Today at a Glance:

• Quote: Play the game in front of you

• Thinking: The middle game, friction worth keeping, the 2028 scenario

• Podcast: Inside Anthropic, AI optimism

• Tactics: Friction logs, OpenClaw

• Try: The four burner audit

• Tweet: UI going to zero, golden handcuffs, AI-free investing

#QUOTE

Quote I’m pondering...

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson

Most people skip the middle game. They vision-cast the end state and never simulate the hundred moves it takes to get there. The opening is exciting, the endgame glamorous. But plans die in the middle.

AI accelerates execution, not strategy. The path from here to there still requires taste, sequence, and willingness to get punched.

#THOUGHTS

What I’m thinking about...

The Middle Game Problem

Will Manidis wrote something provocative: too many tech projects get stuck in the middle game. People jump to the vision without simulating the opening moves required to reach the endgame.

The essay is light on the “so what,” which I think is intentional. Simulation is the point. Play out the moves before you make them. AI makes this easier than ever. You can run scenarios, stress-test assumptions, iterate on plans in minutes. The people who simulate the middle game will outpace those who only dream about the end.

Minutes

End Game Play

It is 1985. Garry Kasparov sits across from Anatoly Karpov in Moscow. It is Game 24…

Read more

24 days ago · 84 likes · 5 comments · Will Manidis

Friction Worth Keeping

Most software is bad. The only way to find the badness is to document every moment of friction while using it. Nothing is too small. The typo. The confusing spacing. The hover that doesn’t reveal what you expect.

But some friction is worth keeping. The struggle to articulate a problem is how you understand it. The tedium of research is how you develop taste. AI removes friction indiscriminately. The winners know which friction to protect.

The 2028 Scenario

Citrini Research published a thought experiment: what if AI bullishness is right, and that’s actually bearish?

The scenario assumes we do not react. AI displaces white-collar workers faster than new jobs emerge. Productivity gains flow to capital, not labor. Consumer spending collapses because machines don’t buy discretionary goods.

I think the trajectory is directionally right, but doomsday is wrong. We will react. The question is how fast and how well. Read it as a simulation, not a prophecy.

Citrini Research

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS

Preface…

Read more

10 days ago · 6088 likes · 83 comments · Citrini and Alap Shah

#PODCASTS

My favorite listens...

Inside Anthropic: The Creator of Claude Code Boris Cherny built Claude Code. The way Anthropic operates is genuinely different. Agent infrastructure is a people problem. Someone has to onboard, coach, and quality-check agents like junior employees. Most companies will fail at AI because they don’t know how to manage non-human workers.

AI at the Ideal Moment Marc Andreessen’s optimism is infectious. AI productivity gains can translate to prosperity, not displacement. Distribution is the harder problem.

Definitely listen to minutes 22-30, which is a concentrated dose of why AI makes the world better. Worth isolating if you’re feeling nihilistic.

#TACTICS & TOOLS

Tools and techniques I’m using...

Friction Logs The technique that reveals where your product actually breaks. Role-play a user, document every micro-friction, and rank the top 3 problems. Most teams are overwhelmed by implied work; the ranking is the insight. https://blog.sbensu.com/posts/friction-logs/

OpenClaw An open-source framework that turns AI into an always-on assistant. Connect it to your email, calendar, messaging apps, and let it work while you sleep. It’s really high leverage; I’ve basically onboarded an AI employee. I’ve been running mine on a Mac Mini (but any old computer will do)—processing email drafts, researching topics, triggering automations overnight, and creating docs for me. Start supervised, then graduate to autonomous. https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw

#THINGS TO TRY

Experiments worth running...

The Four Burner Audit Family, work, health, friends. You can’t run all four on high. Which are dimmed right now? Name them. Decide if that’s intentional or accidental.

The Curious Tales@thecurioustales

🚨 I just learned about a concept, I can't stop thinking about. The Four Burner Theory. It destroyed Elon Musk's first marriage. It explains why Bezos is jacked but divorced. And why Zuckerberg has no real friends. Once you understand it, your life will never be same:🧵

2:30 PM · Feb 15, 2026 · 5.79M Views

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654 Replies · 4.11K Reposts · 23.2K Likes

“If You Had 1000 Support Reps” If you could run ChatGPT in your sleep, what would you build? If you had 1000 support reps working 24/7, what would you automate? Your answer reveals the bottleneck.

#TWEET

Social media that made me stop and think...

AI + Work

PMs will operate like product CEOs with an army of AI agents. Taste and judgment are becoming more valuable than knowing how to build. “I’m not technical” is no longer an excuse.

George from 🕹prodmgmt.world@nurijanian

every PM who wants to survive the AI era should watch this video (75 mins) @gokulr shares how product management is fundamentally changing my notes below but you have to watch the whole video:

Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag

.@gokulr is one of the most prolific product builders and investors of the last 20 years. He helped build the core ads and product businesses at Google, Facebook, Square, and DoorDash, working directly with many of this generation's best founders and CEOs. He's also invested in

3:58 PM · Jan 30, 2026 · 175K Views

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3 Replies · 67 Reposts · 720 Likes

UI usage should trend toward zero. The best interface is none.

Peter Yang@petergyang

Your goal in the AI agent era should be to get user time spent with your product to 0 because you’ve made it so incredibly easy for agents to get work done via APIs/skills/MCPs.

11:18 PM · Feb 21, 2026 · 11.6K Views

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47 Replies · 6 Reposts · 142 Likes

Pretty much how I work now. AI as pair programmer, strategist, editor.

Alex Cohen@anothercohen

It's pretty incredible how much of how I work has changed in just the last two weeks. We rolled out an AI chatbot inside Slack (OpenClaw), hooked up a bunch of tools via MCP and APIs, and now I basically just chat with AI to knock out entire projects. I can also do a lot more

8:38 PM · Feb 15, 2026 · 189K Views

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93 Replies · 47 Reposts · 1.72K Likes

Product + Shipping

Tony Fadell’s filter for everything: “Why does it matter?”

Tony Fadell@tfadell

PMs don’t just ship features. They kill them. Shipping isn’t the job. Shipping the right product is. A great PM doesn’t fall in love with the roadmap. They fall in love with the problem and have the guts to say: This isn’t solving it. This adds complexity. This doesn’t matter.

9:29 PM · Feb 24, 2026 · 274K Views

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68 Replies · 167 Reposts · 1.71K Likes

Investing

Goldman Sachs launched SPXXAI, an S&P 500 index that excludes AI companies. For people who are anti-AI, now you can put your money where your mouth is. https://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/ai-goldman-sachs-stocks-index

Today at a Glance:

• Quote: The obstacle is the way

• Thinking: Jevons Paradox, context graphs, AI assistants

• Podcast: Coca-Cola

• Tactics: Claude Code tips for the non-technical

• Try: The Life Calendar

• Ideas: Shame market niches

#QUOTE

Quote I’m pondering...

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius

Everyone’s racing to remove friction from work. AI handles the tedious parts. Agents do the grunt work. But the friction was often the point. The struggle to articulate a problem clearly is how you understand it. The tedium of research is how you develop taste. When AI removes the obstacle, it also removes the forcing function that made you better. The winners will know which friction to keep.

#THOUGHTS

What I’m thinking about...

Jevons Paradox is Coming for Knowledge Work

Aaron Levie made a point that’s been rattling around my head: Jevons paradox is going to make knowledge work even more important (link).

When something becomes dramatically cheaper, we don’t use less of it. We use vastly more. Coal got efficient, we burned more coal. Compute got cheap, we found infinite uses for it.

AI is doing this to thinking. When analysis, planning, and execution become nearly free, we won’t do less of it. We’ll do things we never bothered to consider before. Resources no longer matter. Return does. Experimentation, strategy, speed.

Context Graphs Will Be the Moat

Without context, agents aren’t useful. Jay Aggarwal argues (link) that systems of record and data warehouses aren’t well positioned here. Agents are, because they’re in the execution path to build context graphs for a specific vertical. The winners will be the ones whose agents learn your business, not just execute commands.

AI Assistants Will Own You by 8 Weeks

Everyone will have AI assistants just like they have smartphones (link). The adoption curve will be staggering. You’ll use AI daily. The only question is how you’ll train it, otherwise it’ll train you.

#PODCASTS

My favorite listens...

Coca-Cola: The Acquired Episode The “secret” formula is a misdirection. The moat was always distribution and brand, two things that compound over a century and can’t be copied. Reframed how I think about defensibility.

We Replaced Our Sales Team with 20 AI Agents Jason Lemkin runs 20 AI agents with 1.2 humans. The bottleneck is management, not technology. Someone has to onboard, coach, and quality-check agents like junior employees. Most companies will fail at AI because they don’t know how to manage non-human workers.

The Non-Technical PM’s Guide to Building with Cursor A Meta PM with zero technical background is now teaching engineers how to ship faster. The power dynamic has flipped. Taste, judgment, and knowing what to build are becoming more valuable than knowing how to build it. If you’re a PM who still thinks “I’m not technical” is an excuse, this episode will make you uncomfortable.

10 Contrarian Leadership Truths | Matt MacInnis (Rippling) “High alpha, low beta” is now my default filter for evaluating people and ideas. MacInnis argues you learn far more from success than failure—the opposite of what most people believe. Also: founders should quit much earlier than VCs want them to. Entropy wins unless you fight it with intensity every single day.

Silicon Valley’s Missing Etiquette Playbook | Sam Lessin Walk into any room with a low heart rate. Introductions, small talk, dining, follow-ups all flow from confidence in knowing the rules. Founders underestimate how much trust gets built or destroyed by basic social competence.

The Counterweight to Speed Culture | 10% Happier You can’t optimize your way to meaning. Community and rituals make speed worth having.

#TACTICS & TOOLS

Cowork: Claude Code for Non-Technical Users Claude’s bet: the terminal isn’t the final form factor. Cowork (link) brings agent-powered work to everyone, not just developers.

Ramp’s Background Agent: Inspect Chat UIs are table stakes. The durable advantage is infrastructure: sandboxed VMs, pre-built environments, automatic verification. (link) Most agent companies are building the wrong layer.

#THINGS TO TRY

The Life Calendar Mortality made visual. (link) Each box is a week you’ve lived or have left. You can see the trade-offs. That Netflix binge? Three boxes. That side project you’ve been “meaning to start”? Visible cost.

72-Hour Fast Once a Quarter The mental clarity comes from realizing you’re stronger than your habits. Nick Huber does this quarterly. (link) I’m considering building a challenge app around it.

10-Week AI Challenge Structured learning beats random experimentation. AI New Years is a 10-week challenge. The best skill investment in 2026 is learning how to work with AI.

Use Claude Code on Your Genetic Data Your genome is just data. Claude can read it. (link) Personal health AI is ready now.

Showers in the Dark No screen, no stimulation, just you and your thoughts. Your brain doesn’t know what to do when there’s nothing to consume.

#IDEAS

“Shame Market” Niches The most profitable businesses solve problems people are too embarrassed to talk about publicly. (link) Shame creates urgency, privacy demands premium pricing, customers never leave reviews. Untapped niches:

• Loneliness — “I have no friends” is a $10B problem hiding in plain sight. Outreach scripts + weekly social rebuild plans.

• Affair recovery — Trust rebuild steps + “what to say tonight” templates. The marriage counseling industry is ripe for disruption.

• Gambling / financial spiral — Relapse-proof routines + damage control checklists. Secret problems need silent solutions.

• High-income hidden debt — Stealth payoff plans + spouse conversation scripts. Making $400K and broke is more common than anyone admits.

• Career crisis — On a PIP, just fired, or quietly drowning. Survival playbooks + manager scripts + stealth job search. The shame keeps people paying.

Theme: Stop relying on motivation. Shorten the loop.

The companies moving fastest aren’t “working harder.” They’re making the default path the right path:

• Automate the repeatable work.

• Shrink the unit of shipping.

• Keep decisions visible.

• Treat friction like a bug.

When life gets noisy, mechanisms beat willpower. They turn “I should…” into “this just happens.”

🗓 Today at a Glance

Quote: “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” — Bruce Lee
Podcast: PM Career Framework (Part 2)
Tactics: Gmail Storage Clean Sweep
Try: The Automation Sweep (15 minutes/day)
Tweet: Good products are opinionated

💬 Quote I’m Pondering

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” — Bruce Lee

Thinking is cheap. Drafts are cheap. Options are cheap. Plans are cheap.

So the scarce thing isn’t ideas. It’s commitment to motion.

The new failure mode is getting trapped in infinite possibility. The fix is boring: shorten loops, ship something, let reality edit your theory.

🧠 What I’m Thinking About

Frameworks are just pre-made tradeoffs

Most overwhelm is unmade decisions.

People talk about productivity like it’s a personal trait. It’s not. It’s a system that decides for you when you’re tired.

If your system doesn’t decide, your inbox does.

“Automate everything” is a culture decision

Jensen Huang pushing “automate every task possible” is less about tools and more about permission.

A lot of companies secretly punish automation:

• you automate → you look less busy

• you ship faster → you create more change management

• you remove meetings → you threaten someone’s control surface

If leadership wants speed, they have to reward the behaviors that create it.

A simple rule that works: anything done twice gets a template; anything done three times gets automated.

The best productivity app in the AI world might be one text file

The “one long text file” productivity system works because it’s durable.

Essay: https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/

Plain text has three superpowers:

• it doesn’t break

• it’s searchable

• it’s AI-ready

Once your work is in a single file, you can ask:

• “Summarize the last 7 days into a weekly update.”

• “Find recurring themes.”

• “What do I keep avoiding?”

• “What should be removed, delegated, or automated?”

The UI doesn’t matter. The data does.

Regulation is the invisible product spec
Two stories that made the same point:
• iRobot / Roomba: blocked from being acquired by Amazon over privacy concerns… then ends up being bought out of bankruptcy by a Chinese firm. Same underlying risk (data/privacy), totally different regulatory posture.
• Boom Supersonic: flirting with a pivot to data centers (turbines → power/infra). Smart narrative shift: fewer aviation constraints, more “AI infrastructure” tailwinds.

High output requires emotional bandwidth
One non-work idea I keep coming back to: output isn’t only time management — it’s emotional management.

This Joe Hudson piece frames emotions like a child: ignore them and they escalate; welcome them and they pass.

Two practical reminders I liked:
• don’t believe your emotions
• welcome the resistance

If you’ve ever optimized your life into numbness, this is worth reading.

🎧 Podcasts Worth Your Time

PM Career Framework (Part 2)

Full-stack builder program at LinkedIn

Trading stocks based off of information asymmetry

🧰 Tactics & Tools

Gmail Storage Clean Sweep

Thread:

Wilsxn@iamwilsxn

If your Gmail shows Storage full and can’t receive emails, do this NOW. I hope this helps you as it has helped me❤️ 1️⃣ Copy + paste these search filters: These expose hidden space-killers: •filename:pdf larger:10mb •older_than:1y has:attachment •filename:mp4 •filename:zip

ʇuᴉɐS📍 @saint_cloudy

what annoys you most about Gmail??

4:36 PM · Dec 7, 2025 · 1.72M Views

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48 Replies · 2.45K Reposts · 16.9K Likes

Search, bulk delete, repeat:

• older_than:1y has:attachment

• larger:10mb

• filename:pdf / filename:mp4 / filename:zip

Then empty Trash and check Google Photos.

One-File Productivity (calendar + log)

Essay: https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/

My favorite lightweight version:

• One .txt file

• Daily header:

  • Top 3 outcomes

  • Meetings

  • Tasks

  • Notes

• End-of-day line:

  • What shipped?

Weekly, ask AI to summarize and spot repeats.

Stolen iPhone shortcut

Wilsxn@iamwilsxn

In case your phone gets lost, you can see who stole it and exactly where it is! Open Shortcuts → Automation Tap Create Personal Automation Choose Message → When I receive a message Set a trigger word (example: LOST) Actions (in this order): • Set Low Power Mode → ON • Take

Apple Design @TheAppleDesign

Most people still have no idea how insanely powerful the Shortcuts app actually is For example here’s an “anti theft shortcut” that turns on low power mode.. takes a front camera photo and sends that photo along with live location to your chosen number.. ALL JUST BY SENDING A

10:45 AM · Dec 18, 2025 · 1.46M Views

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64 Replies · 1.99K Reposts · 13.1K Likes

Even if you never run it, it’s a good exercise: decide what you want your phone to do the moment it’s gone.

A sales narrative worth stealing

Problem → Pain → Current Solutions → Why They Fail → What Changed → New Solution → Proof

This works for internal roadmaps too. If you can’t articulate “what changed,” you’re proposing preference, not strategy.

🧪 Things to Try

The Automation Sweep (15 minutes/day)

For one week:

• Each day, write down one task you did that could be automated or templated.

• At the end of the week, pick one and actually do it.

Standardize one tiny thing

One sock. One lunch. One meeting template.

The point isn’t minimalism. It’s reducing “micro-decisions” that steal attention from the things that matter.

Ask the simplest question in the room

Matteo Franceschetti@m_franceschetti

The most effective people I’ve met ask very simple questions. “What problem are we actually solving?” “Why now?” “Who owns this?” You can run an entire company off those three.

9:23 PM · Dec 2, 2025 · 13.1K Views

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27 Replies · 35 Reposts · 360 Likes

Try this in your next meeting:

• “What are the next steps?”

• “Who owns it?”

• “What would make this a no?”

Simple questions surface missing mechanisms.

🐦 Tweets & Links That Made Me Stop and Think

AI + work

• How ChatGPT memory works: https://manthanguptaa.in/posts/chatgpt_memory/

• ChatGPT can now make presentations:

Aria Westcott@AriaWestcott

🚨Breaking: ChatGPT can now create presentations. No more wasting hundreds of hours creating PowerPoint presentations. Here’s how to do it in a few minutes:

3:13 PM · Dec 19, 2025 · 1.19M Views

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40 Replies · 530 Reposts · 3.08K Likes

• “AI changes everything” (small + big):

dharmesh@dharmesh

Before there was Uber, there were taxis. I rarely ever used taxis because the pain was not worth it. I'd have to call (CALL!) a taxi service, hope and pray that a taxi would actually show up, then hope and pray that the taxi driver didn't have a death wish (or a Fast and Furious

6:07 PM · Dec 22, 2025 · 53.2K Views

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60 Replies · 23 Reposts · 321 Likes

Product + shipping

• Ramp ships major releases daily:

Geoff Charles@geoffintech

At Ramp we ship a new major feature every day - it's impossible for leaders stay up to speed. To keep a high bar without slowing folks down, teams can ship to early access tier whenever they want but need review for general release. Crazy fact: 10% of customers opt into early

2:11 AM · Dec 4, 2025 · 384K Views

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70 Replies · 81 Reposts · 1.84K Likes

• Ship daily / no sprints:

Vic 🌮@VicVijayakumar

No one will tell you this but you can do this even at large companies! And you should, or some tiny startup will run circles around you and steal your lunch. Your job is to ship at the same velocity as the 996 nerds but outlast their runway. I currently have a project planned

sunil pai @threepointone

Do things quickly --- That thing that you're convinced will take 6 months? DOA. Instead, make a plan that ships most of it in 6 weeks. You'll get the buy-in for 6 months if it's worth it. 6 weeks to delivery? Break it down into 6 1-week sprints. Setup a quick review every

4:12 PM · Dec 19, 2025 · 30.9K Views

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15 Replies · 8 Reposts · 274 Likes

• “Do things quickly”:

sunil pai@threepointone

Do things quickly --- That thing that you're convinced will take 6 months? DOA. Instead, make a plan that ships most of it in 6 weeks. You'll get the buy-in for 6 months if it's worth it. 6 weeks to delivery? Break it down into 6 1-week sprints. Setup a quick review every

1:53 PM · May 21, 2024 · 80.3K Views

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15 Replies · 37 Reposts · 534 Likes

• Change management is the hard part:

Kevin Yien@kevinyien

for anyone who has worked at a company with a large user base (especially when it includes enterprise), *this* is the real reason changes are so hard — not dev productivity, not tech debt, not dumb people. it’s because change management and re-learning suuucks

kyzo @ky__zo

guys at @cursor_ai can you please slow down with changing the ui every 2 days? i'm like constantly confused between the agent and editor, feels like the buttons change every day. just make a decision and stick with it becaus re-learning ui every day suuuucks

3:15 AM · Dec 19, 2025 · 29.5K Views

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18 Replies · 6 Reposts · 339 Likes

• Good products are opinionated:

Naval@naval

Good Products are Opinionated. “Every great founder I’ve seen up close, or even from afar, is highly opinionated and they’re almost dictatorial in how they run things. Also, early-stage teams are opinionated. And the products they build are opinionated. Opinionated means they

8:53 PM · Dec 4, 2025 · 435K Views

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207 Replies · 1.1K Reposts · 8.17K Likes

Career

• Venn diagram resume:

Zara Zhang@zarazhangrui

Upload your resume to @NotebookLM and get it to turn it into a slide deck using @NanoBanana. In the custom prompt, ask it to visualize your competencies in venn diagrams. Great way to understand your personal positioning

2:50 AM · Nov 25, 2025 · 43.3K Views

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12 Replies · 70 Reposts · 814 Likes

• How to get engineers to trust you as a PM:

George from 🕹prodmgmt.world@nurijanian

Reading through a brutal Reddit thread about engineer-turned-PMs getting destroyed in meetings, so here are some uncomfortable truths about PM communication: 1. That lead dev who said "you don't understand what you're asking for" was probably right. Most engineer-PMs oscillate

3:57 PM · Nov 20, 2025 · 20.6K Views

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9 Replies · 28 Reposts · 277 Likes

• Negotiation advice:

Kpaxs@Kpaxs

You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

Kpaxs @Kpaxs

Fantastic summary of the most effective negotiating techniques.

5:34 PM · Dec 22, 2025 · 310K Views

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8 Replies · 355 Reposts · 3.79K Likes

• Stop making things about you:

Zyan@ZyanBizBoost

A Harvard professor just revealed why nobody likes you. She studied 1,000+ speed dates, parole hearings, and police body cam footage. What she discovered about conversation will change how you see every interaction you've ever had. Here's the science she just revealed on the

2:00 PM · Dec 22, 2025 · 229K Views

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57 Replies · 445 Reposts · 2.67K Likes

• PM in the AI era:

Behind the Craft

So What's Going to Happen to Product Management Anyway?

Dear subscribers…

Read more

3 months ago · 173 likes · 20 comments · Peter Yang

Life

• Gmail cleanup:

Wilsxn@iamwilsxn

If your Gmail shows Storage full and can’t receive emails, do this NOW. I hope this helps you as it has helped me❤️ 1️⃣ Copy + paste these search filters: These expose hidden space-killers: •filename:pdf larger:10mb •older_than:1y has:attachment •filename:mp4 •filename:zip

ʇuᴉɐS📍 @saint_cloudy

what annoys you most about Gmail??

4:36 PM · Dec 7, 2025 · 1.72M Views

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48 Replies · 2.45K Reposts · 16.9K Likes

• How to wrap a gift (Japan style):

Cary Kelly@CaryKelly11

We’ve been wrapping gifts wrong our entire life. In Japan, they only need one piece of tape.

1:26 PM · Dec 13, 2025 · 8.61M Views

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1.64K Replies · 15.1K Reposts · 136K Likes

• 26 parenting tips:

Paternal Legacy@PaternalLegacy

26 weapons grade parenting tips: 1/ Give them a "heads up," 5 minutes until bedtime, 10 minutes before leaving the playground 2/ Look at the world more through their eyes 3/ Don’t discipline like an angry madman. Stay calm and firm, model how you want THEM to resolve conflict

2:22 PM · Dec 10, 2025 · 2.77M Views

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125 Replies · 842 Reposts · 9.8K Likes

• Zero-drop kids shoes / wide toe box:

Will🦶🏼@Barefoot_Will_

Here are a few companies offering shoes with these key features (not listed in a certain order) (I am not an affiliate for any of these companies)

6:15 PM · Jul 25, 2023 · 254K Views

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7 Replies · 12 Reposts · 193 Likes

• Health + wellness system (expensive but interesting):

Ramit Sethi@ramit

Unlimited spending on health & wellness: - Personal trainer 4x/week - Nutritionist - Physical therapist - Massage therapist - Personal chef - Optional wellness consultants eg acupunturist - Assistant Here's how it works: - Personal trainer, who is integrated with physical

Gator | Dentist @theNOBSdentist

If you had an unlimited budget, but you could only spend it on your health and wellness, what’s the first thing you buy?

6:16 PM · Nov 20, 2025 · 64.5K Views

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15 Replies · 15 Reposts · 288 Likes

Thanks for reading — see you next month.

This month felt like a theme: use simple frameworks to make hard tradeoffs—at work, at home, and with AI. When life gets noisy, frameworks become a moat. I’ve started codifying my frameworks and have been using AI to leverage them in my daily work.

🗓 Today at a Glance

Quote: “Start with the customer experience.” — Steve Jobs
Podcast: Trader Joe’s
Tactics: LNO Framework
Try: The Boredom Block
Tweet: The more you contribute, the more expensive it is

💬 Quote I’m Pondering

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Start with the customer experience.” — Steve Jobs

A reminder that most people don’t know what they want until they feel it. Create a better customer experience than they can imagine and then let them feel it to get their reaction. If you over-optimize on customer feedback, you get an abomination.

🧠 What I’m Thinking About

• Frameworks > willpower.

  • LNO (Leverage / Neutral / Overhead) is becoming my prioritization framework of choice. Planning Friday forces me to acknowledge tradeoffs before Monday chaos sets in. Most “overwhelm” is unmade decisions.

• How to win early in your career.

  • Compounding > compensation. Pick people, skills, and reps that compound. Decode what your company needs right now and deliver that.

• Decoding your role

  • As a Product Manager, you either need to be “Product” —> builder or “Manager” —> Management. If you can’t do either, well, you’re kind of screwed.

  • You need to be excellent at at least one. Ideally both. But if you bring no customer insight and only surface technical detail, you’re a project manager with extra steps.

• Ship faster by designing for decisions.

  • Daily demos. Single-owner DRIs. Smaller PRs. Default to motion. Challenge corporate dysfunction by naming it and replacing it with mechanisms.

• Agents need better surfaces.

  • Agents aren’t end-to-end; they’re middle-to-middle. They need stable IDs, forgiving APIs, clear state, and fewer puzzles.

• Make your staff AI agents.

  • Take recurring SOPs and turn them into agents with human-in-the-loop exceptions. Most companies underestimate how much “hidden glue work” is agent-automatable.

• Boredom is underrated.

  • Intentional 45-minute “no input” blocks produce surprising clarity. Without stimulation, your brain finally processes the backlog.

• UX beginners’ mind.

  • “To be good at UX, be dumb.” Ask the “obvious” questions. Often they’re the ones everyone else is afraid to ask.

🎧 Podcasts Worth Your Time

Trader Joe’s
//acquired
A masterclass in counter-positioning: tiny SKU count, bad parking, no e-com… yet $2k+/sq ft. A reminder that focusing on taste can beat focusing on scale.

AI Evals, Error Buckets & Better Prompts
//howiai
Use evals to optimize your LLM. Use LLM-as-judge. Build error buckets. Treat prompts like code with tests. If you’re building AI products, this is required listening.

🧰 Tactics & Tools

LNO Prioritization Framework in practice
Block 30 minutes every Friday evening to map next week with L / N / O:

• L (Leverage): 10X impact; protect long, fresh hours.

• N (Neutral): good work; timebox.

• O (Overhead): “do a deliberately okay job” or delegate.

Start with Shreyas’s LNO primer and weekly planner.

Rent vs. Own (best calculator I’ve found)
The Ultimate Home Calculator (Swell) compares wealth over time, not just monthly cash flow—ideal for 5–10+ year horizons.

🧪 Things to try out

The Boredom Block

A scheduled 45 minutes of no input: no phone, no laptop, no reading. Just sitting, walking, or staring.

Why it works:
Your brain finally has time to process unresolved loops—decisions you’ve deferred, ideas that never had space, half-formed strategies.

Test:
Do one block. Write down everything that surfaces in the 10 minutes after. If you get even one useful insight, it’s worth keeping.

🐦 Tweets That Made Me Stop and Think

Demanding careers + kids: seasonality, explicit tradeoffs.
https://x.com/nwischoff/status/1977751285248991623

How to win in your 20s: chase compounding.
https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/1977805435874029585

The more you contribute, the more expensive it is.
https://x.com/jameygannon/status/1981096339032461585

Uber surveillance pricing based on WTP based on origin/to locations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1og759r/two_phones_are_showing_drastically_different/

When you find an Ingrid, hold on.
https://x.com/dharmesh/status/1985458556808671631

To be good at UX, be dumb.
https://x.com/frantzfries/status/1986067371354714577

Systems vs. relationships lens.
https://x.com/artemisconsort/status/1986963360471261349

Make your staff AI agents.
https://x.com/yuris/status/1988984094332776811

Ship anything; momentum compounds.
https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1990073384022020290

Tipping arbitrage. There is a 40 cent exploit on a dollar of value in a tipping marketplace. This is why tipping maximizes overall value for companies.
https://x.com/travisk/status/1991282453852692969

How to be a 10/10 candidate.
https://x.com/aschwags3/status/1988595762335248513

🗓 Today at a Glance

Quote: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Reading: How Anthropic launches product
Podcast: Eric Schmidt on agents on All-In podcast
Tweet: “The value of CEOs is urgency.” — Cody Plofker
Idea: The Context Puller

💬 Quote I’m Pondering

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” — Eisenhower

Planning forces me to surface assumptions and pre-decide tradeoffs. Then I can throw away the plan and move faster when reality changes.

🧠 What I’m Thinking About

• Tesla already won infotainment. Everyone else treats the screen like an accessory; Tesla treats it like the ONLY product. I’m using FSD ~95% of the time now (Shaan). It changes how I think about the car.

• Agents are middle-to-middle, not end-to-end. Design for agents as users: stable IDs, forgiving APIs, clear state, fewer puzzles. (Great Eric Schmidt segment on All-In.)

• The CEO job is urgency. Presumptive close reduces decision fatigue: “If I don’t hear otherwise, we ship to 5%.” (tweet)

• Build outside the app. Ride-alongs beat dashboards. (Hiten)

• Ephemeral vs. durable. Transactional features are fun to ship; durable systems compound trust. Do both on purpose.

• Meta Ray-Ban displays. Curious what adoption looks like; chunky, but the price-to-magic ratio is finally interesting.

• Sora: gimmick and spark. Might funnel to ads, yet it meaningfully expands my creative search space.

• Pregnancy pouches. Healthy, shelf-stable mini-meals for the “always a little hungry” window.

• No-DMs mode. A public intake form instead of DMs. Simple, scalable routing. (Anjney)

• Headshots with AI. “Good enough” for most use cases; the delta is lighting and hair. (example)

• Lounge chairs should mandate sunshades. Sun > screens.

🎧 Podcasts Worth Your Time

Eric Schmidt on agents
//allin

• Agents will broker between tools, not “do everything.”

• Design surfaces for agents (APIs, webhooks, stable state), then design stories for humans.

Become the Delight PM
//lennyspodcast

• Treat “find the smile” as a roadmap constraint, not a nice-to-have.

• Time-box delight (e.g., 10% capacity) so it survives prioritization.

• Practical: run weekly “two-hour delight sprints” with a tiny PRD and a before/after clip.

Daniel Ek
//founders

• “Big companies are not evil. They are really good at doing what made them successful in the first place.”

• Useful lens: ask “what are we still good at that no longer maps to the next win?”

• Shipping test: every project should have a visible user-facing improvement in 7 days.

🐦 Tweets That Made Me Stop and Think

• FSD as default. Long stretches without touching the wheel changes your mental model.
  https://x.com/ShaanVP/status/1971225953142722664

• Outside the office; outside the app. If you’re a serious product person, you’re using other products more than your own.
  https://x.com/hnshah/status/1972708704937275610

  

• DoorDash bots are here (and cute). Logistics will get increasingly non-human, and that’s a good thing.
  https://x.com/stanleytang/status/1973108152506748967

• Think smarter than everyone around you and make it a process.
  https://x.com/aakashg0/status/1972798058988806392

  

• Growth: freemium → trial → paid.
  https://x.com/gauravvohra1/status/1975959884706599037

  

• OneBag it. Frictionless > fancy. The r/onebag is great to learn more! https://x.com/levelsio/status/1975210080590344328

• How to throw a party. Curate people, then space; theme optional, vibe mandatory.
  https://x.com/pitdesi/status/1974489116038529094

• Tips on marketing. Simple playbooks, executed with taste.
  https://x.com/boringmarketer/status/1974162899695514070

• Economy of nonsense. Stop with the bullshit jobs.
  https://x.com/riteshmjn/status/1970946935722057816

• How to cut an avocado (you’ll unsee your old way).
  https://x.com/dudespostingws/status/1975357908822204467

• Value of CEOs is urgency. Default to motion.
  https://x.com/codyplof/status/1971190896285843831

💡 Idea I Can’t Get Out of My Head

The Context Puller: an agent that pulls context from your tools (docs, chats, calendar, browser) into one queryable “/context” file

• MVP: Chrome extension + email + calendar + docs; daily digest + API.

• Why now: agents need shared memory; humans need less copy-paste.

• Test: “Draft a project brief from last week’s artifacts.” If it’s 70% right, it’s working.