Andrew Conner

I'll be writing over here for a while, on expanding ideas from Christopher Alexander into experience.

At some point perhaps fifteen years ago, I got bit by the self-development bug.

Ari Nielson and I talked about something that's been bugging me for a while: why is the perception of transformation so misleading?

"Thanks for your help, appreciate it", I typed into ChatGPT earlier today.

Last fall, my dog died.

What if I told you that unhappiness was optional: that no matter your circumstances, you could choose to be happy?

A familiar arc plays out again and again across the internet: An underserved market need emerges, often due to the complacency of entrenched players or innovation that opens new possibilities.

I want to let you in on a little secret: one of the best ways to improve your life is to try a bunch of things that probably won't work.

There's an ancient tradition when talking about efficient markets to bring up stories of $20 bills that lay on the ground, and economists who don't pick them up because, in an efficient market, money wouldn't be on the ground.

Visakan Veerasamy has a great catchphrase: joke about outcomes you want. the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags

This feels braggy, but I stopped having negative self-talk several years ago.

In John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis lecture series, he models four ways of knowing: participatory, perspectival, procedural, and propositional.

Mustaches are cool because they show "proof of work".

There's a cool pattern common in many people I respect most: doing a thing, but without the normal incentives of the thing.

In July 2026, I added a small addendum at the bottom, reflecting a bit more about the experience.

My last company is adjacent to the wellness industry — helping people fix very real health issues.

I'm a bit of an interventionist: I enjoy tweaking systems, experimenting, n=1, and so on.

Earlier this year, I designed and built a cold plunge.

Sometimes we talk about things that are hard to talk about.

There's a conversational move that I discovered recently: when explaining a perspective with examples, use the worst-yet-still-good example.