2026-02-05 18:03:00
Integrity is the act of being in and of itself, from every angle.
As we see the bait-and-switch of the online networks and monopolists, it’s easy to imagine that nothing with integrity stays that way very long. The systems we support almost always end up trading a straightforward clarity about what they do for a facade that’s easy to fall into and hard to get out of.
Big businesses usually succumb to short-term compromises that corrupt the mission that built their brand in the first place.
The opportunity, then, is to find a career path that’s a whole. In calculus, the integral takes an infinite number of tiny slices and reassembles them into a coherent result. Each slice is infinitesimal, almost nothing on its own, yet the accumulation produces something real. We don’t need each moment to be grand. We need it to be of the same function. Showing up consistently in small ways that cohere.
In the movies, there’s plenty of stirring music when the hero has to make their choice. But in our lives, there isn’t a single moment. Instead, there are a million of them.
The way we show up will rarely be perfect. But perfect isn’t the point. Countless tiny decisions add up to a whole. It helps to be clear about the purpose of the work we’re here to do.
In the words of Hugh MacLeod, “The market for something to believe in is infinite.”
PS I just finished the first draft of my new book, THE KNOT, which will publish this September from Authors Equity. If you’re interested in pre-ordering the audiobook and being part of a small beta-test community, I’ve built a page explaining how you can join us. I’ll take this link down once the cohort is full.
2026-02-04 18:03:00
A surprising amount of our time is spent sorting things to create value.
They sort the rotten cranberries from the good ones to ensure that the bag at the market is worth buying. And we sort the movies worth watching, the bargains worth pursuing and the news worth reading. Editors, gold miners and detectives are mostly in the sorting business.
Organized education uses sorting both as a motivation tool and a way to ensure that the graduates it produces meet spec.
Not only do we sort, we are often sorted.
Freelancers and job seekers are sorted into groups, and the best ones sort their potential clients and clients before wasting their time.
Lazy sorting is distracting, expensive and often toxic. Relying on false proxies, easily measured but irrelevant, is a common sorting trap.
And getting better at sorting might be the single most effective improvement we can make in our work. It’s not difficult to improve if we focus on it.
2026-02-03 18:03:00
Sports analogies often let us down.
A colleague was explaining how measurement was difficult in many organizations, unlike a basketball game, where the time, the score and the stats are clear and obvious.
He said, “everybody wants to win.” Depending on how you define ‘win’, this is demonstrably untrue.
It seems that among professional athletes, everyone does want to win, all things being equal. But all things are rarely equal.
Perhaps a player wanted to celebrate with friends a day or two before the game instead of watching game tapes. Or maybe they wanted to think for a moment, just a moment, about a conflict they recently had, instead of being supernaturally focused. Or it could be that they’re protecting their body or their psyche rather than risking everything right now, in this particular moment.
Under the circumstances, committed professionals often choose to do their best to meet the specified goals. But the circumstances are rarely evenly distributed.
What everybody wants is what they want.
It helps to do the work to understand why things aren’t the same for each individual, and even better, how to create the conditions for culture and systems to make the goals you seek more likely to be met.
When we get smart about what we mean by winning, we can build a more resilient and aligned organization.
2026-02-02 18:07:00
Precision requires producing the same results each time. Repeatable, measurable, dependable.
Accuracy means hitting the target.
The only way to consistently be accurate is to be precise.
But there are plenty of precision methods that don’t yield the most desired outcomes.
Simon Winchester’s book on precision is magnificent. As we enter a new age of automation, understanding the thrills and costs of previous revolutions adds a useful perspective.
And you’ll learn about the person who invented shoe sizes as well as the time Queen Victoria hit a bullseye with a rifle.
The world we live in is recent, and was created by a revolution in precision. We’re still working on accuracy.
2026-02-01 18:03:00
This is the hallmark of projects that turn out to be worth doing.
The trouble might be a symptom that we’re onto something that others don’t care enough to do.
And the things that are obviously worth doing are probably already being done.
2026-01-31 18:03:00
The Long Tail was a profound cultural insight. When we created YouTube, Amazon, Roon, recipe websites and Netflix, the culture changed. When you give people a choice, they make a choice.
We went from the Top 40 to millions of songs. From Blockbuster to every movie ever made. From the local bookstore to all the books, all the time. Pick what you want instead of what other people picked.
There are still hits, but the majority of what we consume are titles that weren’t even available to us a few years ago.
It’s hard to believe this was a breakthrough idea only 21 years ago.
Now, with LLMs, it’s all going to change again.
That’s because it doesn’t matter how many cookbooks you own… Claude can invent a new recipe for you, one that’s never been seen before. You can do this today, the tech works.
Soon, it won’t matter if you have 400 Grateful Dead albums; AI systems will be able to generate live recordings from 1974 that never happened.
And eventually, Netflix will generate TV shows that no one has ever seen, for an audience of one.
The generative long tail will go on and on and on.
Most of the time, it’ll degenerate into slop and banality. The humanity of the movies, books and recordings it creates will fade, and we’ll be left with mindless airport music.
But that will evolve over time, and the arc will go in the other direction. Things that work, done more often. Combinations and evolving insights that move even faster than we can keep up with.
Slop and magic, in an eternal braid, a lot like the stuff humans have been producing for decades.
A golden road to who knows where.
