2026-01-22 * Density of Insight * Chef analogy for Head of Product * Seasonal items -- what can we done * The menu -- can't order grilled cheese * * Planning fatigue * Do you want your product to work * String too tight, string too loose * Eight-folds -- how you do anything is how you do everything * A modicum of space is helpful * Banging coconuts 2026-01-09 * Losing one's voice, word economy 2026-01-05 * What do I do as PM? I ask simple questions with difficult answers * [[Negotiating with future self]] * 5 AM club is a dumb book that could have been a one-pager. It's really comically bad * [[Garden/Essays/Evals|Evals]] * Training humans is harder than training models * We need a (gasp) perf 2026-01-03 * Slack is the drainage of creativity * All things there are ostensibly high-leverage, so it's easy to optimize for "clearing the decks" * But it's the opposite of deep work, by definition what's needed. 2025-12-28 * AI is helpful even when wrong -- gives you something to throw darts at * [[I am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter]] so good * [[Winter 25 - Work Reflections]] * Commitment scaling for founders * Founders can sometimes will thing to existence by using founder's heavenly mandate * In the war room vs out in the field - When you're making a decision in the war room (planning mode), there's time to think, time to reach a high-quality decision - When you're making a decision "out in the field", it's an abrupt one, lower quality - As many decisions as possible should be made out in the war room - e.g. "Do we spike over Christmas if we didn't finish Line 1.1" - Sometimes, one can avoid making uncomfortable decisions in the war room, because they're conditional decisions (one could hope to never need them) - But that almost always ends up being a mistake 2025-12-25 * [[Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows]] is a really good book. The TL;DR there is that sometimes you can't find the full causal link. * Org growing is like a crab growing too big for its shell. Painful but necessary. * A 6' 4" charismatic man giving dating advice is useless. * Nice seats don't matter in a bus that breaks down. It has to first * Focus on craft vs generalists (indoor-outdoor cats) * * When you're reporting directly to CEO/Founders or * You don't pick a shawarma place based on fries * Founder's heavenly mandate doesn't exist when new leaders come in