Great ideas disappear when they work
Five fragments for the week of October 20, 2025
Hello from the start of a week with two day trips. So much is happening!
Here are five fragments that stuck with me last week…
All your tasks are not created equal. Doing great work doesn’t mean that you put in your best effort for every task Understand the difference between Leverage tasks, Neutral tasks, and Overhead tasks, and aim for a different degree of quality for each type of task:
L: Do a great job. Let your inner perfectionist shine.N: Do a strictly good job. No better.
O: Just get it done. Actively try to do a bad job.
– Shreyas Doshi on X, February 11, 2022. Words to live by. I’d never heard of the LNO framework, but this post pointed me thataway.
Bicycles sit surprisingly late in the tech tree, mostly because they demand tight metallurgical tolerances.
– Henry Shevlin on X, October 17, 2025. And tight metallurgical tolerances they shall get.
Great ideas disappear when they work.
When did you last notice:
1. Pull to refresh
2. Infinite scroll
3. Double-tap to like
4. @-mention
5. Tab to complete
6. / to build
7. ⌘-K palette
8. Swipe left / right
9. Typing indicator “…”
10. Autoplay
– Frank Costa on X, October 15, 2025. Not in quite some time.
it seems like it’s often the case that when I’m Failing it’s because I’m emotionally stuck, logjammed, trapped, unwilling or unable to really see. when I do manage to see, I pretty much always find that I already know what I should’ve been doing. Often I already even tweeted it
– Visakan Veerasamy on X, October 16, 2025. Capital-f “Failing” does a lot of the work here.
Picture is gorgeous and insanely clear. We sat in the 200s and had a perfect view - got an apple. Monkeys flying were weird bc one flew into/towards the lion so didn’t look realistic. Merch way overpriced (shocker) and not that great - they literally have Halloween costumes. Other than that, it still made me emotional and feel like a kid again.
– Reddit user on the thread “Impressions of the Sphere Wizard of Oz show from people who have seen it?,” August 30, 2025. I’m heading to Vegas twice in the not-too-distant future and may see Wizard of Oz at the Sphere twice, too, so decided to start reading up on it. This comment felt like a perfect encapsulation of internet culture: complaints and childlike joy.
Until next time,
Diana
https://dianaberlin.com