I need a big beautiful poster with this Kevin Kelly’s quote:

“Productivity is for robots. Humans excel at wasting time, experimenting, playing, creating, and exploring”

The tough part isn’t really starting or finishing something. It’s sticking with it in the middle.

That’s when things get boring, messy, or just plain hard to care about.

The older I get, the more I see the value in slow-moving ideas that follow me for years, quietly shaping who I am until I finally notice they’ve changed me forever.

First, someone builds something impossible.

Then time passes. The impossible becomes interesting. Becomes useful. Becomes ordinary.

That's what we do. We turn “dreams” into “appliances”, then use those appliances to reach for stranger dreams.

Automation promised to free us from drudgery, but the word itself feels like drudgery.

Say it ten times fast and you’ll start to hear the mechanical repetition it represents.

Auto-ma-tion.

It’s the sound of efficiency itself, steady and unrelenting and just a little bit soul-crushing.

At first it was just for fun.
Then you start tracking it in a spreadsheet.
Congratulations, now it’s another job.

This is Theo’s version of “you can only connect the dots looking backward”. Somehow these stories always hit deep.

youtu.be/lWsZT-2pQL4?...

You wake up one day, and there you are: the house, the job, the life you built—or did it build you? And then there is this Talking Heads song asking a deceptively simple question: “How did I get here?”

I often find myself chasing numbers. We've all heard the saying: when a metric becomes the goal, it stops being a good metric. But how do you avoid falling into this trap?

Here are a few thoughts...

At its core, analytics isn’t about numbers or tools — it’s about meaning. Great analysts are translators: they breathe life into cold data, turning it into meaningful narratives.

Do you think AI can automate this?
Then read these Vaughn Tan essays. And think twice.
vaughntan.org/meaningmakin...

I keep returning lately to this Byrne Hobart piece: capitalgains.thediff.co/p/the-right-...

As you get better at something, you tend to narrow your focus. This helps you master your craft, but also limits your exposure to new ideas. Over time, this could unintentionally trap you in a local minimum.

The skills that get you in the door aren’t always the ones that keep you in the room.

Obviously, all great ideas make sense immediately, and never involve any absurdity or inconvenience. Right?

There's no such thing as "just the data." What we see depends entirely on what we choose to ask.

Lately, I've been reflecting on some overly ambitious aspirations of mine, mostly peeling away the layers of who everyone else thinks I should be, just to check if there's still someone interesting underneath.

This is hands down the most excited I’ve ever seen o3. I had no idea it could even do that!