This page shares my best articles. Not sure where to begin? Below are what many consider to be my “greatest hits” – the essays and articles that have been the most popular or had the greatest effect on readers’ lives.
Decision-Making, Strategy & Mental Models
Full Archives
2023
- April 05 The Physics of Kaizen: Why Somebody Should Get Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened
- March 08 5 Philosophies of History
2022
- November 18 The St. Petersburg Paradox (AKA How to Not Pull a FTX)
- November 04 Best Operations Management Books and Resources
- March 02 The Four Levels of Organization
2021
- December 10 The Toyota Production System: A Love Letter
- December 03 Insurance Makes Wealth Grow Faster
- October 29 How to Predict our Economic, Political and Cultural Futures
- October 25 Best Practices for Operational Excellence
- October 22 Subtractive Productivity: How Doing Less Can Achieve More
- July 30 The Bullwhip Effect and Supply Chain Inflation
- July 16 The War of Art Summary and Notes
- July 16 Terminator Mode
- July 02 The Smartest Guys in the Room – Bethany McLean
- June 18 Risk is Not Getting What You Want
- June 11 Static vs. Dynamic Games
- June 04 Festina Lente: Why Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast
- May 28 Taylor’s Machete
- May 20 Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff
- May 14 The Systems Bible
- May 07 The Maginot Line Problem
- April 28 Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne
- April 23 Illegible Inefficiencies
- April 16 Do The Thing You Want To Do
- April 02 The Frontier Thesis
- February 19 On 4 Minute Songs
- February 05 My Remote Work Best Practices
- January 27 The Effective Executive Summary
- January 15 How to Win at Business
- January 13 Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business by Chet Richards
2020
- December 18 Trees are the Root of all Evil
- December 04 My Favorite Stone Soup Recipe
- November 27 Pull the Andon Cord
- November 20 Goodhart’s Law: How to not lose $4.6 billion
- November 13 Take the Turkey Out of the Oven
- November 06 9 Questions to Ask Before You Start Something New
- October 30 Metaphorical Proof of Work
- October 23 History has a History too
- October 16 The Farthest Down the Chain Principle
- October 09 Invisible Absorbing Barriers
- October 02 In Praise of 2/3rd-ism and Messy Compromises
- September 25 The Explore/Exploit Tradeoff: When should I Leap?
- September 18 We Are All Journalists Now
- September 04 The Mental Model that Explains Political Revolutions and Financial Crises
- August 28 RETO: The Robustness Efficiency Tradeoff
- August 21 The Origins of Political Order Review and Summary
- August 14 Nietzsche and Ergodicity
- July 31 Becoming an Intergalactic Gazillionaire is Harder Than it Looks
- July 24 The Farmer’s Fable: Free as in Lunch
- July 17 Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail:
Business Edition - July 14 Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail
- July 14 The Art of War Summary (and Quotes) by Sun Tzu
- July 10 Become Like Water My Friend
- June 23 Book Notes – Breakthrough Advertising
- June 15 Tit for Tat Strategy and The Evolution of Cooperation
- June 12 Fire Two Shots, But Never Fire First
- June 05 The Sand Pile Effect: Why are there weeks in which decades happen?
- April 17 Wile E. Coyote Systems
2019
- April 17 The Paint Drop Method for Figuring Out What To Do with Your Life (and Becoming the Best in the World At It)
- April 03 The 3 Laws of Marketing: Why Nobody Buys Your Sh*t
- February 28 Markets Are Eating The World
2018
- December 31 Finite and Infinite Games Summary and Quotes
- December 31 Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life Summary and Quotes
- December 31 Man’s Search for Meaning Summary and Quotes
- December 20 What is Mimetic Theory? A Summary of Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard
- November 07 Will Smart Contracts Eat the World?
- October 10 Best Psychology Books
- October 01 The Best Biographies of All Time
- September 28 Best Self Help Books
- September 26 Best Motivational Books of all Time
- September 19 The Best History Books
- August 19 Impro: Improvisation and Theatre Summary and Notes
- August 13 The Bitcoin Standard Book Summary and Notes
- August 01 When Will Crypto Crash (Again?)
- June 16 The Black Swan Book Synopsis, Quotes and Notes
- June 16 The Essays of Warren Buffett Summary and Quotes
- June 16 Market Mind Games by Denise Shull Summary and Quotes
- June 16 The Most Important Thing Illuminated by Howard Marks Notes and Quotes
- February 25 Misbehavior of Markets Summary and Quotes
- January 15 Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?
- January 10 Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber Summary and Quotes
- January 10 The Best Books I Read In 2017
- January 09 Reasons and Persons Summary
2017
- October 25 How to Change Your Life using Punctuated Equilibrium
- October 11 Denial of Death Summary and Quotes
- October 10 The Blockchain Man
- September 12 Kaleidoscope Thinking: How to Think Faster and More Clearly
- September 05 Everything You’ve Been Taught About How To Read a Book Is Wrong
- August 20 How to Prioritize like a Billionaire
- August 10 The Best Philosophy Books
- August 02 The Ultimate Guide to the OODA Loop
- July 27 How to Get Into Cryptocurrency: The Best Cryptocurrency Resources
- July 17 Why History’s Greatest Innovators Optimized for Interesting
- July 12 The Truth about How Creativity Really Works
- June 17 The Organization Man Quotes and Summary
- June 14 How to Discover Your Core Values List (and Use Them to Make Better Decisions)
2016
- November 30: A Simple Marketing Campaign Checklist
- November 09: The Overton Window and How Creative Business Ideas Arise
- November 02: My Favorite Morning Routine
- October 19: Speed of Implementation and The Law of Shitty Click Throughs
- October 05: The 70% Rule: How to Move Fast and Break Things (and why you should)
- August 31: Fingerspitzengefühl: What Elite Tank Commanders, Chess Grandmasters, and Entrepreneurs Have in Common
- August 17: The Unlikely True Story of Ingeborg Francesca Jurkutat
- August 03: Strengths, Weaknesses, and the Math of Mastery
- July 20: How to Get Lucky: Focus On The Fat Tails
- July 06: How (And Why) To Find An Online Mastermind Group
- May 18: How To Plan Your Ideal Day
- April 20: How to Improve Your Mindset
2015
- December 17 Antifragile Planning: Optimizing for Optionality (Without Chasing Shiny Objects)
- December 02 8 Ways to Read 60 Books A Year
- June 16 An Entrepreneur’s Library: Business Books I Find Repeatedly Useful
- June 02 A Single Word Summary of 188 Books on Entrepreneurship
- March 23 Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths Book Review
- March 23 Anything You Want Book Review
- February 07 Welcome to Extremistan. Don’t Be a Turkey.
- January 03 3 Steps to Prioritizing Your Reading
2014
- November 29 Thinking in Limits: Two Simple Questions for Becoming a Better Entrepreneur
- November 15 The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Review
- November 01 The Fourth Economy and The Future of Work
- October 05 The Rise of the Practitioner-Publisher
- August 16 What is Optionality? How Can Optionality Improve My Performance?
- August 02 The Entrepreneur’s Daily Ritual
- July 12 The Joys of Missing Out (JOMO)
- January 19 Scaling