For thirty years I worked in telecoms. I built a strong network, worked across a wide range of roles and latterly joined a specialist pricing team supporting significant revenues for an international business. I felt I understood the corporate system I was part of.

Then one morning I joined what I thought was a routine catch-up with my manager. HR joined the call and within minutes I was being made redundant. As the news sank in, one thought came to mind: “Perhaps I didn’t understand the system as well as I thought.”

The skills, relationships and experience I’d built were all valuable, but they weren’t the only forces at work. A few months later I found myself in a completely different world. Instead of navigating a large organisation, I was building products as the founder of Incygames. Success no longer depended on reporting lines, budgets or internal politics. It depended on talking to customers, testing assumptions and learning quickly.

Looking back, redundancy wasn’t simply a change of career. It was a change of system.

That experience led me to systems thinking. It starts with a simple observation: before deciding how to solve a problem, it helps to understand what kind of system we’re in. The same behaviour can succeed brilliantly in one system and fail completely in another.

One model I return to is the Cynefin Framework. It suggests there isn’t one best way to tackle problems. Different systems reward different approaches:

• Clear –> Follow proven processes
• Complicated –> Seek expertise
• Complex –> Experiment and learn
• Chaotic –> Act decisively

The mistake usually isn’t choosing a bad approach. It’s applying the wrong approach to the system we’re in.

Clear systems reward discipline

>Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein

Some problems are wonderfully boring. Making a cup of tea, following a recipe or completing a pre-flight checklist all belong to systems where cause and effect are obvious. Follow the process and you’ll usually achieve the expected result.

We often underestimate checklists because they feel too simple. Pilots and surgeons don’t. Neither did Van Halen, whose famous request for a bowl of M&M’s with all the brown ones removed wasn’t rock-star excess. It was a quick way of checking whether a venue had read the detailed technical requirements hidden elsewhere in the contract. One tiny observation revealed the health of the entire system.

Sometimes the cleverest thing we can do isn’t to be clever. It’s simply to respect the process.

Complicated systems reward expertise

>It is not enough to do your best; you must first know what to do. - W. Edwards Deming

Not every problem comes with an instruction manual. Buying a house, planning for retirement, diagnosing a medical condition or designing software are all complicated systems. Good answers exist, but they require knowledge and experience.

This is where expertise creates significant value. I’ve learned that paying an expert often feels expensive until we compare it with fixing our own mistakes. Experience allows people to recognise patterns we’ve never had the chance to see.

The danger is assuming every difficult problem belongs here. Many don’t. Some problems only reveal themselves once we begin moving.

Complex systems reward experimentation

>No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Building Daily View has reinforced this lesson. Every conversation with a potential user changes my understanding of the product. Features I expected people to love receive little interest while seemingly minor details generate enthusiasm.

The product isn’t simply being built, it’s emerging. That’s the nature of complex systems. Cause and effect only become obvious in hindsight which is why entrepreneurs who spend months perfecting a plan often learn less than those who spend weeks testing assumptions.

Planning still matters, but learning matters more. Progress comes from running small experiments, gathering feedback and becoming progressively less wrong.

Chaotic systems reward decisive action

>In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Sometimes analysis isn’t enough. A cyber attack, a family emergency or a major system outage creates a chaotic system where information is incomplete and events move too quickly for certainty.

Johnson & Johnson’s response to the Tylenol poisonings remains a classic example. Rather than waiting until they understood every detail, they recalled millions of bottles immediately. They stabilised the situation first and investigated afterwards.

Chaos rewards decisive action followed by careful learning. Waiting for perfect information usually makes the problem worse.

The hardest system to redesign

>Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. - W. Edwards Deming

Perhaps the biggest lesson from systems thinking is that we’re usually inside the system we’re trying to understand. Fish don’t notice water. Employees don’t always notice company culture. Founders struggle to recognise the assumptions built into their own businesses because those assumptions simply feel normal.

That’s why mentors, data and stepping back matters. Each provides the perspective of someone standing on the platform while we’re sitting inside the moving train.

The hardest system to redesign isn’t our company, our career or our product. It’s the collection of assumptions quietly running inside our heads. Change those and decisions that once felt difficult often become surprisingly obvious.

Want more?

The Startup Is Not Always the Thing You Start post by Phil Martin

Seven Steps to Radical Thinking post by Phil Martin

We spend a lot of time trying to make better decisions. Systems thinking suggests a different question.

Before asking whether we’re making the right decision, ask whether we’re using the right approach for the system we’re in.

The answer might change everything.

Have fun.

Phil...

I had worked for an FTSE 100 telecoms company for about ten years when I joined its corporate strategy department. Around the same time, another colleague joined the team with no telecoms background. Despite starting from scratch, he quickly became one of the most respected people in the department. We had access to the same colleagues, reports and technology, yet he consistently uncovered better information than I did.

I noticed it most when he used Google. We were searching the same internet, but his results were richer, more relevant and more insightful. The difference wasn’t the search engine. It was the question he asked before he started searching. That observation changed how I thought about learning. I realised that one of the most valuable skills is the ability to ask better questions.

Questions create value

>The important thing is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

For centuries, answers were scarce. If we wanted to understand a subject, we needed access to experts, books or formal education. Information was difficult to obtain and often expensive to access. The internet changed that, and AI is accelerating the trend further. Today, answers arrive almost instantly. Ask a search engine or AI model almost anything and you’ll receive a response within seconds.

Whenever something becomes abundant, its value usually falls. Water is precious in a desert because it is scarce. Air is essential but largely ignored because it is everywhere. Answers appear to be following the same path. As they become cheaper and easier to obtain, they become less valuable as a source of competitive advantage.

That raises an interesting possibility. Perhaps the real scarcity is no longer answers but good questions. A well-crafted question doesn’t simply retrieve information. It shapes what you notice, what you ignore and, ultimately, the decisions you make.

Better questions change everything

>The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. - Tony Robbins

Most of us spend our time asking operational questions. How can I make this page load faster? Which software should I use? What colour should this button be? These questions help us make incremental improvements, but they rarely change the direction of a project.

The questions with the greatest leverage usually sit one level higher. What problem am I trying to solve? Who is this for? Why would anyone care? What assumption am I making that could be completely wrong? Questions like these redefine the problem rather than simply improving the solution, influencing every decision that follows.

The same principle applies far beyond business or technology. Doctors ask questions before prescribing treatment. Detectives solve crimes by asking what others overlook. Scientists make breakthroughs by challenging accepted assumptions. In every field, better answers begin with better questions. One answer may solve a problem, but a really good question can redefine it entirely.

AI rewards curiosity

>Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. - Voltaire

One reason I find AI so fascinating is that it amplifies the value of curiosity. Millions of people now have access to essentially the same AI models, yet the quality of the results varies enormously. The difference often has little to do with the technology itself and much more to do with how people use it.

Ask AI to “write a blog post” and you’ll probably receive something generic. Give it context, constraints, examples, a clear audience and a specific objective, and the quality improves dramatically. The tool hasn’t changed. The thinking behind the prompt has.

This is exactly what my colleague demonstrated years before AI existed. He wasn’t simply better at searching Google. He was better at thinking before he started searching. AI hasn’t changed that principle. If anything, it has made it even more valuable.

Better questions come from better models

>The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Good questions rarely appear by accident. They emerge from reading widely, gaining experience and exposing ourselves to different ways of understanding the world. This is one reason mental models are so valuable. They provide different lenses through which to examine the same situation.

An economist, psychologist and engineer might all look at the same problem, yet each will ask different questions. One wonders about incentives, another about behaviour and the third about constraints. Together they create a richer understanding than any single perspective could provide.

The quality of our questions often reflects the quality of the models we carry in our heads. Improve those models and our questions naturally become more insightful. Better questions lead to better conversations, better decisions and, over time, better outcomes.

The future belongs to the curious

>Stay hungry. Stay foolish. - Steve Jobs

Many people worry that AI will reduce the value of human intelligence. I wonder whether it will increase the value of human curiosity instead. Machines are becoming remarkably good at generating answers, but they still depend on people deciding which questions are worth asking.

Which opportunity deserves attention? Which assumption should be tested? Which problem is worth solving? Those decisions don’t begin with answers. They begin with curiosity.

Looking back, my colleague’s greatest strength wasn’t that he knew more than everyone else. It was that he consistently asked better questions. Twenty years later, I think that lesson has become even more valuable. Answers are becoming cheaper every day, but good questions remain scarce. The real advantage in the age of AI may not be knowing more than everyone else, but knowing what is worth asking in the first place.

Want more?

The Four Step Rapid Learning Framework post by Phil Martin

Effectiveness is Signal minus Noise post by Phil Martin

Claude Lévi-Strauss observed, “The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.”

For centuries, knowledge was power because it was scarce. Today, answers are becoming abundant. The advantage is shifting to something more fundamental: asking better questions.

Have fun.

Phil...

I am building Daily View, a product to help people with memory issues understand what is happening today. A dedicated screen displays the date, time, upcoming activities and reminders so users can quickly orient themselves without needing to ask others. I believe there is a real problem here. Families, carers and support organisations often find themselves answering the same questions repeatedly. What day is it? What happens next? When is my appointment? What time is lunch?

Daily View is my attempt to solve that problem, but experience tells me the product I am building today may not be the thing people ultimately value most. Over years building apps, websites and side projects, I noticed a recurring pattern. Features I thought were essential turned out to be irrelevant. In some cases, the biggest lesson was discovering that nobody cared enough to use the product at all. The more startup stories I read, the more I realise that many successful companies did not emerge because founders faithfully executed their original vision. They emerged because founders paid attention when customers revealed a better one.

The first customer is often not the dream

>You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. - Steve Jobs

One of the things I find most interesting about Elon Musk's early companies is how practical they were. Today it is easy to assume everyone knew the internet would transform business. In the mid-1990s that was far from obvious. Elon believed the internet would become important, but belief alone was not a business. His first successful company, Zip2, helped newspapers publish information online. Newspapers had customers, budgets and an immediate need, making them a practical first market.

Grand visions often require surprisingly ordinary starting points. Founders can become so focused on the destination that they overlook the opportunities directly in front of them. The first customer is rarely the dream. They are simply the first person willing to pay.

Customers vote with behaviour

>The market is never wrong. - Jesse Livermore

Elon Musk’s original vision behind X (dot com) was ambitious: a comprehensive online financial services platform including banking, investments, insurance and payments. Yet one feature attracted disproportionate attention. Users could send money to another person using an email address. People found the broader platform interesting, but they found email payments useful. That distinction mattered. The company shifted towards the thing customers wanted and eventually became PayPal.

Customers do not reward effort; they reward outcomes. The feature that took six months to build may be less valuable than the one built over a weekend if it solves a more important problem. PayPal also benefited from a powerful distribution mechanism because every payment introduced another user to the platform. Viral growth did not create product-market fit; it amplified it.

The thing inside the thing

>I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. - Thomas Edison

Some of the most successful companies were hidden inside failed products. Stewart Butterfield discovered this twice. Flickr emerged from an online game called Game Neverending and Slack emerged from communication software built during the development of another failed game, Glitch.

Instagram followed a similar path. Its original product, Burbn, combined check-ins, social networking, gamification and photo sharing. Users largely ignored everything except the photos, so the founders removed almost everything else.

Looking back, these pivots seem obvious. At the time, they required founders to abandon ideas they had invested years pursuing. The successful company was hidden inside the original company.

Conviction and humility

>Strong opinions, weakly held. - Paul Saffo

Startup culture celebrates conviction and for good reason. Without it, few founders would survive the uncertainty involved in building a company. But conviction alone is not enough. The most successful founders pair conviction with humility. They are willing to accept that customers may know something they do not. Every startup receives feedback through purchases, engagement, retention, referrals and complaints. The signals are not always obvious, but they are usually there. Many failed startups did not lack information. They lacked the willingness to listen.

Follow the evidence

>All models are wrong, but some are useful. - George Box

Many startup stories are presented as examples of unwavering vision. In reality, they are often a series of experiments. Founders begin with a hypothesis, customers run the experiment and the market reveals the results.

Daily View is my current model of a problem I believe exists. My hypothesis is that a dedicated display showing the date, time, reminders and upcoming activities can reduce confusion and provide reassurance. History suggests caution. I may have misunderstood the problem. I may have identified the wrong audience. The display itself may turn out to be the least important part of the solution. The goal is not to prove my assumptions correct. The goal is to learn what is actually true.

If Daily View succeeds, I suspect it will not be because I faithfully executed my original vision. It will be because users helped me discover a better one. The startup is not always the thing you start. Sometimes it is the thing customers reveal along the way.

Want more?

Seven Ways Elon Musk Thinks Differently post by Phil Martin

Show Me Your Bad Ideas post by Phil Martin

Elon Musk said: “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”

That may be the real job of every founder.

Have fun.

Phil…

In 2018, Professor Patrick Winston gave his final lecture at MIT. The topic was “How to Speak”.

He opened with a claim: “Students shouldn’t go out into life without the ability to communicate. That’s because your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write and the quality of your thoughts; in that order.”

Most would instinctively reverse the order.

The recording of his lecture has been watched over six million times. I discovered it a few months ago and was struck by the clarity of Patrick’s ideas. More recently, when giving a wedding speech, I borrowed several of his techniques.

The popularity of his teachings is an strong endorsement. Years after it was recorded, the lecture continues to shape how people communicate.

Its longevity illustrates one of Patrick’s central points: good ideas do not succeed on merit alone. They succeed when they are communicated clearly enough for other people to understand, remember and share them.

Like the best products, Patrick’s lecture endures not because it is louder than the alternatives, but because it is clearer.

Dress ideas properly

>You want your ideas to be valued and accepted by the people you speak with. - Patrick Winston

We do not send our children out wearing rags and expect them to be judged fairly. Ideas deserve the same consideration. A brilliant idea presented poorly will not get the opportunity to prove its value.

This is uncomfortable as we like to believe substance is enough. In reality, presentation is often the gateway through which substance must pass. The encouraging part is that communication is not a gift. It is a skill that can be learned, practised and improved.

Start with a promise

>Tell them what they’ll know at the end that they don’t know now. - Patrick Winston

Most presentations begin with a warm-up. A joke, a biography or a few minutes of scene-setting. This wastes the audience’s most attentive moments.

Instead, make an empowerment promise. Tell people what they will gain from listening. Give them a reason to invest their attention. Greg Isenberg's Startup Ideas videos are a good example. Within seconds, he tells viewers what they will gain from watching.

The principle applies beyond public speaking. Whether we’re launching a startup, writing a blog post or explaining a product, people want to know why they should care. A clear promise creates a contract between speaker and audience. It shifts the focus from performance to value.

Five minutes to prove we matter

>In the first five minutes, show vision and evidence. - Patrick Winston

Audiences form opinions quickly. They are looking for two things: a compelling idea and evidence that the speaker has earned the right to discuss it.

Vision answers the question, “Why does this matter?” Evidence answers, “Why should I believe you?”

This principle applies everywhere. Job interviews, startup pitches, websites and blog posts all operate under the same constraint. Attention is scarce. We must earn it quickly.

When attention drifts structure pulls it back

>At any moment, a large part of your audience is fogged out. - Patrick Winston

Minds wander. Phones buzz. People think about lunch, meetings or what they’re doing later.

The instinct is to add more information. The better approach is usually to emphasise less. Repeat the important ideas. Return to them from different angles. Reinforce rather than expand.

Repetition, when used intelligently, is not redundancy. It is recognition of how human attention works. The goal is not to say everything, but to help ensure important points are remembered.

Build a fence around the idea

>Distinguish your idea from others. - Patrick Winston

Many ideas fail not because they are incorrect, but because they are misunderstood. People instinctively try to place new concepts into familiar categories. If we do not define the boundaries, they will do it for us.

Create contrast. Explain not only what an idea is, but what it isn't. A simple distinction often clarifies more than lengthy explanations.

Good positioning works in exactly the same way. Clarity is achieved through separation, not complexity.

Respect the body, not just the mind

>Bright lights, good timing, no surprises. - Patrick Winston

Communication is physical as well as intellectual. Late-morning talks are better as that’s when people are naturally more alert. Keep lights on because darkness is soporific. Visit rooms beforehand to eliminate uncertainty.

These details sound trivial until we’ve sat through a presentation delivered to a tired audience in a dark room. A colleague of mine would sit at the back and dose off.

We are not communicating with abstract intellects. We are communicating with human beings. Their physical environment matters more than most speakers realise.

Slides don’t speak (we do)

>We have only one language processor. - Patrick Winston

Presentations often ask audiences to perform two tasks at once: read dense slides and listen to a speaker. This creates competition rather than understanding.

When slides are crowded, audiences must choose whether to read or listen. They rarely do either well.

The solution is ruthless simplicity. Use fewer words. Create more space. Let visuals support the message rather than compete with it. Communication becomes clearer when there is less noise between the idea and the audience.

Packaging is not superficial

>Knowledge is not power. Only communicated knowledge is. - Patrick Winston

Patrick Winston died in 2019, but his lecture continues to spread because it contains a truth many people overlook.

Communication is not separate from the idea.

In product building, we often treat presentation as something added at the end. First build the thing, then worry about marketing it. Packaging is part of delivery. An idea that is poorly communicated is functionally identical to an idea that nobody has heard.

That creates a quiet advantage for those willing to invest in clarity. You do not always need a better idea. Sometimes you simply need to present it better.

Want more?

Five Step Storytelling Framework post by Phil Martin

Great Communication in Three Steps post by Phil Martin

George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

The quality of our ideas matters. But if people cannot understand them, remember them or act on them, their value remains trapped inside our heads.

Patrick Winston’s enduring lesson is: communication is not decoration. It is part of the work.

Have fun.

Phil…

In my previous post, How Fallacies Shape Debate, I explored the tricks, shortcuts and logical missteps that distort discussions. That, however, leads to a deeper and more unsettling question.

If fallacies are often easy to spot in other people, why are intelligent people so vulnerable to them themselves?

Two intelligent colleagues were arguing in a meeting. Both had data, charts and carefully prepared arguments. Thirty minutes later, neither had changed their mind. Looking back, the discussion was not about solving a business problem. It was about defending positions that had already been chosen.

We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, calmly evaluating evidence. In reality, the human mind relies heavily on shortcuts, assumptions and social cues to navigate a complicated world.

Logical fallacies are not failures of intelligence. They are by-products of being human. They help us preserve beliefs, maintain social bonds and simplify a complex world. The problem is that what feels psychologically useful is not always logically sound.

Intelligence becomes rationalisation

>The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion, draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon

Many assume intelligence protects us from poor thinking. The opposite is often true.

Once we become attached to an idea, intelligence can act less like a scientist searching for truth and more like a lawyer defending a client. The cleverer the lawyer, the more convincing the defence.

Highly educated people can reach completely different conclusions while looking at the same evidence. Their intelligence is not necessarily helping them discover the truth. It is helping them defend a conclusion that was frequently chosen for emotional, social or identity-based reasons.

The ability to construct sophisticated arguments is not the same as the willingness to question our assumptions.

Intelligence helps explain why we defend beliefs. It does not explain why we become attached to them in the first place.

Why changing our mind is so difficult

>It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. - Mark Twain

Few things are psychologically harder than changing a deeply held belief.

Changing our minds is harder than it sounds. It requires admitting mistakes, abandoning sunk costs or questioning part of our identity. My younger self dismissed psychology and marketing as baseless topics. It took my older self a long time to realise they explain far more about human behaviour than I could have possibly imagined.

This is why people often continue defending ideas long after evidence suggests they should reconsider. The more time, effort and emotion invested in a belief, the harder it becomes to let go.

The sunk cost fallacy is not simply a logical error. It reflects a deeply human reluctance to accept that previous effort may have been wasted.

Often the cleverer the person, the more sophisticated the rationalisation becomes.

Humans are social creatures

>The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel Boorstin

Most of us like to believe our opinions are independently formed. In reality, humans are deeply influenced by tribe, status and social consensus.

For most of human history, following trusted leaders and accepted practices was often safer than independently evaluating decisions from first principles. Belonging to the group increased the chances of survival.

The problem is that social agreement and truth are not the same thing.

History is full of examples where large groups confidently believed things that later proved to be wrong. For decades, stomach ulcers were believed to be caused by stress and lifestyle factors rather than bacteria. Consensus felt like truth until evidence proved otherwise.

Intelligence does not necessarily protect us from consensus thinking. In many cases, it simply makes us better at defending the consensus of the groups we belong to.

Why stories beat logic

>The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman

Humans are storytelling animals. We naturally prefer explanations that feel coherent, simple and emotionally satisfying. Reality, however, is often messy, uncertain and difficult to understand.

Aged seven, I hadn’t worked out the days of the week, but I knew I liked weekends. Sometimes I’d ask my dad if I could stay home from school the next day. He’d ask if I’d been good and I’d earnestly say yes. I didn’t realise that my behaviour had nothing to do with it. If it was Friday or Saturday, the answer was yes. Otherwise, it was no.

My young brain had created a neat story: good behaviour caused the outcome I wanted. The story was plausible, emotionally satisfying and completely wrong.

We do the same thing as adults.

A compelling narrative is often more persuasive than a careful analysis because stories provide heroes, villains, causes and effects. They replace uncertainty with apparent understanding. The problem is that coherence and truth are not the same thing.

This is one reason social media is so powerful. A simple story about bad people and obvious causes spreads much faster than a nuanced explanation full of caveats, probabilities and unanswered questions.

The brain rewards explanations that feel right. Reality is under no obligation to be so accommodating.

The hidden purpose of fallacies

>The map is not the territory. - Alfred Korzybski

The deeper lesson is not simply that people are irrational. It is that reality is too complicated to process directly. To cope, we compress complexity into stories, assumptions, heuristics and mental shortcuts. Most of the time this works well. Without these shortcuts we would struggle to make decisions at all.

Logical fallacies are often side effects of this compression process. They help people reduce uncertainty, preserve identity, maintain social cohesion and navigate overwhelming complexity. Intelligent people fall for them just as readily as everyone else.

The goal is not to become immune to fallacies which is impossible. The goal is to catch ourselves a little sooner when intelligence stops being a searchlight for truth and starts becoming a defence lawyer for our existing beliefs.

Want more?

How Fallacies Shape Debate post by Phil Martin

Three Ways Nietzsche Shaped My Thinking post by Phil Martin

The next time you find yourself absolutely certain, it may be worth asking:

Am I searching for the truth or reasons to be right?

Have fun.

Phil…

Most debates are not about truth. Instead, they are about status, identity, emotion, tribal loyalty or winning social games. Once we start to notice this, online debates, corporate meetings and political arguments look different.

What appears to be rational discussion is often a collection of cognitive shortcuts, rhetorical tricks and logical fallacies. The strange part is that many of these fallacies work surprisingly well. We are emotional, social creatures operating with limited attention. Understanding fallacies is, therefore, less about becoming intellectually superior and more about recognising the hidden rules of the game.

My younger daughter pointed out that I fall foul of a number of logical fallacies. I had to admit that she was right. Having attempted to educate myself a little better, below are some of the most common ways debates quietly drift away from truth and toward social games.

Emotional manipulation games

>When reason sleeps, monsters are born. - Francisco Goya

Humans are emotional before they are rational. Many persuasive arguments bypass logic entirely and target fear, outrage, guilt or hope.

❤️ Appeal to Emotion, e.g. “Think of the children!”

❓ Loaded Question, e.g. “Have you stopped wasting company money yet?”

🛑 Thought-Terminating Cliché, e.g. “It is what it is.”

🔁 Proof by Assertion, e.g. repeatedly claiming “This election was stolen” without evidence.

⛷️ Slippery Slope, e.g. “If we allow remote work, soon nobody will come into the office.”

Modern media environments reward emotional intensity far more than careful reasoning.

In a previous role, HR required employees to attend the office at least eight days per month. Yet half the time, I made a five-hour round trip and found none of the people I needed to work with there. So I proposed four days instead. The response was an implicit slippery slope argument: allow flexibility for me and collaboration would reduce for everyone.

Simplification games

>For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

Reality is messy. People simplify it into neat stories because complexity is mentally expensive.

🚪 False Dilemma, e.g. “You’re either with us or against us.”

🪢 Single Cause Fallacy, e.g. “The company failed because employees worked from home.”

🏝️ Nirvana Fallacy, e.g. “Electric cars aren’t completely green so we shouldn’t use them.”

🎲 Ludic Fallacy, e.g. assuming markets behave predictably because models say they should.

⏪ Retrospective Determinism, e.g. “It was obvious Netflix would destroy Blockbuster.”

Many arguments become persuasive precisely because they compress complicated reality into emotionally satisfying narratives.

I’ve been in teams that cling to simple narratives because complexity is challenging. Clear but incomplete explanations spread faster than messy, nuanced truths.

Evidence and data games

>What gets measured gets managed. - Peter Drucker

Data feels objective which is why people manipulate it so often.

📈 Hasty Generalisation, e.g. “I had one bad meal there so the restaurant must be terrible.”

💬 Anecdotal Fallacy, e.g. “My grandfather smoked every day and lived to 95 so smoking isn’t harmful.”

🍒 Cherry Picking, e.g. sharing only positive reviews of your product.

🤠 Texas Sharpshooter, e.g. highlighting only successful startup founders who dropped out of university.

🔗 False Cause, e.g. “Ice cream sales rise when crime rises so ice cream causes crime.”

The internet has dramatically increased our access to information. It has also dramatically increased our ability to selectively weaponise it.

While researching creator businesses, I’ve noticed a form of Texas Sharpshooter thinking. Social media spotlights the tiny number of solo founders who became hugely successful while quietly ignoring the thousands who disappeared without trace. Focusing only on the visible winners creates a distorted picture of reality.

Identity and status games

>Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. - Stephen Covey

Many arguments stop being about ideas and become contests over identity, status and moral legitimacy.

🎯 Ad Hominem, e.g. “You can’t trust his opinion on business because he got divorced.”

🧬 Genetic Fallacy, e.g. “That idea came from Silicon Valley so it’s probably nonsense.”

🎙️ Tone Policing, e.g. “I’d listen to your concerns if you sounded calmer.”

🏴 No True Scotsman, e.g. “No real entrepreneur ever gives up.”

🪞 Tu Quoque, e.g. “You say smoking is bad, but you eat junk food.”

🧩 Fallacy Fallacy, e.g. “Your reasoning was flawed, therefore your conclusion must be wrong.”

Once identity enters the room, rational discussion often leaves through the back door.

In mid-1700s, John Harrison faced resistance from the scientific establishment when solving the longitude ship navigation problem. Some critics dismissed his work because he was a self-taught clockmaker rather than a trained astronomer. The debate became partly ad hominem: attacking the man instead of evaluating the solution.

Want more?

Lessons in Persuasion from the Father of Marketing post by Phil Martin

Great Communication in Three Steps post by Phil Martin

Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

The goal is not to become perfectly rational.

It is to become more aware of the hidden games shaping our thinking, especially the ones we play ourselves.

Have fun.

Phil…

Tim Ferriss entered a Chinese kickboxing tournament, despite having relatively little experience. On paper, it looked absurd as his opponents had trained for years. Tim did not try to outwork them through volume of practice. Instead, he approached the problem like a systems engineer.

First, he deconstructed the sport into smaller components and identified which variables mattered most under tournament rules. Then he selected the highest leverage techniques, rather than trying to master everything. He sequenced his training carefully, focusing first on the moves that produced the greatest competitive advantage. Finally, he created stakes by publicly committing to compete, ensuring there was no easy escape from the process. Remarkably, he went on to win the tournament.

What fascinated Tim wasn’t so much the victory itself, but the realisation that rapid learning could be systemised. The same underlying framework could be applied to languages, business, writing, investing and computer coding.

The four step rapid learning framework

To make the process repeatable, Tim Ferriss distilled it into a four-step framework summarised by the acronym DSSS:

1. Deconstruction: break the skill into components.
2. Selection: identify the highest leverage pieces.
3. Sequencing: learn things in the right order.
4. Stakes: create incentives strong enough to sustain progress.

Most people skip directly into activity without first understanding the structure of the domain itself.

1. Deconstruction

>Taking a fairly ambiguous goal like ‘learn Japanese’ or ‘learn to swim’ and breaking it down into constituent parts. - Tim Ferriss

Most goals begin as vague abstractions. Learn coding. Build an AI business. Understand marketing. Get fit.

Our brains struggle with ambiguity because they cannot identify where to begin. Deconstruction solves this by dismantling a skill into smaller independent parts. Swimming, for example, is not one but many skills: floating, breathing, gliding, kicking, rhythm and confidence underwater.

The same dynamic appears almost everywhere. Most difficult problems are not monolithic; they are collections of smaller solvable parts.

Deconstruction turns overwhelm into navigation.

2. Selection

>You’re picking the 20% that will give you 80% of what you want. - Tim Ferriss

The world rewards people who can distinguish signal from noise.

Most languages contain hundreds of thousands of words, yet conversational fluency depends disproportionately on a very small percentage of them. Learn the most common 1,500 words and something that once felt impossible becomes practical.

The same pattern repeats across almost every domain. In startups, a handful of customer insights matter more than hundreds of speculative features. In writing, clarity matters more than elaborate vocabulary. In AI, understanding a few powerful workflows often matters more than knowing every tool.

Many people unknowingly use preparation as procrastination. Endless YouTube videos, research and optimisation before action. High performers instead identify the critical few variables and attack those first. That changes the speed of progress dramatically.

3. Sequencing

>This is the magic sauce that gets lost a lot. - Tim Ferriss

Sequencing is the hidden multiplier in fast learning. Not just what you learn, but when you learn it.

With swimming, many beginners obsess over breathing technique because it feels important. This is premature. First learn to glide comfortably through the water. Build confidence and balance. Then layer in breathing once the foundations feel natural.

Correct sequencing reduces friction. Incorrect sequencing creates discouragement.

Many founders try scaling before they have product-market fit. People try monetising before they have built trust. New programmers attempt large applications before understanding basic principles.

Good sequencing creates momentum which is important because progress itself becomes motivating. Once learning starts feeling achievable, consistency becomes far easier to sustain.

4. Stakes

>Good intentions are not enough. - Tim Ferriss

This final part of the framework may be the most psychologically important because it recognises an uncomfortable truth: information alone rarely changes behaviour.

Progress needs stakes. Accountability. Consequences. Some form of commitment strong enough to overcome our instinct to avoid discomfort.

Tim Ferriss jokes about giving money to a friend and instructing them to donate it to your least favourite political candidate if you fail to follow through. Extreme perhaps, but psychologically astute. Humans are exceptionally good at negotiating with themselves. We quietly lower standards, postpone difficult work and rationalise inaction.

Without accountability, progress becomes optional. And optional things rarely happen consistently.

The people who repeatedly reinvent themselves are often those who deliberately design environments where action becomes easier than avoidance. Public commitments, deadlines, financial consequences, social pressure and visible progress trackers all add enough psychological weight to sustain momentum after the initial excitement fades.

Applying the rapid learning framework

>Focus on being productive instead of busy. - Tim Ferriss

Many of the products I’m developing, including Proper Treat (Vouchers as a Service), Daily Product Idea (Build ready ideas) and Daily View (Day calendar), require building websites, workflows and apps. I’m excited to use Claude Code to assist.

I need a structured approach to learning and applying Claude Code effectively. So I’m applying the rapid learning framework directly:

1. Deconstruction: Claude Code is not one skill, but many smaller ones: prompting effectively, understanding project structure, debugging, iterating on outputs, creating repeatable workflows and integrating external tools.
2. Selection: A small number of capabilities create disproportionate value early on. Rapid prototyping, debugging, understanding unfamiliar codebases and turning ideas into working demos are probably the highest leverage areas.
3. Sequencing: Most people attempt advanced automations before they can reliably produce good outputs from simple prompts. That is backwards. A better progression is prompting → structured iteration → debugging → small projects → automation and integrations.
4. Stakes: I’ll post weekly LinkedIn updates documenting my progress in prototyping and market testing products like Daily Product Idea and Daily View.

Want more?

Clear Thinking post by Phil Martin

Five Ways to Gain Specific Knowledge that Builds Wealth post by Phil Martin

Tim Ferriss suggests, “Being busy is a form of laziness. Lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” His four step rapid learning framework is the antidote.

Have fun.

Phil…

Ozan Varol started his career working on missions that helped send rovers to Mars. In that world, small mistakes can lead to mission failure. The environments are unforgiving, the margins are thin and the problems are often unprecedented. And yet, rocket scientists routinely do what most people would consider impossible. Not because they are necessarily more intelligent, but because they approach things differently.

Ozan distills that thinking into four steps:

1. Rethink what’s possible.
2. Work backwards from the end.
3. Start with the hardest problem.
4. Test in the wild.

None of them are complex, but they are very useful.

I picked up Think Like a Rocket Scientist in a bookstore in Bath and put it down with an expanded sense of what I could achieve.

Rethink what’s possible

>The reasonable person adapts themselves to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themselves. - George Bernard Shaw

There’s a subtle and powerful shift between asking “What can I do?” and *“*What could I do?”. “Can” is constrained. It’s shaped by experience, norms and what feels realistic. “Could” is expansive. It invites possibility.

Before SpaceX, the cost of launching rockets was accepted as a given. Elon Musk looked at the raw materials and realised something didn’t add up. The inputs were cheap, but the outputs were not. The gap, he concluded, related to assumptions and inefficiencies. What he calls the “idiot index.”

That pattern repeats in many places.

When I started working on Daily Product Idea (build ready product ideas), my initial thinking was shaped by my corporate background. Engage a team of experts, integrate multiple data sources and create a polished product before sharing with users.

Then I paused and asked: “What could I do instead?” The answer was surprisingly simple. Validate the concept with a single landing page featuring manually researched product development ideas. The constraint wasn’t capability, but my imagination shaped by habit.

As a suggestion: Set a timer for 20 minutes and ask yourself, “What could I build with what I already have?” Ignore feasibility and precedent.

We’re trying to be free, not right.

Work backwards from the end

>Begin with the end in mind. - Stephen Covey

When John F. Kennedy set the goal of landing a man on the Moon, NASA didn’t start by building a better rocket. They started with the end: a human walking on the Moon and returning safely. Then they worked backwards.

Moon landing → lunar orbit → Earth-to-Moon trajectory → launch → ignition.

Each step made the next one possible.

I’ve started using this thinking in my own projects.

One product I’m working on is Daily View (a simple, wall-mounted display to reduce anxiety for people with memory challenges). My instinct was to jump into features: integrations, User Interface polish, mobile syncing. Instead, I forced myself to define the end state: A person wakes up, looks at the screen and feels calm because they understand their day.

Working backwards from that point forces clarity. The screen must show today’s date and key events. Those events must be accurate. Family must be able to update them easily. Updates must happen reliably. Anything that didn’t serve those checkpoints were cut.

Start with the hardest problem

>If you don’t try the hard thing first, you’ll waste time on everything else. - Astro Teller

Imagine we’re tasked with training a monkey to stand on a pedestal and recite Shakespeare, flawlessly, in front of an audience. Where do most of us start? We build the pedestal as it’s visible and controllable. We can finish it in a day and call it progress. But it’s irrelevant if the monkey can’t talk.

Pedestal-building is seductive because it feels like progress without risk. We get momentum without ever confronting the thing that could kill the idea.

I’ve been guilty of it. Designing logos. Tweaking UI. Setting up elegant database schemas. All useful. None critical.

When I left the corporate world to explore my own ideas, I realised the real question wasn’t whether I could build products. It was whether I could create something people care about. That’s the monkey. Not the tools, plans or frameworks, but the uncomfortable, make-or-break question at the centre of it all.

Now, whenever I start something new, I look for that question first. What has to be true for this to work? What could break it? What am I avoiding because it’s uncomfortable? Then I go straight at it. If the monkey can’t talk, the pedestal is irrelevant.

Test in the wild

>In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. - Yogi Berra

At NASA, astronauts go through thousands of simulated failures. The goal is to make the simulation feel real enough that survival becomes instinct.

Tim Ferriss applied the same principle in a very different domain. Before publishing The 4-Hour Workweek, he didn’t ask friends for feedback. He ran real ads. Tested real clicks. Observed real behaviour. He didn’t ask what people said they liked. He measured what they did. That distinction matters.

When I’ve tested ideas in the past, I’ve often relied on polite feedback. “Sounds interesting. I’d probably use that.” Friendly but useless. More recently, I’ve tried to get closer to reality. Would someone sign up with their email? Would they pay £5 to access it? Would they return the next day? Behaviour over opinion. Reality has a way of cutting through optimism.

Want more?

Seven Ways Elon Musk Thinks Differently post by Phil Martin

Seven Steps to Radical Thinking post by Phil Martin

Ozan Varol reminds us that, “If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected.”

Have fun.

Phil…

Tim Denning spent a decade in a banking job he hated. He describes feeling stuck and misaligned, “dying inside,” overthinking everything until he became so overwhelmed with anxiety he was vomiting most days before work. It wasn’t just the job he disliked; he felt emotionally drained.

Eventually, he reached a breaking point and walked away, trading the supposed safety of banking for the uncertainty of writing online. That decision became the inflection point. Success didn’t come immediately. But something more important did: a reclaiming of agency, creativity and momentum.

What followed wasn’t luck. Tim evolved and implemented a system.

Six principles behind Tim Denning’s writing

Tim Denning’s “Unfiltered” Substack isn’t just a blog. It’s a rejection of the polished, corporate voice most people default to.

His writing blends brutal honesty, practical strategy and deeply personal storytelling. No jargon or veneer. Just clarity and conviction.

His writing system can be summed up as:

1. Own our audience. Our email list is our lifeblood.
2. Leverage community, not algorithms.
3. Write authentically.
4. Combine habit with intensity.
5. Craft newsletters that people read.
6. Disrupt our patterns.

1. Own our audience

>Build your email list or don’t write. - Tim Denning

If we don’t own our audience, we don’t have a business. We have a dependency.

Social platforms are rented land. Algorithms change, reach disappears, accounts get throttled. An email list gives us direct access to our readers. It is the closest thing to true ownership a creator has.

This is the foundation. Everything else builds on it.

2. Leverage community, not algorithms

>Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool ever invented. - Seth Godin

Tim Denning treats platforms like X, LinkedIn and Instagram as distribution layers, not destinations. The goal is to move people to owned channels.

His playbook is effective. Point every bio and call to action toward our newsletter. Use short-form content to attract attention and funnel readers. Publish frequently. Collaborate with other writers. Recommend generously.

Instead of fighting algorithms, he leans into community. Newsletter recommendations, particularly on platforms like Substack, ConvertKit and Beehiiv, act as modern word-of-mouth. Growth comes from trusted introductions, not hacks.

A handful of aligned creators can outperform a viral post.

3. Write authentically

>Write like you talk. Then edit. - David Ogilvy

Tim Denning’s “Unfiltered” ethos is about removing the corporate mask. He rejects stiff, sanitised writing in favour of something more direct, personal and, at times, uncomfortable. That might mean slang, blunt language or imperfect grammar. The point isn’t polish, it’s connection.

Corporate writing tries to impress. Personal writing tries to resonate.

Most people hide behind formality. Tim does the opposite. He leans into voice and that’s why people stay.

4. Combine habit with intensity

>Intensity is the price of excellence. - Warren Buffett

Consistency without urgency becomes drift. Tim Denning’s approach pairs habit with intensity. Write often, but also write like it matters. Compress timelines. Treat five-year ambitions as 30-day experiments. Become, in his words, “unreasonable.” This isn’t about balance. It’s about momentum.

Short bursts of focused effort can change trajectories faster than years of half-committed work.

5. Craft newsletters that people read

>People don’t read ads. They read what interests them. - Howard Gossage

In a detailed breakdown, Tim Denning offers actionable newsletter tactics anchored in data-driven behaviour:

• Subject lines matter: Make them clear, concise and benefit-driven.
• Frequency: Weekly is the sweet spot.
• Social media: The distribution engine. Use it daily.
• Keep it fun: Write what you care about.
• Minimal links: One or fewer works best.
• Don’t oversell: Sell occasionally, not constantly.
• Lead with stories: Stories outperform everything else.
• Double down: Use data. Repeat what works.
• Privacy over vanity: Depth beats scale.

6. Disrupt our patterns

>Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

Tim Denning’s final principle is: disrupt our own patterns. Change formats. Try new ideas. Push into discomfort. Growth rarely comes from doing more of the same.

Most creators plateau because they optimise too early. They find something that works and cling to it. Success is a starting point, not a destination. Progress requires friction.

Want more?

Share a Spiky Point of View post by Phil Martin

Five Ways I Sharpen my Writing post by Phil Martin

Tim Denning said he was “Vomiting daily from severe anxiety, but was petrified to leave my banking job“. Tim showed it is possible to take control and change your life. I take great inspiration from his “Unfiltered” blog post.

Have fun.

Phil…