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You can opt out of incentives
People and businesses offer all sorts of incentives to encourage you to behave the way they want you to. For example, an airline may offer discounts on multi destination trips instead of return trips. Or a credit card may offer points that you can travel with, in exchange for your continued use. These incentives can…
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Practicing in public
There’s a piano inside a bookstore. It’s available for anyone to play, including you. If you do that, you won’t need to buy a piano, but the trade is that everyone hears you play, practice, or perform. They might like it, they might not. They may be waiting their turn. You’ll need to develop a…
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Five lessons for whispering into the Hacker News front page
A couple of years ago, I met a CEO of a series A startup. At the time, I was working as a content strategist on Figma’s marketing team, where I also found an informal role as the in-house Hacker News expert. At the time, Figma was expanding outside of its core design audience, and into new…
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Trust yourself
It’s simple, pithy, and cliche. It’s also something worth reminding yourself of more often than you think. There are two films that convey this message really well, spoiler alerts for both: In Rental Family, the protagonist is an actor whose job is pretending to be people’s family members. For example, a mom hires him to…
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Happy year of the fire horse
A few nights ago, I went to a lunar new year celebration at the Royal Ontario Museum, which was very energizing. Last year, I happened to visit The Met a few days before the lunar new year and saw the AAPI Jazz Collective play. When I realized this, I felt like it was a cosmic…