GREAT AVE RUINS
Currently listening to: Sharon Robinson
Obsessing over: The way shadows fall on Brutalist concrete.
Current mood: 2am clarity
Reading: The Architecture of Loss

Hey there, I’m Ann.

I have a knack for mapping how we make meaning by watching what holds our attention, especially when we insist it doesn’t matter. I’m curious about how we learn to hide, why hiding works for a time, and what happens when time thins our skin and defenses alike.

Mapping; not in the abstract, academic sense.

I mean: I excavate the behavioural economics of why you stayed in that conversation for three hours when you meant to leave after ten minutes. Why certain books crack you open. Why some cities feel like home and others like exile. Why you do the things you do, even when you can't quite explain it to yourself.

A woman with dark hair smiling at the camera in a black t-shirt, sitting indoors with blurred background.

I once fed 20+ of my essays to AI to see if it could spot what I was actually doing. It analysed: "Ann operates at the intersection of biology and poetry, using the rigid truths of science to explain the messy realities of the human heart. A body of work that feels like a long-form argument for surrender—surrendering the need to be 'fixed,' the need to be 'independent,' and the need to be 'opaque.'"

Apparently I have a type.

I call this Cartographies of Attention.

My methodology that applies behavioural economics to human experience, creating what I consider to be intellectual intimacy.

Simplified: Kinda like the moment someone describes something you've felt but never had words for, and suddenly you understand yourself differently.

I draw on psychology, neuroscience, poetry, philosophy, the work of writers who stayed with human complexity, and researchers who listen carefully to what the nervous system reveals when words fail.

I have a tendency to trust what the body does over what the mouth says - the flush, the tapping, the voice that breaks mid-sentence.

*My clients either love this or find it deeply unsettling.


Select Work & Studio Notes


You’re still here. That tells me something.

You just spent over 200 words with someone who collects accidental truths. If that didn't send you running, we might actually get along.

Here’s me: I’m born and bred in Singapore where I spend my time over-analysing my own thoughts and actions, whilst trying to convince my nervous system that I am, in fact, the one in charge.

I spent about fifteen years in education and ecommerce. Learned the machinery of how we're seen and sold. Got good at it - certifications (view my papers in the drawer), features in the likes of Honeycombers, Vogue, and noissue; the whole apparatus of attention. But I wanted excavation, not amplification. So in October 2024, I closed that door. Now I work in the shadows as a ghost, finding language for what you feel but cannot name.

Your turn →

On the Soul & Resilience

  • The Science of Well-Being | Yale University

  • Positive Psychology: Character, Grit, and Research | University of Pennsylvania

  • Resilience Skills & Design for Well-being | University of Pennsylvania

  • Counseling & Child Psychology | NUS & IAPCCT

On the Machine & The Market

  • Digital Marketing & E-commerce Specialization | Google

  • Marketing Analytics, Measurement, and Loyalty | Google

  • Foundations of Email and SMS Marketing | Mailchimp

  • Product Development Opportunities | Shopify

This glossary, lexicon, or dictionary (call it what you may) maps the language I use. It's here because if we're going to work together, we need to speak the same language. If the language here resonates, we'll probably work well together. If it feels like pretentious overthinking, we won't—and that's useful information too.

  • ALGORITHM The invisible hand that has convinced organisations to optimise for distribution rather than substance. Rewards frequency over quality, emotion over insight, brevity over depth. The error lies in mistaking its logic for wisdom.

    AUTHORITY What is crafted, not claimed. The result of sustained intellectual work. It is not algorithmic. It accumulates through sustained quality, not optimised cadence. Organisations with authority are consulted, cited, and listened to. Organisations without it must pay for attention.

    AXIAL IDEA The central concept around which all messaging rotates. The gravitational core of your intellectual universe.

  • BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS OF EXPERIENCE Applying the logic of "why we stay" or "why we choose" to the messy, non-logical parts of human life, like conversations that last three hours or why certain cities feel like exile.

    BEHAVIOURAL GROUNDING My practice of anchoring editorial narratives in empirical psychological frameworks. It is a transition from "subjective advice" to "objective truth," to give the reader a structural foundation—rooted in science—to support their personal evolution.

  • CADENCE Organisations are told that consistent publishing creates authority. This is backwards. Consistent thinking creates authority, which then justifies consistent publishing. Publishing on cadence without the intellectual infrastructure to support it produces only the appearance of activity. The question is not "How often should we publish?" The question is "Do we have something worth saying often enough to sustain a publication?"

    CARTOGRAPHIES OF ATTENTION My signature methodology. The belief that where we look (and where we refuse to look) is the most honest map of who we are. It’s the study of what holds our attention, especially when we insist it doesn’t matter.

    CLARITY The absence of evasion. The discipline of saying what you actually mean in language that cannot be misunderstood. Clarity is rare because it is dangerous. To be clear is to be disagreeable to someone. Clarity is the first requirement of intellectual authority. If you cannot say what you think clearly, you either do not know what you think or you do not have the courage to say it.

    COUNTER-INTUITIVE FLIP The structural pivot in a piece of writing where an established expectation is inverted to reveal a deeper utility. It is the "Aha!" moment where a source of anxiety is reframed as a source of relief.

    CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE The practiced awareness of audience context, norms, and subtleties that shape how ideas land.

    CULTURAL SYNTHESIS My intentional layering of modern phenomena with historical, anthropological, or philosophical precedents to remove the "newness" from an idea to reveal its timelessness. It is the craft of proving that our modern struggles are part of a much older, more graceful human story.

  • DISCIPLINE The capacity to maintain standards when velocity demands compromise. Editorial discipline means killing good sentences that weaken the paragraph, cutting interesting tangents that blur the thesis, and refusing to publish when the work is not ready.

    DRIFT The opposite of discipline: content or strategy that reacts to trends instead of vision. It happens when organisations stop asking "What do we think?" and start asking "What performs well?" The drift is reversible, but reversal requires acknowledging the problem and accepting that the solution is structural, not tactical.

  • EDITOR The person who asks "Is this clear? Is this true? Is this necessary?" before publication. Organisations often publish without editors. They have "content managers" who ensure cadence but not quality. This is why most organisational publishing is forgettable. An editor is not a copywriter, not a proofreader, not an approver. An editor is the institutional guardian of intellectual standards.

    ENGAGEMENT Clicks, likes, shares, comments. The metrics platforms provide to convince organisations they are succeeding. Engagement measures attention, not authority. Organisations addicted to engagement metrics become incapable of producing work that matters over time. They optimise for the dopamine hit rather than the structural trace.

    EXCAVATION VS AMPLIFICATION Two competing modes of attention in modern life. Amplification: making things louder, more visible, more viral—the machinery of being seen. Excavation: digging beneath surface explanations to find the behavioural truth underneath.

  • INCUBATION The period of apparent inactivity necessary for the unconscious mind to integrate disparate experiences into insight.

    INDUSTRIAL CLOCK, THE The internalised pressure to be constantly productive, stemming from industrial-era management and the Protestant work ethic.

    INHERITED NORMAL Conditions accepted as natural because they were never presented as choices.

    INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITY The central value proposition. The capacity to be taken seriously based on demonstrated thought leadership rather than transactional presence. The state of deserving attention rather than demanding it.

    INTELLECTUAL INTIMACY The goal of my work. The specific, visceral click that happens when someone finds language for a feeling you’ve had but could never name.

    INTELLECTUAL SPINE The fundamental architecture of an organisation's thinking. Not merely messaging or communication, but the structural framework that supports all external expression.

    INTELLECTUAL VITALITY The quality of content that prioritises psychological depth over surface-level utility. Writing that seeks to expand capacity for thought. The hallmark of work that refuses to be "content" and insists on being "contribution."

  • JARGON Specialised language that excludes non-specialists. Sometimes necessary. Often lazy. Technical jargon (legal, medical, engineering) exists because precision requires it. Corporate jargon (synergy, leverage, impact) exists because clarity is dangerous. Organisations might use jargon to sound sophisticated while saying nothing. The test: can you explain this concept to an intelligent outsider without using the jargon? If not, you do not understand it well enough to use it.

  • KEYNOTE A high-profile speech delivered by an executive at a conference or event. Often the most visible demonstration of an organisation's thinking. Usually disappointing. Most keynotes are assembled from slides, quotes, and anecdotes rather than developed as coherent arguments. They are designed to be inoffensive and inspiring rather than substantive.

    A good keynote is an essay delivered orally. It has a thesis, builds an argument, and leaves the audience with a new way of thinking about a problem.

  • LEGACY MEDIA Publications with editorial standards, fact-checking processes, and institutional credibility. Often dismissed by digital-native organisations as "old media" or "traditional media." Legacy media maintains standards that digital platforms abandoned. They pay editors, verify facts, and issue corrections. This is not obsolete; this is the prerequisite for authority. Organisations should study legacy media's editorial practices, not their dying business models.

    LINGUISTIC RECLAMATION The process of applying a rigorous intellectual lens to transient slang or "low-culture" memes. It is the act of proving that even our "trashiest" cultural moments carry deep human significance.

    Read: Goblin mode sociology

    LINKEDIN A professional networking platform that has become the primary venue for organisational publishing. Optimised for brief takes, personal anecdotes, and engagement bait. Publish on LinkedIn by all means. But own your intellectual property elsewhere.

  • MESSAGING Marketing term for the coordinated set of things an organisation says about itself. Key messages, message hierarchy, message testing. Messaging is tactical. It optimises for persuasion. Organisations that think in terms of messaging rather than ideas have already lost the intellectual game.

  • NARRATIVE Marketing term for "the story we tell about ourselves." Every organisation believes it needs a narrative. Few organisations have anything resembling an actual story.

    A narrative is not a tagline, not a value proposition, not a brand positioning. A narrative has characters, conflict, resolution. Before you craft your narrative, have something worth narrating.

    NEWSLETTER A regular publication delivered via email. Once the province of obsessives and enthusiasts. Now, every organisation has one. Most newsletters are glorified press release distributions. They exist to "stay top of mind" without offering any value that would justify the reader's sustained attention. A proper newsletter is a publication in its own right. It has editorial standards, a consistent voice, and commits to serving the reader rather than the organisation's marketing objectives.

    NEGATIVE CAPABILITY The ability to remain in "uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts" without searching for a simple factual or moral resolution.

  • OPTIMISATION The process of maximizing a specific metric. Organisations optimise for clicks, for shares, for conversion. The metric chosen determines the outcome. Optimisation is useful for tactics, deadly for strategy. You cannot optimise your way to authority. Authority emerges from sustained quality, which is fundamentally resistant to optimisation.

  • PLATFORM Someone else's publishing infrastructure. LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Twitter. Places where organisations publish because they offer built-in distribution. Publishing on platforms is renting distribution from landlords who can change the terms at any time. Algorithms change. Features disappear. Accounts get suspended. Own your publishing infrastructure. Use platforms for distribution, not as your primary venue.

    POSITION What an organisation actually thinks about issues in its domain. Not "positioning" (marketing term), but intellectual position (what you believe). Organisations with positions risk disagreement. Organisations without positions risk irrelevance. Most organisations choose the latter in favour of strategic ambiguity. This is why they have no authority.

  • QUALITY Difficult to define. Obvious when absent. The standard that separates editorial work from content production. Quality requires time, judgment, and willingness to kill work that does not meet the standard. The cruel truth: quality only matters if you care about authority. If you only need distribution, quality is negotiable.

  • REACH The total number of unique individuals who could potentially see your content. A vanity metric that confuses distribution potential with actual influence. Organisations celebrate reach numbers without asking whether those reached were influenced. Ten thousand people scrolled past your post. Did any of them change their thinking?

    RESEARCH The process of systematic investigation to establish facts or reach conclusions. Rare in organisational publishing. Most organizational content is opinion labeled as insight. Actual research requires time, methodology, and intellectual honesty. It means following evidence even when it contradicts your preferences.

  • SEO Search Engine Optimisation. The practice of structuring content to rank well in search results. Useful tactic. Dangerous philosophy. Organisations that think in SEO think in keywords and search intent rather than ideas. They produce content designed to answer searches rather than advance understanding. SEO should inform distribution strategy. It should never inform editorial strategy.

    SOCIAL MEDIA Platforms designed for social connection repurposed for organisational publishing. Social media rewards frequency, emotion, and brevity. Use social media for distribution. Build authority elsewhere.

    STRATEGY The intellectual architecture that determines what the organisation does and why. Strategy is not goals, not tactics, not vision. Strategy is the logical structure connecting belief to action.

    Most organisational strategies are PowerPoint fantasies: ambitious goals without the intellectual infrastructure to support them. Real strategy emerges from clear thinking about competitive position, market dynamics, and organizational capabilities.

    SUBSTANCE Actual intellectual content. Ideas, insights, frameworks, research. The opposite of performance. Substance is measured by insight density, not publication frequency.

  • THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Marketing term that has been stripped of meaning. Once meant actual intellectual leadership in a domain. Now means "content published by executives." Everyone claims thought leadership. Few organisations demonstrate it. Real thought leadership means introducing ideas that change how people in your domain think. It means taking positions that risk disagreement.

    Most "thought leadership" is agreeable opinions about industry trends. This is not leadership.

    TONE The characteristic sound of a publication's voice. Professional but not corporate, confident but not arrogant, clear but not simplistic.

    Organisations struggle with tone because they optimise for inoffensiveness. They want to sound authoritative without alienating anyone. This produces the bland corporate voice that populates LinkedIn. Good tone requires courage: the willingness to sound like yourself even when yourself is not universally popular.

    TRANSIENT, THE Content optimised for immediate consumption and instant obsolescence. Posts, tweets, stories, reels. Material designed to generate quick engagement and be forgotten. Dominates organisational publishing. It is easy to produce, easy to distribute, and generates measurable engagement. It is also worthless for building authority.

  • VELOCITY Speed of execution. Feels like progress. Velocity without direction is chaos. Velocity without standards produces garbage quickly. The question is never "How fast can we publish?" The question is "What standard can we maintain at what pace?"

    VOICE Not brand voice. Intellectual voice. The distinctive sound of an organisation's thinking. Emerges from consistency of editorial standards and clarity of position. It cannot be manufactured. It develops over time as the organisation publishes enough material that patterns become recognisable.

  • ZERO-SUM THINKING Produces imitation when organisations study whoever has authority and try to replicate their tactics. Authority is not zero-sum. The world has room for many authoritative voices in any domain. Your task is not to take authority from competitors but to build your own through sustained intellectual work.