Not a canon — a fingerprint. Systems, decisions, operations, chess, emergence, and a little tea. The annotations are why each one’s here.
Papers
Industrial Dynamics: A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers
1958
Where system dynamics began. Everything I believe about feedback loops traces here.
The Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains
1997
I watch this happen from inside a warehouse. The paper that explains my day job.
Ironies of Automation
1983
The more you automate, the more the human matters. I build automation for a living — this one keeps me honest.
A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice
1955
Bounded rationality. People satisfice — systems should be designed for the people we are.
Perception in Chess
1973
Why masters see the board differently. I’m studying my own games trying to catch this happening.
2020
Maia — engines that predict human moves instead of best moves. Chess as a lab for human-AI interaction.
2023
25 LLM agents in a sim town spontaneously threw a party. Emergence is having a moment.
Books
Thinking in Systems
The book I hand people when they ask what ‘systems thinking’ means.
Business Dynamics
The system dynamics bible. The class that rewired how I see organizations traces to this.
The Goal
Operations as a novel. I think about constraints and bottlenecks every working day — this is why.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Still the foundation under everything I read about decisions.
Sources of Power
How people actually decide under pressure — the field-study counterweight to Kahneman’s lab.
Micromotives and Macrobehavior
Small individual choices, huge collective consequences. Emergence before it had a hashtag.
Shoe Dog
A Portland operator story. Building something real is mostly chaos held together by stubbornness.
The Mom Test
How to talk to customers without them lying to you. Re-reading as I interview other small wholesalers.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
For the founder ambition. No recipes, just scar tissue.
The Lessons of History
A hundred pages distilling civilizations. I’m fascinated by how decisions compound across centuries.
The Book of Tea
I work at a tea company. This one’s required — and it turned out to be a philosophy book in disguise.