Johanna

I once found this idea seductive. Now I find it outrageous. It’s not just because it’s wrong; it’s an affront to the human spirit. People only discover stuff when they think it’s worth trying, and there have been entire eras of human history where people didn’t think it was worth trying. A meme like “ideas are getting harder to find” could drive... See more

In the final analysis, Nucor probably didn’t have any core attributes that were unavailable to its competitors. It simply made better choices and was more fanatical about sticking to them. The resulting success was deserved. This is why culture eats strategy.

Howes says that “innovation is not in human nature, but is instead received. … when people do not innovate, it is often simply because it never occurs to them to do so.” Joel Mokyr says, similarly, that “progress isn’t natural” (and his book on this topic, A Culture of Growth, helped inspire this blog). I agree with both.

A strong UBI would corrupt the division of labor. Making participation in gainful employment functionally optional threatens to unravel the entire system of collective production that sustains society as we know it.

A maker’s schedule is different. It is made up of long blocks of time reserved for focusing on particular tasks, or the entire day might be devoted to one activity. Breaking their day up into slots of a few minutes each would be the equivalent of doing nothing.

Good ideas are getting harder to find. In 300 BC, if you noticed that the water level in your bathtub got higher when you got into it, you were allowed to run through the streets shouting “eureka!” and declare yourself to be a genius. Now you would need some 400 page mathematical proof drawing on the topology of eight-dimensional manifolds in order... See more

Chat is the most essential and omnipresent form of communication you can have when people are working remotely, so you need to make absolutely sure it’s functioning smoothly before going any further.

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.