Agalia Tan

If we want to accomplish our goals, we need thenarratives driving our actions to be accurate and useful. We also need other people to buy the narratives we believe in if we want to attract customers, investors, employees, or any other kind of partner. So it’s worth understanding where they come from and how they grow.

The self is not something you can set out looking for; it reveals itself gradually through the choices you make.

We must cease to concern ourselves with our unique suffering – whether we are happy or sad, fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad – and give up our neurotic and debilitating journeys of self-discovery. Art of true value requires, like a j

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I believe the “ tyranny of numbers ” has atrophied people’s abilities to listen to their body. Numbers can be helpful, but often cause me to lose the plot. I’ve found that I feel better when I let my body tell me what I really want, instead of the non-actionable anxiety associated with metrics.

We need to treat alignment not as a prerequisite, but as a process. “Getting it” isn’t a static quality—it’s a product of access, timing, exposure, and experience.

One method is to design for shared sensemaking. That might mean narrating your mental model instead of assuming it’s obvious. It might mean making space for dissent even when time feels t... See more

sometimes people unfairly collapse reality via cliche.

Attempting to define, quantify and strategize around the zeitgeist is a game of tag. That’s what we’re after. That’s the Sisyphean task. It’s utterly daunting and exhausting, but that challenge is also where the opportunity (and fun) lies.

The key premise of algorithms is efficiency. Algorithms optimise data for decision-making that we previously did not have before. But humans are not efficient. We are messy and inherently flawed, which makes us human. We value serendipity, community and experiences, which may not be efficient but is impactful.