Some thoughts on writing An Essay by Dan Luu danluu.com Besides being unlikely to work for you even if someone is able to describe what makes their writing tick, most advice is written by people who don't understand how their writing works. This may be difficult to see for writing if you haven't spent a lot of time analyzing writing, but it's easy to see this is true if you've taken a bunch of dance classes or had sports instruction that isn't from a very good coach. If you watch, for example, the median dance instructor and listen to their instructions, you'll see that their instructions are quite different from what they actually do. People who listen and follow instructions instead of attempting to copy what the instructor is doing will end up doing the thing completely wrong. Most writing advice similarly fails to capture what's important. The superficial aspects of what someone else is doingThings that increase popularity that I generally don't do writinglearningexpertise
Individuals matter An Article by Dan Luu danluu.com One of the most common mistakes I see people make when looking at data is incorrectly using an overly simplified model. A specific variant of this that has derailed the majority of work roadmaps I've looked at is treating people as interchangeable, as if it doesn't matter who is doing what, as if individuals don't matter. Individuals matter. On Talent teamworkplanningwork
What to learn An Essay by Dan Luu danluu.com While being an extremely broad generalist can work, it's gotten much harder to "know a bit of everything" and be effective because there's more of everything over time (in terms of both breadth and depth). ...If you watch an anime or a TV series "about" fighting, people often improve by increasing the number of techniques they know because that's an easy thing to depict but, in real life, getting better at techniques you already know is often more effective than having a portfolio of hundreds of "moves". I've personally found this to be true in a variety of disciplines. Managing Oneself learningskill
95%-ile isn't that good An Article by Dan Luu danluu.com Reaching 95Mistakes at the top Waste as little effort as possible on low competence talent
Locus. (Appwalls) An Article by Ethan Marcotte ethanmarcotte.com I’ve noticed a recent trend on the web — or at least, on the parts of it I’ve visited. Maybe you’ve noticed it too. Here’s what happens: you’re on a website, and one of these little prompts pops up...[to] let you know that there’s an app, and that the website you’re on...well, it’s not quite the app, is it? ...Sometimes, the website wants me to install the app — no, it needs me to install the app. It’s like a paywall, but for apps. An appwall. In recent years, these prompts have gotten more prominent, and occasionally impassable. And I think that trend’s interesting. Why would a company promote a native app over their perfectly usable website? It feels like a glimpse into that company’s design priorities. And it’s possibly providing us with insight into the business value they place on the open web — a medium that’s meant to be accessible everywhere, on any screen, on any device. And it really does feel like these glimpses are becoming more common. wwwux