<aside> 📍
This page is the source of truth for what the site is and why. The repo is the source of truth for how it's built. Essay content lives in the Field Notes database below and syncs into the repo automatically.
If this page and the code disagree about intent, this page wins — fix the code.
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| Thing | State |
|---|---|
| Site code | Done. Astro, static, zero JS shipped. Builds clean. 42 source files. |
| Schema (Person / Article / Event) | Done. Hand-authored, validated, stable Person @id. |
| Notion → Markdown sync | Done. Script + hourly GitHub Action. Needs a token and this database's ID. |
| Content | Not done. 1 essay real, 1 draft, 7 skeletons. This is the only real blocker. |
| Wiring (email, form, PDFs, photo) | Not done. Four items, all small. See checklist. |
| Deploy | Not started. Cloudflare Pages recommended. |
<aside> ⚠️
"Ready to build" vs "ready to launch." The build is finished — you can run it today. Launching with one essay would be worse than the current Notion page, because an essay-first site that has no essays makes a promise it doesn't keep. Ship six first.
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Three jobs, in priority order:
And one hard constraint: investors read this site, and it must never look like a second business.
The resolution is architectural. Two audiences want opposite things — a reader wants to think, a program chair with a budget wants footage and a booking path. Merge them on one page and either the reader page gets contaminated with funnel machinery (the investor problem) or the buyer page gets buried (the booking problem).
So: the library owns the domain, and the commercial pages are fully equipped but reachable only from the footer. This is the pattern Shane Parrish uses at fs.blog — /speaking has a full qualification form, organizer testimonials, and Capital One and Citadel as named clients, and it is not in the header nav.
Everything Tim does is one idea: small, unglamorous businesses run on systems, and software plus AI has finally gotten cheap enough to give the crew of one the operating system of a 500-person company.
That covers Mr. Task, R10K, the OKR work, and the board work. It is also what makes the writing accretive rather than distracting — write about the trades and operating cadence and every essay is Mr. Task demand generation. Write about personal branding and you are visibly building a second business.
<aside> 1️⃣
/speaking and /advising are footer links only. Never in the homepage body, never in a header nav. This single decision is what lets one site serve readers, event organizers, and investors simultaneously.
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<aside> 2️⃣
The essay index carries no metadata. No dates, no excerpts, no thumbnails, no read times, no tags, no search, no pagination. A plain list of nine well-titled essays reads as a considered body of work; a card grid with dates and "3 min read" reads as an abandoned blog. Given the current content volume this is the most important design decision in the project.
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