Britt Gage

When you’re an early stage startup, your most important job is to get clarity on what you’re building. When your product is buggy and low quality and the first mile of the product is ignored (the welcome/tour, the onboarding, the explanatory copy, the empty states), you won’t know if the poor retention numbers are due to a bad product or a bad... See more

In a distracted world, the ability to consistently do deep work is a competitive advantage.

It's impossible to create meaningful works of tech, writing, or art without the capacity to sit down and focus for extended periods.

Given the pace we are working at, we look foremost for flexibility and initiative. The ability to build constructively in a limited-resource environment (potentially having to wear several hats) is the most important to us.

There are endless tasks to be done in starting a new venture. But most of the tasks are necessary but insufficient. You can’t begin without them, but by themselves, they won’t create enough impact for your work to make a change happen.

And every new project must create change, or else it fails.

We spend our time focusing on the tasks because the... See more

Subtle translations allow people from different walks of life, in different parts of the economy, to communicate and coordinate efforts. They break down barriers that would normally take months or years of effort to break down.

According to productivity expert Grace Marshall: Fake work keeps you busy, but offers little in return. It’s relatively easy to tick off a to-do list (giving you that oh-so-lovely dopamine hit!) but doesn’t necessarily move goals forward. Examples could be…

Answering every email in your inbox. 

Tinkering with your landing page until it’s just right. ... See more

Here's my six-step approach to strategic micromanagement:

1. Gauge Task Maturity
   
   When handing off work, assess the employee's skill level. Are they new to this task or a seasoned pro? Newbies naturally need more support. You can take off the training wheels as skills develop.


2. Set a Clear Baseline
   
   Just because an employee can execute a process doesn’t

... See more

Emotional labor is the opposite of the industrial economy’s task-based, measured output. Even if we don’t dig ditches, the offer for a certain kind of work was: Process this pile of papers and we don’t care whether you like (or pretend to like) your job. The labor is the easily measured stuff.

But AI and mechanization have turned this sort of task... See more