Topic / thinking

Exploiting Locality

Messy worksspaces as buffers for fast retrieval.

Walking and Talking

Thinking through dictating your ideas.

Mental Liquidity

On the flexibility to change your mind.

Pond Brains and GPT-4

How ecosystems are smarter than we are.

New Metaphors

A card deck to help spark creativity.

The Simplest Thing

Sometimes the best way to find a breakthrough on a problem is to do the simplest thing, not necessarily the cleanest, best, or most complex.

The Midwit Trap

Seek out simple solutions over complex ones.

Sam Hinkie's Resignation Letter

A memo chock full of insights from Sam 'Trust the Process' Hinkie.

Second-Order Thinking

The power of second-order thinking, and being more probabilistic.

Concept-based Notes and Composable Ideas

On atomic notes and how they encourage generating new ideas.

Hammock-Driven Creativity

On getting out of your normal work environment to spur creative thinking.

Downtime Thinking

Downtime as a critical context for deep thinking.

Phase Transitions

David Perell on intellectual phase transitions.

The Idea-to-Reality Production Stack

Kahlil Corazo reviews a plethora of techniques and thinking frameworks for going from ideas to reality with your work.

The Zettelkasten Method

A deep look at how the Zettelkasten note-taking system works.

A System for Publishing Evergreen Notes

Thinking about a 'digital garden' for evergreen notes.

Weekend Reading: Two Elites, DOS in VR, and Personal Brainstorming

Weekend Reading: American Production, On Bikeshedding, and Glyphfinder

American industrial production, why we bikeshed, and an app for glyphs.

Knowledge Synthesis in Roam

Roam as a tool for knowledge synthesis.

Getting Comfortable with Roam

A dive into Roam Research and how it fits into my workflow so far.

How to Make a Memex

Sarah Constantin compares Roam to Vannevar Bush's memex.

Roam: A Tool for Metacognition

Roam Research as a tool for networked thought.

Weekend Reading: Chess, COVID Tracking, and Note Types

The Idea Maze

A framework for analyzing product ideas by simulating your path through the maze.

Weekend Reading: Tagging with Turf, Mars Panorama, and Kinds of Easy

Tagging data with Turf, Curiosity high-res photo, and different kinds of easy.

100 Little Ideas

Weekend Reading: Tradeoffs, the Margins, and PR FAQs

Ubiquity of tradeoffs, outsiders vs. insiders, and FAQs as a tool for goal setting.

Getting Paid to Change Your Mind

Rory Sutherland on changing your mind as a virtue in business.

The Full Reset

On the power of starting with no baggage, sunk costs, or past poor decisions.

Weekend Reading: Universal Laws, Tandem, and Computers That Can See

Universal laws of the world, Tandem for live collaboration in Slack, and the forward march of vision for computers.

Caution on Bias Arguments

Slate Star Codex thoughts on biases.

Surfing Uncertainty

A book review becomes a great insight into how the brain works.

The Danger of Oversimplification

Occam's razor and when to avoid oversimplification.

Gates' Law: How Progress Compounds

Long-term investments and the potential of the 'Adjacent Possible'.

Degrees of Confidence

Morgan Housel's framework for scales of confidence.

Mental Models: A Conversation with Shane Parrish

Shane Parrish and Sam Harris discuss mental models.

Weekend Reading: Running Maps, Thinking, and Remote Work

Planning runs, Vannevar Bush on the future of thinking, and best practices for remote work.

Weekend Reading: Brains and Language, Hillshading in Blender, and Antifragility

The brain storing native language, Joe's work on hillshading, and living antifragility.

Writing Docs at Amazon

On writing memos for meetings at Amazon.

Weekend Reading: Hurricanes, Long Games, and AirPods

NSF program using Fulcrum Community, playing long games instead of short ones, and how AirPods are like the iPod.

The Quality of Your Thoughts

A quote from Marcus Aurelius.

Weekend Reading: Mental Models, Git History, and Notion

Shane Parrish's archive of mental models, visualizing git history, and page templates for Notion.

The Distrust of Intellectual Authority

A great piece from Shane Parrish on the degradation of trust in subject matter expertise.