Britt Gage

As we encounter complex ideas, they’re often explained with a form of semantic algebra. You understand X, and this is a bit like that, but different...

Understanding is worth the effort.

The world of expertise has flipped. Before the internet and social media, expertise was functionally scarce. Now, it’s readily abundant, and it really is possible to read an expert credibly criticizing a New York Times article on Twitter.

Writers can no longer depend on default credibility. Quoting a couple of experts and linking a few studies... See more

They looked for first principles thinkers, so not necessarily your experience, but how do you approach problems, how do you know the right questions to ask? And then create your own framework around that.

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Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative and team oriented. And the combination of those two things,... See more

Somewhere in my mainlining of these philosophies, my wires got crossed. I conflated being busy with being responsible; productive with being profitable. A sense of ambient hustle urged me forward toward an imaginary (or rather, quantified) finish line. I filled every spare moment with a podcast, newsfeed, or task, reflexively stuffing my day until... See more

More than anything else it was this feeling that captivated me—the feeling that, literally, made me captive.

Personal process notation

“I’ll remember it later.”

I’ll confess, I rarely do.

It turns out, it’s easier to remember questions than answers. And tools like Google Docs and photos in the cloud give us a chance to build our own personal search engine.

Every day, we make decisions. These require effort, and there’s probably a finite amount of energy available for these focused choices.

That’s why our digital habits matter. Not to save us five or ten minutes a day, but to save us from a few hundred unimportant decisions that break our flow.

For example, if instead of trying to come up with a unique... See more

Separate what you can control from what you can’t. It’s a small way to lift some weight off your shoulders. Take 15 minutes to create a list of everything that you’re worried about. Then label each one as a ‘within’ or a ‘beyond’ to see your sources of stress and anxiety laid bare