Small Levers Lab Writing Directory

The writings on this page are originally posted across Substack and LinkedIn and released books. Tune in over time for this page to be updated. Last updated: 10/16/2025.

Technical Demonstrations

Technical Demo Posts

Minor Movements AI Stop Motion Video Creator

Leverage Maps Companion GPT: The Leverage Partner

Successful Arch Linux Virtual Machine Installation

Learning Rust On Arch Linux With Vim

In Progress Works

Iron Temple Ranch

A vision for a network of ranches aimed to mentor and teach young men.

Leverage Notes - Substack

Weekly lessons in systems thinking through real experience. Distilled insights and stories from embedded systems, software engineering, Bitcoin, career building, and the 10-year journey toward Iron Temple Ranch.

1. Leverage Maps: Realign Or Leave When Misaligned
2. Workplace Jiujitsu: The Temptation to Bypass Your Manager
3. Hard Guarantees: What Bitcoin Promised the Poor And What It Actually Delivered
4. Workplace Jiujitsu: Stop Asking Senior Engineers to Be Accidental Managers
5. Leverage Maps: Even Senior Teams Need Vertical Leadership
6. Hard Guarantees: How Bitcoin Protocol Updates Work
7. Leverage Maps: Building Strategic Influence in Low-Trust Environments
8. Workplace Jiujitsu: The High Achiever’s Survival Playbook
9. Leverage Maps: When Culture Amplifies Or Neutralizes Leadership
10. Leverage Maps: Parallel Lives, Optionality, and Sequencing Your Future
11. Leverage Maps: Integrity as Energy Conservation
12. Leverage Maps: Knowledge Hoarding and Knowledge Curation
13. Consolidating My Writing Ventures
14. Course Correcting My Interview Prep
15. Investment Trading Decision Engines
16. …Coming Soon

Leverage Notes - LinkedIn

Weekly short reflections using observation and systems thinking across embedded systems, software engineering, Bitcoin, career building, and the 10-year journey toward Iron Temple Ranch.

1. Wrangling with AI Slop In My Writing
2. “Common Sense” Isn't So Common
3. Aligning My Vision With a Grayscale Phone
4. Choosing To Not Return To College
5. …Coming Soon

Leverage Maps - Book

Leverage Maps is a book about getting ahead using systems thinking.

Leverage Maps: Mental Models For Making Systems Move

Preface

Introduction: Why Systems Thinking Matters Now

Chapter 1 – Convictions, Mirrors, and Learning Loops

Chapter 2 – Playing the Right Game

Chapter 3 – Work Rhythms and Hidden Costs

Chapter 4 – Scaffolds, Glue, and the Backlog

Chapter 5 – Invisible Work, Influence, and Trust

Chapter 6 – When the Current Turns Against You

Closing Chapter – Building Your Own Leverage Map

About the Author

Completed Works

Minor Movements - Quote Reflections

Minor Movements is a series of microfiction based on selected quotes.

Preface

1. "Order and disorder. They each have their beauty."
2. "Let's commit the perfect crime. I'll steal your heart, and you'll steal mine."
3. "And then in that moment when I love them... I destroy them."
4. "This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back."
5. "Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone."
6. "And I just lost my mind, but I still got you."
7. "If you hate your life, try something different. It's like chess."
8. "Statistics mean nothing to the individual."
9. "But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose."
10. "Hey man, you're getting better. A lot better, so stick with it, man."
11. "He said I didn't need to tell him goodnight. I say goodnight because I'm pretty sure no one else does."
12. "I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted."

To view the full Minor Movements short story collection, you can subscribe to the Leverage Notes Substack and receive it in the welcome email.

Archived Works

Hard Guarantees

Hard Guarantees is my field guide to Bitcoin’s architecture, incentives, and design lessons for real-world infrastructure.

1. No New Math: How Bitcoin Was Built Using Existing Tools
2. Why Length Extension Attacks Don’t Work on Bitcoin Block Headers
3. Why MicroStrategy Would Benefit From Making Its Bitcoin Inaccessible
4. Bitcoin for the Poor and Block Size Caps
5. Would you ship $1 million worth of goods for a Bitcoin payment?
6. Coping with the UK’s TV Pickup Using Bitcoin to Level the Grid
7. Rethinking Solar Energy Subsidies
8. Naming Is Architecture – Lessons from Bitcoin v0.1
9. UTXOs Over Accounts
10. Bitcoin's First Mover Advantage
11. The Centralization of Bitcoin Client Development
12. Bitcoin Threat Models
13. How Bitcoin Gets Unstuck

Workplace Jiujitsu

Workplace Jiujitsu is a series on how to navigate the workplace strategically.

1. Never Sidestep Your Manager (Even When You Think You Should)
2. I Was a Permanent Junior Until I Started Building My Own Feedback Loops
3. I Didn’t Know How to Ask for Help, So I Almost Failed
4. Just Do Your Job Is Not Enough
5. The Gift Of Burden
6. The Flexibility Of The Machine
7. The Invisible Weight of a Stuck Decision
8. Why 1-on-1s Always Matter
9. How To Steady The Rope When Someone Is On a PIP
10. Make Yourself Replaceable
11. The Hidden Coaching Crisis in Tech Teams
12. When Good Intentions Meet Growing Company Constraints
13. The New Manager's Guide to Junior Engineer Retention
14. When No One Asks You To Improve The Code
15. Go With The Flow
16. Staying Longer To Avoid Reactive Decisions
17. How To Approach Skip-Level Meetings As An IC

Soft Dystopias

Soft Dystopias is a series of microfiction based around the concept of subtle yet haunting future science fiction dystopian scenarios.

1. Neuro Phi Police
2. Terms Of Care
3. Suspicious Offline
4. Not Your Voice
5. The Gentle Option
6. Beach Blues

Leverage Maps - Blog

Leverage Maps is a series around getting ahead using systems thinking.

1. Disrupted Education: Exploratory Learning Using An LLM
2. Modeling Infrastructure Reusability
3. How I Was Able to Afford My Sabbatical
4. Play the Right Game, Win on Your Terms
5. Realign Or Leave When Misaligned
6. AI as a Mirror
7. Many Jobs, One Clear Map
8. Don't Lie To People. Or to Yourself
9. Rethinking the 40-Hour Workweek
10. Grow with Scaffolds, Not Glue
11. Stop Managing Your Backlog, Start Designing It
12. How I Learned To Thank the Dunning-Kruger Effect
13. Engineering Management Impact System
14. Giving Freely to Get Freely
15. Using Convictions as Your North Star
16. Why I Am Writing Leverage Maps: Mental Models for Making Systems Move
17. Why Systems Thinking Matters
18. Who Leverage Maps Is Really For
19. AI As An Intellectual Sparring Partner
20. I Stopped Trying To Predict My Career's Future
21. Engineering Culture Quiz
22. Leadership Leverage Quiz
23. One Funnel, Many Roles
24. The Feedback That Redirected My Career
25. Choosing Better Games Playbook
26. The Value Of Life Constraint Mapping
27. The Cost Of Compound Drag In Your Career
28. Debug Your Thinking Patterns at Work
29. Framework-First Learning

Sabbatical Reflections

Reflections on a 3 month sabbatical that I took starting on June 19, 2025.

1. Week 1 - Learning to Waste Time Properly
2. Week 2 - Laying the Tracks While Riding the Train
3. Week 3 - Exploring Ideas For Pleasure
4. Month 1 - Foundations, Not Finishes
5. Week 5 - Resting and Recovering
6. Week 6 - Getting Back on Track
7. Week 7 - Focus and Strategic Positioning
8. Month 2 - Consolidating Post Exit
9. Week 9 - Learning From What You Don't Do
10. Week 10 - One Chapter, Two Mentors, and a Clearer Vision
11. Week 11 - 52 Ways To Stand Out And No More Wrist Pain
12. Month 3 - Sabbatical In Reflection