The essay archive.

Long-form writing on AI, systems thinking, science and reflective life design, organized by thread, not by date. Filter by area below.

Jun 2026 AI Workflow

Why AI workflow is not just automation

Value comes from arranging the work and the judgment, not from removing steps.

8 min Jun 2026 AI · Craft

Prompt design is interface design

Working with a model is a craft borrowed from interface design and cost discipline.

8 min Jun 2026 AI · Organizations

Why AI transformation fails at scale

Not the model, the organization: fragmentation, governance, data and trust.

9 min Jun 2026 Systems

Systems thinking as a survival skill for complex work

Why seeing the whole, not the parts, is becoming a core literacy.

7 min Jun 2026 Systems · Mechanics

Feedback loops you didn't know you were in

The invisible loops and delays that quietly run your week.

6 min Jun 2026 Systems · Organizations

Compliance as organizational intelligence

Control systems as the way an organization learns about itself.

8 min Jun 2026 Science

The cognitive cost of modern productivity

The quiet tax of switching, notifications and overload.

7 min Jun 2026 Science · Learning

How understanding actually forms

Why insight resists being rushed, in the age of instant answers.

6 min Jun 2026 Science · Decisions

The biases that survive knowing about them

Why awareness rarely fixes how we decide, and what to build instead.

7 min Jun 2026 Life Design

Designing a full life without optimizing everything

Intention over efficiency, and why a good life resists the dashboard.

7 min Jun 2026 Life Design · Constraints

Constraints are a design material

How limits, used well, make a life more legible rather than smaller.

6 min Jun 2026 Life Design · Energy

Energy is the real budget

Designing around energy, not the calendar.

6 min May 2026 AI

We Didn't Teach People How to Think With Technology…

Fifty years of missing tech literacy meet the most demanding tool we've built.

Substack ↗ May 2026 AI

The AI answered you. Now make it wrong.

Critical thinking before you become a parrot of your favorite tool.

Substack ↗ Feb 2026 AI

The Advantage You Didn't Know You Had

How cross-functional experience became my biggest AI advantage.

Substack ↗ Jan 2026 Systems

When the Future Has a Skyline

Shenzhen, a city projected toward the future, young and vast.

Substack ↗ Feb 2026 Life Design

Metro C at the Colosseum: 3 Questions to Take Your Time Back

A station that became a museum, and a lesson in reclaiming time.

Substack ↗ May 2025 Life Design

You're Not Scattered, You're Multipotential

Full of interests and directions, not fragmented.

Substack ↗