attention & work

the multi-organization problem

Ten years of short posts were circling one object: a person who belongs to many organizations at once, with tools that assume one and methods that assume a task. Here is the theory in one place, what three fields and forty years of software actually know about it, whether anyone has solved it, and what a solution needs.

Count your organizations. Not your jobs. Your organizations: every group with its own state that you owe something to. An employer. Each customer, if you have customers. A household. The side project with one member. The volunteer thing. The body, which has appointments and a vocabulary and a backlog like everything else.

2026-09-27 · 19 min · read the essay →

N > 1
the threads · 4 obsessions
01attention & work

the multi-organization problem

Ten years of short posts were circling one object: a person who belongs to many organizations at once, with tools that assume one and methods that assume a task. Here is the theory in one place, what three fields and forty years of software actually know about it, whether anyone has solved it, and what a solution needs.

2026-09-27 · 19 min · read →

also: the room that forgot what it was for · eleven minutes and four seconds · a root to stand on

02craft & play

three games to sell one

Entry three of three in “the dimension problem.” Part one builds the vocabulary; part two runs it against the remake business. This one spends all …

2026-09-24 · 8 min · read →

also: the unremade · the dimension is the genre · the strong start on sunday

03containment

run the full test suite

Published as an experiment. A research program ran on this question for two weeks and then got told to stop and hand over what it had. This is the article …

2026-09-14 · 7 min · read →

also: Where the Sandbox Ends · the sandbox and the wall · the right to pull the plug

04the machine economy

The Convergence Tax

When competitors independently arrive at the same abstractions, the abstraction is telling you something about the territory — not the map.

2026-07-24 · 5 min · read →

also: The Gigawatt Problem