Top all-time · #270
Commoncog
Personal blog · commoncog.combusinesscareerproductivity
Commoncog is a personal blog at commoncog.com about business, career and productivity. Since 2018, 178 different Hacker News readers have linked it 429 times, most often “Goodhart’s law isn’t as useful as you might think (2023)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Cedric Chin's Commoncog blog for posts on career moats, tacit knowledge and cash-flow games, which comments call a great read and a nice overview.
- Recommended for · 12 comments
- Called useful, a great read, very interesting, a nice overview; one calls the author one of the smartest tech writers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Commoncog publishes ideas & business cases to help you get good at business faster. Read by 9k+ investors & execs each week.
Most-linked posts?
- Goodhart’s law isn’t as useful as you might think (2023)13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2023-01-11
- Why Tacit Knowledge Is More Important Than Deliberate Practice9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2022-09-26
- Games People Play with Cash Flow (2020)7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2022-12-30
- Mental Strength in Judo, Mental Strength in Life6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-05-03
- Becoming Data Driven, from First Principles5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-01-29
- How to Make Sense of AI5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2026-03-18
- Games people play with cash flow5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-12-09
- Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-06-09
- Are You Playing to Play, or Playing to Win?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-02-17
- Burnout4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-07-19
What Hacker News says?
It is absolutely not just marketing: https://commoncog.com/cash-flow-games/ Jump to "Pre-payments in the Restaurant Industry" Money now is more valuable than money later, and guaranteed future money is more valuable than no guaranteed future money.
Comment linking /cash-flow-games/
on “FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions”Submitted To get good, go after the metagame as a story · 726 points
HN discussion>when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation >It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, arti…
Comment linking /blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fails/
on “YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud”Submitted Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice as a story · 414 points
HN discussionI've heard about at least 4 theories of truth: Correspondence, Coherence, Consensus and Pragmatic (as described, for example, here https://commoncog.com/four-theories-of-truth/ ). If we look at Newtonian mechanics, then various independently verifiable experiments are examples of Correspondence truth, and the minimal mathematical framework that describes them is an example of Coherence truth.
Comment linking /four-theories-of-truth/
on “Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world”Submitted Games people play with cash flow as a story · 389 points
HN discussionhttps://commoncog.com/blog/ I write mostly about career moats. I wrote a post about the Metagame that was on HN's front page a few weeks ago. But the context in which that post exists is actually in the context of smart thinking in one's career. My hard rule with the blog is that I should (as much as possible) write only about things I can verify through practice. None of that 'it sounds insightful because it is nov…
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted So Good They Can't Ignore You as a story · 385 points
HN discussionHere's an update of the ideas found in Superforecasting https://commoncog.com/blog/how-the-superforecasters-do-it/
Comment linking /blog/how-the-superforecasters-do-it/
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?”Submitted Focus is saying no to good ideas as a story · 376 points
HN discussionhttps://commoncog.com/blog/ (by Cedric Chin)
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice as a story · 344 points
HN discussionThere's a great book called the Procrastination Equation that addresses this, and offers a different equation than Fogg. Motivation = (Expectancy + Value) / (Impulsiveness + Delay) It's useful to know what each of those terms means. Your motivation is for a specific task or goal. Expectancy is your confidence that you can complete a task or reach the goal. Value is the importance you assign to the goal. Impulsivenes…
Comment linking /blog/a-user-review-of-the-procrastination-equation/
on “How to stop procrastinating by using the Fogg Behavior Model”Submitted The Skill of Org Design as a story · 334 points
HN discussionI'm of the unpopular opinion that we conditioned ourselves to pedestalize speed of acquisition as the most important evidence that someone is talented. I see root comments bringing up how the person the article is talking about was anything but a beginner because he was practicing to the point of obsession at a younger age. Reading the post in isolation omits important details because it's hard to quantify how much…
Comment linking /the-tacit-knowledge-series/
on “There’s no speed limit (2009)”Submitted Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley as a story · 300 points
HN discussionThere's two valid, and opposing forces at play here: - Motivation is a precious resource. If you are more motivated to work in an Open Source software business, then this will prevent burnout. - You have to ask if you're playing to play, or playing to win [0]. If you're playing a game with self-imposed rules that exist only in your head, you put yourself at a huge disadvantage. [0] https://commoncog.com/playing-to-p…
Comment linking /playing-to-play-playing-to-win/
on “I turned my open-source project into a full-time business”Submitted ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well as a story · 290 points
HN discussion> When people are pressured to meet a target value there are three ways they can proceed: 1) They can work to improve the system 2) They can distort the system 3) Or they can distort the data https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/
Comment linking /goodharts-law-not-useful/
on “Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI”Submitted Games People Play with Cash Flow (2020) as a story · 279 points
HN discussionHere's is a useful categorization of nonfiction books into three kinds: narrative, tree, and branch. The "tree" books are the most enlightening and worth reading to have your perspective shifted and grown. https://commoncog.com/blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-book/
Comment linking /blog/the-3-kinds-of-non-fiction-book/
on “Ask HN: Are books worth it?”Submitted Pay attention to deviations from mainstream incentives as a story · 231 points
HN discussion> Monopolies lead to no competition, leading to reduced innovation, economic stagnation That sounds smart, but is it actually true? How many of the things enabling the existence of this website are inventions made in the research institute of the Bell Telecom company. On top of my head, there are transistors, C, Unix and a fair bit of cryptographical work. I'm sure others can add a lot more to the list. Hell, this w…
Comment linking /cash-flow-games/
on “The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome”Submitted What good cash-strapped hiring looks like as a story · 221 points
HN discussionCommoncog has some blog posts about the process: https://commoncog.com/putting-amazons-pr-faq-to-practice/ https://commoncog.com/product-development-iterated-taste/
Comment linking /product-development-iterated-taste/
on “Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy”Submitted Mental Model Fallacy (2018) as a story · 168 points
HN discussionA better way to read this is "80% of a not losing strategy". The author agrees with this but buries the lede at the very end of the piece: "Is this a fail-safe path? Of course not. Even in chess. The rest of the game does matter." I also think his framing is somewhat misleading, since the default mindset (Despite his hedging) is that you will win (Or have higher chances) if you don't blunder. The problem is that win…
Comment linking /highest-order-bit/
on “Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy”Submitted Be good to your mentors as a story · 157 points
HN discussionThis page helped me understand a bit about how I came to be burnt out. Hope it helps you too: https://commoncog.com/g/burnout
Comment linking /g/burnout
on “Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?”Submitted The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020) as a story · 150 points
HN discussion
