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.
Marketing and Business
Investing & Decision Making
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
- May 06 Systemantics by John Gall
- 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
- April 08 A COVID-19 Crisis Management Plan for Startups and Small Businesses
- March 13 Corona, Attractor Landscapes & Dinosaur Markets
- March 07 Coronavirus Primer for Reasonably Rational People
- February 28 COVID-19, Vladimir Lenin, and Portfolio Protection
- February 21 Mortgages
- February 16 The True Believer Summary (and Quotes) by Eric Hoffer
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
- March 27 Platform Power Summary
- March 27 Influence by Robert Cialdini Book Notes
- February 28 Markets Are Eating The World
- February 06 The Best Intermediate-ish Crypto Resources
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 26 How to Unlock Your Creative Potential
- December 20 What is Mimetic Theory? A Summary of Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard
- December 07 Three Focus Failures and How to Avoid Them
- December 04 How to Get Focused for 2025
- November 07 Will Smart Contracts Eat the World?
- October 10 Best Psychology Books
- October 09 What is a Security Token? A Comprehensive Guide to How They Work and Their Impact
- 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
- September 05 State of Bitcoin (Fall 2018)
- August 22 Cryptocurency and the Turkey Problem
- 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 80/20 Investor by David Schneider
- June 16 The Most Important Thing Illuminated by Howard Marks Notes and Quotes
- June 05 The Ultimate Guide to Apprenticeships (Or How To Find Your First Remote Job)
- March 27 Complexity Science: A Basic Explanation (with examples and resources)
- March 13 Why the ‘Worst’ Crypto Networks Will be the Biggest
- March 04 Why Apprenticeships Matter
- February 25 Misbehavior of Markets Summary and Quotes
- February 20 12 Books That Make You Think
- February 05 Blockchain Supply Chain Use Cases: A Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity?
- January 23 The Best Longform Articles I Read In 2017
- 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
- January 02 Will Cryptocurrency Protocols Be Fat or Thin?
2017
- November 23 Bug Out Bag Essentials for Reasonably Rational People
- November 16 You Want Democracy? Try A Hard Fork
- October 25 How to Change Your Life using Punctuated Equilibrium
- October 11 Denial of Death Summary and Quotes
- October 10 The Blockchain Man
- October 03 The Dark Side of Growth
- September 26 Four Books To Better Understand How Cryptocurrency Works
- 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 16 The State of Cryptocurrency: 2017 Edition
- 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)
- February 28 A Brief History of Existential Terror
- February 15 The Safety And Sanity Of Entrepreneurship [TEDx Talk]
- February 01 The Illegible Margin: Seeing Like a State Book Summary
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
- June 22: 6 Essential Insights on The Future from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger
- June 08: How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure with The Bucky Method
- April 20: How to Improve Your Mindset
- April 06: The Work: What a Philosophy Professor and Strength Coach Can Teach Us About Our Careers
- March 17: Effectual Reasoning: The Little Known Method Entrepreneurs Use to Figure Out What They Want
- March 08: Why Product Market Fit is Overrated (and what to focus on instead)
- February 23: Disintermediation and Selectorate Theory
2015
- December 30 My Ten Most Influential Reads of 2015
- December 17 Antifragile Planning: Optimizing for Optionality (Without Chasing Shiny Objects)
- December 02 8 Ways to Read 60 Books A Year
- November 17 Jesus Marketing: How I Sold 5000 Books in Four Weeks As a First Time Author (With Less Than 700 Email Subscribers)
- November 07 The First Job Dilemma (Or Welcome to The Hyper-Meritocracy)
- September 30 Get on the Plane: You Become What You Do at the Margins
- September 09 The Retirement Catch-22: Why Those Who Want to Retire Most, Can’t
- July 22 My General Operating Principles: 37 Principles for Making Hard Decisions
- July 03 The Work and The People
- July 01 We’ve Reached The End of Jobs
- June 16 An Entrepreneur’s Library: Business Books I Find Repeatedly Useful
- June 02 A Single Word Summary of 188 Books on Entrepreneurship
- May 19 Crafting Marketing Meta Narratives (Or Why I’m Giving Away 339 Hours of Work For Free)
- May 02 Illegible Currency Arbitrage: How to Optimize for What Matters, Not What You Can Measure
- April 19 The Taboo Productivity Trap: On Dealing with Blah-ness
- April 04 4 Strategies To Find The Work Only You Can Do (And Why It’s More Profitable Than Ever)
- March 23 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Book Review
- March 23 Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths Book Review
- March 23 Anything You Want Book Review
- March 21 Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Book Review
- March 21 Nine 80/20 Principles for Entrepreneurs Learned From Writing a Book
- March 07 The Commoditization of Credentialism: Why MBAs and JDs Can’t Get Jobs
- February 14 To You Who Wants More Freedom
- February 07 Welcome to Extremistan. Don’t Be a Turkey.
2014
- December 27 The Annual Review: How I Get Clarity, Confidence and Conviction In My Life and Business
- December 20 Identity Based Decision Making: How Your Identity Makes You Wealthy
- December 09 How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World Book Review
- December 06 Going All In: The Ignorance of Diversification in Life and Entrepreneurship
- December 01 The ONE Thing Book Review
- November 29 Thinking in Limits: Two Simple Questions for Becoming a Better Entrepreneur
- November 28 Platform Power Summary
- November 22 Mountain Top Blogging: A Framework for Life Changing Blog Posts
- November 15 The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Review
- November 08 Location Leverage: 10X Your Location Independence
- November 01 The Fourth Economy and The Future of Work
- October 05 The Rise of the Practitioner-Publisher
- September 20 The Path to Wealth and Power is Paved by Definition
- August 25 Case Study: Growing a B2B eCommerce Business 527% in 18 Months
- 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)
- June 14 9 Frameworks To Add a Few Hundred Thousand to Your Bottomline in 18 Months
- June 01 Business Education is an Oxymoron
- April 27 My Favorite Heuristic for Evaluating Relationships: The Antifragile Person
- April 12 What to Do When You Don’t Know What You Want
- February 23 5 Mental Models To Create Dramatically More Leverage
- February 16 Existential Terror is Just Another Term for Happiness
- February 09 Why Cash is Worth Less Than You Think
- January 19 Scaling
- January 06 Rip, Pivot, Jam – How to Work at the Limits without Dying
2013
- December 23 Change Your Location. Change Your Life.
- October 29 Table Selection – When to Hold ’em vs. When to Fold ’em?
- October 12 The Black Box System
- August 18 Influence by Robert Cialdini Book Notes
- July 20 The Cat Furniture Problem