Agalia Tan

the very grammar of cinema

One of my (many) contrarian beliefs is that we do not have strong enough preferences. We often blame social media or the speed of information as the reason why we’re easily distracted, but the real reason behind our inability to focus has less to do with the sheer quantity of media and more to do with our laziness when it comes to distinguishing... See more

"Go deeper and weirder and make something that is so human and so strange that it can't be duplicated by an algorithm."

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.

That's the thing. We're not a brand. We're not a company. We're human beings. Of course it's going to change every 30 seconds. We're following our lives.

A good short story is, among other things, a highly organised system. Its parts feel in connection with one another. There’s very little waste or randomness. Many decisions have been made along the way, by different means, some conscious, some not. It feels fraught with intention, full of direction. It doesn’t necessarily know what it is, but it

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The Illusion of Progress : Action Bias leads us to believe that doing something – anything – is better than doing nothing , even when the action doesn’t actually move us forward. We equate busyness with productivity, mistaking motion for progress, and perceive novelty as innately valuable.