(01) Principles
Operating principles.
These are the operating principles of Jonathan Weston Endicott, also known as Jonathan Endicott. They are working rules, not commandments: held firmly enough to act on and loosely enough to revise when the evidence changes. Each one has earned its place by being useful in real decisions.
1. Start before you're ready
Readiness is a feeling, not a fact. The information needed to do something well mostly arrives while doing it. So begin with the smallest meaningful step, gather feedback and adjust. Waiting for certainty is itself a decision, and usually a costly one.
2. Reversible decisions deserve speed
If a choice can be undone cheaply, make it quickly and learn from the result. Save deliberation for decisions that are hard to reverse, such as commitments, partnerships and anything involving trust. Sorting decisions by how easily they can be undone is one of the simplest ways to move faster without becoming reckless.
3. Incentives are the strategy
People and systems behave the way they are rewarded to behave. When outcomes disappoint, look first at what is being measured and rewarded. Designing incentives well for customers, collaborators and yourself does more than any mission statement.
4. Subtract before you add
Every addition carries ongoing costs in attention, complexity and maintenance. Before starting something new, ask what can be stopped. Focus is the discipline of protecting the few things that matter from the many things that merely seem interesting.
5. Distrust the map
Models, plans and frameworks are useful until reality diverges from them. Hold every model as a tool rather than a truth. When the territory disagrees with the map, believe the territory and update the map.
6. Own the bottleneck
In any system, value concentrates around the scarcest step. Identify what is genuinely limiting progress and put effort there, rather than optimising parts that are already good enough.
7. Stay at the boundary
The most interesting opportunities often sit between fields, where one discipline's obvious idea is another's breakthrough. Learning across boundaries keeps thinking fresh and reveals inefficiencies that specialists overlook.
8. Compound quietly
Prefer actions whose benefits accumulate: skills, relationships, reputation, a public body of work. Short spikes of attention fade. Consistent effort, sustained over years, builds advantages that are hard to copy.
9. Measure behaviour, not opinions
What people say they will do and what they actually do are different data. Watch actions: what gets used, bought, shared or ignored. Opinions are a starting hypothesis, and behaviour is the test.
10. Write it down
Writing turns vague intuition into a clear argument that can be examined. It exposes weak reasoning, makes ideas shareable and creates a record to learn from later. Most of Jonathan Endicott's thinking starts as a draft.
11. Respect time, including your own
Attention is the scarcest resource for everyone. Communicate clearly and briefly, decline what does not fit, and guard deep work. Saying no politely and early is a kindness to everyone involved.
12. Keep the promise small and the delivery large
Trust grows when results exceed expectations. Commit carefully, then over-deliver. Over time, a reputation for reliability is worth more than any single impressive pitch.
Using these principles
None of these ideas is new on its own. Their value comes from applying them consistently and checking them honestly against results. When a principle stops producing good decisions, it gets rewritten. That too is a principle.
For how these rules show up in business, read the entrepreneur page. For how they shape his writing and public work, see the creator page. The fuller argument behind the first principle is in the essay "Start Before You're Ready" on Substack.
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