The Commonplace Mailing List — every Friday, with a smattering of links related to building career moats.

Optimising for usefulness is my current stab at a core principle that underpins the effective life. A first draft of a life philosophy.

Dismissive stubbornness is the worst kind of stubborn, and the only character trait I can’t tolerate on my team.

Nassem Taleb and a mozzarella video show us how trial & error is actually a superior life strategy.

I spent a few weeks reading Ray Dalio's Principles and summarising the contents. This is the end, in which I take a final stab at contextualising the book.

The final chapter of Ray Dalio's Life Principles — which has to do with better decision-making.

Understanding how the human brain works helps with managing yourself, as well as with orchestrating other people.

Your two biggest barriers to achieving your goals: lying to yourself and blind-spots. The cure? Being 'radically open-minded'.

In a nutshell: update your mental models and stay open-minded. The latter being less obvious than the former.

Successful practitioners use 'optimise for usefulness' over 'optimise for truth'. Unintended side effect: this means it's ok to believe in religion, so long as it doesn't harm you.