Commoncog   Commoncog

“I can’t remember what I read last week!”

You know how it is. You’re a busy professional. Your industry changes rapidly due to new technology and new threats.

You read widely to ensure your career doesn’t get left behind. You devour news articles, social analysis, Medium stories, pithy Facebook posts, long Twitter threads. You want to know how this affects you tomorrow. 👓

But you can’t remember what you read last week!

And how can you? The internet is a battleground for our attention! You can’t remember what you’ve read if you don't process it, and you can’t process it when you have Instagram, and Facebook, and chat. 📱

But what if you could?

I created Commoncog to help you with exactly that.

Every article you read can be highlighted in Commoncog. When you’re done, Commoncog asks you to record your takeaways. 🤔

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Twice a week, you get summaries of your takeaways emailed to you. (You can tell it to stop if you’re done with that particular article.) 📬

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When you want to remember what you’ve learnt, you run a search. 🔍

You may also tag your takeaways with a topic tag, for browsing later. 📖

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Eventually, your collection of links and your takeaways serves as your external brain. You’ll see Commoncog as a log of ideas that you want to remember. 💡

This is why I call Commoncog an idea bookmarking service. 💡📚

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An article with no takeaway is time you’ve just wasted. (Unless you’re reading for fun, that is!)

My name is Cedric. I created Commoncog for myself. This software is how I track ideas for my career growth.

Commoncog’s blog is where I write about building career moats in a world of rapid change. I update it twice a week, and I use Commoncog to track the ideas I write about. Here are the latest posts:

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Commonplace, the Commoncog Blog

What Danny Meyer Did

A look at several concept instantiations embedded in Danny Meyer's 2006 business biography, Setting The Table.

Cognitive Flexibility Theory: The Rules

Everything I know about learning in novel, ill-structured domains, summarised in one piece.

The Best Incentives Are Hard To Copy

If your incentive set leads to differentiated behaviour, why don't more competitors copy it? Because it's hard to copy, that's why. Here are two reasons how.

Pay Attention to Deviations from Mainstream Incentives

The second part of a three part piece on incentives. It turns out that if you've grokked the primary incentives of an industry, you can do one other thing: identify aberrations, and use that as a guide to dig further.

You may follow the blog here, if you’d like ideas for finding an edge in your career. 🚨

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Thanks for reading! ❤️

Warmly, Cedric