I'm hitting "send" on this week’s Idea Surplus Disorder from the Dublin airport after a week abroad —and I'm really looking forward to being home!
This week: a simple framework that fixes the most common reason meetings go sideways, some hard-won wisdom from Kevin Kelly, why AI (still) can't write like you do, and a surprisingly moving piece about what happens when the world stops needing what you're best at.
Plus tools for making better gut decisions, a beautifully designed archive worth exploring, and a few things that made me smile.
As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!
What I'm Writing:
Most meetings don't fail because of bad agendas or the wrong people in the room. They fail because nobody agrees on what kind of conversation they're actually having. Is this a brainstorm? A debate? A decision? When that's unclear, people show up in different modes and talk past each other.
Filament's Dream, Debate, Decide, Do framework solves that with a single question asked before the meeting starts: Which of these four are we doing right now?
- Is it a Dream meeting? Come with ideas.
- A Debate meeting? Arrive with a point of view.
- Are we Deciding? Let's be clear about what we're deciding on and who the decider is.
- And if we're Doing? We'll leave with clear tasks, accountability, and measures.
It's a small habit with a surprisingly large effect on how meetings feel and what they actually produce.
Read the full post for a breakdown of each mode and how to use them.
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 is a book: Kevin Kelly's Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier.
It's a collection of his observations from a life lived as the world's most interesting man. One that stopped me dead in my tracks as I was "finishing" our new website is:
Be prepared. When you have 90% of a large project completed, finishing the final details will take another 90%.
And another that gives me the ambition to keep learning and using AI:
A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can't believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
A Few More Things Worth Your Time:
Why your AI (still) can't write like you:
Why does AI writing still sound like AI writing, even as the models get smarter? The most reliable fingerprints of your personal style come from the words you write subconsciously: articles, pronouns, and function words that emerge in a distinctive pattern as you focus on the meaning of a sentence.
Related: What's Happening to Writing
Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares her Gut Decision Matrix that starts with two questions to ask when you have a strong gut reaction to something: 1. Is this instinct or intuition? 2. Are you in immediate danger, or is this a more complex situation?
If your response is instinct in immediate danger, it usually makes sense to act right away. These survival mechanisms evolved specifically to deal with situations where hesitation could be costly.
However, instincts can misfire in modern contexts. When a situation is more complex, it’s often better to slow down and question the instinctive response before acting on it.
If you have domain-specific expertise or experience in similar fast-moving situations, a strong intuition may be worth acting on quickly. In these moments you may not have time for deliberate analysis, so it can be reasonable to rely on your brain’s automatic pattern recognition, which can detect important signals faster than conscious reasoning.
Finally, in slower-developing or more complex situations, it’s best to treat intuitions as hypotheses and examine them through additional thinking, evidence, or testing before committing to a decision.
When you've loved your job, but your job hasn't loved you back:
It still makes me sad, though, that what I’ve spent 45 years of my life toiling at will likely end up as a footnote, the providence of folksy artisans and historical reenactors. I didn’t leave a dent in the universe so much as splatted against it. The world no longer has a need for what I somewhat sardonically call my art. We are all product managers now, pleading with obtuse underlings to go back and try again and to get it right this time. I remain a father and husband and son and friend, but the need for what I can do — the need for what programmers can do — is shrinking, and my conception of myself and my usefulness along with it.
That was something I did that mattered. I’ll miss it.
The Steve Jobs Archive is a beautifully designed compilation of his work, teachings, and others' reflections on his legacy. Letters to Young Creators is a great place to start.
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
- In Every Language is a Wikipedia search engine that lets you see how different regions of the world depict the same thing.
- A Reading List for Strategists Who Want to Think Dangerously
- How one unappetizing weed became dozens of different vegetables, including kale, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts.
- The 80's were brown.
- Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer.
- The origin of Casual Fridays
Words of Wisdom
Imagination is the most potent force in the universe. It's the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows. – Kevin Kelly
You just have to be very careful about doing things you are fundamentally not going to be proud of, because they will damage you. – Naval Ravikant
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. — Seneca
If all you did was look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life. – Esther Hicks
What you celebrate becomes what you are: choose with extraordinary care. – Patricia Mou
FILAMENT'S LAST MINUTE MEETINGS
We've got a few open dates for Filament's Last Minute Meetings on March 24 and 31, and April 1 and 2. You can get more information here.