Casey Rosengren: “If today was the last day of your life, would you be happy with how you’re about to spend it? Steve Jobs famously said that he would ask himself this question each morning. I’ve found that continually asking this question is both one of the hardest and most valuable things you can do as a founder. It’s hard because it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of making your company succeed. It’s valuable because the only way to make the stress worth it is to be working on something that matters to you.”
Bloomberg: “To cut back on meeting overload, senior leaders must do more than encourage employees to be more selective about the meetings they schedule or attend. When organizations seek to limit the number, size or frequency of meetings, they are often treating the symptoms of an underlying disease. But addressing the root causes of meeting overload requires deeper work. Are employees spread across too many projects? Is the culture overly consensus-driven? Are meetings the only way people know to force colleagues to meet for deadlines or to compel managers to make decisions? Is the company over-rewarding visibility at the expense of recognizing lower-profile work?”
Andy Kessler: “Social media may make us dumber, but streaming has the opposite effect…Goodbye to only lowest-common-denominator plots. At the same time, the bar for intelligence has gone even lower as amusing TikToky technology has accelerated the goldfish-attention-span problem. But people are deep. For those too lazy to read books, technology has enabled not only computer-generated visual extravaganzas, but also fabulous stories with complex characters that make us think. I’m not sure that’s all bad.”
FT: “The promise of generative AI is that it can boost the productivity of workers in creative industries, if not replace them altogether. Just as machines augmented muscle in the industrial revolution, so AI can augment brainpower in the cognitive revolution. This may be particularly good news for jaded copywriters, computer coders, TV scriptwriters and desperate school children late with their homework. But it may also have a big impact on areas as diverse as the automation of customer services, marketing material, scientific research and digital assistants. One intriguing open question is whether it will reinforce the dominance of existing search engines, such as Google’s, or usurp them. Generative AI is a good example of a broader trend that is taking powerful technologies out of the hands of experts and putting them in those of everyday users. This democratisation of access may have huge implications, and create extraordinary opportunities, for many businesses. The increasing popularity of “low code/no code” software platforms, for example, will enable increasing numbers of non-expert users to create their own powerful mobile and web apps. No longer will product managers be so beholden to their tech teams setting their own agenda.”
NYT: “In more than 20 years of college teaching, I have seen that students who are open to new knowledge will learn. Students who aren’t won’t. But this attitude is not fixed. The paradoxical union of intellectual humility and ambition is something that every student can (with help from teachers, counselors and parents) and should cultivate. It’s what makes learning possible. The willingness to learn is related to the growth mind-set — the belief that your abilities are not fixed but can improve. But there is a key difference: This willingness is a belief not primarily about the self but about the world. It’s a belief that every class offers something worthwhile, even if you don’t know in advance what that something is.”
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