Author: Barnaby Robson

Part 4 of the 80/20 series. The most extreme imbalance sits inside your own head, and almost nobody uses it on purpose.

Part 3 of the 80/20 series. The same imbalance runs through a single life: a fifth of your time produces most of what you achieve and enjoy.

Data visuals on 10 years of HK’s MPF with narration from the great Bard.

AI’s effect on your job is still anyone’s guess. The practical response is getting good at directing it, and COPE gives you a framework for doing exactly that.

What tinkering with agents at home taught me about deploying them at work

An eyewateringly large dinner, a business class seat that doesn’t recline, and a NASA engineer who changed history with a nine-page memo. First impressions of America at forty-five.

The bottleneck used to be information overload. Now AI handles the mechanical work — and the real challenge is knowing what to pay attention to.

Perfect highways, better consumer products than the West, and a surveillance state that makes it all feel slightly too clean. Notes on a country that builds while others deliberate.

Ten days driving cross-country from Delhi to Udaipur. Traffic as a contact sport, English better than yours, and a country that oscillates between boundless energy and voluntary chaos.

Part 2 of the 80/20 series focusses on corporate success.

Part 1 of the 80/20 series. Why reality is unbalanced: a vital few causes produce most of the results.

AI’s cost base is beginning to shift. Gemini 3 and Anthropic’s move to TPUs show that state-of-the-art models no longer require Nvidia hardware.