Idea Surplus Disorder #103

Matthew Homann -

This week in Idea Surplus Disorder: why soft skills are strategic, how “cookie lickers” derail momentum, and what AI can’t replace. Plus: effort vs. achievement, eponymous internet laws, a better way to say no, and Henry Miller's rules for writing.

And as always, you’ll find a mix of fun finds, practical insights, and thought-provoking quotes to help you lead, live, and think more intentionally.

I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here.

It's Thinksgiving Time

We're kicking off our Business Partner recruiting for Thinksgiving this week.

Thinksgiving is our initiative that pairs business teams with nonprofits for a day of collaboration and innovation.

It happens on November 6, 2025, this year, and we'll only have 50 spots available. Check out the one-pager, watch the video, and let me know if you're interested.

Ideas + Insights

We should reclaim the term Soft Skills:

Let’s reframe “soft” not as “easy” or “secondary,” but as “sophisticated,” “subtle,” and “distinctively human.” These are the skills that make teams functional, leaders inspiring, and organizations resilient. They’re not antithetical to technical skill, they’re actually the multiplier.
We do our students a disservice when we teach them how to code but not how to communicate, or how to calculate but not how to collaborate. We handicap their potential when we separate technical and human education into silos. And we shortchange society when we undervalue the disciplines that teach us how to be human together.
The future doesn’t belong to those who can merely execute technical tasks. It belongs to those who bring the full spectrum of human capability to our most complex challenges.

Does trying to work better make you work worse?

Individuals engaging in task proactivity—initiating better or more efficient ways to perform one’s core tasks—will have to deviate from these established routines, sacrificing cognitive benefits to take on additional mental demands. This in turn would create greater mental fatigue, which previous research has found makes it harder to focus, process information, or make decisions.

How many "cookie lickers" do you have in your organization?

The term cookie licking is inspired by sneaky children who lick all the cookies to deter their friends and family from eating them. Urban Dictionary defines it as “the act of calling ‘dibs’ on something long before you actually intend to do it.”
Cookie lickers take resources, projects, and decisions away from others, even when they have less expertise, time, or interest in such things.

Even though I use AI nearly every day, I can't disagree with this:

There are a lot of things in life you can only get good at by doing them, again and again. If you stop doing them, you will become bad at them again.
I'm just not convinced that "well if there's a way I can not do a thing then I will never do that thing again" is the correct way to live your life. If you really, truly are outsourcing all of this purely so you can focus on Very Important And Fruitful Things Instead then sure, be my guest, but are you? Are you really? Do you think that's what even a small minority of genAI users are doing? I'd love for it to be true, but it's just not what's happening, is it?

The Grand Encyclopedia of Eponymous Laws includes these gems:

  • Time Cube Law: “As the length of a webpage grows linearly, the likelihood of the author being a lunatic increases exponentially.”
  • Wadsworth Constant: “The first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no worthwhile or interesting information.”
  • Munroe’s Law: “You will never change anyone's opinion on anything by making a post on the Internet. Knowing this will not stop you from trying.”
  • DarkShikari’s Theorem: “Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company.”
  • Akin’s 10th Law: “When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.”
  • Shaker’s Law of Departure: “Those who egregiously announce their imminent departure from an Internet discussion forum almost never actually leave.”
  • Cosmic Schmuck Principle: “There are two types of people in this world: those who sometimes worry that they’re a moron, and actual morons.”
  • Ruckert’s Law: “There is nothing so small that it can’t be blown out of proportion.”

People feel entitled to be rewarded for achievement, not effort:

Achievement is the primary input into feelings of entitlement while effort seems to matter little. Moreover, we found that people feel entitled to rewards even when they know the role that luck played in putting them in an easy and effortless position to do well.

If your biggest competitor copied every feature you have, how might you still win?

All your good ideas will be copied; it’s just a question of when. Competing only on features results in bullet-point battles; this is the weakest way to win sales. Creating bigger and more emotional distinction is a powerful way to win, and breaks us of the habit of believing that incremental product updates will dramatically increase differentiation, or growth.

Henry Miller's Rules for Writing include these reminders:

  • Work on one thing at a time until finished.
  • Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
  • When you can’t create you can work.
  • Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
  • Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Morgan Housel has some excellent advice for entrepreneurs in his book Same as Ever:

Most things worth pursuing charge their fee in the form of stress, uncertainty, dealing with quirky people, bureaucracy, other peoples’ conflicting incentives, hassle, nonsense, long hours, and constant doubt.
That’s the overhead cost of getting ahead. A lot of times that price is worth paying. But you have to realize that it’s a price that must be paid. There are few coupons, and sales are rare.excellent

If you're ever moderating a Q&A, and someone has "more of a comment than a question," respond with this from author John Scalzi:

Sorry, no. This is not ‘comment and answer,’ it’s ‘question and answer.’ So unless you have a question, please give the mic over to the next person in line.

If you tell someone, “We should keep in touch,” you will not keep in touch. Do this instead:

Say, “I’m going to schedule a phone call with you in two months to catch up, I’ll send you the invite — if we need to adjust when we get closer to the date, that’s fine.”

What should be on your business strategist's bookshelf?

To learn strategy, you should read some basic source books. This list presented here mixes military, political, and business strategy sources. Some are easy and inviting, while others demand more concentrated attention to unfamiliar background events or archaic narrative styles.
I include only a few books on business strategy. When reading about business strategy, you should avoid works that claim to provide “winning” strategies and other simple formulas for success and profit. The idea that we can all be like the winners if we only follow their example is the oldest scam in popular culture. Also, avoid modern books on “leadership”—these are almost all about perfecting oneself to project a compelling vision. They are not about actually leading anyone.

Fun Finds

Words of Wisdom

Sometimes the greatest scientific breakthroughs happen because someone ignores the prevailing pessimism. –Nessa Carey
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. – Henry Miller
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. – John Kenneth Galbraith
A man is worked on by what he works on. – Frederick Douglass
Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice. – Will Durant 
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
Worrying about the future is like watching a leaf fall and trying to predict where it will land. – James Clear
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. – Michel de Montaigne
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. – John Maeda

Up Next From Filament

Every month, Filament delivers an incredible mix of free programming and professional development.

  • June 6 | New Skills for Work & SuperCollider
    • Build transformational innovation into an everyday organizational habit as you unlock ways to reimagine challenges, unlock your team's creative potential, experiment fearlessly, and turn bold ideas into actionable solutions. 
  • June 27 | EmpowerHer
    • We’ll explore a practical framework for shifting harmful or limiting questions into ones that foster empathy and connection. It’s not about saying the perfect thing. It’s about saying the real thing — and learning to say it better.

You can find links to sign up for all of our upcoming events, including PlayDays, EmpowerHer, NSFW, and SuperCollider here.