Nick T

@nt

1057 Following

6031 Followers

Nick T pfp

practicing "bottom up" research and writing for a month with really promising results so far. Writing "bottom up" to me means writing piecemeal, one paragraph, argument at a time on an index card, and filing the index cards next to each other - forming a tree of thoughts that build on top of each other. I hated writing before and now I write for at least 1-2 hours per day, and it's so enjoyable that I can easily spend a whole day doing it. Usually I reflect on what I'm reading in the moment and try to apply new information + my take/experience to what's already in the box. It's like having a conversation with myself. Eventually I can tie together all the thoughts to construct essays - that should be easy as most of the work is already done. If you want to try this yourself, look up the Zettelkasten method. But be careful as it's starting to get corrupted by productivity influencer grifters. Happy to guide anyone who wants to seriously try this out!

3 replies

0 recast

14 reactions

Nick T pfp

what if holding shared tokens influenced the home feed algorithm? token-gated chats and communities are hard to keep up with if you're a power user. checking many chats = cognitive friction. the essence of what we want is to have more tight-knit conversations with select groups of people in a "many-to-many" relation. what if instead tokens weighed the algorithm so that you are more likely to see content from people based on what you hold in common?

1 reply

0 recast

6 reactions

Nick T pfp

some thoughts after reading Max Bennet's "A Brief History of Intelligence": how good you feel about doing some work, and your will to do it in the moment is powered by dopamine. dopamine is released when you feel like you are making progress towards your goals (powers temporal difference learning). I find that if you have total control over your goals, you can hack the motivation: - pick goals where you have total control (e.g. work 5 hours on some outcome, write for 20 minutes, etc - not 'close X customer', 'raise $100k', etc) - make progress obvious - visualise it using paper/spreadsheet/app etc. calculate and account for progress towards your goal - e.g. 5% -> 10%. - will yourself into making the first 0.01% - define exactly what that will entail you to do (e.g. read 1 paragraph, open gmail, clone the repo) - keep reflecting on the progress. let dopamine do the rest in the resulting "flow" state.

2 replies

0 recast

11 reactions

Nick T pfp

“flow” in work is simply enjoying the work for its own sake. turns out you can work effortlessly for hours because you actually like the work! the idea of working on things you really like or even learning to enjoy the things you do is so foreign to us that we need to wrap it in mystic jargon and send psychologists and writers to discover it and explain it to us.

1 reply

0 recast

9 reactions

Nick T pfp

thoughts on the ideal client for conversations: - reverse chrono feed of those you follow. show not just top level posts but replies in feed. feed updates live, like discord. channel feeds update like discord too. - remove likes and recasts from view, or make it hidden by default. subjective quality of ideas > popularity

2 replies

1 recast

10 reactions

Nick T pfp

content or conversations? https://frame.weponder.io/api/polls/12677

4 replies

1 recast

7 reactions

Nick T pfp

it seems that startup approaches split politically along the rift of techno-centricity: whether we believe in technology is a means to an end, a tool, or its own domain around which other things orbit. two groups and two dogmas form: vibe of the first: "let's hire a dev to ship this", do things that don’t scale, enterprise SaaS, user interviews, product/business CEO. vibe of the second: “fuck around and find out”, hackathons, tinkering, research and deep tech, engineer as CEO.

1 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

Nick T pfp

A sober take on what nearly all of crypto is today. Some exceptions imo are where intrinsic value to users is provided despite (e.g. @ensdomains) or as a result (e.g. @polymarket) of these dynamics, but those are mere exceptions. The gold lies in discovering more of these exceptions.

0 reply

0 recast

8 reactions

Nick T pfp

shipping feels great because you’re in full control. success in building a specific piece of software lies only in your abilities - which you have complete control over. corollary: human-induced chaos can feel threatening in this mode, hence the cliché rift between business and developers

7 replies

0 recast

9 reactions

Nick T pfp

i took a painting - two cities, two watercolor postcards. can you doxx?

1 reply

0 recast

7 reactions

Nick T pfp

3 replies

0 recast

14 reactions

Nick T pfp

really dissapointed by the educational content on PKM systems. seems like vast majority of influencers just really like the "idea" of having a second brain - the content seems hollow, more akin to "gear acquisition syndrome" than anything else. are there any serious researchers who just happen to educate on the process on the side? best example I know is Andy Matuschak. any others? https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes

5 replies

1 recast

10 reactions

Nick T pfp

quite ironic that we call those who are the most aligned on our mission, on the same wavelength and generally aiming at the same ends, our “competitors”.

3 replies

1 recast

14 reactions

Nick T pfp

i’m doing a self-study philosophy course alongside building /amp why? i’ve always pondered questions around ethics, which I believe are especially important for software builders, because if you really nail it you’re potentially creating consequences far beyond just your ARR. having done my first startup I notice the pull towards just thinking about efficiency (grind 16/7, binge huberman, “traction is king”, etc) with purpose often fading in the background as a result. I’m thinking this partial sabbatical of 2-3 months might help me answer the complicated and personal “why” questions and set me up on a good path I’m reading great philosophical works chronologically - I started with Plato’s Republic and just finished Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics after 2 weeks of full time study. I will now continue, likely part time, half and half, filing my learning and interpretations in a cardboard slip box called “Zettelkasten” (look it up, super interesting!)

6 replies

6 recasts

23 reactions

Nick T pfp

The fact that Stoicism is trending says a lot about what's happening in the world around us these days

0 reply

0 recast

12 reactions

Nick T pfp

i currently pay $100+/mo to host 10 projects on Vercel 😵 set up Coolify on Hetzner today - self-hosted Vercel alternative costs about $30/mo for an 8-core AMD with 16GB RAM 💯 working perfectly + easy switch (1-2h all in) will be migrating all of my projects in the coming days https://coolify.io

5 replies

1 recast

30 reactions

Nick T pfp

Still the most goated reading list in tech circles in my opinion. Who else has a great public bookshelf? https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf

3 replies

2 recasts

13 reactions

Nick T pfp

backend vs. frontend

1 reply

0 recast

24 reactions

Nick T pfp

Anyone tried rolling Coolify on Hetzner as an alternative to Vercel? Keen to hear about your experience + costs.

7 replies

0 recast

13 reactions

Nick T pfp

fun fact: I went to high school in Cambridge UK, and whilst there, I broke into the University juggling club, where I pretended to be a student so that I could tag along to the meet-ups and juggle with others. funner fact: nearly everyone there was a mathematician or physicist, and today I discovered why:

4 replies

6 recasts

22 reactions