📚 Founder leap, How to title, Humans as luxury goods, 3 Modes to manage attention, Safe system approach

3 Categories of problems, HDR, The way of code & more

Hello, this is post #213.

We’re settling in well at the new place. School starts today, which means a new routine for everyone. Our younger one begins 1st grade this year, so the morning chaos is about to get real! If you have any tips to make life easier for the kids—or for us parents—I’m all ears.

This week flew by, but I still remember a few highlights: playing some new games (job perks!), restarting my podcast routine (helped by the longer commute), and grabbing a little me-time in my reading nook. I came across some great reads this week, and a few made it into today’s curation. Here’s a quick look:

We’ve a lot to cover today, let’s get started.

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😰 Preparing for Founder Leap

Starting up sounds exciting—the rush of solving a problem, building something new, making lives better, and creating value. We hear a lot about those parts in every founder’s story. But what’s often left out is the emotional toll it takes—the quiet, persistent struggle to keep going.

First Round Review brought in psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt to share some timely and useful advice for founders on how to build an emotional toolkit for the journey.

The founder journey isn't just about managing long hours and a heavy workload. It's about navigating profound identity shifts, handling persistent loneliness and learning to lead through failure. The “building the plane while flying it” metaphor gets tossed around frequently. But I don’t think it quite captures the fact that you're also building yourself as a founder while you're doing it. You're simultaneously constructing the plane, learning to fly and getting your pilot's license in mid-air.

I found this piece highly actionable. Many of the ideas resonate deeply, especially having seen them help people around me in the early stages of their own journeys. Here are a few highlights:

🏁 Before you start building:

- Practice rejection therapy. Every day, ask for something you probably won’t get. Build up emotional calluses to hearing the word no, because as a founder, you’re going to hear it a lot.

- Focus on micro-wins. Too many founders wait until they feel completely ready — a moment that never comes. Confidence comes from action. Try building an MVP in a weekend or asking industry experts to give you feedback on your idea.

⛰️ When you’re in the thick of it:

- Maintain your hobbies outside of work to remind yourself that you are more than just the company.

- Build your circles of trust. Different relationships will serve different needs (like a therapist for processing personal fears, mentors for strategic guidance and friends outside of tech for perspective). Each relationship serves a purpose and together they create a complete support system.

I strongly recommend this read to founders, aspiring founders, or anyone working in early-stage companies. The emotional challenges are real—and too often overlooked.

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📰 How to Title

I’ve always struggled with writing titles for my posts. In the early days, I’d use the most memorable idea or quote from the post, thinking even if someone didn’t open the email, they’d still get a small takeaway. Noble intent—but it made the titling process pretty limiting.

Later, I switched to listing key ideas in the title, a style I noticed many newsletters use. It gave me more freedom, but brought a new challenge: with no clear structure, the quality of titles became hard to control.

Over the last few months, I’ve tried to keep titles shorter. I read somewhere that long titles hurt delivery and open rates (not sure how true that is), but for me, shortening them became a way to force myself to choose only the best ideas—the ones that connect instantly.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Somewhere along the way, I came across Dynomight’s post, “How to title your blog post or whatever.” It’s quirky, interesting, and genuinely useful. A couple of snippets from the post:

4. Say you write a post about concrete. Should you call it, “My favorite concrete pozzolanic admixtures”, even though 99.9% of people have no idea what pozzolanic means? Well, think of the people who’d actually like your thing. Do they know? If so, use “pozzolanic”. That gives a strong signal to Concrete People: “Hey! This is for you! And you know I’m not lying about that, because I’ve driven away all the noobs.”

14. A difficult case is things that create new “labels”. Sometimes there’s an idea floating around, and we need someone to make a canonical thing with a Name. To serve that role, the thing’s title needs to be that name. This presents a trade-off. A post titled “The Waluigi Effect” is great for people who want to know what that is, but terrible for everyone else.

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🤓 Humans as ‘Luxury Goods’

If you only have time for one read today, make it Sangeet Paul Choudary’s “Humans as 'luxury goods' in the age of AI.” This one stands out. Here’s a quick look at the core idea:

Sommeliers emerged as luxury goods in a world where the product (wine) was getting commoditized, and curation was the new differentiator. That’s exactly where jobs are headed.

What the sommeliers figured out, before the rest of us eventually do, is that value is not in giving people more information. It’s in giving them confidence in a moment of uncertainty, making them feel like connoisseurs even if this is the first sip they’ve ever had.

He uses the interplay of curiosity, knowledge, curation & judgement to make his case. Here’s a quick primer:

This piece is a masterclass in clear, thoughtful storytelling that keeps you hooked and thinking. His examples are sharp and memorable. I’m bookmarking it for a re-read — some essays are worth coming back to again and again.

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Founding Fuel is one newsletter I try not to miss. It covers a wide range of current topics and often includes a gem or two from books and experts. The second part, especially, stands out for how well it surfaces ideas that go beyond what's trending.

Their opening section is always a strong start. In just 3–4 short paragraphs, they capture the core idea with clarity and punch. Below, I’ve highlighted two gems from recent editions. I’m only touching on the core ideas here, but I highly recommend checking out the original posts to enjoy their signature introduction and outstanding curation.

🔥 Three Categories of Problems

As featured in FF Insights #1380

In Getting to Maybe, Frances Westley, J.W. McConnell professor of social innovation at the University of Waterloo, Canada, argues that there are three categories of problems that we need to be aware of: simple, complicated and complex. She uses three powerful metaphors to explain them—baking a cake, sending a rocket to the moon, and parenting.

Some tasks are as simple as they look. Complicated ones need experts but can still be tackled with a fair degree of certainty. Complex tasks, though, don’t follow fixed rules—they’re the hardest to master. And this is where the parenting example lands perfectly. It’s a clincher. I couldn’t think of a better way to explain it.

🔥 Three Modes to Manage Attention

As featured in FF Insights #1378

In The Art of Bitfulness, Nandan Nilekani and Tanuj Bhojwani suggest we create distinct digital environments or "modes" based on the type of attention needed for a task: Create, Curate and Communicate.

It’s easy to guess what these terms mean, but the explanation offers sharp guidance on how to navigate them—especially when you’re constantly flooded with information. They further elaborate:

There is no hierarchy between the three modes. The deliberate boundaries between these modes help us create thoughtful information environments that support us in what we’re trying to do. For a balanced life, you will probably be spending time in each mode.

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🚸 Safe System Approach

If you're into urban or traffic planning, Abi Olvera’s essay “Traffic fatalities are a choice” is a must-read. It dives into the “Safe System” approach—a framework that’s helped cities around the world reduce traffic deaths.

The core idea? People make mistakes. So roads should be designed to keep those mistakes from turning deadly. As Abi puts it:

At its core, the Safe System approach acknowledges that human error while driving is inevitable. Thus, road designers and urban planners should engineer environments to guide safer behaviors. Smart design ensures that when human error happens, it does not lead to severe crashes by, for example, physically separating pedestrians from high speed car traffic, and by designing roads that don’t facilitate high speeds.

Her examples show how simple, thoughtful design changes—not big budgets or sweeping reforms—can lead to real improvements in safety. It's a powerful case for rethinking how we build our public spaces.

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📷 HDR Explained

If you’ve recently bought a TV or are into photography, you’ve probably heard of HDR. I had too—but it never occurred to me that the two HDRs might not mean the same thing. I never stopped to ask: What is HDR, anyway?

This blog post by the Halide App team is a great primer. The two HDRs aren’t exactly the same, but they’re somewhat connected.

The post is packed with visual examples (of course) and makes for a fun read. It’s good to get a little nerdy sometimes!

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✨ Everything else

1. Rick Rubin’s The Way of Code is a beautiful attempt to capture the wisdom of the world in poetic nuggets. A companion for the days when you want to meditate on the ways of life!

2. Great curation of Social Proof Examples from various sites. They have done a great job creating different classifications - helps think of social proof in more nuanced ways.

3. Why I am not going to buy a computer by Wendell Berry. A post, some sharp comments, a rebuttal, and more—straight from the pre-Twitter era. Check out the arguments and counterarguments. Those were the days of logic and healthy debate!

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ICYMI…

Here’s a quick link to last week’s post:

📚 Princess saving app, Types of luck, Unified theory of deliciousness, Congestion tax, Consensus of the Conclave

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That's all for this week, folks!

I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.

If this piece sparked something for you, I’d love to hear what stood out—leave a comment and let’s keep the conversation alive. And if you know someone who’s always asking "why?" or "how come?", pass this along to them. The world gets more interesting every time a curious mind shares what they’ve found.

Pritesh