(2023-12-03) Azout My Favorite Questions

Sari Azout: My favorite questions (favorite problem). Most productivity advice is BS, and I say this as the founder of a “personal knowledge management tool” (sublime.app). The only productivity advice that matters is getting clarity on what matters to you. You just feel differently about the world when you know what you care about.

Here is an initial (still work in progress) attempt at defining the questions that bring me alive.

(1) How can we go from accumulating insights to embodying and integrating learnings?

learning, reading, and thinking are only the seeds of change. (Do Something)

(2) How can we build interfaces that reliably make us feel the way we want to feel – calm, connected, inspired?

the vibes on the web are off

What does the design space for software that combines the focus and intentionality of a personal tool with the sense of aliveness and serendipity of a communal space look like? What does a web designed for self-directed learning, deepening our understanding, and communal meaning-making look like?

(3) What comes after the algorithm, and how will we discover information?

Every idea that we have is downstream from what we consume. And so it follows that if we are forced to navigate a world where junk media gets amplified and is packaged in bite-sized delicacies that our brain finds irresistible, this has a tremendous impact on our psyche and how we relate to ourselves and the world.

(4) How can I better articulate and educate people on the benefits of having a Sublime library?

This practice of building a digital garden, a spark file, an idea library, a digital library – whatever we call it – has brought enormous benefits to my life. It’s the closest thing to giving others an API for my mind. It provides a record of my learning journey and helps me explore my values, beliefs, and identity. It helps me plant seeds for dots that will connect later. It’s a gift to my future self – giving me just-in-time inspiration. It helps me pay attention to what I pay attention to.

(5) How can we better align incentives between founders and funders, and enable more people to build enduring companies with patience, care, and preservation at the center?

(6) How can I maintain my creativity, optimism, intellectual vitality, and sense of agency in the face of the stress that comes from building a company and the endless forces luring towards conformity?

(7) How do we reconcile ambition and the desire to do great work with motherhood?

Great work needs solitude. It needs concentration. It needs time. And it is time that often feels incompatible with child rearing. The expectation to be ever present and the realities of care labor do compete with creative selfhood.