makes something customers want, and spends as little money as possible.
Read the original of How to Start a Startup (opens in a new tab)Torenberg argues that chasing safe, prestigious options caps your upside, so the better move is a string of asymmetric bets that build skills either way.
Read the original of Reconsidering Career Optionality (opens in a new tab)Yeung argues that professional relationships run on unwritten norms nobody teaches, and lays out the rules he wishes he had known at 22.
Read the original of The Unspoken Rules of Business (opens in a new tab)Yeung argues that everyone should live in New York for at least two years in their 20s, since it sharpens ambition, confidence, and your network.
Read the original of Why You Should Move to New York (opens in a new tab)Ahmad argues that most growth comes from writing, curiosity about people, and hard work kept up over time, in a running list of rules for his younger self.
Read the original of Advice for a Younger Me (opens in a new tab)Miller argues that peeking at A/B test results and stopping once they look significant inflates false positives, so sample size must be fixed in advance.
Read the original of How Not To Run an A/B Test (opens in a new tab)Maja argues that friendships survive distance only when someone takes responsibility for reaching out, and reflects on staying close as lives spread apart.
Read the original of the art of staying in touch (opens in a new tab)Blank argues that founding a startup suits only people who can live with chaos and failure, and offers a checklist of traits to test yourself against.
Read the original of Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. (opens in a new tab)Graham argues that every city sends a message about what you should strive for, and that living where the message fits your ambition matters a lot.
Read the original of Cities and Ambition (opens in a new tab)Mitchell argues that New York pulls people toward breadth while San Francisco draws out depth, which is why she moved west to create more than consume.
Read the original of Depth over breadth: why I left NYC for San Francisco (opens in a new tab)Crawford argues that San Francisco is the best place to learn as a first-time founder, and explains why he left New York for it.
Read the original of Sucked into the black hole (opens in a new tab)Graham argues that good taste is real and learnable, and that beautiful work across math, design, and art shares the same underlying principles.
Read the original of Taste for Makers (opens in a new tab)Coursey argues good writers use the same words far better than the rest of us, comparing Aaron Swartz’s gripping first line about Carol Dweck with the dull school-style opening he’d have written.
Read the original of Good Writers (opens in a new tab)Roberts argues that you can grow your own luck, since serendipity scales with how much you do what you care about and how many people you tell about it.
Read the original of How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area (opens in a new tab)Hartmann argues that writing is the skill that most expands a senior engineer’s impact, and that good writing starts with having a clear message for a specific audience.
Read the original of Writing for Engineers (opens in a new tab)Ango shares the 40 questions he answers at the end of every year, from what you did for the first time to what you want next year, noting that the real value is the trends that show up across years.
Read the original of 40 questions to ask yourself every year (opens in a new tab)Hall treats agency as a learnable skill and shares the edges that built hers: court rejection, seek anonymous feedback, take random meetings, cross the moat of low status, and avoid burnout.
Read the original of How to be more agentic (opens in a new tab)Libera argues that sitcoms can hold life lessons as real as those in books, and walks through the moments from Community that shaped how she sees her own life.
Read the original of Seeds of Community: Unexpected Life Lessons From A Sitcom (opens in a new tab)Friedman’s credo: reshape the world with technology, move fast because time is the denominator, keep teams small, empower great individuals, and distrust the efficient market.
Read the original of Some Things I Believe (opens in a new tab)Hall’s 50 hard-won lessons on love, judgment, and agency, from caring about people who don’t care back to doing the tasks you most want to avoid first and knowing when to quit.
Read the original of 50 things I know (opens in a new tab)How to apply Christopher Alexander’s idea of unfolding to design a life that fits
Read the original of Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process (opens in a new tab)Karlsson argues that most writing doesn’t help you think, and that it becomes a real tool for thought only when you use it to find and test the flaws in your ideas.
Read the original of How to think in writing (opens in a new tab)Hall argues that fear of looking bad while learning keeps people from richer lives, and that the only way across is to accept the embarrassment and do it anyway, as she did playing poker on television.
Read the original of Learn to love the Moat of Low Status (opens in a new tab)Karlsson argues you should write niche, detailed posts for the person you were six months ago rather than a general audience, since precise writing works like a search query that finds your people online.
Read the original of A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox (opens in a new tab)Housel argues progress is easy to underestimate because it comes from small ideas recombining and compounding over generations, the way Edwin Land influenced Steve Jobs, rather than from lone geniuses.
Read the original of Compounding Optimism (opens in a new tab)Karlsson argues we absorb whatever milieu surrounds us, as historical geniuses absorbed the highly skilled adults around them, so you should deliberately curate both your influences and your audience.
Read the original of First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us (opens in a new tab)Karlsson argues, building on Erich Fromm, that giving is an act of potency rather than sacrifice, and that genuine care for others is how we generate connection.
Read the original of On feeling connected (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that the best way to learn how the world works is to see how connected every field is, since the big lessons from one domain often explain another.
Read the original of One Big Web: A Few Ways the World Works (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that choosing what to ignore is the key attention skill: favor permanent knowledge over expiring news, remember stories, and listen to admired people who disagree.
Read the original of Paying Attention (opens in a new tab)Housel lists the easy mental shortcuts people take instead of hard thinking, like killing uncertainty fast, blaming complex events on one cause, judging others but excusing yourself, and trusting stories over statistics.
Read the original of Psychological Paths of Least Resistance (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues old books reveal lessons that stay true because people don’t change, using Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and quotes from 1980s investors like Peter Lynch to show how the same mistakes repeat.
Read the original of Read Old Books (opens in a new tab)Karlsson argues we misread people by judging surface interests in a single context, as he did for 15 years with his friend Torbjörn, whom he saw as funny rather than deeply responsive.
Read the original of Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you meet (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that high intelligence can backfire, since smart people build elaborate stories to explain randomness, dismiss less-credentialed voices, and cling to outdated ideas to protect their reputations.
Read the original of The Dumber Side of Smart People (opens in a new tab)Housel argues we blame bad times on risk but credit good times to ourselves, though luck is just risk in reverse, so the best guard against entitlement is to be nicer the better things go.
Read the original of The Luckier You Are The Nicer You Should Be (opens in a new tab)Housel’s uncomfortable self-audit questions, such as whose admired life is secretly miserable, which beliefs you hold only for tribal standing, and whether your ambition is really envy.
Read the original of A Few Questions (2023) (opens in a new tab)Housel’s 2025 set of self-audit questions, such as how you’d define a good life without comparison, whose approval you’re auditioning for, and which principles you’d drop if they stopped earning praise.
Read the original of A Few Questions (2025) (opens in a new tab)Housel collects short historical stories with lessons on behavior, from drivers ignoring seat belts for decades to Scots massing troops during the Black Death and Apollo astronauts finding the moon underwhelming.
Read the original of A Few Short Stories (opens in a new tab)Housel’s convictions on money and behavior, from not needing to impress anyone as the best financial asset to expectations inflation, endurance as the key to success, and how ego and impatience override intelligence.
Read the original of A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure About (2023) (opens in a new tab)Housel argues money works best as a tool for a better life rather than a status yardstick, and that how you spend reflects your history and often buys happiness only indirectly.
Read the original of A Few Thoughts on Spending Money (opens in a new tab)Housel argues nostalgia comes from knowing how the story ends, which erases the uncertainty you felt at the time and makes past years, markets, and eras look easier than they were.
Read the original of A Message From the Past (Thoughts on Nostalgia) (opens in a new tab)Housel argues every forecast multiplies a hard number from today by a story about tomorrow, so data-driven predictions are mostly storytelling and always deserve room for error.
Read the original of A Number From Today and A Story About Tomorrow (opens in a new tab)Housel argues outlier success often pairs a science with an unrelated art, like Einstein’s thought experiments, and that great investors are usually great writers because clear communication keeps investors loyal and thinking honest.
Read the original of An Art Leveraging A Science (opens in a new tab)Housel compares much financial advice to magazine architects whose award-winning buildings leak, arguing that most people need simple, boring, practical plans rather than advice that sounds brilliant.
Read the original of Beautiful vs. Practical Advice (opens in a new tab)Housel lists pairs of opposing skills investing demands at once, like taking big risks to get rich but avoiding them to stay rich, or trusting your gut while doubting your biases.
Read the original of Conflicting Skill Sets (opens in a new tab)Using the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, Housel argues academic intelligence is only one kind of smart, and that reading across fields, paranoia about survival, storytelling, and humility matter as much.
Read the original of Different Kinds of Smart (opens in a new tab)Housel argues the best strategy is the one that fits your personality, from talented bloggers who fizzled under media company style guides to investing and spending choices that suit you.
Read the original of Do It Your Way (opens in a new tab)Housel draws five broad lessons from history, including that hardship makes unthinkable views popular, unsustainable things last longer than expected, and progress moves too slowly to notice while setbacks hit fast.
Read the original of Five Lessons from History (opens in a new tab)Koe argues cognitive flexibility matters more than raw intelligence, describes three levels of thinking from scripted NPC to self-aware programmer, and prescribes daily habits of questioning, curating, reading, and creating.
Read the original of Give me 20 minutes and i’ll make you impossible to manipulate (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that more debt narrows the range of life’s shocks you can survive, which is why Japan’s centuries-old shinise businesses hold lots of cash and no debt, and why flexibility is worth protecting.
Read the original of How I Think About Debt (opens in a new tab)Housel’s filters for the flood of financial content: sort it by relevance, read respected people you disagree with, read beyond finance, use old news as a guide, and remember writers may play a different game than you.
Read the original of How To Read Financial News (opens in a new tab)Taking a cue from Munger, Housel argues you should start any book that interests you but quit ruthlessly once it stops working, since most books aren’t worth finishing and a few can change your life.
Read the original of How to Read: Lots of Inputs and a Strong Filter (opens in a new tab)Morgan Housel’s list of questions for testing your own beliefs, from what you desperately want to be true to which views would change if your incentives did.
Read the original of I Have A Few Questions (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues you should give small and unwanted chances your full effort, as Philip Seymour Hoffman did in auditions, William McRaven did with a parade float, and Tom Brady did with two practice reps.
Read the original of If You Get the Chance (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that imagining impossible information, like the exact role of luck in success, is useful because it forces you to think about what matters but is easy to ignore.
Read the original of Information That Would Get Your Attention (opens in a new tab)Housel argues knowledge work often looks lazy because good decisions need quiet thinking time, as Rockefeller, Einstein, and Bill Gates’s Think Weeks show, so judge workers by outcomes rather than visible effort.
Read the original of Lazy Work, Good Work (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that kids looking spoiled by past standards is often the point of their parents’ hard work, since each generation’s easier life just frees it to worry about higher-order problems.
Read the original of Long-Term Money (opens in a new tab)Housel suggests asking what isn’t repeatable instead of who got lucky, so you copy the transferable skills of people like Bezos and Buffett and skip the conditions that will never recur.
Read the original of Lucky vs. Repeatable (opens in a new tab)Housel collects lines on history, risk, and wisdom, from Sebastian Junger on people needing to feel necessary to Amos Tversky on staying a little underemployed to do good research.
Read the original of Makes You Think (opens in a new tab)Housel introduces The Art of Spending Money and its core ideas: money works best as a tool rather than a status yardstick, buys happiness only indirectly, and is spent best by those who stop thinking about it.
Read the original of My New Book: The Art of Spending Money (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues our poor grasp of odds fuels needless stress, since 25,000 valedictorians compete for about 15,000 Ivy seats, yet ignoring the odds is fine when you love the pursuit itself.
Read the original of Our Achilles Heel (opens in a new tab)Housel argues independence, financial but also intellectual and moral, is one of life’s highest goals, starting from his shy son’s pride at buying ice cream alone and why doing things on your own terms feels so good.
Read the original of Pure Independence (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues that significance, the quiet impact you have on people around you, matters more than success, drawing on a Cornell coach’s speech and a gym teacher who built confidence in small kids for decades.
Read the original of Significance > Success (opens in a new tab)Housel collects lines on wealth, happiness, and self-deception, from Ernest Dimnet on small destructive habits to Will Durant calling insecurity the mother of greed.
Read the original of Smart Things Smart People Said (opens in a new tab)Housel collects lines on judgment, humility, and happiness, from Albert Lasker’s humility in the presence of a good idea to Jensen Huang on how high expectations destroy resilience.
Read the original of Smart Words From Smart People (opens in a new tab)Housel argues success depends on surviving long losing streaks, as Ed Thorp’s 2% blackjack edge still meant losing half his hands, which is why real optimism and a margin of safety matter more than the edge itself.
Read the original of Surviving the Continuous Chain of Disappointments (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues we instinctively solve problems by adding things when subtracting often works better, from the pedal-less Strider bike and Chipotle’s short menu to simpler investment portfolios.
Read the original of Take Something Away (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that huge outcomes grow from small early bases, showing that about 97% of Buffett’s fortune traces to the capital he built as a teenager, just as ice ages start from one summer’s leftover snow.
Read the original of The Freakishly Strong Base (opens in a new tab)Buying books, hunting for inspiration, and watching tutorials feel like progress because the brain rewards preparation, so the fix is doing one small, imperfect piece of the actual work today.
Read the original of The illusion of productivity (and why we stay stuck) (opens in a new tab)Housel argues long-term success depends on managing the short run well enough to survive it, from kids distracting themselves in the marshmallow test to Bill Gates keeping a year of payroll in the bank.
Read the original of The Long Run Is Just A Collection of Short Runs (opens in a new tab)Lamade argues the imperfect moments are the ones we remember, from his father’s habit of buying the first flawed Christmas tree he sees, and asks what we lose by smoothing every flaw out of life.
Read the original of The Misfit Tree (opens in a new tab)Housel argues studying extreme cases teaches overly precise lessons that lead you to see rare patterns everywhere, as a 19th-century professor did diagnosing a rare disease his student had rightly ruled out.
Read the original of The Most Dangerous Kind of Learning (opens in a new tab)Housel argues pessimism sounds smarter than optimism because short-term shocks are easier to recall and we underestimate how people adapt, as Jeremy Siegel’s long horizon and the oil cycles show.
Read the original of The Seduction of Pessimism (opens in a new tab)Housel’s rules for writing well: write what you like to read, use stories as leverage for ideas, aim for memorable sentences, and say the most in the fewest words without building up to your point.
Read the original of The Written Word (opens in a new tab)Housel argues that some of the most valuable skills get little credit, like tolerating hassle you can’t control and noticing how much wanting something shapes what you believe.
Read the original of Useful and Overlooked Skills (opens in a new tab)Taking a cue from Munger’s advice to avoid obvious disasters, Housel writes a list of very bad advice, such as letting expectations outgrow income and judging others at their worst and yourself at your best.
Read the original of Very Bad Advice (opens in a new tab)Morgan Housel’s Very Bad Advice list rewritten as its positive version, on envy, status, independence, self-worth, and whose example to follow.
Housel collects short historical stories about luck, uncertainty, and hidden effort, from Henry Ford turning Model T scrap wood into Kingsford charcoal to Chris Rock testing jokes in small clubs before a tour.
Read the original of What A World (A few Stories) (opens in a new tab)Brian argues that small everyday choices compound into who you become, so pushing through hard moments is how you avoid looking back at the person you could have been.
Read the original of What you could have been (opens in a new tab)Housel argues world-changing inventions are usually ignored for years, as the Wright brothers were by the New York Times until 1906, so innovators need patience to wait for the world to notice.
Read the original of When You Change the World and No One Notices (opens in a new tab)Brian argues that a good life isn’t a universal template, so measuring yours against other people’s milestones guarantees it never feels like enough.
Read the original of Who defines a “good” life? (opens in a new tab)Thomas reads Andreessen’s motto through a lost traveler at a fork: commit fully to a path, then turn around fast when it dead-ends, which maximizes your rate of learning.
Read the original of Strong Opinions, Weakly Held (opens in a new tab)Thomas argues that in unknown, unforgiving settings like startups, speed lowers risk, which is why Amundsen’s fast, light team reached the South Pole in comfort while Scott’s slow, cautious one died.
Read the original of The Perils of Prudence (opens in a new tab)Thomas argues that startup experiments should be designed to succeed or fail clearly, because a mediocre result, like two sales from 100 cold calls, teaches you nothing about whether to double down.
Read the original of The Worst Outcome is a Mediocre Success (opens in a new tab)McKenzie argues engineers should always negotiate because five minutes can be worth $100k: never name a number first, echo the employer’s words, and trade across salary, vacation, and perks.
Read the original of Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (opens in a new tab)Kuhn argues the people he admires most are great at thinking clearly about uncomfortable questions, like whether to pivot, quit, or break up, as Wave’s CEO did through a dozen pivots, and offers ways to get better at it.
Read the original of Staring into the abyss as a core life skill (opens in a new tab)signull argues the world now changes faster than advice can keep up, so inherited maps like get a stable job go stale, and you need your own radar for what is shifting right now.
Read the original of advice expires faster than milk now (opens in a new tab)signull argues that real, absorbing fun is a more honest measure than money or prestige and the only sustainable fuel, so plan your days around what would make the work fun.
Read the original of fun is the only metric that doesn’t lie (opens in a new tab)A mechanical way for early-career, non-technical people to pick which startup to join: choose a few criteria, rank them, and use them to filter companies.
Read the original of how to pick the right startup to join [full guide] (opens in a new tab)signull argues attention works like gravity and pulls hardest toward whoever returns it least, which is why silence, scarcity, and one-sided interest hold our focus in relationships, markets, and culture.
Read the original of the physics of attention (opens in a new tab)signull argues people never change because they are told to, only when a story or vision shifts what they see, as in falling in love, lasting friendships, and leaders like Jobs.
Read the original of the world doesn’t move because you tell it to (opens in a new tab)An insider’s list of what made Stripe great around 2018, starting with nearly everyone being agentic, smart, and conscientious, and what that cost in energy.
Read the original of Braindump on what made Stripe great (opens in a new tab)Blunt advice for new grads: send hard-to-fake signals of competence, get good at Leetcode-style problems and programming tactics, and use your network to get noticed.
Read the original of Getting a Tech Job Out of College (opens in a new tab)Feeling stuck usually means a valley, not a local minimum: avoid volatile moves like quitting, build steady momentum, and take bigger steps in calm, promising directions.
Read the original of Gradient Descent Valleys (opens in a new tab)How writing the Hacker News headline first, then building the release to match it, kept RethinkDB on top of HN and taught Akhmechet to write headlines that land.
Read the original of How to Capture Attention (opens in a new tab)How to give feedback people want and feedback they don’t: move from a concrete example of their work to how you’d do it, why it matters, and a reusable framework.
Read the original of how to give feedback (opens in a new tab)Great candidates are rare and have options, so move fast, pour energy into small gestures and their bigger dreams, and leave compensation for the end.
Read the original of How to recruit (opens in a new tab)Tips for updates to investors, bosses, and other teams: show you take their trust seriously, vary the cadence a little, and build a record of good stewardship.
Read the original of How To Send Progress Updates (opens in a new tab)Great designers see the world from a vantage point you can’t share, so working with one means building a common language together until the confusion clears.
Read the original of How to Work W Designers (opens in a new tab)In technical interviews, treat small problems like bugs as a normal part of the work: no change of pace, no irritation, no surprise, because composure is what strong performers share.
Read the original of Interview Advice (opens in a new tab)Contrasts two working modes: leaders take a goal, tolerate ambiguity, and figure out the how, while followers need precise tasks and excel within a narrow range.
Read the original of Leader v Follower Mode (opens in a new tab)A 10-to-20-year career loop: get in rooms with the most competent people who’ll have you, work hard to be reliably useful, and watch for weird asymmetric opportunities.
Read the original of Long Range Career Advice (opens in a new tab)What good incident response takes under uncertainty and time pressure: the rare mix of equanimity, rigor, and urgency, plus calm, organized coordination of the war room.
Read the original of Notes on Incident Response (opens in a new tab)People respond to big failures by either consolidating lessons and moving up or hiding in humiliation, and the mode you land in is decided by habits built before the failure.
Read the original of On Failure (opens in a new tab)Start a new job by running two threads: solve one small valuable problem fast and keep scaling up, while talking to everyone to understand what they work on and why.
Read the original of On Starting a New Job (opens in a new tab)PMs own outcomes they don’t control, and engineering and PM share strategic goals but diverge tactically by design, so the relationship is part partnership, part healthy tension.
Read the original of On Working with Product Managers (opens in a new tab)Firm rules for execution: every effort needs one owner for whom it’s the main job, leaders and followers rarely swap roles, and you can only run as many things as you have leaders.
Read the original of Stubborn Attachments On Getting Things Done (opens in a new tab)Housel on why bad behavior makes sense with more information, how housing affordability drives social problems, why people fear AI after the internet, and why politics runs in cycles.
Read the original of A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure About (2026) (opens in a new tab)Housel’s handful of ideas that shaped his thinking, including how tribes bend beliefs, why history repeats in behavior, why room for error is aggressive, and how personal experience skews your view.
Read the original of Ideas That Changed My Life (opens in a new tab)Housel’s list of short rules on money, risk, and behavior, from keeping a gap between ego and income to fearing permanent damage far more than temporary harm.
Read the original of Little Rules About Big Things (opens in a new tab)Using data to design sounds objective. On metrics versus intent, A/B tests, and why judgment still has to make the call.
Read the original of Measurable does not mean important (opens in a new tab)Housel’s one-line observations on wealth, luck, and human nature, such as measuring wealth as what you have minus what you want and the value of not needing to impress anyone.
Read the original of Some Things I Think (opens in a new tab)Smart ideas get copied fast, so lasting advantage comes from doing what others won’t, starting with the ability to learn faster than the competition.
Read the original of Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage (opens in a new tab)Eliason argues most productivity systems are tool-sharpening that rarely improves the actual work, as a chef taught him about knife skills, so use the minimum scaffolding and fix tools only when work suffers.
Read the original of Breaking Up with Productivity Advice (opens in a new tab)Eliason argues modern life atomizes rich activities into single efficient elements, like a Peloton ride instead of biking with friends, and that blending exercise, food, work, and friends back together makes life happier.
Read the original of De-Atomization is the Secret to Happiness (opens in a new tab)Altman pushes back on complaints about a lack of innovation by pointing out that the phones, apps, and services people use to complain mostly didn’t exist ten years earlier.
Read the original of A Question (opens in a new tab)Altman argues startups should chase growth only after some users love the product enough to recommend it unprompted, since growth hacking a half-liked product fools investors only until they check retention.
Read the original of Before Growth (opens in a new tab)Altman argues retention becomes harder than hiring once a startup grows, and that mission, rocketship growth, and a great team keep people where perks and inflated salaries never do.
Read the original of Employee Retention (opens in a new tab)Altman argues democracy breaks down without economic growth, since voters in a zero-sum system can only gain at each other’s expense, and that America’s dysfunction traces back to slowing real growth.
Read the original of Growth and Government (opens in a new tab)Altman’s 13 principles for outlier success, centered on compounding yourself, near-delusional self-belief, focus, hard work, owning equity instead of selling time, and being driven from within.
Read the original of How To Be Successful (opens in a new tab)Hunter Walk on why living below your means keeps your options open, letting you take risks and choose work you care about over the highest salary.
Read the original of Keep Your Personal Burn Rate Low To Maximize Your Options (opens in a new tab)Altman argues that choosing what to work on matters most for productivity, then shares his system of paper lists, ruthless no’s, protected mornings, and sleep, exercise, and diet tuned by experiment.
Read the original of Productivity (opens in a new tab)Altman argues you should think of a startup as a project for as long as possible, since low expectations free you to pursue slightly crazy ideas, the way Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb all began.
Read the original of Projects and Companies (opens in a new tab)Altman shares the term sheet he uses as an angel and explains what he left out, from option-pool shuffles and investor legal fees to exploding offers and confidentiality, to win the best founders.
Read the original of A founder-friendly term sheet (opens in a new tab)Altman argues college, a job, or a startup can each be right at 19 as long as you build things, stay around smart people, and take the right risks, like joining a breakout company over a higher salary at Microsoft.
Read the original of Advice for ambitious 19 year olds (opens in a new tab)Startups don’t take off on their own; founders have to push them early by recruiting users by hand and delighting them in ways that would never work at scale.
Read the original of Do Things that Don’t Scale (opens in a new tab)Altman notices that every breakout startup he tracks connects the online and physical worlds, like Uber and Airbnb, and argues that companies bridging the two tend to beat purely digital or purely physical ones.
Read the original of Electrons and Atoms (opens in a new tab)Altman lists common fundraising mistakes, from chasing high valuations and playing tricks to failing to create competition between investors, raising without a lead, and not knowing your own metrics cold.
Read the original of Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make (opens in a new tab)Altman holds up Greg Brockman as the ideal cofounder, the force of will who committed to OpenAI on a car ride home, recruited the founding team, took every non-technical job, and kept everyone pressing on.
Read the original of Greg Brockman (opens in a new tab)Altman argues hard, meaningful startups are often easier to make succeed than easy ones, because an important mission attracts the talent, advice, and funding that a thousand photo-sharing apps compete for.
Read the original of Hard Startups (opens in a new tab)Altman endorses Charlie Rose’s theory that things get done through focus and personal connections, so founders should drop everything beyond two or three priorities and invest in relationships with smart people.
Read the original of How things get done (opens in a new tab)Altman argues startup investing comes down to access, judgment, and getting founders to pick you, which means outworking other investors, backing fast-improving founders in possible $10B markets, and acting decisively.
Read the original of How To Invest In Startups (opens in a new tab)Paul Graham’s practical guide to early fundraising: when to raise, how investors think, and how to run the process without letting it distract from the company.
Read the original of How to Raise Money (opens in a new tab)Altman argues good startup ideas come from being around optimistic, unfiltered people, projecting 20 years ahead, and spotting what became possible this year, and that a good idea sounds bad for reasons you can explain.
Read the original of Idea Generation (opens in a new tab)Altman argues that A/B tests and funnel tweaks only matter once users love the product, so early startups should chase a step change in the product itself rather than incremental 10% gains.
Read the original of Premature optimization (opens in a new tab)A startup is a company designed to grow fast, and Graham explains why growth rate is the one metric that should guide nearly every decision a founder makes.
Read the original of Startup = Growth (opens in a new tab)Altman’s 95 pieces of startup advice for a new YC batch, from make something people want and hire slow, fire fast to keeping burn low, moving fast, and staying optimistic when everything melts down.
Read the original of Startup Advice (opens in a new tab)Altman’s compressed guide to building a startup: start with a project, make something a few users love, keep burn low, hire well and fire fast, obsess over growth, and keep working hard for ten years.
Read the original of Startup advice, briefly (opens in a new tab)Altman lists what hugely successful startups do when young, from obsessing over product quality and talent to making something a few users love, keeping costs low, and moving fast on everything.
Read the original of Super successful companies (opens in a new tab)Altman collects confident expert predictions that turned out wrong, from Wilbur Wright doubting flight and Einstein dismissing nuclear energy to 2015 skeptics calling superhuman AI ridiculous.
Read the original of Technology predictions (opens in a new tab)Altman’s 36 lessons from his twenties, from keeping close friends and a low burn rate to picking the right work, asking for what you want, and doing something new and risky every year.
Read the original of The days are long but the decades are short (opens in a new tab)Altman argues the goal is to care about others’ opinions on a long time horizon rather than stop caring, trading short-term low status for long-term high status by being right about a non-consensus bet.
Read the original of The Strength of Being Misunderstood (opens in a new tab)Altman argues that because one angel investment often returns more than all the rest combined, the real risk is missing the outlier, so investors should stop demanding protective terms that drive off the best founders.
Read the original of Upside risk (opens in a new tab)Altman argues that tweeting, networking, and talking about the future only feel like work, since value comes from execution, so measure what you got done each day and work on what you actually care about.
Read the original of Value is created by doing (opens in a new tab)Altman’s 17 lessons on building things: optimism and obsession get them started, while cohesive teams, focused bets, and fast iteration get them finished.
Read the original of What I Wish Someone Had Told Me (opens in a new tab)Generic subject lines like “Coffee Chat Request” get ignored; personalize the subject so a busy executive has a reason to open your cold email.
Read the original of How To Craft A Subject Line for Cold Emailing part 1 (opens in a new tab)Paul Graham argues nerds are unpopular in school because they care more about being smart than popular, and because schools are artificial places with no real work to do.
Read the original of Why Nerds are Unpopular (opens in a new tab)Brian Chesky shares the rejection emails Airbnb got from investors when it tried to raise $150,000 at a $1.5M valuation.
Read the original of 7 Rejections (opens in a new tab)A chapter from Sivers’s How to Live arguing that the way to live is to create, finish what you start, and die with nothing left inside you.
Read the original of Create. (opens in a new tab)Brian Chesky on how adults stop imagining things they can’t yet see how to build, and why starting from an unedited imagination leads to bigger ideas.
Read the original of Don’t Edit Your Imagination (opens in a new tab)Chesky’s 2013 letter to the Airbnb team on why culture comes first, prompted by Peter Thiel’s one piece of advice after investing.
Read the original of Don’t Fuck Up the Culture (opens in a new tab)Drawing on selling two B2B software companies to Google and Elastic, Dullien explains how your target market dictates funding, how VC incentives really work, and how to handle product, hiring, sales, and cofounders.
Read the original of Halvar’s Guide to Entrepreneurship (opens in a new tab)Chesky argues that repetition blurs memory while new experiences stretch it, which is why he remembers every childhood family trip but none of his 2,000 bus rides, so travel makes life feel longer.
Read the original of How to Time Travel (opens in a new tab)Netscape’s rewrite from scratch shows why throwing away working code is the worst strategic mistake a software company can make.
Read the original of Things You Should Never Do, Part I (opens in a new tab)Wang argues a leader sets the ceiling on how much a company cares, so leaders must overdo everything, as Scale did by moving most of its team to LLM data within six months.
Read the original of Do Too Much (opens in a new tab)Wang’s Scale memo argues the key hiring screen is whether candidates care about the company and have been obsessed with work before, warning that a growing startup risks becoming a credential instead of a mission.
Read the original of Hire people who give a shit. (opens in a new tab)“Do what you love” is harder than it sounds; Graham unpacks how to tell real interest from prestige, money, and others’ expectations when choosing your work.
Read the original of How to Do What You Love (opens in a new tab)Wang’s 2019 Scale memo argues companies slow down because people compress complex problems badly when handing them off, so the fix is shared context, vertical teams, and solving your own problems.
Read the original of Information Compression (opens in a new tab)Having kids convinced Graham that life really is short, so the answer is to cut out the bullshit, avoid letting time slip by, and do what matters to you now.
Read the original of Life is Short (opens in a new tab)Wang’s 2019 Scale memo argues that time estimates set how long work takes, since people aim just under any bar, so optimistic scopes make teams move faster.
Read the original of Optimism Shapes Reality (opens in a new tab)Sivers’s talk to incoming Berklee students: six lessons on focus, ignoring distraction, and treating school as an intense training period.
Read the original of 6 things I wish I knew the day I started Berklee (opens in a new tab)Henderson argues you should copy people a little ahead of you rather than stars, since successful people can afford countersignals like humility or not self-promoting that would hurt someone just starting out.
Read the original of Be Wary of Imitating High-Status People Who Can Afford to Countersignal (opens in a new tab)Bensusan argues you should read people backwards from what they actually accomplish, since that reveals their real motivation, as he learned when he forgot the protein in his protein pudding.
Read the original of But I want to turn people into dinosaurs (opens in a new tab)Bensusan argues software businesses are blind by default, since a paper shop clerk sees a Chinese New Year rush but an online store sees nothing unless someone asks, so people can stay lost for years.
Read the original of Default blind (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues school trains students to recite answers like “light is waves” that earn gold stars but predict nothing, and that real understanding means a belief that controls what you expect to see.
Read the original of Guessing the Teacher’s Password (opens in a new tab)Henderson argues there’s no secret to reading a lot: read slowly with notes, cycle through several books, fill spare minutes with a Kindle instead of scrolling, and treat a daily reading habit as non-negotiable.
Read the original of How I Read (opens in a new tab)When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
Read the original of Incentives as selection effects (opens in a new tab)Bensusan argues big tech ships few products for its size because the real bottleneck is lieutenants, agentic people who push through blockers outside their job description, and they grow scarcer as companies grow.
Read the original of Lieutenants are the limiting reagent (opens in a new tab)Ponnekanti argues the only reason that gets a stuck person moving is the feeling of motion itself, so the goal is two good days in a row, which gives you a trend worth defending.
Read the original of Psychokinetics (opens in a new tab)Bensusan argues that needing time to think usually means fearing risks you already understand, so ask what you need to know to decide now, with a reply from Andy Matuschak on when waiting helps.
Read the original of Risk-takers decide faster (opens in a new tab)When one language draws a distinction another lacks, like Swedish’s four words for grandparents, listeners get stuck on details that don’t matter to the story.
Read the original of Semantic gaps (opens in a new tab)Gichuru uses Price’s Law, where the square root of a group does half the work, to argue for producing in volume, finding the few posts and skills that matter, and doubling down on them.
Read the original of The Mathematical Reason Most People Never “Make It” (opens in a new tab)Bensusan argues writers’ ideas mostly flow from their personalities, as he learns every time he meets an author, so knowing the person, through podcasts or biography, changes how much authority their arguments deserve.
Read the original of The person behind the idea (opens in a new tab)Uses the hill-climbing algorithm to explain why smart people stay on career paths they don’t want, and why moving to the higher hill early beats climbing the wrong one.
Read the original of Climbing the wrong hill (opens in a new tab)Lessons on cadence, hiring, culture, and finding meaning at a high-growth startup.
Read the original of How to Build a High-Growth Operating System: 9 Lessons from 9 Years at Faire (opens in a new tab)A reflection on how friendships fade without a final conversation, why lost people still surface in ordinary moments, and how those who once mattered keep shaping who you are after contact ends.
Read the original of people i no longer speak to (opens in a new tab)Big companies constantly fight misaligned incentives between employees and the firm, so selling to them means knowing what each decision maker is rewarded for.
Read the original of Agency problems (opens in a new tab)Feedback loops between platforms and apps produce exponential growth that looks slow for years and then sudden, with smartphones as the main example.
Read the original of Exponential curves feel gradual and then sudden (opens in a new tab)Steve Jobs in 1985 on watching kids grow up with Apple IIs and the leverage of an idea that a few people design and many others build on.
Read the original of It all blossomed out of this tiny little seed (opens in a new tab)Steve Jobs on pushing past the convoluted middle stage of a hard problem to find its underlying principle and an elegant solution.
Read the original of Steve Jobs on problem solving (opens in a new tab)A quote arguing that today’s free internet in your pocket would have sounded insane twenty years ago, and that the biggest technological changes are still ahead.
Read the original of The next twenty years are going to make this last twenty years just pale (opens in a new tab)A ten-step list of how people react to a transformative technology, from never having heard of it to calling it too powerful and demanding regulation.
Read the original of The typical path of how people respond to life-changing inventions (opens in a new tab)Mike Moritz on judging each startup on its own, and why generalizing about whole markets is dangerous when your job is finding the exceptions.
Read the original of This business is like bird spotting (opens in a new tab)Extends Eric Ries’s vanity metrics to milestones: celebrity investors, brand partnerships, and press that feel like progress but don’t help the company.
Read the original of Vanity milestones (opens in a new tab)Engineers spend free time on interesting problems rather than near-term returns, which is why today’s tech hobbies tend to become tomorrow’s industries.
Read the original of What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years (opens in a new tab)Gross numbers like “hits” feel like progress but hide who your customers are and what caused growth, so teams should track actionable metrics instead.
Read the original of Why vanity metrics are dangerous (opens in a new tab)Sivers spent years learning to sing, produce, and program himself when shortcuts existed, because the point was to become those things, not just to have the results.
Read the original of It’s about being, not having (opens in a new tab)Ben Horowitz on what makes a good place to work: people can focus on the job and trust that doing it well benefits both them and the company.
Read the original of A Good Place to Work (opens in a new tab)Carey argues you should judge every trade of time for money, from chasing discounts to hiring cleaners, against your personal hourly exchange rate, and asks readers to share dollar-per-hour estimates for common trades.
Read the original of Collating widely available time/money trades (opens in a new tab)Chapin argues fast connection with strangers is a learnable skill: expect everything and nothing from people, risk looking stupid, match their tempo, be responsive, and stay physically relaxed.
Read the original of Connecting with people more easily (opens in a new tab)Framing a request as a choice between two options instead of yes or no takes “no” off the table, and the same trick works for your own habits.
Read the original of Don’t ask yes/no, ask A/B (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues the secret behind outsized impact is a deep belief that you can make a dent in the universe, since expectations shape reality and self-doubt becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Read the original of Elon Musk’s, Steve Jobs’, Albert Einstein’s Secret Sauce (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues junk content compounds like junk food, pointing to Alex Hormozi’s finding that viewers of short entertaining videos almost never move on to his deeper long-form content.
Read the original of Evidence that you should take your content diet more seriously (opens in a new tab)Applies the investing barbell strategy to everyday life: skip the middle and combine extremes in caffeine, reading, friendships, and writing.
Read the original of Examples of barbell strategies (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues life shrinks by default as habit pulls you toward the same places and people, so he expands it on purpose with several workplaces and a weekly mini-adventure from his Living Larger list.
Read the original of Expansion, always, in all ways (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues curiosity beats spreadsheets, prestige, and money as a guide to what to work on, since excitement is information and fuel, as David Perell found when chasing ambition led him into a writing slump.
Read the original of Follow Curiosity (opens in a new tab)Borrowing improv’s offer-block-accept idea, Greenfeld argues that blocking feels safe and high-status but makes life dull, so accept more offers and make interesting ones, the way Californication’s Richard Bates does.
Read the original of Howl with the wolves (opens in a new tab)Kumar argues that copying successful people like Elon Musk fails because their habits only work in context and survivorship bias hides the rest, so the better bet is to be uniquely yourself.
Read the original of If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out you’re stupid. (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld turns Naval’s definition of retirement into a daily practice: hit work, exercise, learning, and social time every day, and bring holiday experiences into ordinary life.
Read the original of Immediate Retirement (opens in a new tab)Busy people miss most of their email, so if you want a reply, it’s on you to follow up politely and repeatedly until you get one.
Read the original of It Is Your Responsibility to Follow Up (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld’s notes from two 37signals podcasts, where DHH and Jason Fried argue you learn whether an idea works by shipping it, since the best business ideas can’t be analyzed rationally up front.
Read the original of Lessons from DHH and Jason Fried (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld balances structure and spontaneity by deciding each evening what tomorrow’s deep work and task blocks will hold, since he chooses far better for his future self than in the moment.
Read the original of Letting Now Jakob make decisions for Future Jakob (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld uses the single vote to show how actions too small to matter on their own, like a little junk food or doomscrolling, add up to define who you are.
Read the original of On the importance of infinitesimal actions (opens in a new tab)Buggy software quietly trains users to avoid its problems until they stop noticing them, which hides bugs from developers and from the users themselves.
Read the original of Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs (opens in a new tab)Pearson uses the can opener test and Germany’s collapsing scientific forests to show how overconfidence breeds hidden risk, and recommends knowing your limits, building deep expertise, and keeping a margin of safety.
Read the original of Overconfidence Bias: What It Is and How to Overcome It (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues that doing more of what kind of works keeps you stuck at the same level, as indie hackers he hadn’t seen in two years still were, and that 10x jumps require radically changing your approach.
Read the original of Progress is not automatic (opens in a new tab)Eliason argues the real reason to take hard classes like calculus is to prove to yourself you can do hard things, since that track record shapes how capable you feel when new challenges arrive.
Read the original of Proof You Can Do Hard Things (opens in a new tab)When someone upset comes to you for support, empathize before offering advice, even if they asked for advice, because they can’t take it in until they feel heard.
Read the original of Reminder: Empathize First! (opens in a new tab)A busy music publicist only listened to artists who followed up three times, which Sivers uses to argue that persistent follow-up is how you show you care.
Read the original of Repeatedly follow-up to show you care (opens in a new tab)Starting from a vague founder pitch at YC office hours, a call for exercises that train people to replace abstract claims with concrete, specific examples.
Read the original of SotW: Be Specific (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues that banning a disputed word and describing what you actually expect to observe dissolves fake disagreements, like the tree falling in an empty forest, and exposes real ones hiding behind shared labels.
Read the original of Taboo Your Words (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues people tend to mirror how you treat them, since popular kids are the ones who like their classmates most, so to stop fearing judgment, mistrust, or rudeness, change your own behavior first.
Read the original of The Mirror (opens in a new tab)Aaron Swartz argues effective people work backward from a goal to a concrete theory of how change happens, while most people just apply whatever skills they already have.
Read the original of Theory of Change (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues analytical, left-brain thinking oversells frameworks and plans, so he now sits with problems and leans into the obvious, the way improv pros do, to let intuition contribute.
Read the original of Thinking harder doesn’t work (or how I learned to love the right half of my brain) (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues that because every piece of success advice has an equally valid opposite, the skill is knowing when to use which, and that usefulness, even useful delusion, matters more than truth.
Read the original of Truth is Overrated (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld argues productivity systems are mostly procrastination, since real output flows upstream from physical health and from working on things you truly care about.
Read the original of Upstream Productivity (opens in a new tab)Eliason argues the word balance sets work against life when work is just one area of life, so the better goal is to integrate health, relationships, fun, and work so each supports the others.
Read the original of Work Life Balance is Impossible (opens in a new tab)After quitting piano, a third language, and content creation for fear of being behind, janelle argues that regretting lost time only wastes more of it, so ask what you’d start today if being late didn’t matter.
Read the original of the fear of wasting your time is wasting your time (opens in a new tab)Explains anchoring: people start from an arbitrary number and adjust too little, as Tversky and Kahneman’s wheel-of-fortune experiment showed.
Read the original of Anchoring and Adjustment (opens in a new tab)Slide-style notes making the case for becoming generally capable and comfortable with failure, before a stalled life forces you to rethink your model of the world.
Read the original of Being Generally Capable (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues that knowing an outcome makes it look far more predictable than it was, so after disasters like Challenger and 9/11 we learn overly specific lessons and underestimate the real cost of caution.
Read the original of Hindsight bias (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues the strongest evidence sits closest to the question itself, so checking the Wright brothers’ calculations or watching the plane fly beats weighing Lord Kelvin’s authority or anyone’s biases.
Read the original of Hug the Query (opens in a new tab)Most people pursue goals through far less effective routes than they could find, because good strategy takes deliberate effort and nothing pushes us toward it by default.
Read the original of Humans are not automatically strategic (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky uses Boaz Keysar’s experiments to show that we know what we mean and assume others do too, so speakers overestimate how well they’re understood, as Chamberlain did in his letter to Hitler.
Read the original of Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You (opens in a new tab)What’s obvious to you often isn’t to others, so it’s worth saying “obvious” things out loud and dropping the word “obviously” from your arguments.
Read the original of On Saying the Obvious (opens in a new tab)Uses Wason’s 2-4-6 task to show how people only test cases that confirm their hypothesis, and why you should look for evidence that could prove you wrong.
Read the original of Positive Bias: Look Into the Dark (opens in a new tab)Building stairs and fences taught Salvatier that every real task hides countless details, which is why experts miss what they don’t know to look for and get stuck.
Read the original of Reality has a surprising amount of detail (opens in a new tab)A wiki page arguing scientific papers should report likelihood functions instead of p-values, so readers can see how strongly the evidence supports each hypothesis.
Read the original of Report likelihoods, not p-values (opens in a new tab)A wiki entry on Korzybski’s map-territory distinction: beliefs are models of reality, and changing what you believe doesn’t change the world itself.
Read the original of The Map Is Not The Territory (opens in a new tab)Kuhn argues that reflecting someone’s words back is cargo-cult listening, and that good listening comes from real curiosity about the details of their situation, without which your advice is usually wrong.
Read the original of To listen well, get curious (opens in a new tab)Why Yoda was right: setting out to “try” means aiming at having made an effort rather than at success, and that lower target quietly guarantees weaker plans.
Read the original of Trying to Try (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky shares his trick for getting out of bed by counting down from ten, which turns an effortful decision into a default plan that runs on its own, while warning it’s shallow advice without deep theory behind it.
Read the original of Willpower Hax #487: Execute by Default (opens in a new tab)Schmidt-Nielsen argues a vesting equity grant is a call option paid for with your time, since you can stay if the company does well and quit if it doesn’t, so a dollar of equity beats a dollar of cash, especially at startups.
Read the original of Equity is Worth More Than Cash Because of Optionality (opens in a new tab)Vesting plus the option to leave gives startup employees an embedded call option on their equity, so it’s worth far more than its face value when outcomes are volatile.
Read the original of The value of employee equity depends a lot on volatility (opens in a new tab)Patrick Collison’s list of teams that did ambitious things remarkably fast, from launching BankAmericard in 90 days to building the first USAF jet fighter in 143.
Read the original of Fast (opens in a new tab)Patrick Collison’s running list of big open questions he finds interesting, such as why some things like healthcare and education keep getting more expensive.
Read the original of Questions (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues that an explanation able to fit any outcome predicts nothing, so saying “because of heat conduction” without real expectations is just magic dressed in scientific words.
Read the original of Fake Explanations (opens in a new tab)How labeling a domain as one you “just don’t understand,” like mechanical things or math, makes people stop thinking before they’ve tried the obvious next question.
Read the original of Learned Blankness (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues you should admit a big mistake all at once rather than concede it in small grudging pieces, since only acknowledging a fundamental error drives real change, as Enron’s executives never did.
Read the original of The Importance of Saying “Oops” (opens in a new tab)The adage that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered “no,” because a publisher confident in the answer would have stated it outright.
Read the original of Betteridge’s law of headlines (opens in a new tab)Drawing on Nate Silver’s On the Edge, Greenfeld argues successful people understand probability well enough to treat failures as inevitable, so they shrug them off and keep trying hundreds of times instead of three.
Read the original of Big IDGAF Energy (opens in a new tab)Thompson defines aggregators as companies with a direct user relationship, zero marginal costs, and demand-driven networks, then ranks them by supplier cost, from Netflix and Uber to Google and Facebook.
Read the original of Defining Aggregators (opens in a new tab)Great developers rarely hit the job market, so Spolsky explains how to reach them early through internships, community, and building a place they want to work.
Read the original of Finding Great Developers (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld treats vibes as a practical lens: things on your wavelength attract and influence you, so raise your state first, then notice which people, food, music, and work feel off.
Read the original of Higher Vibrations (opens in a new tab)Wang argues you can create luck by growing your luck surface area through doing more and telling more people, and maps the four kinds of luck from accidental to magnetic onto habits and strategy.
Read the original of How to Create Luck (opens in a new tab)Wang argues developers can market themselves without becoming celebrities by building a consistent personal brand, claiming a domain to be the go-to person for, and showcasing their work both in public and at work.
Read the original of How to Market Yourself (opens in a new tab)Every company has to choose between slow organic growth like Ben and Jerry’s and fast land-grab growth like Amazon, then build everything around that choice.
Read the original of Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry’s vs. Amazon (opens in a new tab)Greenfeld collects passages, mostly from John Vervaeke, arguing that suffering means losing agency rather than feeling pain, which is why addiction and even too much joy count as suffering.
Read the original of Suffering (opens in a new tab)Joel Spolsky’s guide to technical interviews: hire people who are smart and get things done, and how to structure an interview that reliably finds them.
Read the original of The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (opens in a new tab)Non-programmers judge software by its visible interface, a small fraction of the real work, so make unfinished features look unfinished to keep expectations honest.
Read the original of The Iceberg Secret, Revealed (opens in a new tab)Charlie Munger’s rules for a life that works, drawn from his 2007 USC Law commencement speech: deserve what you want, keep learning, invert problems, be reliable, avoid ideology and self-pity, and earn deserved trust.
Read the original of The Munger Operating System: A Life That Works (opens in a new tab)Yudkowsky argues that calling quantum physics weird exposes bad intuitions, since surprise lives in the model, so you should reshape them until reality feels normal.
Read the original of Think Like Reality (opens in a new tab)Joel Spolsky works through a simple bond puzzle to show how interest rates move bond and stock prices, a basic piece of finance most programmers never learn.
Read the original of Wall Street Survival 101 (opens in a new tab)Looking back at his successes, Ben Kuhn found the hardest part was simply getting up and doing things outside his routine, which matters more than talent.
Read the original of Actually doing things (opens in a new tab)Startup investing returns come from a few huge winners, and the best ideas look bad at first, so investors should bet on ideas that seem crazy rather than safe.
Read the original of Black Swan Farming (opens in a new tab)Sarris argues virtue lives in careful everyday acts rather than heroics, and that you should leave public breadcrumbs, like writing what you learn, so the right people, jobs, and partners can find you.
Read the original of Breadcrumbs (opens in a new tab)A step-by-step guide to networking, starting with having a clear goal, on the premise that the people around you often limit what you can accomplish.
Read the original of How to Network Effectively (opens in a new tab)Say no to anything you feel half-hearted about so you have the time and focus to go all in when something exciting comes along.
Read the original of If you’re not feeling “hell yeah!” then say no (opens in a new tab)Ahmed answers every doubt he heard while building Whoop, from having no experience to Nike, Apple, and Amazon killing him, with a single reply to keep going.
Read the original of Just keep going (opens in a new tab)Before questioning a belief you care about, picture calmly how you’d live if it were false, so the evidence doesn’t feel like a threat you have to fight off.
Read the original of Leave a Line of Retreat (opens in a new tab)Kuhn argues that jobs, hires, relationships, and blog posts follow heavy-tailed distributions, so you should draw many samples, filter for maybe-amazing over probably-good, and expect to fail a lot.
Read the original of Searching for outliers (opens in a new tab)Ben Kuhn argues the usual complaints about startup pay miss how much stock options are worth once you count the option to leave and the chance of a big outcome.
Read the original of Startup options are much better than they look (opens in a new tab)How teacher Kimo Williams pushed a teenage Sivers through two years of music theory in a few lessons, showing you can learn far faster than the standard pace.
Read the original of There’s no speed limit (opens in a new tab)Updating his 2014 job-hunting criteria after years at Wave, Kuhn now ranks fast company growth first, then deep alignment, impact, mentorship, and earned responsibility, while caring little about hard problems or income.
Read the original of What to care about in a job (opens in a new tab)A guide to judging founding designer offers by the founder, team culture, product, and real scope of the role rather than comp alone, with questions to ask current and former employees before signing.
Read the original of founding designer, explained (opens in a new tab)Treating a job as a bundle of problems someone will pay to solve, this guide argues the front door of job boards is crowded, so reach people directly with specific proof or publish work that lets them find you.
Read the original of how to enter side doors (opens in a new tab)Paul Graham on why starting or joining a startup is the most reliable way to get rich: wealth is created, not taken, and startups compress a working life into a few years.
Read the original of How to Make Wealth (opens in a new tab)Hard problems get solved by the thinking you do without trying, like in the shower, so guard what occupies your mind, especially against money and disputes.
Read the original of The Top Idea in Your Mind (opens in a new tab)Qureshi’s 63 life principles, centered on moving fast, making many bets, putting yourself out there, and seeking environments and people that push you to your best work.
Read the original of Principles (opens in a new tab)Yeo argues the best life-decision rule is to collect bets with capped downside and uncapped upside, act fast on lucky breaks, and double down on what pays off, as when she chose a crypto startup over Google.
Read the original of Collect as many lottery tickets as you can (opens in a new tab)Alisa Wuffles’s probability study notes: a map from problem types to the right concept, plus common distributions, expectations, and Bayes rule with proofs.
Read the original of math (opens in a new tab)After spending her first 25 years avoiding failure by not trying anything, janelle argues that the worst outcome of trying is learning, and starts experimenting with floristry, writing, and photography anyway.
Read the original of the worst thing that can happen is that you’ll learn (opens in a new tab)Kevin Kelly’s 101 new bits of life advice written for his 73rd birthday, from criticizing something by making something better to interviewing your parents while you can and being the last to let go of a hug.
Read the original of 101 Additional Advices (opens in a new tab)Patrick Collison’s advice to his younger self, broken down by decade of life, starting with going deep on several subjects in your teens.
Read the original of Advice (opens in a new tab)Andrej Karpathy’s rules of thumb for doing well in undergrad courses, from skipping all-nighters and starting early to studying actively before exams.
Read the original of Andrej’s advice for success (opens in a new tab)How fear of looking stupid held Kaminsky back from new things, and how learning Spanish in Mexico taught him to be bad at something in public.
Read the original of Being Bad (opens in a new tab)Elad Gil’s framework for choosing your next career step: which factors to overweight, starting with network, and how their importance shifts with your stage of life.
Read the original of Career Decisions (opens in a new tab)Stancil argues leaders often order more analysis to dodge hard calls rather than learn anything, using data as a substitute for courage, and that analysts who want to lead must learn to own decisions the data can’t settle.
Read the original of Does data make us cowards? (opens in a new tab)Brosh’s illustrated story of moving from Montana to Oregon with a simple-minded dog and a neurotic helper dog, who meet car sickness, snow, and sled-dog booties with escalating panic until a squeaky toy saves the day.
Read the original of Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving (opens in a new tab)An excerpt from Steve Jobs’s 1996 Palo Alto High School graduation speech urging students to trust their intuitions about life over goal-driven, materialistic paths.
Read the original of Don’t be a Career by Steve Jobs (opens in a new tab)H.T. Kung’s 1987 talk to new Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. students on what research is, what a thesis should accomplish, and how to pick and attack problems.
Read the original of H.T. Kung’s Ph.D. Advice (opens in a new tab)A letter to a new high school graduate about adult life: what you repeat becomes who you are, starting with how you get along with the voice in your head.
Read the original of Letter to Jack (opens in a new tab)The story of a comfortable copywriter who never actually chose his life, and how most people drift into jobs, homes, and routines by default.
Read the original of Most lives are lived by default (opens in a new tab)Nike’s ten founding principles, written by Rob Strasser in 1977, including that the business is change, results matter more than process, and doing the right things makes money nearly automatic.
Read the original of The 10 Principles at Nike (opens in a new tab)Urban counts his remaining winters, books, and visits home and finds that by high school graduation he had already used up 93% of his in-person time with his parents, so time with loved ones deserves top priority.
Read the original of The Tail End (opens in a new tab)Alexey Guzey’s guide for people coasting without a plan, with curated lists of problems worth working on and advice on figuring out what to do next.
Read the original of What Should You Do with Your Life? Directions and Advice (opens in a new tab)Paul Graham’s answer to what a person should do with their life: help people, take care of the world, and make good new things.
Read the original of What to Do (opens in a new tab)Urban argues chronically late people who hate being late aren’t selfish but irrational, then traces his own lateness to denial about how long things take, dread of transitions, and anger at an unproductive day.
Read the original of Why I’m Always Late (opens in a new tab)Lelouch argues that struggling with hard subjects like math usually means missing prerequisites rather than ability, which he found after 150 days of rebuilding from the basics.
Read the original of You Are NOT Dumb, You Just Lack the Prerequisites (opens in a new tab)Explaining a new idea in words rarely works; people only understand once they experience it, which changes how you should pitch, demo, and teach.
Read the original of You can’t tell people anything (opens in a new tab)
Nothing matches.