The Inside Story of MacKenzie Scott, the Mysterious 60-Billion-Dollar Woman
[Technocratic philanthropy is done to people rather than with people.]
The Inside Story of MacKenzie Scott, the Mysterious 60-Billion-Dollar Woman
[Technocratic philanthropy is done to people rather than with people.]
Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn't Work
[James P Carse defines finite games as played to win and infinite games as played to enjoy.]
[Accepting free money from the government often means you are reducing scope to what is definable, provable, measurable—this is not conducive to a creative, curious, exploratory environment for generating profound change.]
[Inviting disorder and embracing chaos can be more antifragile than being frustrated at the unexpected.]
[When you are feeling burned out, focus on recovering instead of being productive: basics like sleep, water, sunshine, vegetables, exercise, stretching, meditation, nature, comfort of friends, walks, good books, other entertainment.]
The Startup Guide to Hiring a Remote Customer Support Rep
[Ask about the current job to see if their reason for leaving makes your company a good fit for them.]
[Ask about what projects they're working on to see if they have the relevant work experience.]
[Side projects can indicate an ability to balance work and other things, avoid burning out.]
[Ask about their preferred work schedule to get the ball rolling about your company's rhythm.]
[Respond to innovation and uncertainty by focussing on tradeoffs you are (or are not) willing to make, as opposed to concrete goals.]
[Autonomy is about being able to act in the moment with an understanding of resources and constraints, not to do whatever you want.]
[Rereading keeps certain ideas nearby so that you can think with them, perhaps moreso than the fleeting ones that you cross on social media.]
[Fiction doesn't take you away, it helps you to see more clearly.]
[Goals go away once they are achieved. Work continuously instead of stops. Just do, try, create, absorb yourself in process. Treat each step as a continuous line from the first thing you ever did.]
[Moving towards 100% of our attention in the digital world implies zero-sum economics for software businesses.]
[Competition is more likely to be with Internet-first businesses than pre-Internet incumbents.]
Build vs. Buy: How to blow $100,000 saving money
[If you payed engineers to build it, instead of just buying it, the salary cost plus the lost revenue from not improving your core product would amount to orders of magnitude more than the paid service's fee.]
That new feature will not save your business
[Solutions make a difference, not features.]
The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It's Gamergate
[They would coordinate mass emailing on Sunday (to clog inboxes at the start of the week) and Wednesday (pressuring the target to resolve it before the weekend). They did this without referencing GamerGate because it could be too easy to filter.]
[The GamerGate reasoning stated directly would sound like: 'Feminism is about equality and so if a woman can use her sexuality to her advantage and men are not able to, Feminism is invalid'.]
[Silicon Valley's double-bind is: your similarity validates my idea and I like you for that, but it also makes us rivals and I hate you for that.]
[Company shutdowns take a form similar to ancient rituals of human sacrifice: undifferentiation (VC-backed competition) is named as the scapegoat, the company is eulogized in a generic way (raised X and shut down), and then they 'celebrate failure' to shift the blame away from true causes and leave the door open for this to recur ('they died so that other companies could live').]
Crowd-owning campaign strategies
[Incentivize social sharing by creating lots of shareable content.]
Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.
[Winners and losers have the same goals. What differentiates is their system.]
[Focus on the system that creates the results you want.]
[Ditch your goals and fall in love with systems.]
Stripe Atlas: Guide to getting your first 10 customers
[Tell them that you know what you're doing, then show them an example, try to provide value just for making the time to read your message.]
[Scheduling is cognitive load, remove the burden and make it easy to say Yes: Do you have 15 minutes free this Thursday?]
[If they're busy Thursday, let them tell you that. Be respectful of their reading time.]
Goal Setting: A Scientific Guide to Setting and Achieving Goals
[Goal setting is as much about the pain and sacrifices you are willing to endure as the desired outcome.]
[Goals determine the destination, systems determine your progress.]
[Increase the likelihood of sticking to your goals by planning specifically when, where, and how you will do it.]
[Hook new plans before or after existing habits.]
[Opt in while you're feeling motivated so that when the time comes you will have to justify opting out.]
Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web
[In a decentralized model, the pattern of 'wait for the 'query and operate on all results' becomes 'query and respond to the result stream as updates arrive' because completeness can never be assumed.]
Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard
[The product being advertised is not nearly as important as membership in the group that buys the product.]
[One is more likely to envy their peer than the king, because even though the king has much more, there is less distance between you and you peer. We fight not because we are different but because we are the same.]
[In Silicon Valley, envy is productive and creates more founders, as opposed to destructive with many people competing over a CEO title.]
[The collapse of distance online compromises our ability to desire things in a healthy way.]
[Trumpism rejects the idea that 'everyone is equal and we ought to be undifferentiated.]
The Psychology of Loneliness: Why You're Lonely and What to Do About It
[Even being around others with shared interests might make one feel lonely because values are different. Sharing values can outweigh connections based on shared interests")
[Keeping oneself busy to avoid their own thoughts; intellectualizing emotions, trying to 'fix' emotions instead of understanding them can create self-disconnection, making one feel lonely in their own body.]
[Chronic business can keep your connections shallow and not leave enough space to cultivate more meaningful connections.]
[Make a list of your three happiest days. Recall as many details as possible. Try to list common patterns between these days. Pick an activity that seems most appealing and list people that would also enjoy it.]
[Describing your emotion as 'stressed' or 'tired' is avoiding the actual emotion.]
[Email is a hotter medium because its one-shot nature necessitates being clear and concise, leaving out ambiguity.]
[Hot and cool processing are like muscles: more use makes them stronger which makes us use them more.]
[The ubiquity of headphones has created more demand for hot, unambiguous content.]