Building

Richard Feynman didn’t get his Nobel Prize by pursuing "win a Nobel Prize" as a goal. He played with problems, often placing arbitrary limits on himself: what if we assume this system has no dissipation? What if we ignore spin? He looked for elegance within boundaries, not outcomes. His freedom came from self-imposed structure.

Constraints do not bl... See more

Software startups face the same dilemma. Basecamp’s founders famously turned down VC money and capped headcount. They wanted to stay small on purpose. Not to signal humility, to preserve sovereignty. They understood that the minute you optimize for scale, you subordinate every other variable to it. Product quality, user intimacy, personal time - th... See more

On modernity’s optimization of means but confusion of goals

None of these guys have any idea what they're doing. The machine is running the show. There's a famous line where it's like humanity is like the sex organs of the machines. It's like all these people are the sex organs of the machines and they don't even know it. And they think they're cool... See more

“Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”

So here’s the formula, if you can call it that:

1. Find a real problem (not a hypothetical one)


2. Make the solution emotionally resonant (not just functional)


3. Time it right (not too early, not too late)


4. Communicate the why (not just the what)


5. Focus on existing needs (not invented ones)


6. Win decisively on what matters most (not marginally on everything)


7. Remove o

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Nan offered a distinction: there are two kinds of speed. The first is how quickly someone gets good, the pace at which they build fluency through repetition and feedback. And then there’s the speed they earn once that fluency is established—the efficiency and ease that comes after mastery. Think of it as the difference between learning to cook, and... See more

Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF describes this phenomenon:

"No one talks about the future anymore. Instead, everything accelerates the present to a fever pitch, intensifying and weirding the dysfunctions of the current moment. There’s a hole where the future used to be, and all that remains is the increasingly spicy present."

This presents both a... See more

Constraints operate on the second level - they shape how you move through the world over years and decades. Not by pointing to a specific outcome, but by removing paths that would corrupt, dilute, or distract you

Because goals are often surrogates for clarity. We set goals when we’re uncertain about what we really want. The goal becomes a placeholder. It acts as a proxy for direction, not a result of it.