Stealing ideas doesn’t have to result in imposter syndrome. If anything, copying helps reveal our most authentic selves. — More than 70% of people in the workplace feel they have experienced ‘imposter’ thoughts at some point in their lives. …

The Pursuit of Simplicity Only Serves to Manufacture Our Consent, Not Our Understanding. — There is nothing humans hate more than not knowing their place in the universe. We are continually looking at the world around us and demanding to understand our value within it. But that value is not easy to discern. Like a hurricane, there is no single root cause in a…

Building a successful search takes more than technical smarts, but if done right is one of the most rewarding products you could work on. — Everything is a search problem. From finding the keys in our pocket (thanks, AirTag) to looking up a long lost lover on LinkedIn — seeking things and answers is the problem that predates civilisation. When historians look back at our lives, they will proclaim how this was the time when…

We are still waiting on a cure for death, but until then building products may be the next best thing. — The late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has many famous quotes, but one from a Playboy interview in 1985 hits me harder than the rest: “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here?” Some have interpreted it as inspiration to live a life filled with…

There are no guarantees the future will hold the same values as us, so what right do we have to encode ours upon them? — In Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet, the future is at war with the past “because the oceans rose and the rivers ran dry.” Thanks to catastrophic climate change, no path lay ahead for our descendants, and their only hope was to carve out a future by orchestrating a genocide in our…

If you’re reading this, it means I succeeded in my mission to the future. What follows is a human year’s worth of data condensed into minutes. — Finding the motivation and skills to navigate any one of the many dominating events of 2021 is something I think we can all relate to. This article is a summary of the best ideas and thoughts I came across (or copied) in 2021 that have helped me navigate these uncertain…

Doing our best creative work sometimes means tricking ourselves into leaving our minds alone. Here are six things to try while walking to achieve this. — I’ve spent enough time indoors these last years to know my best ideas don’t happen at a desk. With only so many daylight hours, I’ve learned that sacrificing a few of them to do the seemingly unproductive is the surest path to new creative insights. Going for a walk is…

Failure may be the most important part of the human experience. So why not run towards it? — Just look at all the successful people around you. Doctors too busy to see their families. Scientists so brilliant they won’t change disciplines. Public figures so popular they can’t change their minds. One of the problems with success is that it gives us something to lose. As a species not…

We don’t deserve the team we can’t inspire. Camaraderie, purpose, and appreciation need to be our priorities. — With record numbers of employees leaving their jobs, perhaps it’s no surprise that I recently stumbled across a product manager asking, ‘How do people inspire their engineering teams?’ Even if you don’t work in product, I’m sure many of us not planning an imminent exit can relate to this problem.