Britt Gage

When someone acts in a surprising way, we can begin to understand by wondering what they might be afraid of.

Entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham on fooling yourself:

"If you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

Don’t confuse people rooting for you with market signal

On some level, all founders suffer from “happy ears”—the chronic confirmation bias pervading conversations with customers, partners, team members, and investors. We tend to have irrational levels of confidence anyway, but that gets compounded when we mistake support for market signal. Most... See more

The actual measures of productivity that might be useful range quite a bit:

• I did enough to not get fired.


• I did enough to get promoted.


• I did enough to get hired by a better firm.


• I solved a problem for a customer who was frustrated.


• I changed the system and now my peers are far more productive.


• I invented something that creates new possibilities and

... See more

radical agency involves finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying, unpleasant, or obscured in a cloud of aversion.

You can either build your dream, or help someone build theirs.

Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of daily persistence, of gradual and insane and apparently useless effort over time.