moneyball

Have fun — There’s a version of this work that’s hyper-analytical where we try to Moneyball our way to success. There’s another version where we’re living it, enjoying it, and having fun with it. Our best work comes when we’re having fun and enjoying what we’re doing, not when we’re overly analytical. Analytical thinking creates fear and uncertaint... See more

Are we undertaking the project of breaking down big giant ideas like ‘i feel weird and alone sometimes’ or ‘Why does life feel like its passing me by’ into smaller more manageable ideas because that’s a helpful framework to think about them or because its a helpful market framework to sell weird little solutions like fuckin headspace and better hel... See more

My house plants became healthier and died less often once I stopped tracking their watering, stopped trying to use moisture meters or other tools, and learned to pick up on their vibes instead. Many such cases.

What is risky work? And what if we tend to fundamentally mistake what is or is not risky? What if the formulaic, expected, small c-conservative work is, in fact, the riskiest? What if fitting in with what’s expected and copying what everyone else is doing, far from de-risking, actually adds risk?

The key premise of algorithms is efficiency. Algorithms optimise data for decision-making that we previously did not have before. But humans are not efficient. We are messy and inherently flawed, which makes us human. We value serendipity, community and experiences, which may not be efficient but is impactful.

If you go too far off the beaten path of algorithmic consistency, you risk never being heard. You may never get enough cultural momentum to exist in any meaningful way. That is a real problem. But if you're too good at algorithmic optimization, you risk building a large audience without saying anything particularly original or important. Not to men... See more

Overtime we’ve begun to treat this nuance and ambiguity as friction and something to program out. Computers don’t like it. Algorithms can’t categorize it. So we remove it.

Yet we so desperately need this “in between” and neither “yes” nor “no” thinking.

It's scary to admit that you can't control the future; it's a lot easier to distract yourself by trying to optimize every decision, no matter how insignificant.