The Cobra Effect: Why Your Best Metric Might Be Breeding Snakes
Every incentive creates a game. The Cobra Effect is what happens when it's not the game you wanted—and why your best-looking metric might be the one breeding snakes.
Latest
The IKEA Effect: Why Users Love the Ugly Thing They Made
People value what they build far beyond its objective worth. The best products don't just get used — they get built on. Here's how to design for it.
The Empty Cup: Why You Can't Learn With a Full One
A distinguished professor watched a Zen master pour tea until it spilled across the floor. The lesson still lands: you can't fill a cup that's already full.
Hedonic Stockholm Syndrome: Why Users Cling to Products They Hate
People don't stay in bad situations because they can't see better options. They stay because their brain protects the known from the threat of the unknown.
Conway's Law: Why Your App Feels Like Three Different Companies
The seams in your product are copies of the seams in your org chart. That's not a metaphor — it's Conway's Law, and it predicts what your app feels like to use.
3 Stories to Read When You Have to Choose
Three old stories about choosing well: the crossroads, the strawberry on the cliff, and the woman carried across the mud. What they teach about the moment of decision.
Mental Models for Product Managers: 12 That Actually Change Decisions
Most product decisions go wrong for reasons that already have names. Here are 12 mental models — what each one is, a concrete product example, and when it quietly lies to you.
Charm Pricing: Why the Last Digit Is Positioning, Not Math
Everyone knows the $9.99 trick. Everyone still falls for it. Here's why the last digit of your price is a positioning decision, not a math one.
3 Wisdom Stories for When You Feel Stuck
Being stuck and going nowhere are not the same thing. Three old stories about the difference — and what to do when you can't see your own progress.
Jobs To Be Done: Why Nobody Actually Wants Your Product
A fast-food chain couldn't sell more milkshakes—until they stopped studying the milkshake and started watching who bought it, and when. That's Jobs to Be Done.
The Decoy Effect: The Option That Exists to Lose
The medium popcorn was never meant to sell. It was meant to sell the large. Meet the decoy effect—and why it lives on your pricing page.
3 Stories to Read When You're Tempted
Temptation rarely shows up as a villain. It shows up as a reasonable-sounding voice. Three old stories for the moment you're about to give in.
zen stories
9 Short Zen Stories About Letting Go (and What They Teach)
Direct advice about letting go bounces right off. A story slips past the guard and stays. Here are nine of the best — on control, grudges, outcomes, and certainty.
anchoring
Anchoring: The First Number Always Wins
A real estate agent shows you an $800,000 house you don't love. The next one is $650,000, and suddenly it's a steal. You're not judging the house. You're judging the first number that entered your head.
words
The Cracked Pot: A Story About the Flaws You Carry
Some of the things you carry are cracked. An old Indian folk tale about the leak you keep apologizing for — and the flowers growing on the trail behind you.
Product Theory
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why Your Users Stay (and Why That Should Scare You)
Past investment shouldn't influence future decisions, but it always does. How the sunk cost fallacy retains your users — and why the retention it buys you might be a prison, not a product.
Product Theory
Product Theory: The Complete Table of Contents
Every chapter in Product Theory — the mental models behind how users price, choose, stay, and churn. Read the free essays or get the book.
words
3 Stories to Read When Everything Goes Wrong
Three old stories for the days the floor drops out from under you — and why the smartest response to disaster might be four small words.
survivorship-bias
Survivorship Bias: Why the Best Startup Advice Comes From the Dead
The military wanted to armor the bullet holes. A statistician told them to armor everywhere else. The same mistake is quietly wrecking your product decisions.
pricing psychology
Pricing Psychology: 7 Rules That Actually Change What People Buy
Price isn't a number. It's a story people tell themselves about what something is worth. Here are seven rules — anchoring, decoys, charm pricing, mental accounting — that quietly decide what people buy.
Product Theory
The Utility Paradox: Why We Scrutinize Tools and Splurge on Treats
The more useful something is, the harder we scrutinize its price. Why we under-invest in essentials, over-invest in indulgences, and how great products flip the switch.
goodharts-law
Goodhart's Law: Why the Metric You Target Stops Working
Set a target, and your team will hit it — often without touching the thing you actually care about. Goodhart's Law explains why every metric you optimize eventually lies to you.
Product Theory
Metric Theater: When Your Dashboard Lies to Everyone at Once
DAU up. Churn down. Everyone nods. Meanwhile a user is quietly switching to a competitor. That gap has a name — Metric Theater — and it's killing your product.