In the brain dumps I try to clear my head of everything I’ve experienced, read, and learned in a month. Primarily as a journal for myself — but maybe useful to you, too.
Learnings
Fifty.
On June 14th, I turned 50. I expected this to mess with my head more than it did. It didn’t. What surprised me: the number doesn’t matter. What does matter — and what I felt more clearly that day than usual — is the question of what you spend your time on. Not more things. Better things. And the right people.
Systems beat effort.
This month I built my „Second Brain“ — a structured knowledge base where everything I learn, decide, or find worth keeping lands. The key insight: it’s not discipline that makes the difference. It’s the system. Anyone relying on willpower will eventually lose to anyone with a good process. This applies to knowledge management just as much as it does to running. Or to the dog. I’ve written about this before.
Three sentences. Then silence.
The most useful negotiation framework I encountered this month fits on a napkin. State your need in one sentence. State your offer in one sentence. State the consequence in one sentence. Then: shut up. Whoever speaks first, loses. Allegedly passed down from Icelandic fishermen. Believable enough to try. Though you need to identify the right situation and not be too rigid about it.
Boring makes you rich.
This month I talked openly to my family about money — specific, with real numbers, no sugarcoating. The insight that surprised everyone: the most boring financial decisions are almost always the best ones. Diversify broadly. Start early. Keep costs low. Don’t constantly reshuffle. No hype. Especially not with money.
Links
- Andrej Karpathy — How I use LLMs · Karpathy is one of the people I listen to on AI without reservation. No hype, no pitch — just honest insights into a productive workflow with language models. Required viewing for anyone who actually wants to use AI rather than just talk about it. → YouTube
- Werner Vogels — The Renaissance Developer · Amazon’s CTO at AWS re:Invent 2025 on a new type of developer: someone who understands AI as a tool and can build things alone that used to require entire teams. Particularly interesting: his concept of „Verification Debt“ — if you don’t understand the AI-generated output you’re shipping, you’re quietly piling up debt. → AWS re:Invent 2025
- AI Manifesto — Ronan Berder · Short, direct, worth reading. What AI can do, what it can’t, and why the distinction matters. → ronanberder.com
Quote
„Words after the first three are weakness.“
— Icelandic fish trader proverb (allegedly)
What are the brain dumps? Monthly entries where I empty my head — learnings, links, quotes. Started in 2015, back now. If you were here back then: good to see you’re still around.