50 Things I Learned
This is a special version of Weekly I/O. In this Rumination, I will pick learnings that I found worth reviewing in all 50 inputs from Weekly…
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On Taiwanese Names or: Call me Cheng-Wei not Cheng, thank you
This guy with the name tag "Cheng-Wei Hu" just joined the virtual meeting. How will people greet him? In a "scientific" study, 74% of the…
Emotional Freedom
One day, you decide that your life's goal is to be depressed. Would you first focus on earning a lot of money to afford the best resources…
Attachment is Enemy of Love
The near enemy of love is attachment. True love allows, honors, and appreciates. Attachment grasps, demands, needs, and aims to possess…
Collaborative Math Engineering
The paradigm of mathematical proof is shifting from solitary genius to collaborative software engineering. AI and formalization are turning…
Math as Civilization
Mathematics is a civilization humans built upward from a small set of shared axioms. Like a contract, mathematicians agree on what feels…
Math as Art
The essence of math lies in the artistic progression from observation to theoretical construction. Aesthetics and beauty are diagnostic…
Mantra for Running Companies
Frank Slootman's rules for running companies: increase the tempo, raise the standards, narrow the focus. Article: Performance Culture by…
Beautiful Solutions
"When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution…
Equal Odds Rule
The Equal Odds Rule: The likelihood of any single work becoming a major hit stays roughly the same across a creator's career. Most great…
Alien Tech Trees
The science tech tree is far bigger and more branched than we realize. Most of it will never be explored. An alien civilization's technology…
Slow Verification Loops
Good ideas can wait a very long time for clean proof. In science, verification loops are often slow, noisy, and sometimes hostile to the…
Moving Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks shift but they rarely vanish. When a new tool unblocks one constraint, it exposes the next one. Major discoveries often emerge…
Spaced Repetition for Better Learning
This is still an evolving draft. If you have any feedback or suggestion, welcome to comment on Substack, or send me a message via twitter…
Become Me More and More
"I am Me, and I hope to become Me more and more. That is surely the goal of all our struggles." — Paula Modersohn-Becker Quote From German…
Drama Triangle
The Drama Triangle: If you cannot face another person directly, you will drag a third person in and call it "process". The three roles of…
PMF Survey
Define Product-market fit beyond just feelings: Ask users how they would feel if your product disappeared. If 40% say "very disappointed…
Elaborative Encoding
Elaborative Encoding: We remember what is meaningful. Memory is not a recording but a translation. The more you connect new information to…
Constructive Confrontation
Constructive Confrontation: Be blunt with ideas, but kind to people. Politeness is often just a mask for fear. Book: High Output Management…
Joy and Aliveness
Discovering more joy does not save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will also…
Three Circles of Authentic Positioning
Good positioning is not manufacturing a persona. It is selecting and amplifying the three circles of positioning: what is true, relevant…
Four Types of Knowledge
Knowledge comes in four core types: facts (what), procedures (how), concepts (why), and strategies (when). Knowing when to apply the right…
Instructional and Learning Events
Instructional vs. Learning Events: Teaching is an external catalyst for an internal change. Instructional events are the visible things…
Robust Learning Needs Varied Assessment
Measuring Robust Learning: True mastery lasts over time, transfers to new situations, and accelerates future learning. Paper: The Knowledge…
Intelligence Augmentation Framework
This is part 2 of the Revisiting Augmenting Human Intellect series, where I break down Douglas Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect, the…
Euphemism Treadmill
The Euphemism Treadmill: Replacing an offensive word with a neutral one doesn't remove the stigma. Because concepts, not words, drive how…
Disney Language
Disney created a theatrical vocabulary for Disneyland: guests not customers, cast members not employees, attractions not rides. The words we…
80 Percent Finish
Disneyland opened at less than 80% completion, and Opening Day was a disaster. But Walt Disney saw the park as a living thing and embraced…
Gen Z on AI Companions
72% of US teens have used AI companions at least once, and 13% use them daily. While most teens find AI companions less satisfying than real…
Joy as Competitive Advantage
Bring Joy = Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Hard work builds skill. Joy builds resilience. Article: Alfred Lin on X: "Bring Joy = Ultimate…
Discovery Ads for AI
AI products like ChatGPT are doing Google-style search ads, but they should learn from Instagram's discovery model instead. Discovery ads…
Five Ws Communication
The Five Ws: Always tell people who is going to do what, where, when, and why. If you skip the why, people won't understand, won't care, and…
Ego-Depletion is Myth
Ego depletion, the idea that willpower is a limited resource, faces a crisis deeper than failed replications. The field cannot even agree on…
Four Levels of Agentic Commerce
E-commerce will evolve through four levels with AI: from filling out forms to anticipating needs. But when AI agents do all the research, it…
Humble After Not During
"Be humble after but not during the action." — Ernest Hemingway Quote Hemingway warned writers about premature humility in a lecture on the…
Micro-Pessimist Macro-Optimist
Zoom in with notes to improve the craft, zoom out with faith to protect the momentum. Be a micro-pessimist to critique the details…
Dyslexia and Delegation
35% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia compared to less than 1% of corporate managers. The coping strategies dyslexics develop early, especially…
Children as Scientists
Children learn more like scientists than adults. Children are "high-temperature" learners who explore wild possibilities with flatter priors…
Loving Attention Beats LGTM
Loving attention beats LGTM culture. "Looks good to me" means your work was skimmed. Loving attention means someone catches the typo and…
Principles not Methods
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The person who grasps principles can successfully select their…
Augmenting Human Intellect and Douglas Engelbart
I've been learning tools for thought and intelligence amplification/augmentation recently. After researching a bit more, I found myself…
Augustine's Divided Will
Augustine's Divided Will: We sabotage our own goals not because we're weak, but because we genuinely want contradictory things at the same…
SUCCESs Framework for Ideas
The SUCCESs framework: Ideas stick when they're Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and wrapped in Stories. Book: Made to…
Zone of Proximal Development
The Zone of Proximal Development: Learning happens best in the gap between what you can do alone and what you can achieve with guidance. Too…
Seven Sins in Product
Successful consumer products tap into one of the seven deadly sins. But the goal of good design is to sublimate those impulses into…
Personal is Creative
"The most personal is the most creative." Quote Specific, personal details are harder to copy. They give your work a texture that general BS…
Octalysis Motivation Framework
Motivation comes from eight core drives: Meaning, Development, Creativity, Ownership, Social influence, Scarcity, Unpredictability, and Loss…
Artful Leadership
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a…
Cognitive Load Theory
Cognitive Load Theory: Learning fails when working memory is overloaded. Design should protect mental bandwidth. Article: Cognitive Load…
GPA Decision Styles
GPA: Separate decisions into Goal, Priority, and Alternatives, and use a different decision style at each stage. Podcast: Manus' Final…