Espresso Shots 1-25-26

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• Velocity Is the New Authority. Here's Why. Easily the must-read of the week, Om wrote not only what so many people are feeling these days, but eloquently breaks down the timeline of why over 'the past decade and a half, the whole information ecosystem has become much larger, faster and noisier. It is hardly surprising that nothing works. And we feel a collective sense of overwhelming disappointment.' And the root cause: velocity. In hindsight, one of the things I've personally been trying to spend time on is systemic thinking and how to reduce friction, but as he points out, the 'system rewards whoever speaks first, not whoever lives with it long enough to understand it' and in those places, 'the cost of all this isn't abstract. It's the review that took three months but no one will read. It's the investigation that required patience. It's the work of understanding something before declaring judgment. All of it still exists, still gets made. It just doesn't travel. And in a system where only what travels matters, we've made expertise indistinguishable from noise.' I need to spend some time digesting this one a bit, but I do love this food for thought.
• The Art of (Attention) War. If there are any two posts to read this week, this is the next one. Grab a cup of coffee, sit in a quiet corner, and digest this article on how velocity is all fighting for our attention. 'In every myth, the lesson is the same: The path to the infinite is the path to madness. And yet, we still gouge out our eyes. We plug our untrained minds into the infinite machines – our smartphones, our social media, our Oura rings, our prediction markets, and our AIs. And as a result, we are going mad.'
• The Stick in the Stream. 'My stick thesis is simple: your habits will only change if you seek the single stick, the blockage, the core problem that is blocking everything else. Seeing that stick not only gives you a place to start, but the discovery will better motivate you when you yank it, and the water starts flowing.' I found this post an interesting metaphor for ways to clear blockages: remove the single 'key object' that initiated the entire problem. Beware single points of failure, though; pulling that thread can cause unintended, unpracticed breakage.
• Life Happens at 1x Speed Funny as I write this, the self-reflection on why/what I chose these Espresso Shots this week: it's been about mindfulness on what we consume and why. 'If something isn't worth consuming at 1x, it's not worth consuming at all' is a wonderful philosophy feeding into anti-velocity. 'Life happens at 1x. Every conversation you've ever had. Every walk, every meal, every meaningful experience. None of it comes with a speed dial. We're biological creatures wired for real-time processing. When someone speaks to you in person, you don't get to fast-forward through the parts you find boring.'
• Failure vs. Success is the Wrong Frame. Shifting gears into the value of creative play and child-like curiosity and reframing the idea of failures. In fact, the author suggested even getting rid of the f-word, instead calling them experiments. 'The fear that stops people from making things is almost entirely the fear of the performance frame. Nobody is afraid to experiment. We're afraid to be judged. And the trick is to stop thinking of yourself as someone performing a skill and start thinking of yourself as a scientist in a lab, running tests, gathering data, slowly building up a picture of what works and what doesn't. The scientist isn't brave for continuing after unexpected results. They're just doing science. That's what science is.'
• Moral False Dichotomies. 'Assuming something about someone else, based on your own worldview and without asking questions, is intellectually lazy.' Direct and to the point. Listen more, talk less.
• When Productivity Turns Toxic and How to Break Free. In 2023, I wrote: 'I am done with note-taking app nirvana and trying to capture discrete knowledge with interconnected thoughts. I once prided myself in the ability to capture all sorts of things, and it took me scorch-earthing my PKM to free me. I'm back to basics.' Working on less PKM jujitsu has been a tremendous boost for my own productivity health. 'We convince ourselves that the new app will solve all our productivity issues, spend hours migrating to the new system, then drop it when the next new app appears.' Bonus links: 'What Deserves My Attention' and declaring systems bankruptcy.
• Create Intentional Serendipity. I never really had a way to describe this concept, but ‌intentional serendipity could nail it. The basic idea is that 'You can’t plan for it, but you can increase the factors that make it happen. You can make diverse people meet each other. You can try ideas and test them quickly. You can increase intentional serendipity.' Put simply: 'You never can sit down and make this perfect plan. You can only do it by having faith in this drunken walk. And you know what? I have no idea where this is going.'
• 1993: Web Browsers Add Multimedia and MTV.com Goes Online. Shifting gears here into a bit of retrospective fun.
• Evolution of the Alphabet. What a fantastic poster that is a beautiful and straightforward visualization of 'the transformation of the alphabet from Proto-Sinaitic origins to modern forms, highlighting the changes each letter has undergone throughout history.'
• The Graphic Trends You'll Want to Bookmark for 2026. It's not only the overload of digital information, but how visual design is counteracting a different type of overload. 'Approaches that counteract an increasing fatigue from current hyper-digital design processes continued to shape a layered, imperfect and naively analogue approach to work last year: a symptom of the many ways we might be pushing back against fast-moving tech. It’s as if we’re realising design work can’t be separated from the hands that make it – that’s why people are turning back to scanning, scrapbooking, collecting and collaging to make things feel mismatched where polish is otherwise making the work feel flat.'
• I Have A Love Language, And Its Name Is Pizza. I can get behind this philosophy. 'In a world that appears so fragile, with so much anger and self-absorption, it is pizza that keeps me grounded.'

Amor Fati ✌🏻