Reminders for myself

I learned that Kelly doesn’t think in outputs. For him, doing is part of learning. “I don’t really pursue a destination,” he said. “I pursue a direction.”

The thing about assuming good intent is that it creates space for actual resolution. When you approach someone's difficult behavior as information rather than attack, you can respond from curiosity instead of defensiveness. You can ask questions instead of building cases. You can offer understanding instead of demanding explanations.

It’s choosing a frame that doesn’t turn every interaction into a drama where someone always has to be wrong.

What if the problem isn't other people's inconsiderateness, but our own inability to tolerate the fundamental messiness of being human around other humans?

The most radical thing you can do in a culture obsessed with optimisation is to fully occupy your own choices . To be here instead of somewhere else. To do this instead of something better. To be satisfied with enough instead of always reaching for more.

I watch people scroll through lives they're not living, amassing evidence of their own incompleteness. The investment they didn’t make. The startup they didn’t join. The newsletter they didn’t start, the career pivot, the relationship that might have been different. We've turned existence into an infinite ramble of inadequacy, each swipe an attempt... See more

There are times when goals make sense. Training for a marathon. Preparing for an exam. Trying to ship a product by a hard deadline. In finite, controlled, well-understood domains, goals are fine.

But smart people often face ambiguous, ill-defined problems. Should I switch careers? Start a company? Move cities? Build a media business? In those spaces... See more

refusals shape lives just as powerfully as ambitions.

A goal is a win condition. Constraints are the rules of the game. But not all games are worth playing. And some of the most powerful forms of progress emerge from people who stopped trying to win and started building new game boards entirely.