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“Football is life”
This is the motto of Dani Rojas, a football player in the TV show Ted Lasso. It usually comes out when Dani gets to play football, because he feels really happy. He’ll run around kicking the ball, chanting, “Football is life!” One day, something bad happened to the team. The owner traded away their best…
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20 lessons from 2 years in New York City
Two years ago, I moved to New York City with my wife and our cat. I’d first visited nearly a decade before, and it had always been a dream of mine—one I’d talked myself out of many times. I’m Canadian and I wasn’t sure how I’d figure out a way to stay. Working visas felt…
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AI as an answer key
One of the first things I learned in high school was that my math textbook had an answer key at the back. Which was weird. My impulse was I could shortcut my homework simply by writing the answer key down on a piece of paper. Of course, the teacher required us to show our work…
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Notes on fragmented sleep
I’m really good at waking up. I’m so good at waking up, in fact, that occasionally I wake up two hours too early. I used to find it difficult to fall back asleep. When I asked a doctor about this, they told me it was called “fragmented sleep” and there wasn’t that much they could…
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Convenience, growth, commitment, and sacredness
When a theater shows a movie, it’s not convenient. You need to buy a relatively expensive ticket. You need to arrive on time. You can’t pause it. There will be a day the theater stops showing it. Movie theaters are not growing—they are in decline. Movie theaters make you do something that a streaming service…
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Limitations of causal reasoning
A few days ago, I wrote about causal and effectual reasoning. You’ll be familiar with these two paths—but having words to describe them really helps. “When you think with causal reasoning, you focus on what you want to do—the desired end goal, or the destination—and then work backwards from that,” I wrote. “Business leaders, managers,…
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Keep the back up plan a back up plan
The future is unpredictable. It’s always great to have an option, maybe two, in case things don’t go according to plan. That’s why you’d want to have a backup plan. In my freshman year in university, I made a backup plan that took too much of my energy. According to my plan, I would switch…