Psychology & Self-Improvement

Communication & influence — the through-line#

The tag’s biggest genuine thread, and the skill you keep re-saving on your way from ops work to architect conversations.

• Wes Kao: become a better communicator — specific frameworks for clarity, influence, and impact — and her follow-up you saved later: “I’m an introvert. This is how I get myself to speak up”.
• The reason most people are terrible communicators — “giving exactly the context someone needs to take the next step. Not more. Not less.”
• How to be direct and strategic (“don’t confuse being direct with being unfiltered”) · lowering your anxiety to speaking up and sharing ideas.
• Seroter’s favorite books about persuasive communication — “the most important skill you can develop right now.”
• The HBR classics: “The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why” (1995) · what great listeners actually do · a simple way to introduce yourself — that last one saved twice, months apart.
• Jason Liu: effective communication in AI engineering — stop with vague “improvements”; quantify, highlight trade-offs. Directly usable in your agentic-AI write-ups.
• How 37signals communicates · phrases that make you sound passive-aggressive · Byrne Hobart: writing is networking for introverts.
• How to think clearly — to improve understanding and communication.

Public speaking & storytelling#

A decade-deep sub-collection: Carmine Gallo alone shows up a dozen times, and the storytelling thread bleeds into your data-viz and DevRel saves.

• The mindset shift Gallo teaches at Harvard for captivating presentations · what the best presenters do differently · nervous about public speaking? Use notes like a pro.
• Steve Jobs’ storytelling framework — the 2007 iPhone launch, decomposed · MasterClass: how to tell a story effectively · the neuroscience of storytelling.
• Dylan Field (Figma CEO) giving a masterclass in learned public speaking — proof it’s honed, not innate. Same message as a cloud engineer’s “from nerves to confidence” journey — the closest save to your own path.
• HashiCorp: want to be a developer advocate? Start with public speaking.
• technical writing as storytelling — “the most effective people I’ve met in this industry are great storytellers.”
• Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel speech on storytelling and tenderness — the literary outlier on this shelf.

Mindset & failing better#

The growth-mindset canon, re-saved as recently as March 2026 in a single “day 2: learn how to fail better” study-sprint.

• The 2026 cluster: Carol Dweck’s TED talk · Angela Duckworth on grit · the Mindset book · Fishbach’s “You Think Failure Is Hard? So Is Learning From It”.
• Farnam Street’s Dweck summary — the evergreen version you saved back in 2020.
• Ness Labs: fail like a scientist · fear-setting — Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a recurring guest here.
• Kaizen: continuous 1% improvement · why people lose motivation — “exploring, experimenting, learning: this is the way we’re supposed to live and work”.
• “Confidence is a prediction that things will work out. Fear is the belief that they won’t.” · Stanford GSB: humility and confidence are complements, not opposites.
• Applied to the career: probabilistic software demands a mindset shift — design experiments, not features · is your mindset about generative AI limiting your professional growth? · the leap to leader is a new mindset, not new skills.
• an incredibly simple guide to Stoicism · growth-mindset posters for the wall.

Thinking clearly — mental models & the outsourced brain#

The Munger-and-Farnam-Street shelf, plus a sharp new 2025–2026 thread worrying about what LLMs do to thinking.

• Farnam Street’s mental models list — your entry into the rabbit hole — with The Great Mental Models books and Munger: adding mental models to your toolbox.
• Munger’s “Psychology of Human Misjudgment” speech — “probably the best thing to read when you’re starting to invest.”
• Cialdini’s Influence · Morgan Housel’s “The Psychology of Money” — saved as a blog post in 2018, years before it was a book.
• 10 mental models for learning anything · computational philosophy — the underpinnings most CS people skip.
• The AI-era anxiety thread: critical thinking as the ceiling of understanding · “metacognitive laziness”: generative AI’s effect on learning motivation · Rachel Thomas on “dark flow” — the psychology of vibe coding.
• Henrik Karlsson’s “Looking for Alice” — your note: “Once in a while you read something that rewires your brain and completely blows you away… had to pause several times.”
• If you work with your brain, how do you create something of enduring value?

Anxiety, stress & staying sane in tech#

The most personal section — heavy on practical protocols, and increasingly about engineering-specific mental health.

• how anxiety traps us (catastrophizing, mind reading, overgeneralizing) and how to break free · an anxious person’s guide to managing anxiety · the 3-3-3 rule.
• Stanford’s cyclic sighing trial — five minutes that outperformed mindfulness meditation, plus the Huberman clip version.
• the math-anxiety systematic review — “forget breathing exercises; confidence follows competence.” Arguably the most transferable line in the whole tag.
• From the trenches: Burke Holland on living with crippling anxiety as a developer · how low self-esteem and hyperfocus drove Takuya to burnout · mental health in software engineering · finishing a PhD with bipolar disorder — strength in perceived weakness.
• “brain fry”: the acute mental fatigue of intensive AI oversight — distinct from burnout, and very 2026.
• burnout is not about too much work — it’s about too little meaning · the biology of social anxiety · calming your brain during conflict.
• The wiser frame: a psychiatrist on how chasing happiness leads to misery · fight existential dread by embracing the ridiculous · Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals — your lifespan is finite, plan accordingly.

Brain, rest & attention#

Where the neuroscience listicles earn their keep: sleep, meditation, and single-tasking as infrastructure.

• the power of single-tasking — your brain cannot run two cognitive tasks at once · stop overloading the wrong part of your brain at work.
• the Yoga Nidra staple — “done 1–7X per week since 2017,” says the note — alongside meditation tips for a lifetime of practice · Rob Burbea’s jhana retreat lectures · the mindfulness alternative for people sick of meditation.
• Tim Ferriss’s mental health routines and tools · reduce your stress in two minutes a day · Yale’s Science of Well-Being.
• Hypnagogia — the half-asleep state where Kekulé found his ring; why repetition enchants the brain in music; the neuroscience of everyday rituals — why you always use the same coffee mug.
• MIT: reading code is neither language nor math — it seems to be its own thing — the study you want to cite in every “learn to code” argument.
• the faster your brain moves, the more time off you need · the psychology of automation — a bulletproof personal-finance system · and the thread’s origin story, how to take the perfect nap (2013) — the oldest save in the tag.

All links on this topic#