Dialed
The interviewee tells the host that the length of the human attention span has dropped to 47 seconds. That seems long.
Ethan Alter
Essays on management, product, attention, and fiction.
Latest posts
The Hierarchy of Whats
Everything is a What. Also, a Why. Also, a How. It's the Theory of Whelativity.
Memory makings
Film photography memories captured and recalled.
Where are the products?
Analysis of Paul Graham's 2010 essay and the market opportunity for attention management.
The Next Bottleneck
Examines current and future bottlenecks in software development, including the implications of AI.
What You Need Is Motivation
People-centered leadership and organizational dynamics in the age of cultural disillusionment.
Urgent Is Not the Way
Corporate overreliance on urgency and its costs to employees, managers, and businesses.
Dear Cat
An open letter to my mother's cat.
Flattened
How conformity in work and media reduces individuality.
You Won't Remember This
Knowledge, retention, and screen-based self-help.
The Gap Theory of Exceptional Success
Finding and leveraging systemic vulnerabilities for success.
Performative Investing
Venture capital hype cycles and their evolution.
Pickup Basketball and the Joy of Immediate Feedback
Preference for feedback-rich environments.
First Principles for Product Marketing 1
Non-urgent important work and complexity management.
The real Defense Against the Dark Arts
Self-awareness and vulnerability in relationships.
The Unnatural Practice of Attention
The natural equilibrium is attentional entropy.
A Product Request
A user story about self-control and personal discipline.
The Attention Value Problem
Economic perspectives on attention valuation.
The Communication Problem (or "Why I Love Voice Notes")
The implications of the Communication Problem are sobering: I'll never fully understand you, you'll never fully understand me, and we should think about how we want to handle that.
Never Pooped On
Most people live a more carefree life; some small percentage of them, on any given day, will get pooped on.
Hello and welcome
I'm Ethan, and this is my personal blog.