Writing
Practical essays on cognitive biases, mental frameworks, and the art of deciding well.
Outcome bias makes a lucky call look wise and a careful one look foolish. A six-question review for judging decision quality fairly, separate from luck.
First Principles ThinkingYou can't eliminate uncertainty, but you can structure it. A practical five-step process for deciding when the facts run out and the outcome is unknowable.
Circle of CompetenceA complete premortem example. Follow one decision from confident yes to imagined failure to a stronger plan, step by step, with the full failure list.
Premortem AnalysisA calm decision framework for career change at 40, separating growth, burnout, money risk, sunk cost, and fear of starting over.
Sunk Cost ReleaseA practical cognitive bias checklist for checking confirmation bias, sunk cost, loss aversion, hindsight, and overthinking before a big decision.
InversionA practical decision matrix for choosing between two jobs, comparing salary, manager quality, growth, risk, energy, and long-term fit.
Second-Order ThinkingA practical impact effort matrix for choosing your next move, prioritizing decisions, and spotting hidden bias before action.
Second-Order ThinkingA copyable premortem template. Ten questions to answer before a project, career move, or investment, so likely failures surface while you can still prevent them.
Premortem AnalysisA calm decision framework for deciding whether to quit your job, stay, or take a smaller next step without letting fear or sunk cost decide.
Sunk Cost ReleaseConfirmation bias makes preferred options feel more logical than they are. Learn how to test your own reasoning before a big decision.
InversionA practical decision journal template for recording your reasoning before hindsight bias rewrites the story.
Premortem AnalysisA practical decision matrix template for comparing hard choices, plus the hidden biases a static scorecard can miss.
Second-Order ThinkingHindsight bias makes past decisions feel obvious after the outcome is known. Learn how to record your reasoning before memory rewrites the story.
Premortem AnalysisA practical framework for escaping decision paralysis: define the real decision, separate facts from assumptions, name the fear, and choose the next clear step.
Premortem AnalysisSkilled intuition only works in regular environments: chess, nurses, firefighters. In zero-validity worlds like the stock market, trust the data, not your gut.
Circle of CompetenceMy mom calls her mahjong winning streaks lucky. Monte Carlo gamblers lost millions doing the same in 1913. Why the gambler's fallacy keeps tricking your bets.
Second-Order ThinkingMarkets price what we don't know. Chaos theory, the 2008 crash, and the limit of prediction: why staying within your circle of competence beats forecasting.
Circle of CompetenceLao Tzu, water, and the mentor who only said 'shut up and listen': why the greatest leaders win by being soft. The case for power as service, not control.
InversionBayesian thinking shows why a vivid story beats a base rate, and why your conjunction fallacy keeps choosing the wrong answer about a stranger named Karen.
First Principles ThinkingRegret is a counterfactual emotion, a punishment we hand ourselves for a road not taken. Why 'what if' destroys decisions, and how to turn it into 'so what'.
Loss Aversion ReframeSelf-awareness is a mirror you paint with attention. Three habits to keep the reflection honest: read more, judge less, and design a routine you follow.
First Principles ThinkingSun Tzu, Nash equilibrium, and the price war: the art of strategy isn't winning but staying invincible. Why competing on price always leaves both sides poorer.
Second-Order ThinkingSunk cost fallacy examples from career and life, and how to stop letting past investments decide what your next move should be.
Sunk Cost ReleaseReturning bombers showed where to put armour, until Abraham Wald spotted the trap. Survivorship bias quietly shapes the data you trust to make decisions.
First Principles ThinkingKahneman's WYSIATI explains why smart people make confident wrong decisions, and how a decision matrix surfaces the blind spots you didn't know you had.
First Principles ThinkingConfirmation bias quietly distorts how we read data, from giver-vs-taker rankings to billion-dollar education bets. Here is why the elephant is too big.
First Principles ThinkingMany of our thoughts are doubts that sprout into whole stories. A five-question test, learned the hard way, helps decide which doubts are worth chasing.
First Principles ThinkingThe narrative fallacy makes a coherent story feel like evidence. Use four questions to separate facts, assumptions, and causes before an important decision.
First Principles ThinkingPremortem analysis: imagine the project has already failed, then work backwards to find why. A method for catching overconfidence before it costs you.
Premortem AnalysisGivers earn less, burn out more, and still reach the top of the success ladder. Use sincerity screening to spot takers before you default to generosity.
Inversion