Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from Left To Write
Why you’re getting this: I’m Jason Nguyen. I run Bloomstory.co.uk and The Mailroom. This is my newsletter. I used to write this every week, but now I send this out when I can — life got in the way. Updates on what’s been going on in my life are at the bottom of this newsletter.
A brief update of the last months
This will be the last issue of Writemas ‘23. It’s been tough juggling this, Bloomstory and other projects, but it’s been a lot of fun producing these short emails. As we enter the last week of the year, I’m trying to let the dust of 2023 settle so that I can regain
There’s a quote by Jorge Luis Borges I came across that I think about a lot. It goes like this: “I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
More in life
In the end, judgment comes first. And that means hiring is a gut decision. As much science as people want to try to pour into the hiring process, art always floats to the top. This is especially true when hiring at the executive level. The people who make the final calls — the ones who are judged on outcome, not effort — are ultimately hired based on experience and judgement. Two traits that are qualities, not quantities. They are tasked with setting direction, evaluating situations, and making decisions with limited information. All day long they are making judgment calls. That's what you hire them to do, and that's how you decide who to hire. Presented with a few finalists, you decide who you *think* will do a better job when they have to *think* about what to do in uncertain situations. This is where their experience and judgment come in. It's the only thing they have that separates them from someone else. Embrace the situation. You don't know, they don't know, everyone's guessing, some guess better than others. You can't measure how well someone's going to guess next time, you can only make assumptions based on other assumptions. Certainty is a mirage. In the art of people, everything is subjective. In the end, it's not about qualifications — it's about who you trust to make the right call when it matters most. Ultimately, the only thing that was objective was your decision. The reasons were not. -Jason
Or why we need less math in music theory
On Milei, Musk, and Trump
