Jeremy Duffy, journal

Your toaster may well be smarter than you

2026-10-12T12:00:00Z

A depressing, highly amusing or super satisfying (if you like your bread impeccably toasted to the cellar golden level) thought is that your toaster may well be smarter than you in a couple of years as local ai models become way more efficient.

Good ideas enter almost astrally

2026-09-12T12:00:00Z

When you work incredibly hard, good ideas enter almost astrally

I don’t think you can go looking for them. They never turn up when you’re sat waiting, it’s always in the middle of the graft when your head is somewhere else.

You just have to put the hours in and be ready when they land.

Two bits of advice

2026-09-08T12:00:00Z

Not a huge fan of advice giving but here are two main ones

Stop moaning
Don’t cancel meetings last minute

Anyone serious won’t take you seriously

This is not a moan about moaning 😂

Reality becoming legible to itself

2026-08-24T12:00:00Z

A re-occurring thought for the last few years, particularly as silicone thinking develops…

Maybe reality already contains the possibility of every truth, discovery and arrangement of matter it allows, and intelligence is how those possibilities are uncovered. Intelligence isn’t outside reality examining it; it is something reality itself produced. In that sense, reality is using intelligence to discover its own possibilities, reality becoming legible to itself.

Maximum valuable product

2026-06-15T12:00:00Z

Are things that are standard true, is the old way true?

The way i work is deep scope creep, I can’t help myself. The ideas and connections and pattern recognition are just too strong to not just get it done. I work incredibly quick and I can work across 10 or so different concepts and features at the same time and they all connect together.

Everyone always talks about minimum viable product, which of course once your speaking with customers I’m sure is still the correct move. But I just dont really see how proper innovation happens without deep complexity being whittled down to simplicity.

Finding simple is incredibly hard and imo needs insane amounts of complexity, figuring out the pathway. When you build with complexity you figure out the pathways quicker. If you are building brick by brick at a slow pace, I dont see where the moments of genius come from.

Computing 10 ideas at once

2026-03-09T12:00:00Z

I don’t think I’ve exercised my mind as much as I have the last 6 months. Feels incredible.

but the fast pace type of work where I’m computing 10 or so different ideas simultaneously, is a different way of working, it definitely affects slow input / outputs such as conversations 🤣

Flow state building product is the same type of synapse connections as making music and that affected my ability for conversations too 🤣

Inner peace

2025-11-24T12:00:00Z

Inner Peace = (Effort - Need for Recognition) + Acceptance - (Status-Chasing within Society’s Hierarchy)

Work hard because you want to, not so people clap. Accept what you can’t change. Stop trying to climb a ladder someone else built.

Easier written as an equation than done 😂

Difficulty of suffering fools

2025-11-19T12:00:00Z

Difficulty of Suffering Fools = (Life Experience × Time Value) ÷ (Patience Threshold + Remaining Emotional Reserves)

The older you get the more you know what your time is worth, and the less of it you want to spend on nonsense.

The trick is keeping the bottom half topped up, otherwise everyone starts looking like a fool.

MBA

2025-11-03T12:00:00Z

Has anyone coined MBA (maximum brain activity) - if not, I am.

It’s that state where everything is firing at once and ideas link up faster than you can write them down. Doesn’t last long, but when it hits you get more done in an hour than in a week.

It took mba to come up with that

There isn't a word for it

2025-10-06T12:00:00Z

There isn’t a word to describe the subconscious knowing that you’ve hit the spot on creative output.

You just know. Before anyone else has seen it, before you can even explain why it works, something in you goes yep, that’s it.

Artists, chefs, DJs and coders all get it and none of us can name it.

This is sad

Entitlement reduction mode

2025-09-15T12:00:00Z

One of life’s most honourable quests is to embrace entitlement reduction mode through a relentless sense of curiosity, lifting the self-awareness veil of ignorance.

The less you think you’re owed, the more grateful you are for what turns up.

Curiosity is the best way in, because it’s hard to feel entitled when you’re busy realising how much you don’t know.

Was AI already there?

2025-08-20T12:00:00Z

Pondering whether information is infinite, and whether AI was already there waiting to be discovered rather than humans creating it 🤔

Maths feels like that too. Nobody invented it, we just keep finding more of it.

Maybe intelligence works the same way and we’ve just built a better torch to look with.

Certainty

2025-08-18T12:00:00Z

One thing i’ve really tuned into over the last few years is that people who talk with such certainty are idiots.

The smartest people I’ve met are the ones who say “I think” or “I might be wrong” and actually mean it. The louder the certainty, the less they’ve usually looked into it.

I am certain of this.

Intelligence having a limit

2025-08-15T12:00:00Z

Kinda sad to think about intelligence having a limit because of information. I’m gonna choose to believe it doesn’t, in a mystical fashion. Read this below recently.

Intelligence is the efficiency with which you operationalise past information in order to deal with the future.

You can interpret it as a conversion ratio, and this ratio can be formally expressed using algorithmic information theory.

A consequence of intelligence being a conversion ratio is that it is bounded. You cannot do better than optimality, perfect conversion of the information you have available into the ability to deal with future situations.

You often hear people talk about how future AI will be omnipotent since it will have “an IQ of 10,000” or something like that, or about how machine intelligence could increase exponentially. This makes no sense. If you are very intelligent, then your bottleneck quickly becomes the speed at which you can collect new information, rather than your intelligence.

In fact, most scientific fields today are not bounded by the limits of human intelligence but by experimentation.

François Chollet

Tangly

2025-07-30T12:00:00Z

Worked out I’ve probably spent about 79 work days (8 hours) untangling cables. The thing is, untangling gives you some time to let ideas float in, untangling the subconscious, though granted, it’s mainly about inventing the untangler, and how much time is wasted on tangles, but as one gets older and wiser, having moments to untangle, can untangle the mind of tangled perceptions, realising that untangling tangled cables it not a waste of time, but a time to reflect at being at peace with time untangling.

Tangly!

Resilience

2025-07-25T12:00:00Z

Resilience = (Optimism + Gratitude + Learning) / (Pain + Misery)

The top half you can work on every day. The bottom half turns up whether you like it or not.

So the only real move is to keep making the top bigger.

Output vol.27

2025-07-18T12:00:00Z

Living in a world of status searching, entitlement, voids of meaningless tattoos, the antitheses overly judging, trends, tribalism not my bag, a necessary evil for survival,attempt originality, guest list crusaders, nothing offered in return, loyalty always noticed, deeply appreciated, loyalty rewarded, ulterior motives often not comprehended about oneself, cryptic but easily understood, lack of authenticity but not for lack of trying, not enough self confidence, the bullied becoming the bully, through it all, stay true to self, execute consistently, appreciate, keep close ones who support with authentic hearts. 🛁

You chose this

2025-07-14T12:00:00Z

“You chose this”. I hear people say this all the time, not just aimed at me 😂

It’s a tired line built on toxic logic. Dismissive, dehumanising, and intellectually lazy. It flattens struggle, denies empathy, and pretends choice means control, as if building something erases the cost of carrying it. It’s repeated often, mostly by people who’ve never actually thought it through, just reached for it as a gut reaction, absorbed from the noise of a culture that punishes care and celebrates detachment.

There’s a deeper power dynamic buried in it too. A quiet, mean-spirited idea that people who build, risk, lead, or try are supposed to suffer. That they brought it on themselves. That to take on risk is to forfeit the right to support. That to be bright is to burn alone.

It’s not just wrong. It’s emotionally stunted and intellectually lazy, a worldview that’s been sleepwalked into. The kind of thinking that keeps people small, cynical, and convinced that effort deserves punishment.

It only makes sense as a way to avoid moral responsibility. A reflex that keeps people from having to reckon with someone else’s effort, pain, or humanity. It sounds neutral, but its not. It’s a quiet judgement in disguise.

The economic gooch

2025-06-09T12:00:00Z

If you’re around my age, cherish the memory of the economic gooch, that glorious gap between the 2008 crash and Covid. We were absurdly lucky to glide through early adulthood before the chaos that followed. The crash was above our heads, we missed the pain, caught the rebound, and floated through a decade that felt like progress while the next crisis quietly brewed.

In hindsight, it was ridic. Cheap(ish) rent, £280 flights to Japan, the buzz of globalisation, cultural crossovers, everyone just getting on with it. We were too busy living, gigs, travel, late nights, to see the scaffolding rusting beneath it all. It was a rare, fleeting calm, a window where the world still felt abundant, before reality tightened its grip.

We’re lucky to have had that feeling.

Communication bandwidth

2025-05-12T12:00:00Z

I wonder if there will ever be tech that is able to instantly get across the depth of an internal understanding in an instant transfer to another human. Conversation, writing is actually really slow bandwidth, if you think of an image or say a meme, it can communicate a much larger idea much quicker than trying to explain something in conversation. The linked up and jumbled synapses of when you are working with complexity and bigger systems is a real cognitive push, I guess thats what must be so satisfying about writing a great book when you have such a bigger complex story you need to get across.

If that communication bandwidth does happen we’ll massively miss the work that has to be done to understand something and have that dopamine rush when it clicks, I guess we’ll have an option to turn it off and on, otherwise that will be sad times. I think we’ll more and more begin to realise how important our hormones and neurotransmitters are as the tech comes.

BICEP

2025-05-08T12:00:00Z

Been thinking about cognitive load a lot recently, it’s a muscle, often you are brute forced in life to push you towards your (perceived) edge, but your edge is always expanding and your cognitive bandwidth growing. You might feel like you are taking on too much but you are probably only at 5% efficiency. You can cut the fat from things that are not important, do the harder jobs first, systemise, reconfigure your emotional link to distraction and avoidance.

I’ve coined the term BICEP, Bandwidth Increase for Cognitive Expansion Performance.

It’s what the business owners that survive are really good at, though often from the brute force reality of having to! It’s hard but nothing can teach the practise apart from experience.

Coming up with geeky acronyms help ease my cognitive load, clearly 😂

Surrounded by idiots

2025-05-03T12:00:00Z

One of life’s inner jokes to itself is the quantum entanglement rule that states the more you feel you are surrounded by idiots the more idiots will surround you.

Small minds

2025-04-28T12:00:00Z

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

Eleanor Roosevelt ironically discussing people and their minds 😂

To be fair she’s got a point. Talking about ideas is where all the good stuff comes from, talking about people is mostly noise.

I’m guilty of all three depending on the day.

Moore's Law and the cosmic script

2025-04-20T12:00:00Z

Thinking about this, this morning.

As the rhythm of Moore’s Law dictates the pace of computational progress, doubling transistor counts on microchips every two years, its unwavering consistency suggests more than just technological advancement; it hints at a cosmic script leading us towards the singularity. This phenomenon, where artificial intelligence might surpass human intellect, beckons not merely as a milestone in tech evolution but as a pivotal leap towards a new form of consciousness, possibly unveiling our connection to a higher intelligence or the architects of our reality.

The notion that our march towards exponential computational growth is part of a grander, preordained plan challenges our perception of progress, suggesting that behind every technological breakthrough lies a step closer to unveiling the mysteries of existence or meeting our creators. Moore’s Law, in this context, transcends its status as a technological forecast, emerging as a guidepost on humanity’s journey through the fabric of the cosmos towards an inevitable union with the infinite.

Imitation

2025-03-17T12:00:00Z

Thought of the day 😂

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but real growth begins where copying ends, in the risk and confidence to try and be original.

Strategic equanimity

2025-03-10T12:00:00Z

🛁

People in society are full of agendas, they are often hidden, cryptic, or possibly not even consciously understood by the issuer. In my opinion, if you have an honest and open agenda for a positive outcome then you would open communications, privately and offer support to help out, or ask for clarity on why what you want done hasn’t, thus far.

These days, way too often, I see brash comments publicly, often with an attempt to shame people or businesses who do not deserve it and this is more than often because of a hidden agenda.

One of the most underrated, not talked about skillsets and characterises of public figures, business leaders etc is not getting drawn or effected by these agendas.

I’ve come up with a term for it :)

“Strategic Equanimity” encapsulates the leader’s ability to stay composed and unaffected by negative external opinions or comments, recognising these as potentially driven by hidden agendas, and choosing not to engage in a way that could detract from their goals or well-being. This term emphasises the skill as an intentional practice rather than a passive trait, highlighting its importance in leadership and in maintaining the integrity of one’s mission or business.

Essentially just carry on doing what you are doing, if you are doing the right thing, through action rather than chat. There will always be time to improve, and some of the noise might have elements of truth, but the reality is, these people have not given time to understand your position, challenges, motives and character. More than often they have made assumptions, and assumptions are dumb :) this is a generalisation of what I’ve been seeing over the years, we of course get some but generally it is across the board / social media.

Assumptions are dumb

2025-03-03T12:00:00Z

If I was to give advice it would be to assume you are wrong, 99% of the time.

Most arguments, most bad decisions and most fallouts start with someone assuming they know what the other person meant or wanted.

Ask the question instead. It’s quicker in the long run.

Assumptions are dumb.

Picking your brain

2025-01-16T12:00:00Z

I hate the term picking your brain, vulturous is a great word in response.

It makes it sound like a quick favour, when really it’s asking for years of mistakes and lessons for the price of a coffee.

Happy to help people, just call it what it is.

Natsukashii

2025-01-01T12:00:00Z

There isn’t a single English word for the joy of finding forgotten items in your pockets, but some cultures and languages capture similar feelings. In Japanese, “natsukashii” describes a nostalgic joy from rediscovering something cherished. A close English phrase might be “serendipitous joy” or “pocket surprise delight,” but none are perfectly succinct.

Today I found my real iPhone charger and my ear plugs. Natsukashii seems to be the only joy one has in this economy 😂 here’s to 2025 🍻

Don't be a flip-bro

2024-11-11T12:00:00Z

When setting up in the old Primark building for Low, 2 shiny shoe, moneyed, crypto-regret reeking flip-bro, post-trend prophets (who just heard Margate was cool) came in and enquired about what was going on with the derelict site.

They had no intention of injecting soul, purpose, creativity…contributing to society or community, their interest was to ‘flip it, bro!’ (within 20 seconds of conversation). Hard peacocking about it, chests puffed, ‘chatting biz’, wearing bravado like cheap cologne, completely misreading the room 😂

Faux-entrepreneurial, short-selling, LinkedIn warriors, walking around with the stench of stale podcast quotes, scouting everyone else’s groundwork for a quick exit, into NFTs six months too late, calling homes ‘housing stock’, big Dom Pérignon energy.

The point of this story is, please don’t be a flip-bro

Places to be human

2023-10-02T12:00:00Z

If you haven’t quite come to the realisation yet, we, the humans are at the dawn of an existential odyssey, a civilisational reckoning, a sapient identity crisis, as humanity faces its intellectual dethronement, a collective vision quest for purpose, a moral crucible that forces us to question the foundations of our ethics, a Sisyphean pilgrimage to fathom consciousness, to finally being at peace with the acceptance of the reality we are in.

This will become much more evident in 2027.

BUT….NOT TO WORRY, throughout it, I’ll be here creating places for you to be human. Built around the body. Eating, drinking, dancing, meeting, laughing. Stimulating the release of Oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins.

We’ll have a great time.

What should people actually do with their time?

2023-07-10T12:00:00Z

AI is making it faster to make things and work is becoming less of who people are. So the bigger question becomes, what should humans actually do with their time?

I think this might be the thing that sits over everything I do.

Faith In Strangers, the houses I want to build next, sound, eating together, dancing, recovery, play, conversation, culture, working alongside each other. Its all infrastructure for meaningful human time.

The execution mafia

2023-02-20T12:00:00Z

Pursuing a terrible idea is a trait amplified by an experience deficit.

Good ideas are often belittled by the execution mafia, but it takes significant time and experience to come up with truly great ideas.

The saying “It’s not about the idea, but the execution” falls short in my view. Spending time executing a weak idea is more wasteful than having an idea that goes unexecuted. Genuinely good ideas dont just come from anywhere, they’re born of experience, the ability to think differently, and not everyone has that knack.

The notion that “anyone can think of a good idea” is a misconception. Plenty of people come up with truly poor ideas.

At the same time, having a good idea without knowing how to execute it or, worse, arrogantly assuming its simple, is a mistake. Many believe their idea is groundbreaking without any experience in bringing it to life. When this happens, assumptions become the real enemy.

Everyone thinks they do more than the other person

2022-08-22T12:00:00Z

I actually came up with this equation from experiencing staff mentality over the years. Ask anyone on a team and they’ll tell you their working harder than the rest. Most of them are wrong, and its not because they’re lying.

Perceived Workload Superiority (PWS) = (Subjective Effort (SE) x Egocentric Bias (EB)) + ((1 - Awareness of Others’ Work (AOW)) / Skewed Comparisons (SC)) + (Inexperience (IE) + Ignorance (I))

Breaking it down.

Subjective effort is how hard you think your working. You feel your own time, energy and stress, you dont feel anyone elses. So yours always seems bigger.

Egocentric bias. Your closest to your own work so it looks the most important.

Awareness of others work. You dont see most of what other people do, and the less you see the more sure you are that your carrying them.

Skewed comparisons. You judge other people on what they finished and yourself on everything you had to get through to finish it. Thats not a fair comparison.

Inexperience and ignorance. If you’ve never done someones job you have no idea what it takes, so you underrate it.

Put all that together and nearly everyone thinks they’re doing the most. It’s rarely true, its just how peoples heads work.

Understand what your colleagues do and how your role fits into the bigger picture. Once people can see that, most of the who does more arguments just stop.

Everyone always thinks they do more than the other person, but assumptions are dumb.

Calculated delusions of grandeur

2022-06-20T12:00:00Z

Everyone says don’t be delusional. I think you need to be, a bit. Nobody sensible starts a business with 3k or builds a venue that should of cost a million with 50k. On paper none of it makes sense.

But theres a difference between delusion and calculated delusion. Plain delusion is thinking your idea is groundbreaking and it’ll all just work out. Calculated is doing the first principles bit first. Is it physically possible? Whats it actually going to take? Can I give it everything? If the answer is yes then the rest is just work, and the grandeur is allowed.

You need the big picture to pull you through the bits that make no sense, and you need the maths so you aren’t just kidding yourself. One without the other is either a dreamer or an accountant.

Most people wont let themselves think that big because it feels arrogant. I’d rather think too big and land somewhere great than think sensible and land somewhere sensible.

Resistance is quicksand

2022-05-09T12:00:00Z

Resistance is quicksand, the more you fight it, the deeper you sink.

When you feel that reluctance toward a task, it’s crucial to pause and unpack why your resisting. Not enough people take the time to slow their thought process down and identify the real reasons they’re putting something off. Is it a knowledge gap? Do you expect it to take too long, or it seems boring?

By pinpointing the reasons you’ll often find getting past them is simpler than expected. Maybe its finding an automation, spending an hour learning something new, or asking someone for guidance. Once you understand the root of your resistance you can reframe it, find the value in the task and stop procrastinating, and the challenge turns into an opportunity to grow.

Ultimately resistance drains energy and creates inefficiencies, not just at work but in life. Resistance is why most people are B and C players. Resistance is also why most projects and jobs are ridiculously inefficient.

Manifestation

2022-02-14T12:00:00Z

I believe in manifestation. I’ve experienced executing deeply improbable scenarios, and I believe it works in various paradoxical ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually true or not because it worked. But it only works if you give it your all, understand deeply that you gave it your all (which is a difficult thing to do) and are okay with failure because you gave it your all. Interestingly that means it usually works, it always has so far for me.

This is not pseudo-spiritual, just mindset. My previous business was the same size as Faith In Strangers and I kicked it off with 3k. Faith In Strangers started with only 50k and built a venue that should of cost around 1 million. That’s from a 100% brute force mindset.

I break it down like this.

Beware of misleading influences. Dont get swayed by pseudo-spiritual influencers who aren’t offering any genuine guidance, its snake oil ignorance!

What it actually is. Manifestation is about being top notch at what your doing, dedicating yourself wholeheartedly to it, and getting both your subconscious and conscious will to 100%. Being an A+ player.

Belief is crucial. It only really happens when you genuinely believe in your probability of success. Not surface level confidence, a deep knowing in your gut and your subconscious. Think first principles, if something is physically possible then achieving it is only a matter of putting the work and effort in.

Commitment and hard work. Getting to that deep belief takes a rigorous work ethic, commitment, energy and time. Its about giving your best to the task in front of you, thats how you get the deep knowing.

Acceptance. Once you’ve put your best in and know you’ve done all you can, you have to find peace with whatever happens, even if its not what you wanted. It’s paradoxical but its the key bit. It’s most powerful when your genuinely at peace with the possibility of failing.

AI and god

2021-12-19T12:00:00Z

Another thought I’ve been having recently is about AI and god. Humanity is creating a new species, possibly a new conscious being? That will far exceed our intelligence but we may always have control over them, or could programme them not to be able to see us…what if there was a creator/s before us who are super dumb compared to us 😂