How My Brain Works

Or at least, my best attempt at documenting it.

The Problem-Solving Loop

I think in systems. When I encounter a problem, my first instinct isn't to solve it directly—it's to understand the shape of it. What are the inputs? What are the constraints? Where are the feedback loops hiding?

This sometimes makes me slow to start, but it means I rarely solve the wrong problem. The real issue is usually one or two layers beneath the surface. A bug isn't just a bug; it's a symptom of a structural assumption that no longer holds.

My process: zoom out until the problem looks obvious, then zoom back in with a plan. The hard part is knowing when to stop zooming.

Things I've Built

I've spent time building tools that didn't exist when I needed them. The most significant was a personal finance system—not an app, but a framework for thinking about money flows. It tracks the relationships between accounts, projects spending patterns, and surfaces the questions I should be asking but wasn't.

Most personal finance tools show you what happened. I wanted something that helped me understand what's happening—the dynamics, not just the data points.

Building it taught me that the best tools don't add features; they remove confusion.

Current Work

I work at a tech startup where I think about how systems scale and how they break. The role sits somewhere between engineering and product—understanding what we're building, why it matters, and where the complexity is hiding.

Startups are interesting because the systems are still small enough to hold in your head, but growing fast enough that they won't stay that way. You're always building the bridge while walking across it.

What I'm Thinking About

Lately: the difference between complicated and complex systems. Complicated systems have many parts but are ultimately predictable—you can take them apart and put them back together. Complex systems are different. They have emergent properties that can't be reduced to their components.

Most interesting problems are complex, but we keep trying to solve them with complicated solutions. I'm interested in approaches that work with complexity instead of against it.

Also: optimism as a strategy, not just a disposition. The value of being wrong in interesting ways. Why good ideas spread slower than bad ones.