Insights

Why do I write? Because it helps me understand and learn better. And if I can’t write something down clearly, then I have not really understood it. As Buffett says, “ I learn while I think when I write it out. Some of the things, I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down and explain them to people ... And... See more

To paraphrase Buffett and Munger – decision-making is not about making brilliant decisions, but avoiding terrible ones. Mistakes and dumb decisions are a fact of life and I’m going to make more, but as long as I can avoid the big or “fatal” ones I’m fine.

It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.

Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self. It’s our instincts, our cravings and longings, the things and places and ideas we burn for, the intuition that swells up from somewhere deep inside of us. Must is what happens when we stop conforming to other people’s ideals and start... See more

I think that every writer should have a question they can ask that there is no end to the pursuit of. Every writer should have questions big enough and pressing enough and multi-faceted enough and unanswerable enough that they occupy their entire life, however long or short it is

The ability to speak continuously with confidence is a talent of sorts. But, over the course of my working life, I found that the colleagues who had the most impact on meetings, and whose careers advanced with the greatest velocity, were those who restricted themselves to fewer and better statements; more concise and memorable observations; more

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I distinctly remember at Microsoft in the late 90s, walking around campus and there was just all the folks sort of saying, God, we must be God's gifts to mankind because we are so good now that the market also recognizes it, except that it was obviously the beginning of the end in some sense, right? The day hubris takes over and you're not grounded... See more

When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing.