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The Strength of Being Misunderstood
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question. Almost everyone cares what...
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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,746 posts.
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My experience trying to write human-sounding articles using Claude AI
You can use AI tools like Claude to help you write full-length content. By going paragraph-by-paragraph, you can direct the AI while seemingly maintaining your own voice and ideas. However, despite my attempts to use AI with writing, I’ve found that it’s harder to pull off than I thought. I can get close, but due to…
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Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person's mistake
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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The lazy way to being outstanding: go after hard things
Doing the hard things is both the best thing for the company, for you and counterintuitively – your lifestyle.
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The Markdown Mindset
Over the last year, I have moved all my non-code writing to Markdown format. I don’t even have Microsoft Word installed on my laptop anymore. Here’s why:
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It's cool to care (2025)
Caring deeply – about art, my friends, and shared experiences – has brought me so much joy.
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Notes on Resonance
Resonance occurs when two sources of excitation fall completely in sync, and reinforce one another endlessly. In this state, the sources convey an unbounded amount of energy over time.
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Practicing 2000 hrs (The Dan Plan: a 10,000 hr deliberate practice experiment)
One year, 5 months and four days = 2,000 hours (strange math, but it adds up) of deliberate practice. 2,000 hours spent literally over a ball working on something in my swing/putt and learning how to play golf. 2,000 hours of aha moments, setbacks, mini-triumphs and determination to get better. 2,000 hours of…
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My eBook build process and some PDF, EPUB and MOBI tips
In case you missed it, last month I self-published an eBook about Ruby internals called Ruby Under a Microscope . To date I’ve sold over 600 copies - thanks everyone! I’ve never written anything so ambitious before, and I’m grateful for your support. I hope it’s been a fun read, and that you come away with a better…
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Shit I Learned Burning through My Family's Life Savings on a Failed Startup
I wrote this three years ago after burning through my family’s life savings in a failed startup, but never posted or published it – as frankly it hurt too much. After all, no one ever …
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Skip The Water
I told this story to an entrepreneur last weekend and she loved it. So I figured I should tell it to everyone here at AVC. I was a mechanical engineering major (course 2) at MIT. One of the best classes in the mechanical engineering curriculum at MIT is 2.70, Introduction To Design. And the highlight […]
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Documenting Dance: Keeping Score (2017)
At several points throughout history, someone has sat down to watch a ballet; a long and complex performance with multiple dancers and changes of music and style, and at the end of it, said: “someh…
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Toward an exploratory medium for mathematics
The world's oldest complete piece of surviving music is the 3,400-year-old Hurrian cult hymn . The hymn was found inscribed on clay tablets excavated from the ancient city of Ugarit, in modern-day Syria. Sometime after the hymn was composed, the idea of using notation to record music was lost. Writing two millennia…
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Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)
Use DIY CAN bus tools to convert your car into the best sim rig ever
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Yes, learn basic programming
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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My Org Roam Notes Workflow (2021)
A description of my org-roam notes workflow, from writing the notes to publishing them on my website.
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Kill the Alarm Clock (2017)
Few upwardly mobile people in the modern rat-race society can live without an alarm clock. With a shot of strong coffee and round-the-clock stress, most people learn to live and survive with an alarm clock. Half of the population wakes up with an alarm, 9% are woken by a partner, 4% by pets, 3% by children, etc. That…
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What to do when you’ve ruined your life
Every now and then, life becomes unacceptable. What do you do then?
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Why are mathematicians so bad at arithmetic? (2017)
18 x 93 is… hey, look over there!
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A blog does not need “analytics”
Analytics are a military and financial tool. Your blog is not and you shouldn’t surveil you readers.
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Things the most successful people I know struggle with to be happy
“You wouldn’t want to be me.” is the line Elon Musk tells Joe Rogan about his life. Many of us see the successes and the outward experiences people produce and think up. Yet, few of us get to see what it’s like on the inside of that person’s body or day to day life. It […]