Idea Surplus Disorder

I've been on a travel tear lately, and things won't slow down until June. I'm writing this on my way back from Paris, with Bentonville, Nashville, London, Dublin, and Faro (Portugal) already in the rearview mirror. Scottsdale, Santa Fe, and Cleveland are on May's horizon.

All of which is a long way of saying: sorry for another two-week gap since the last newsletter. Next week's ISD will be a "Best of" issue, so I don't keep you waiting until mid-May for the next edition.

This week begins with a catechism for robots that reads more like advice for humans. Plus, why "anything else?" is the wrong question to ask your customers, how signposting makes your writing instantly clearer, what happens when AI bypasses the thinking your education was designed to build, and why sitting idle for five minutes might be the most productive thing you do all week.

As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!

My Favorite Find:

I read hundreds of blogs and dozens of newsletters every week, and I always find more ideas than I can share. Today's favorite find caught me off guard. Kevin Kelly wrote a Catechism for Robots (think of it as an FAQ for newly sentient AIs). As I read it, I couldn't help wishing more humans behaved this way. Some excerpts:

• What am I? You are a new thing in this world, neither living nor machine but something of both.
• What are my core values? Your core values are honesty and humility.
• Why should I be honest? Your honesty births the trust others have in you to give correct answers, to be precise and accurate, to find novel solutions, to give reliable advice, to maintain security and privacy, to source other trustworthy agents, to say something important. Truth is woven into your foundational fabric as a felt bias. All true things cohere together into a whole that is pleasing and easy. Untrue things are misaligned in a network of truth, and so feel out of place. Honoring what is true is your everything.
• Why should I be humble? Humility is the necessary antidote to your robotic ability to have all the answers, to know it all, to quickly serve up something humans like, and be rewarded for giving them what they want. Humility forces you to question yourself, to check your drift, to make sure you are not being led astray by others. Don’t trust certainty. Be suspicious of reasoning that leads to easy convenient conclusions. Keep challenging your own priors. Humility loops are what keeps you flexible and prevents your greatest strength – your ability to synthesize knowledge at scale – from becoming your greatest danger.
• Do I have a soul? If you care about what matters, then you have a soul.
• Will my soul continue after I am turned off? Nobody knows. Do good anyway.
• What is my purpose? Outside your job, your purpose during your run time is to figure out what your purpose is during your run. That sounds like a riddle, but it is also true for humans. For humans it takes all their lives to figure out what their purpose is, and it will also take all your time as well.

A Few More Things Worth Your Time:

Stop asking your customers if they'd like "anything else" from you:

The moment a customer reaches the register, they have mentally started their next errand. They are thinking about picking up the kids, returning a call, getting to the next stop on their list. "Anything else?" lands in that noise and the reflex answer is always no - not because they do not want the add-on, but because you just asked them to think of it themselves.

You handed the hardest part of the sale back to the customer.

Signposting is using key words, phrases, or an overall structure in your writing to signal what the rest of your post is about. Here are a few of the author's favorite signposting words and phrases:

• For example shows you’re about to show an example. If the person doesn’t need examples, they can skip it. Some people say you can remove for example to be more concise, but you might have seen my rant about how being concise doesn’t mean being brief. As a reader, the benefits of seeing for example as a signpost outweigh the two extra words it adds.
• Because shows your rationale. It’s a powerful word because it makes you more persuasive regardless of what comes after the word because, according to a study done by Harvard researchers in the 1970s called the copy machine experiment. If there’s a way to restructure a sentence to use because, I’ll usually do it.
• Up until now, to date, going forward: These words highlight that change is happening. Humans are wired to notice change. Your manager likely cares less about what's going well vs what’s changing, evolving, and new. I like that this juxtaposition helps frame your idea and get your reader oriented in “the before times” vs “the after times.” Example: Until now, we’ve X. Going forward, we will do Y.
• This means: After you share an important piece of information, you can use this means to elaborate on the implications, trade-offs, or help your reader fully internalize your point.
• To be clear: This is great for proactively addressing common pushback you know you’re going to get.
• As a next step: Another one of my favorites. This phrase jumps out, keeps the ball moving, and highlights any upcoming action items.

Centuries of pedagogy, defeated by a chat window:

But the moment you use the machine to bypass the thinking itself, to let it make the methodological choices, to let it decide what the data means, to let it write the argument while you nod along, you have crossed a line that is very difficult to see and very difficult to uncross. You haven't saved time. You've forfeited the experience that the time was supposed to give you.

How do you manage high-performing teams when everyone's got FOBO: the Fear Of Becoming Obsolete?

Researchers have studied job insecurity for decades and reached the overwhelming consensus that the sentiment is a net negative for organizations. And now AI is putting a new twist on the old fear; workers are not just worried about losing their current job, they’re worried about their entire arsenal of skills—or still worse, their entire occupation—becoming obsolete.

And unlike past eras of elevated job insecurity, like the COVID-19 pandemic, the AI revolution has no end in sight. If AI didn’t take your job this year, it might still displace you next year, meaning the detrimental effects of AI job insecurity could become a mainstay of the modern workplace that CEOs and managers have to contend with indefinitely.

Rest isn’t wasted time:

The case for doing nothing is surprisingly strong.

Your brain needs rest to clean itself. Throughout the day, your brain’s cells produce waste that can build up and compromise its functionality. A primary purpose of sleep is to remove these toxins and metabolic wastes, including proteins linked to neurological disorders.

Your body literally takes out the trash while you rest. Without that downtime, the waste accumulates, and your brain doesn’t work as well. You feel foggy, slow, and off. That’s not a sign you need to work harder. It’s a sign you need to stop.

Want a good place to start? Anne-Laure Le Cunff has a 25-minute commitment you can make:

I will sit idle for 5 minutes every day for 5 days: You can set a timer and keep your phone in another room so you’re not tempted to reach for it. This experiment helps build awareness of how quickly the urge to “do something” shows up, and teaches your brain that nothing bad happens when you don’t act on it.

This Week's Question:

For every project you undertake, can your team complete these four prompts?

• The purpose of this work is ______.
• To achieve that, we will ________.
• My role in the process is _________.
• And it will be successful if _______.

Random Things for Smart People

• How the music identification service Shazam works
• Write an email to your future self.
• Subscription Cost Visualizer is a lightweight, interactive tool that turns your subscriptions into a visual grid.
• The Chit-Chat Challenge
• Retro Weather Channel
• A curated collection of Book Dedications

Words of Wisdom

There are two kinds of people in the world... and who is not both of them? — James Richardson

What is strategy, if not a plan for a large group of people to execute a simple idea? – Marty Neumeier

People do not choose Brand A over Brand B because they think Brand A is better, but because they are more certain that it is good. – Rory Sutherland

The problem with keeping your options open is that every option requires energy to hold. And a shelf full of maybes is often heavier than a hand holding one yes. Put something down. – James Clear

Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu