Humans In The Loop

While frameworks can offer valuable perspectives and guide decision-making, rigid adherence to them can lead to tunnel vision and unhelpful outcomes. Successful decision-making often requires a blend of framework-guided analysis and intuitive judgment, where the needs of both the business and the customer are carefully considered.

Our career decisions are more reversible than we think

Humans suffer from what psychologists call the end of history illusion. We tend to understand that we’ve undergone significant personal growth and changes in taste to bring us to the present moment, but we discount the fact that we’ll change in the future.

The end of history illusion is worth... See more

If you have time to consume, you have time to create.

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.

Most traditions are solutions to forgotten problems.

Here are eight imperatives—all of them drawing strength and sustenance from the humanities:

1. We need a way of defining and pursuing progress that doesn’t reduce that concept to something that only comes from a digital device.


2. We desperately need access to values and wisdom that aren’t corrupted by the relentless financial metrics and imposed

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First-principles thinking, or thinking from first principles, sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It’s simply a technique for approaching problems with a beginner’s mind. Instead of working within assumptions and what people around you “know” to be true, you do the hard work of figuring out what’s actually true and, thus, what’s truly... See more

In practice, that meant permission to stop , permission to play ( including to do work that still felt truly fun), and permission to go internal (get back in touch with her internal compass, goals, and sense of self). She was still working, she was just being a whole lot more mindful about where she was directing her energy.