Amie Pollack
@amiepollack
Amie Pollack
If you work on anything worthwhile, sooner or later people will care about it and will want you to send progress updates. These could be quarterly investor updates, weekly updates to your boss, emails to adjacent teams, etc. Here are tips on how to do this well.
Understand your role, and with each update add to the body of evidence that you’re a goo
Most people fall short of the creative ideal. They are satisficers rather than searchers for the optimal or desired solution... and unless they are held accountable for their decision-making strategies, they tend to find the easy way out—either by not engaging in very careful thinking or by modeling the choices on the preferences of those who will ... See more
Tomasz Tunguz • Bias Against Creativity
Editing is easier when you know the patterns_
When it comes to essay writing, the idea of “patterns over process,” is just as relevant.
Tootzi instilled a philosophy of “all that exists is the artifact that’s on the table.” It doesn’t matter if your ideas come from your mind, your heart, your soul, your belly button, the tops of mountains, a bottle ... See more
When it comes to essay writing, the idea of “patterns over process,” is just as relevant.
Tootzi instilled a philosophy of “all that exists is the artifact that’s on the table.” It doesn’t matter if your ideas come from your mind, your heart, your soul, your belly button, the tops of mountains, a bottle ... See more
Michael Dean • The Secret Architecture of Great Essays
Some group of people must exist who are educated, aware, motivated, and at the bleeding edge of a field…who nonetheless have some spare hours in the workweek to spend innovating on something instead of slavishly executing a task.
It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.
I think there's a very deep point about the universe being interconnected there, but there's also a really interesting point for people who want to make stuff—write or make podcasts or whatever—because there's this deep fear that everyone has about being pigeonholed. And it's like, well, if I pick this really specific topic, I won't be able to brin... See more
Dan Shipper • Transcript: ‘Dwarkesh Patel’s Quest to Learn Everything’
the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us he'd come for us after we die, and not when we're still living.
Ambition, then and now
benn.substack.com
But at a minimum, we shouldn’t find our ambitions by accident. If we imagine that we’re no longer in our current pond—that we got fired, or are 16 years old and dreaming about what we to do with our life, or 80 years old and reflecting on what we did—what would we care about then? Are the ladders we spent our time climbing the ladders that we really want to stand at the top of?