68: Rules Aren't Real 📐
Dispensing with the status quo is the key to escaping mediocrity.
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67: Not all that glitters 🪩
In one morning I came across three stories that made me think twice about the ‘metaverse’. It’s not some abstract future dystopia—it’s already here. Many of us already inhabit mini-metaverses full of personalised algorithms, and few of us are ready to take off the headset. The first...
66: Win the small hill ⛷
Sometimes in order to win the game you're optimising for, you must lose the ones you've been told were important.
65: What you want for dinner 🍽
How often do you revisit ideas you believe to be common sense? When thinking of possible ways we could develop our thinking or improve our lives we naturally gravitate to new ideas instead of investigating existing patterns. When you start thinking from first principles, a lot of things you might...
64: Constraints and consistency 🎲
People become great by being creative within the boundaries and persisting when others might quit.
63: Nobody cares 📵
Sometimes you will be out in the field, pushing the limits of expectation, on the verge of changing the world, and not a single soul will care. The masses often sleepwalk through innovation. You can only make great things if you’re willing to be ignored and unafraid of going...
62: The hard thing about hard work ⚒️
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite authors. If he writes something I’m going to eat it up. But not immediately. Because Brandon likes to write big beefy books that could double as self-defence weapons or stools for small cats. He writes a LOT. He recently surprised his entire...
61: It Sounds Better Over There 🎋
Whenever words are carried by saltine winds over vast expanses of water, they somehow gain the magical property of resonating clearer in our minds. This is why we seem to fall head over heels in love with wisdom from faraway lands. It explains our obsession with Ikigai. It’s why...
60: The Sum of our Parts 🧩
No one human knows how to make a pencil from scratch despite it seeming like a fundamentally basic thing - something every child can use. To construct something as simple as a pencil takes mining graphite, cutting wood, shaping metal, and figuring out whatever modern erasers are made out of....
59: Greener Grass
The Sword of Damocles has become synonymous with imminent danger and the threat of sudden calamity - but that’s only half the story, and perhaps the wrong half to focus on. If you’ve never heard of Damocles before, you’re in for a treat! The story of Damocles...
57: The Power of Impostors 👻
What the heck is an impostor anyway? Someone who is not supposed to be there. An impersonator. A copycat. A covert intelligence gatherer. Uninformed. Uninitiated. Uninvited. Maybe that’s you. It’s definitely me—but maybe there’s power in that. The ones who are different I am not supposed...
A Tree in the Woods
If the cameras turn off, do the Kardashians still exist? People are designing their lives and actions around black camera lenses, hoping that an audience will exist on the other side. People stand alone in rooms swinging their arms violently and making faces at the wall, because TikTok promises their...
56: Finding your passion 🔮
People spend their lives chasing passion. We have dreams of what life should be like. What it could be like, once we find the magic that's missing. We all want to get paid to do something we love. And we want to be paid well for it! To...
55: Almost Invisible 👻
We quickly get used to the sound of alarm bells. My smart watch keeps vibrating, every single hour, reminding me to stand up. I turned on the feature because I know sitting for too long is unhealthy. And when I say I know, I KNOW. I know it in my...
54: A glass half full 🥃
Is the glass half empty or half full? Apparently, your answer indicates whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. I think that’s silly. It’s a question of orientation, not optimism. Are you picking it up or putting it down? What’s your motivation in the scene? Are...
Conquering Your Inner Slacker: How Skinner's Law Can Hack Your Productivity
Tricia is a kind girl. She was busy writing, just as with her usual work. Every 2 hours, someone came to her desk asking for a favor, but when the fourth person came, she shouted, and the room suddenly went silent. Tricia is not an angry person, but the deadlines,...
Find the right fuel
Marvin Gaye wrote one of the best albums of all time (Here, my dear) because he didn’t want to pay child support. During divorce proceedings, Marvin was ordered to pay more money than he actually had on hand as alimony, so a deal was arranged - 50% of the...
🎙️ Leverage, Luck, and Happiness with Eric Jorgenson
David speaks with Eric Jorgenson, the CEO of Scribe Media. He also has a rolling fund investing in pre-seed and seed-stage tech companies, and is the author of two books: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness; and The Anthology of Balaji. They talked about: 🤓 Working...
🧭 Circles of Competence: Navigating the Boundaries of Your Abilities (Wayfinder #13)
Welcome back to Wayfinder, your fortnightly compass for navigating life’s toughest decisions. Today we’re zooming out to consider the boundaries of our capabilities and the notion of circles of competence. The Cautionary Tale of the Spruce Goose The year was 1947. Howard Hughes was already an acclaimed businessman,...
Chesterton's Fence: Explained
TL;DR / Summary G.K. Chesterton was an early 20th century English writer known for his clever paradoxes. He once wrote: “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more...
🎙️Building Enduring Digital Companies with Sondre Rasch
David speaks with Sondre Rasch, Co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing, a global social safety net for remote workers and companies. They talked about: 🌐 Conceptualizing digital countries 💼 Sondre's early entrepreneurial experience 🌱 Formative experiences and aspirations 🎯 Choosing the right problems to solve 🤔 Exploring intuition and judgement in decision-making 🚀 Journey of...
