A leader is ambitious for you.

Personal ambition is a good thing. It drives effort and, in most cases, precedes achievement. In a hyper-competitive world, it is almost a default setting.

People in leadership roles in today's world tend to have strong personal ambitions. In many cases, those ambitions are what got them there and that shapes what they prioritise, and how far they are willing to push themselves.

But ambition alone does not make a leader. Managers pursue results through people. Leaders on the other hand pursue the expansion of people themselves.

When that distinction is absent, something quietly shifts in the people being led. Most leaders believe they are doing the latter. The people working for them often experience something different. The difference is felt before it is understood.

A sign of this is when people can see the vision clearly, but cannot see themselves in it. They understand what needs to be done, but not how they grow through doing it. Over time, they begin to feel like instruments of someone else's ambition rather than authors of their own growth.

This is where something starts to narrow.

The people they manage feel truncated at the altar of the manager's priorities. Not in obvious, dramatic ways — in small, everyday moments. In what they choose not to say. In risks they decide not to take. In parts of themselves they quietly leave out of the room.

Rob Cross and Karen Dillon write about this in The Microstress Effect. Their argument is that it is rarely the large, visible pressures that wear people down — it is the small, accumulated ones that go unnoticed. One condition they identify is low trust. Not a dramatic breakdown, but the quieter version: expectations are high, communication is uneven, and neither side takes much risk with the other. Self-oriented ambition tends to produce exactly this.

They also identify something they call conflict with personal values. This is not about ethical dilemmas. It is the slow erosion that comes from small, repeated compromises — when the only way to contribute is to serve the leader's ambition, even when it sits at an angle to your own. Work begins to feel extractive. And over time, that does not just affect performance. It affects how a person sees themselves in relation to the work.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out to cross Antarctica. His ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice and was eventually crushed, leaving his crew stranded in one of the harshest environments on earth. The expedition failed in its original goal. Yet every single man survived.

What is remembered is not the plan, but how he led when the plan collapsed. Shackleton shifted his ambition. The mission no longer mattered. The people did. He reorganised roles, managed morale, and paid attention to the smallest details of human strain and resilience. Not as a management technique, but because his people had become the point.

Sir Raymond Priestley, who had served on Antarctic expeditions himself, put it plainly:

For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

Shackleton did not become less ambitious. He redirected it — from achieving a goal, to carrying his people through uncertainty.

Shackleton is an extreme case. Most leaders will never face a shipwreck. But the principle his story surfaces is not about crisis management — it is about where ambition is pointed.

Exceptional leaders are not less ambitious. They are ambitious in a direction that includes the people around them. They recognise that people are different, respond to different things, and carry different constraints. Rather than flattening that difference, they build around it.

Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, is a more recent example of this. He built an organisation where creative disagreement was not just tolerated but expected — on the belief that great outcomes come from the friction of different perspectives, not from hierarchy smoothing them away. Teams were encouraged to challenge ideas regardless of seniority. The point was not to eliminate risk but to build people who could recover from it.

He put it directly: 

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will fix it.

Build the team. The outcomes follow.

What is worth noting is that in environments like Pixar, what many organisations now struggle to mandate, genuine diversity of thought, people bringing their full selves to work, emerged as a natural consequence of how people were led. It was not enforced. It was enabled by leaders whose ambition had room for other people's growth inside it.

What this means in practice

One. Ambition is not the problem. Ambition pointed only inward is. The difference is subtle enough that many leaders never notice which one they are doing; and their people notice immediately.

Two. People do not need to be told whether they are being developed or deployed. They feel it in the small moments; the risks that were or were not supported, the growth that did or did not show up in the work. Trust is built or lost there, not in annual reviews.

Three. The leaders who build the strongest teams are rarely the ones trying to build strong teams. They are trying to expand people. The teams are a consequence.

Note: All images were imagined and created with help of Claude and ChatGPT.

The opposite of a good thing is probably also a good thing

The opposite of a good thing can also be a good thing. This is for me a simple statement that makes sense. But I think it is deep and not easy to comprehend and apply. The mind looks for good versus evil to clearly bucket things as “for me” or “against me.” But in life we are often choosing between what is good and what is also good. Each one comes with a certain cost. As Emerson put it: the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

To make decisions, the mind wants a certain degree of certainty. To achieve that, it wants to paint what we did not choose or are not able to choose as something inferior, or often something bad. But that is rarely the case. I am not talking about choosing between something good and something clearly broken. I am talking about two things that are equally good but you can only have one – for various reasons.

They famous idiom says - You cannot have the cake and eat it too. But having the cake is a good idea. And eating it is also a good idea. The idiom was never about foolishness it was always about the cost of a good choice.

The parable of the King who learned to thunder

There was once a king who was noble and devoted. He believed that serving his people was his highest duty. So, he spent little on himself and his household. He wore simple clothes, plain ornaments, and had no ostentatious displays of wealth, whether before his own people or the nobles and kings of neighbouring kingdoms.

This was good. It was virtuous. And yet it cost him something he had not anticipated. And he did not even know what it cost him.

Because of his frugality, people did not know his stature. In councils where he should have led, he was overlooked. His kingdom and his people suffered for it.

Then a sage came to him and told him the story of Lord Indra the king of the gods in the Vedic tradition. Indra, said the sage, does not rule through wisdom alone.

You see the Sage was wise. He knew that even the gods lose power when they become complacent. When they grow quiet, they end up dimming their divinity. Indra, the sage observed, wields the Vajra, the thunderbolt. He moves in lightning and spectacle and divine display. It might be called out as vanity. But there was a reason behind this display of vanity. Power that is hidden becomes power that is doubted. When it is visible, people tend to believe in it. When Indra withdraws into shadow, rivals rise. So, he thunders and does not allow order to dissipate away.

The sage looked at the king and said: subtle authority is good. Visible grandeur is also good. These are not opposites they are two truths about the same throne. Kings are obeyed not only because they are wise, but because they appear powerful. You have not erred in being humble, O King. You have erred in thinking that grandeur was beneath you.

The king saw the light. His humility had not been wrong. What had led him astray was the belief that its opposite was wrong. He saw now that grandeur was not a betrayal of his virtue it was the other half of it, waiting to be called upon when the moment required.

Why this matter and what can we do to overcome it?

I have noticed this in my own life when I choose one opportunity and then spend months explaining to myself why what I did not take was never worth it. The mind does not see the world as it is. It sees it as it needs to. Whatever happens to us is not inherently good or bad but the mind, in its need for certainty, will quickly label what we did not get or did not choose as inferior, even wrong. This is the trap. It is not reality. It is just the mind protecting the choice it made.

We can use this to our advantage. If the mind is going to justify whatever we chose anyway, we can consciously direct it toward the good in what we have rather than letting it default to making the unchosen thing the villain.

I suppose this is what cognitive behavioural reframing is trying to teach us. When something happens that you did not want, try this: tell yourself it was a conscious choice you made, for good reasons, and then actively look for the silver linings. The mind will find what you point it toward. Point it toward the good.

Note: All images were imagined and created with Gemini, Google Whisk and ChatGPT.

Explorer's Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome is a well-known and widely discussed idea. It is used to explain the nervousness one feels and as something that can be overcome if consciously acknowledged. It is also used as an excuse when one wants to avoid something. But what if Impostor Syndrome is not the only frame available to us? What if there is another stance altogether, an Explorer Syndrome, which is a different framing that can be learned? To explain what I mean, I need to share what shaped this thought.

Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology, has in recent years popularized the idea of deliberately cultivating awe. His work suggests that awe diminishes cynicism and helps us notice goodness, courage, and beauty in places outside ourselves. This is a modern articulation of an ancient intuition: that there is greatness in the natural world, something almost divine in what is beautiful, and that our curiosity about it changes us. For me, this distinction lies at the very core of the difference between an explorer and an impostor.

As I was hearing about the cultivation of awe on a podcast, what struck me most was that we first have to be open to experiencing things as magical and larger than ourselves in order to feel it. Identifying with impostor syndrome, even if you are openly trying to acknowledge it and overcome it, shuts you off to experiencing awe. Counterintuitively, one would expect someone besotted with impostor syndrome to be always in awe of others. But that is not the case. It is the one who has the openness and curiosity of an explorer that is able to find awe, both within and outside of them.

What I am saying here feels like Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset at first glance, but I feel it is slightly different. When I hear or read about growth mindset, it feels evaluative for me. It is about skill improvement and openness. It rightly says effort matters, failure is informative, and that abilities can be developed. A person with impostor syndrome can have all that and they can still be shut off to the sense of awe and curiosity.

When I think about the Explorer’s Syndrome, I feel that it is a bit more poetic and has an implicit license to chase joy. While growth mindset says “keep improving,” the Explorer’s Syndrome is more about “There is something greater than me that is worth moving towards.” And the other thing about it is that it invites you to break away from autopilot, even for positive habit loops. I will explain why.

As Jonathan Goodman puts it in Unhinged Habits, “Escape from autopilot begins with exploration.” Autopilot happens when someone too easily falls into a routine of things, for both the good habits and the bad. But the autopilot is more insidious. It is the repetition of safe patterns shaped by fear. How many of our habits are shaped by what we want to avoid or what we fear? I suspect many.

Exploration interrupts that loop.

For someone in the grip of an Explorer’s Syndrome, growth is not the goal; curiosity is, along with awe, exploration, and the urge to see what lies beyond the next hill. It is the drive to pursue what is novel, simply because it is new and unexplored. It is also the quiet curiosity to take things apart just to understand how they work—and to put them back together once you do.

There is something deeply productive about believing you can figure something out and not being consumed by what you don’t yet know or might get wrong.

At Davos in 2026, Elon Musk famously said, “I would rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.”

The productivity of optimism lies in this willingness to move. When you assume things might work out, you act; when you obsess over how they might fail, you stall. And stalling, more often than not, proves the pessimism right.

But for most of us, the default setting in modern life seems to tilt in the other direction. The impostor’s attention turns inward, circling perceived gaps—what they lack, what they might mishandle, whether they will measure up.

That inward spiral rarely produces clarity. It narrows attention until action feels risky and visibility feels dangerous. Every new opportunity is weighed less as possibility to explore and more as a test to survive. And because the focus stays fixed on deficiency, the lens through which the world is viewed becomes distorted. It is not that ability is absent—it is that attention is misdirected.

Courage Before Certainty

I have written elsewhere that agonizing over a decision is often worse than the decision itself. Much of that agony comes from trying to pre-decide outcomes in a future none of us can predict. When prediction is impossible, progress comes not from perfect certainty but from movement—act, observe, adjust. Courage, in that sense, beats confidence.

Overthinking keeps us waiting for a perfect answer. This is the posture of the impostor: cautious, self-monitoring, waiting to feel ready. It feels safe, even responsible. But it quietly narrows the world. Exploration moves forward with one that feels interesting and yes, considered, but not obsessed over. Then learns from the experience gained from the exploration.  

In fact, the explorer shifts the axis entirely. Attention leaves the self and moves toward the playground —what can be learned, what can be tested, what might unfold. The unknown stops being a threat and becomes a canvas to paint on. Gaps in knowledge are not evidence of being caught as a fraud, but invitations to inquire. Mistakes are not verdicts on worth, but information gathered along the way.

I have written before about how courage is often found in the embrace of the unknown. In reflecting on writers like Sontag, McCarthy, and even the idea of Fernweh—a longing for the unfamiliar—I realized that what looks like “being lost” is often just a refusal to abandon oneself. To live deeply is to step into uncertainty without betraying who you are.

The Performance Trap

That same stance—the willingness to enter unfamiliar terrain without collapsing inward—plays out in far more ordinary settings than travel or mortality. Let’s take a concrete example from the world of work in 2026. Consider something as commonplace—and revealing—as networking.

In a professional setting, networking often becomes a performance. For the impostor, a networking meeting is less a conversation and more a test. They over-prepare to avoid appearing uninformed, choose environments where they feel in control, and leave measuring whether they impressed rather than whether they learned. If the exchange does not yield visible validation, it feels like failure.

The explorer walks into the same meeting, but with a completely different orientation. They are curious first, strategic second. The goal is not to impress, but to discover—what this person knows, how they think, where their world intersects with yours. There is intention without an agenda; presence without performance. Trust, in that context, emerges not from polish, but from reduced self-orientation.

Let’s zoom out. Networking was only one example; this is about something more fundamental.

Unlearning the Reflex

What I am really arguing is that impostor syndrome is not merely insecurity, but a strategy built around securing validation. It is not something that simply happens to us; it is something we participate in. We structure our actions to avoid confronting weaknesses we do not want to admit—even to ourselves.

Explorer Syndrome, then, is the quiet refusal to live by that logic. And because it is a strategy, it can be unlearned.

The first lever is attention. Validation-seeking trains attention inward; exploration trains it outward.

The second lever is repeated contact with situations that do not guarantee approval. Small acts of outreach without over-preparation begin to loosen the grip.

The third lever is learning to release the outcome and doing so completes the shift.

Over time, outward-directed attention makes awe easier to notice. But awe is not sustained by accident; it is cultivated through repetition and openness. Left unattended, repetition becomes routine, and routine slides back into autopilot. Ritual is repetition done with awareness—an intentional return to outward attention. This is why all ancient religious practices emphasize the importance of rituals in cultivating a sense of awe of the divine.

Across both ancient discipline and modern individualist thought, one idea repeats: action is directed toward a chosen aim. When the aim is validation, disapproval strikes at who you think you are. When the aim is exploration and a surrender to something larger than oneself, disapproval becomes noise rather than threat. Placed in that frame, criticism changes texture. It may still register, but it no longer dictates movement. In practice, this shift is quieter than it sounds.

An Ongoing Apprenticeship

On a personal note, I am beginning to notice how this impacts me in the small things. I used to find myself choosing books, projects, even leisure partly for how they will appear—to myself as much as to anyone else. Reading something “serious,” avoiding something indulgent, rehearsing questions before asking them. Lately, I have been interrupting that reflex. I slow down. I breathe. I deliberately unclench from the need to look curated and intelligent. I ask the obvious question in rooms. I volunteer for work that might be judged as beneath me. Nothing dramatic changes in the moment. But when validation does not arrive, or even when criticism does—either directly said to me or felt indirectly— the impact feels different. It stops meaning so much.

In fact, each instance of the lack of validation stops registering altogether and, if anything, feels like a small exposure—leading to the strengthening of the muscle. If antifragility to judgment means growing steadier each time approval is absent, then this is how I am beginning to train it.

A quiet apprenticeship into Explorer Syndrome.

Note: All images were imagined and created with Gemini.

 

BOOK NOTE: A Triumph of Genius - Ronald K Fierstein

Pick problems that are nearly impossible to solve. Pick problems that arise from sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs. Pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution. And where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration. Involve all the members of the organization in this sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s reward comes from this involvement.

This quote is attributed to Dr Edwin Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation and one of the greatest inventors of all time. While the attribution to Land is well established, the quotation does not appear to originate from a single published source. It is most likely drawn from internal speeches or memoranda delivered by Land within Polaroid, reflecting his deeply held philosophy rather than a polished public statement.

Ronald K. Fierstein’s book is aptly titled A Triumph of Genius.

Among the many biographies I have read about exceptional individuals, few come as close to a true portrait of genius as this account of Edwin Land. A prolific inventor with more than five hundred patents to his name, Land ranked in his time just behind figures such as Edison and Thomson in sheer inventive output. Beyond this, he was also a pioneer at the intersection of technology and the arts, an area he believed was essential to human progress.

The book traces Land’s early life as an inventor, beginning with his development of polarizing filters, technology that most of us now use daily in products such as sunglasses and car headlights. It also covers his critical role during the Second World War, when he supported Allied war efforts through innovations in optics, including camera systems used on bomber flights and other advanced military photographic equipment.

A substantial portion of the book focuses on Polaroid’s efforts in developing instant photography during the second half of the twentieth century. Fierstein goes into impressive detail explaining the foundational science behind instant cameras and films, effectively showing how an entire darkroom was compressed into a small, handheld device. The chemistry and engineering that the researchers and industrialists brought together in the iconic Polaroid camera is nothing short of genius.

I was reminded of John Collison’s post that the World is a Museum of Passion projects.

This section is one of the most rewarding parts of the book, not only for its scientific clarity but also for its vivid character sketches of Land and the many researchers and executives who helped bring these ideas to life.

The majority of the book, however, concentrates on the landmark intellectual property litigation between Polaroid and Kodak. This section is equally compelling, offering portraits not just of technologists, but also of senior business leaders, lawyers, and judges involved in one of the most consequential patent cases of the late twentieth century. Written by a junior lawyer on the Polaroid legal team, the narrative provides a rare inside view of the legal process, capturing both its brilliance and its unpredictability. As the book itself states, A Triumph of Genius chronicles, in an unprecedented insider account, Polaroid’s legal battle with Kodak, a case whose outcome continues to shape how technological innovation is protected well into the twenty first century.

For me, the deepest satisfaction came from reading about the nature of genius itself and from being inspired by Edwin Land’s philosophy of life and work. Much can be learned from his outlook. One of Land’s personal mottos was “to do what no one else could do”, a principle he lived by consistently.

He stands among those rare figures who combined reclusive brilliance with an ability to perform as a consummate showman when required. He was a true scientist who understood the importance of art and beauty, and who made it his mission to bring beauty into the everyday life.

Steve Jobs is often described as having a reality distortion field, an ability to bend the possible through sheer force of belief. Edwin Land can be seen as his intellectual, commercial and technologist predecessor. It was said of Land that people who worked with him became experts, and that difficult or seemingly impossible problems appeared to yield in his presence.

“My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring about in people resources they did not know they had” Land once said. This belief runs like a quiet undercurrent throughout the book.

Fierstein’s work is meticulously researched and does genuine justice to the complexity of genius. At the same time, having been immersed in the crucible of the Polaroid Kodak patent battle, he excels at portraying the legal and business personalities involved. I particularly enjoyed reading about Judge Rya Zobel, the sharp and fair minded judge who presided over the trial, as well as Herb Schwartz, lead counsel for Polaroid. The portrayals of Kodak executives Louis Eilers and Walter Fallon were also intriguing, especially in showing how personal animosity toward Land played a role in decisions that ultimately led to Kodak’s costly infringement loss.

In closing, George Bernard Shaw’s words feel especially fitting in describing Edwin Land: 

There are those who look at things the way they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not.

A truly inspiring read. Such an inspiration, that I decided to indulge in his creation and recently purchased my Polaroid camera!

BOOK NOTE: The Old Man - Thomas Perry

 

A boomer Jack Reacher is an easy sell. The Old Man is a gripping and entertaining read that delivers a relatively simple adventure story centered on a capable yet unlikely action hero. I enjoyed the audacious simplicity of the Old Man as a character. His actions feel believable because of his clandestine background, and yet his age constantly works against expectations. You find yourself trusting his skills while doubting his endurance, which adds tension to even straightforward scenes.

At its core, the book is about how the Old Man evades powerful forces determined to hunt him down. Like Lee Child’s Reacher series, he lives off the grid. Unlike Reacher, who actively goes looking for trouble, Dan Chase, also known as the Old Man, is trying to avoid it. His instinct is not confrontation, but escape. The drama comes from his attempt to slip away quietly rather than to dominate every encounter.

What stood out to me in books like Reacher and The Old Man is a distinctly modern anxiety. How does one disappear in a world where almost every action leaves a digital trace. Beneath the familiar adventure tropes lies a simple but unsettling premise. In today’s world, disappearing requires the training of a CIA operative, access to significant resources, and often a willingness to use violence.

We often speak of anonymity on the internet as if it were a given. Stories like this reveal the illusion behind that belief. The surveillance state has emerged as a powerful counterweight to the anonymity promised by the digital revolution. In many ways, the pendulum has swung entirely in the opposite direction. With digital payments, digital identities, and persistent online presence, it is increasingly reasonable to argue that anonymity is no longer viable.

Another thread running through this idea is tied to urbanization. In the twentieth century, as populations moved from small, closely knit rural or semi urban communities to dense cities, a new form of anonymity emerged. In villages, everyone knew who the troublemaker was, and fugitives could rarely remain hidden. Cities, by contrast, offered loneliness and obscurity. People could live for decades in anonymous apartment blocks without knowing their neighbours. Yet the rise of digital surveillance, driven by security concerns, has transformed urban centres into the most monitored spaces of all. Cities may still allow one to blend into the crowd, but never to step outside the digital panopticon.

That said, the book itself does not explicitly dwell on these themes. They sit beneath the high adrenaline exploits of an aging fugitive and his two dogs. Still, there is an underlying sense of lost individual sovereignty, and a quiet lament about how difficult it has become to truly disappear.

It is a strong and engaging read. I would be remiss, however, not to mention the television series adapted from the book. While it deviates significantly from the original plot, sometimes frustratingly so, it explores the difficulty of disappearing more directly than the novel does. I am still working my way through the episodes. The pacing is slow, but at times it feels more contemplative, and occasionally deeper than the book itself. 

I strongly believe that fiction is one of the best ways to peer into the future. By placing us in imagined worlds, it allows us to explore consequences before we encounter them directly. The Old Man prompted me to think about a world where the balance between anonymity and convenience, and between privacy and security, continues to tilt in one direction. It also made me consider what that shift means for individuals, and for a society made up of individuals who have already accepted that trade-off.

BOOK NOTE: Nightshade - Michael Connelly

 

A new Connelly novel, and that too one introducing a new detective into the Los Angeles crime universe, was all I needed to want to devour this book. As a big fan of Michael Connelly’s other creations, including Harry Bosch, Mickey Haller, and Rene Ballard, my expectations were high. The familiar Los Angeles crime setting, a trope I have written about before, is a personal favorite across books, television shows, films, and even computer games.

Nightshade has all the classic Connelly bestseller ingredients. A dead girl, a dogged loner cop as the protagonist, corrupt politicians, macabre gang members, nosy reporters, and dirty, ineffectual cops who serve as rivals to the hero. The story does not disappoint, and it is unquestionably a page turner. That said, it did not leave a lasting mark in the way many of the Harry Bosch novels have. It worked well as an engaging detective story to slot in between more serious nonfiction reading, and for that I was satisfied and have little to complain about.

Detective Stilwell, however, feels somewhat dull for my tastes. His backstory is revealed gradually through fragments and interactions, but it does not feel especially distinct. In many ways, he recalls a Ballard shaped by loneliness and held together by surfing, or the original Bosch with his deeply tortured past that drives his reactions and decisions. Stilwell, too, has a history of internal police politics that leads to his reassignment to a secluded Los Angeles island, where he functions as the primary lawman. He is almost too competent a detective for such a contained setting, which makes the situation feel unbalanced, like bringing an oversized weapon to a small fight.

Catalina Island itself feels too small a stage when compared to the larger Los Angeles canvas on which Bosch, Ballard, and Haller typically operate. To be clear, small and enclosed settings can be excellent backdrops for murder mysteries. The Knives Out films, and even The White Lotus, show how limited spaces can heighten tension and create compelling drama. They succeed by building dread through dense interpersonal politics and layered relationships. Catalina Island, despite its shady wealthy residents and exclusive private clubs, does not quite achieve that effect here. The atmosphere never fully develops the sense of intrigue or unease that such a setting promises.

I was left wondering whether Michael Connelly’s universe might benefit from a genuinely happy detective. One who does not rely on a tortured past for motivation. One whose personal struggles recede into the background, allowing the mystery itself to carry more of the weight. Or perhaps that would make the book feel less like a Connelly novel at all.

BOOK NOTE: The Not To Do List - Rolf Dobelli

Rolf Dobelli is a successful entrepreneur and author. I suspect he is an even better motivational or keynote speaker. He is an accomplished writer, with many books that have catchy, memorable titles. Some of these include Stop Reading the News, The Art of Thinking Clearly, and The Art of the Good Life. While these titles may appear vaguely self-help and are packaged that way, his books clearly have a strong following.

The Not to Do List is one of them, and I listened to it as an audiobook. It takes the familiar “to-do” list genre of self-help and flips it, focusing instead on what we should avoid to lead a successful life.

The idea of focusing on what not to do, rather than on what to do, was not new to me. I first encountered it through Nassim Taleb’s concept of via negativa, the notion that progress is often achieved more reliably by removing what causes harm than by adding new optimizations. In strategy, an area I work in professionally and a subject of long standing interest, this way of thinking is foundational. Strategy is less about expanding options and more about narrowing them, about drawing clear lines around what will be excluded. Peter Drucker articulated this powerfully when he framed strategy as a discipline of choice. Effectiveness, in his view, comes not from doing more things well, but from deciding which things should not be done at all. Seen this way, strategy becomes an act of subtraction, a process of clearing space so that what truly matters can operate without interference.

I have encountered the same idea across different domains, from minimalist thinking to practical philosophies of life that emphasize reduction of friction over accumulation of the next best things. As someone who values clear boundaries, the idea of not burdening the mind or physical spaces by consciously avoiding clutter resonates deeply with me. Leading a simple life is a personal ethos. What may have begun as a necessity shaped by family values has evolved into a deliberate way of life for me. I consciously try to avoid overconsumption, and I have seen many highly successful people adopt this approach and thrive because of it.

Even so, it is not always easy. In today’s hyper commercial world, it is far easier to consume mindlessly than to curate thoughtfully and prioritize deliberately. When I came across this book on my library app, it felt like something worth listening to. Dobelli makes a solid case for restraint, and the book helped me reflect more directly on these themes. That said, while it works well as reinforcement for readers already aligned with this philosophy, I do not think it is the strongest book for introducing or persuading newcomers.

I suspect this is largely due to the book’s structure. Each chapter begins, in a roundabout way, with a story illustrating behavior we should avoid. This is then followed, somewhat formulaically, by what Dobelli calls the “Quiet Voice of Reason,” explaining what not to do instead. This approach works in some chapters, but at times it feels contrived and slightly sardonic.

This format is effective in a keynote speech, where repetition and structure help drive a message home. In a book, however, it feels less satisfying. As I tried to articulate what was bothering me, I was reminded of George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air and his “what is in your backpack” philosophy. That comparison captured my unease perfectly.

BOOK NOTE: You Never Know With Women - James Hadley Chase

 

A typical Chase potboiler, but one that felt more depressing than strictly fun. The title of the book is too much of a giveaway, even by Chase standards, where one usually knows who the criminal is. The cat-and-mouse chase has an interesting survivalist trope to it, hidden in the vast 1940s California wilderness and mileu. I loved the initial part of the story, with a down-on-his-luck private detective, like that of Raymond Chandler’s books already having trouble with the cops, making a shady deal with likely criminal. Hadley Chase does a good job of making you hate all the wrong people initially, and while they all have shades of grey, the real ‘bad guy’ is revealed with a twist.

Some parts are not so believable, like the convenient bombs that go off without hurting the hero, the ferocious guard dogs that do not bite, and the oh so convenient hideaway that is waiting to be used by the fugitives on the run. But this just shows the hardy, ‘make what you can of the situation’ luck that the Hadley Chase’s criminals seem to have.

What struck me, interestingly, is that the survivalist theme also showed up in another book I was reading around the same time. In a similar twist, in Thomas Perry’s The Old Man, the fugitives also make use of a hideaway in the Californian mountains near Los Angeles. Funny how that happens, although Perry’s fugitives are in a luxurious hideout, while Hadley Chase’s are in an abandoned and beat up cabin.

One thing I always find great about James Hadley Chase’s books, which I have commented on before here, is how easy it is to visualize the scenes he describes, and how that is a mark of great writing. This happened again, and I was left imagining whether the hideaway that the fugitives in The Old Man use, at a much later point in time, is the same place from You Never Know With Women, just refurbished for Luxury.

Or it is just my wild imagination.

BOOK NOTE: The Blacktongue Thief - Christopher Buehlman

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book is a strong recommendation for anyone who enjoys Grimdark fantasy. Much like The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, Christopher Buehlman builds a magical world like no other, filled with unforgettable characters. It was recommended to me as a good book for a guy, and that turned out to be true. It is hilarious, and the humour is both simple and layered. I especially loved the wicked humour in the swearing. The curses belong entirely to the magical world, not ours, which makes them wicked and funny at the same time. They feel distinctly otherworldly, yet somehow very real.

The magical system is unique. For a seasoned fantasy reader, this world offers different kinds of magic, and it is wonderfully weird. The protagonist can sense when luck is on his side and can perform small spells to make people trip, among other tricks. As a thief, he uses this in hilarious ways. At first, this may make the magic seem small, almost like a parlour trick. But then the world shifts. There are assassins who can hide inside animals and strike with brutal precision. Giant war birds can be concealed inside tattoos. Magic is both awe inspiring and oddly ordinary. Like the humour, which is both sophisticated and juvenile, the magic manages to be both magnificent and mundane. That mix makes it feel alive.

One of the things I loved most was how the author made the language of the world easy to grasp without long glossaries. The Goblins are eaters of people, so they are known as Biters. Without any explanation, the word tells you they are nasty. It also made absolute sense that Kynd is simply another word for humankind. It is clever, effortless worldbuilding.

The protagonist, Kinch, is loveable not just because he is an underdog but because of his optimism. He is a doer, not a brooder or a whiner. His romance with Norrigal was charming, and the twist at the end caught me off guard.

The institutions in this world are equally interesting. The Guild is evil but a necessary evil. It feels like a mercenary bank slowly taking over everything. You want to hate them, but there are worse creatures to fear. The Goblins are terrifying. They are both pathetic and astonishingly vile. The plot twists keep that dread alive.

What fascinated me most was imagining how this world came to life in Buehlman’s mind. He is an accomplished screenwriter with a strong body of work, but this book feels uniquely different. I also feel it would be difficult to televise, not just because of the heavy CGI, but because the world has a texture that is hard to capture on screen.

A great read.

BOOK NOTE: Smart Brevity by Jim VadeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz

Smart Brevity is a book — or rather, a guide — by the creators of Axios. One that could have benefited from the very advice it gives. It rambles through many disconnected sections and, for some reason, seems to think it’s acceptable to use clunky sentence structures in the quest to demonstrate the “power of saying more with less.”

I’m being harsh. There are many valuable lessons in it. But maybe I’m a snob when it comes to good writing. While I completely see the value of brevity in conversations and communication, I don’t think it should come at the cost of well-crafted sentences — or, more importantly, at the cost of framing thoughts coherently.

I’ll be honest. I need to learn how to communicate more briefly. It’s been a long-standing piece of 360-degree feedback throughout my 20-year corporate career as a strategy consultant. More recently, as someone who does a fair number of presentations and has conversations with senior executives, this is feedback I need to act on. So, I’ve been on a deliberate quest to learn brevity.

Even more so because my Gallup StrengthsFinder has repeatedly identified “Input” and “Intellection” as top strengths — the need to collect, archive, and accumulate information, ideas, artefacts, and even relationships. I’m also a learner, with a strong desire to grow and continuously improve. The process of learning matters more to me than the outcome itself. I love to think (perhaps too much), muse, and reflect.

All this sounds great on paper, but the blind spots are obvious, in hindsight, of course. Pun and inconsistency intended.

One of the most important watch-outs for me has been phrased like this:

You might have a tendency to give people so much information or so many resources that you can overload or overwhelm them. Before you share with others, consider sorting out what is most meaningful so they don’t lose interest.

And another, in the same vein:

Some people might think you create needless complexity during discussions and may want you to make decisions faster. Sometimes it’s better to keep it simple and go more in depth later.

How damning, and how true.

This has been an ongoing area of learning for me. Over the years, I’ve been influenced by Tom Henschel’s advice from The Look and Sound of Leadership: “Short sounds confident.” That has become something of a mantra. But as much as I like that little ditty, I like words too. I like trivia, context-setting, and, above all, a good, powerful sentence.

But the point remains: I need to be brief. So I picked up Economical Writing by Deirdre McCloskey — a great book with some very smart advice — though I haven’t finished it yet. The Just Saying podcast by Joe McCormack has also been helpful.

So when, in June this year, my boss gave me Smart Brevity, I didn’t waste time reading it. Yes, my manager thought it necessary to gift me a book about brevity. And no, I’m not that bad — I take it as a positive gesture.

Anyway, this is a topic I genuinely care about, and I read the book. While it makes some smart points — like simplifying sentences, making them catchy, and using labels — the way those points are communicated feels haphazard. It rambles, trying to connect disparate ideas to its central thesis in roundabout ways.

Here’s an example. The opening sentence of the book is:

Never in the history of humanity have we vomited more words in more places with more velocity.

It’s a strong line, but reading it aloud isn’t a great experience, especially without the advantages of proper punctuation.

Other examples include the before-and-after writing tips:

Before: “The coronavirus variant in California is possibly more infectious and might cause more serious illness than the first.”
After: “California COVID-19 strain is more infectious than the first.”

Is that factually correct? Communicating the probability of might is worthwhile, and it’s lost in this falsely assertive sentence.

Beyond these issues, one stylistic choice really bothered me: the authors refer to themselves in the third person. I understand that’s tricky when there are three authors, but paragraphs like this put me off:

BACKSTORY: Jim and Mike started Politico back in 2007 with John Harris, a friend from The Washington Post. John and Jim were bosses and Mike was the on-the-go reporter, scooping news nuggets and building the little-known Politico brand around DC.

• At dawn every day, Mike would write an email to Jim and John with the subject line ‘How we can rock today’. It was a blueprint for the stories the publication should pursue.
• Mike’s email followed a very specific format. It always started with a burst of fresh news or insight — journalism’s holy grail of ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

This sort of writing goes against the very advice the book gives: never assume the reader knows who you’re talking about. It’s not “skim-resistant.”

In summary, Smart Brevity is a book with solid concepts, but the authors’ insistence on sacrificing good sentence structure for catchy, web-friendly phrasing is a drawback. Not everything worthwhile should be sacrificed for brevity. Brevity is more than that.

Finally, I took away the relevant parts of the book. And now, with the advent of AI, I’ve been using a different workflow to communicate briefly and impactfully. I write in my own way, full of ideas and context. Then I ask AI to edit my writing for brevity — without losing any of the detail. It does a fantastic job. It cleans up grammar, removes redundancies, and helps me structure my thoughts better without losing my style or substance. 

Win-win.