Britt Gage

Part of the problem with the Lean Startup mindset is that it sees life and work as an optimization problem. The point is to help people live a good life, not just an efficient life. The goal is human flourishing, not convenience. The goal is a good future, not just a technically advanced future.

as humans, we tend to do whatever it takes and to use any justification to keep busy, even if the task is meaningless. In the words of the scientists behind the study: “Our research suggests that many purported goals that people pursue may be merely justifications to keep themselves busy.”

At the end of the day, having an exciting vision (even one where illegibility is an asset) does not exempt us from building a product that people actually want.

The Silicon Valley small business, the SV-SB, is a hybrid of sorts — it intertwines small business values and discipline with big tech know-how and ambition.

• Founding teams may look like that of a “traditional” Silicon Valley startup. They’re native to Silicon Valley ethos, skills, and playbooks. But , beneath the surface, they’re different. You

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"I've noticed three main things holding people back from being more productive and achieving their goals.

They resist creating processes for themselves: This might be baggage from the past where processes were used to control and subjugate them. But processes chosen and designed by YOU can become liberating. ​

They resist making decisions: Most

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Embracing the risk of losing everything means learning that our self-worth and identity are not solely tied to the success or failure of our ventures.

A difference in emphasis: raising the floor versus raising the ceiling

Matt Clifford has written about how building a world-changing technology company has never been easier than it is today. But for all of the technical, commercial, and industry-specific knowledge that founders can readily access, psychological knowledge still lags behind. (In... See more

They’ve built a solid frame of knowledge and beliefs about the things that change more slowly on which they hang newer, faster-moving information in its proper place. The new thing that most people see as the main thing, they treat like a small thing in the context of a much longer, larger thing. Maybe it will impact the longer, larger thing –... See more

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