Idea Surplus Disorder #87

Welcome to Idea Surplus Disorder, and happy Thanksgiving week!

You'll get a "leftovers" issue next week (which will still be new to many), but today's helping is fresh out of the oven and includes the tyranny of choice, AI coworkers, sympathy cards, narrative feedback, Bayesian decision-making, vintage video games, history-making recipes, Aztec death whistles, and more.

I'm Matt Homann and I'm glad you're here!

SuperCollider on December 6

We're hosting our final SuperCollider on December 6th, and we're focusing on ways to end the year well.

If you participated in Thinksgiving, it is also a great opportunity for a touch-base with your partner to reconnect and follow-up on your day together.

Ideas + Insights

Can't decide? Blame the Hick-Hyman Law:

The Hick–Hyman law describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices they have. It states that increasing the number of choices will logarithmically increase the decision time. 

Having too many options is not only bad for decision making, it’s bad for our mental well-being. Many studies have documented overchoice, and found that it leads people to delay or completely opt-out of decision-making, report lower choice satisfaction, and make poorer decisions when they are faced with a large number of options.

This is how I've been using AI for a while and it has been a game-changer for me:

Treat AI like an infinitely patient new coworker who forgets everything you tell them each new conversation, one that comes highly recommended but whose actual abilities are not that clear. And I mean literally treat AI just like an infinitely patient new coworker who forgets everything you tell them each new conversation. Two parts of this are analogous to working with humans (being new on the job and being a coworker) and two of them are very alien (forgetting everything and being infinitely patient). We should start with where AIs are closest to humans, because that is the key to good-enough prompting

As it is a coworker, you want to work with it, not just give it orders, and you also want to learn out what it is good or bad at. Start by using it in areas of your expertise, where you are able to quickly figure out the shape of the jagged frontier of its ability. Because you are expert, you will be able to quickly assess where the AI is wrong or right. You do need to be prepared for it to give you plausible but wrong answers, but don’t let the risk of these hallucinations scare you off initially. Though hallucinations may be inevitable, you will learn where they are a big deal, and where they are not, over time. You can reduce the rate of hallucinations somewhat by giving the AI the ability to be wrong, for example, writing: if you’re unsure or necessary information, say “I don’t have enough information to answer this” can make a big difference.

Companies do not transform, people do:

Any transformation strategy that does not incorporate why the transformation is good for the various people involved is unlikely to succeed.

Just because it is good for the company does not necessarily mean it is good for the people. The change involved is often described as good when reality is that change that is imposed on anyone is scary and sucks.

The key questions that people ask is not how the strategy will allow the company to grow but how will it help them grow?

Lots of meetings are pointless and are a form of “therapy.” Surprised?

[T]he rise in meetings reflects changes in the workforce - with fewer people doing and making things and an increase in those involved in "meetings-intense" roles such as strategists, advisers, consultants and managers. "People don't do concrete things any more," he says. Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear".

"Many managers don't know what to do," he says, and when they are "unsure of their role", they respond by generating more meetings. "People like to talk and it helps them find a role," says the professor. Many of these people can spend half of their working hours in meetings, he says. These can spill over into pre- and post-meetings, to such an extent that people might begin to "disguise" how much time they spend attending them.

A skill you know you’ll need but wish you wouldn’t: How to Write a Sympathy Card

Think like a Bayesian:

1. Start with your baseline belief (Prior). Ask: “Before I learned this new information, what did I already believe about this situation?”
2. Weigh the new evidence (Likelihood). Ask: “If my belief is true, how likely is it that I would see this new evidence? And if my belief is false, how likely is it?” Focus on the strength of the evidence—strong signals move your belief more, weak signals less.
3. Adjust your belief (Update). Ask: “Does this new evidence make me more or less confident? By how much?" Combine your baseline belief with the weight of the evidence to refine your confidence.

The 10-10-10 Rule by Suzy Welch is a simple decision-making framework that requires you to pause and evaluate your decision across three timeframes:

• 10 Minutes: How will you feel about this decision in 10 minutes?
• 10 Months: How will you feel about this decision in 10 months?
• 10 Years: How will you feel about this decision in 10 years?

Building your 2025 plan, but need to prioritize? Try these four categories:

One simple prioritization technique employs a hybrid assessment. It merges implementation order and importance into four different designations you can use to prioritize strategic initiatives quickly. For each activity included in your plan, identify whether it: Can Launch Now, Depends on Something Else, Makes Sense for a Later Phase, or Raises Questions.

Do you keep your "best time" for yourself or give it away?

The reality is we all get, maybe, two good hours a day where we actually feel awake and alert. "And the big, important question is: Who currently gets that time from you?

And would you be willing to take it back so that it’s yours and then give the world the 'second-rate' version of you (which is the other 22 hours of the day)?

Give your feedback in narratives, not numbers:

We found that when feedback included numbers, showing room for improvement — in both numerical-only and combined formats — people seemed to assume that the manager was unfairly focusing on their negative aspects. This was true even when the content of the feedback in the combined format was the same as that given to the narrative-only feedback group. In these instances, narrative-only recipients did not seem to find the content unfairly focused on the negative. Employees who received the narrative-only feedback likely thought it was the most fair because they felt the least negatively evaluated by it.

Fun Finds

• A visually beautiful compendium of good news.
• The 25 most influential recipes of the last 100 years.
• Old airline and video game console logos.
• Creepy Aztec death whistles.
• The reason for film disclaimers.

Words of Wisdom

“Always remember to love people, and to use things, because doing the opposite never works.” — Jesse Tevelow

In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last. The audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what's come before. – Rick Rubin

"If you want to do a good deed, do it now. The time will pass, and you will not have the chance again." — Leo Tolstoy

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu

“Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.” – Frank Ocean

”We are least aware of what our minds do best.” — Marvin Minsky

“What if we measured true success not by the amount of money you have but by the amount of human energy you unlock, the amount of potential you enable? If that were our metric, our world would be a different place.” — Jacqueline Novogratz