Growth Mindset

I wrote a piece back at the start of the year called 10 Choices For a Better Future that was largely focused on behaviorally based choices, I now realize. Just to be clear there is no big plan here I just write this stuff when I’m thinking about it and have time and have some motivation. And in discussing this with someone I occasionally mentor recently (okay a couple months ago) I realized that while that list was good from a choosing how to behave daily standpoint (which is what I writing it for) it didn’t really provide any thinking how to make choices about your life, and that’s a problem because you could apply everything in that piece and still make stupid unguided choices. ...

I’m not 100% certain I love this article. I made myself write it in less than one hour. It’s core point is supposed to be around written language being the dominant skill going forward which replaces today’s primary skill of knowing how to do stuff (visual skill). I will likely revisit this topic in the future as I think about it more. For at least the next 5-10 years, professional work is going to become more language-based, not less. We are entering a period where being able to express yourself clearly in writing will be more critical than ever. ...

History creates the illusion of predictability once outcomes are already known. Only after events converge do patterns become obvious, narratives become clean, and parallels feel inevitable. Before that point, history is far less useful than most executives, investors, and commentators would like to believe. In theory, history can help us avoid repeating known failures. But even then, it only works when we extract constrained rules grounded in structural invariants - the underlying forces that actually shape outcomes, like capital availability, incentive alignment, and physical constraints. Everything else is pattern matching dressed up as wisdom. And this is problematic, because we often use that dressed-up wisdom to both constrain our choices (“history says that’s a bad idea”) and to make foolish choices (“when in history has this failed?”). ...

I’m not a fan of traditional New Years Resolutions, as I wrote about here, but as we started 2026 I wanted to think even a bit more differently about the problem of improvement. First, I don’t think anyone can know what the future holds - and anyone saying they do know, is lying or delusional or both. And while there may be things that make sense to do now (and you should therefore do them) they won’t necessarily makes sense in six or eight months. So I don’t really think we should be building plans around the fact that it just happens to be January 1st any more than we should around March 8th or June 17th or August 22nd or any other random day. Further, I didn’t want to set a simple achievable goal because simple achievable goals don’t have staying power - they won’t usually be powering you years down the road. I wanted to create something that could be applicable forever (in theory) and wasn’t situation dependent, since I don’t know what the future holds. ...

I used to have a monthly Gogo Wifi subscription. Then I got rid of it. Flying is better for me now, it’s more beneficial because it helps me to focus. Not long ago I realized that Delta offered free wifi for messaging (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) Awesome. Now I can stay in contact but not get sucked into Apps and Internet world. I wish American offered this, but they don’t - so choose Delta if it’s an option. ...

Since it is the start of December we’re now down to one month left to accomplish this year’s goals and set some goals for next year…for a lot of people those goals include getting some big projects done, and one of the reasons we fail to accomplish a lot of our big projects is because we aren’t in the right state to do deep work. Deep Work I only came across this NPR podcast (worth the 40 minutes to listen to) from July the other day and found it very interesting, in light of the need many of us have to find ways to be more effective. I see people complaining about their procrastination problem. (And no, you probably don’t have ADHD - not even “a little bit” - but if you think you legitimately might have ADHD then find a good psychiatrist and schedule an appointment.) Our world is becoming full of distractions and that is taking away from our ability to really focus and do deep work. ...