Idea Surplus Disorder #99

This week in Idea Surplus Disorder, we dig into what every project needs: a Victory Plan.

We explore how drugs like Ozempic could be as disruptive as AI, how failure is the most honest teacher, and why the second-bravest person in any organization matters most. You’ll find practical tools to like things more, give better feedback, and write when you’re stuck.

We also look at how AI is reshaping solo work, how “chunking” your day determines automation risk, and why effort alone doesn’t earn an A.

As always, you’ll find curiosity-sparking ideas, creative prompts, and wisdom to help you get the most out of this week at work.

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

Up Next From Filament

We're busy in March and April at Filament with an incredible mix of free programming and professional development.

• March 28 | The Uncertainty Summit is our attempt to help nonprofits who are feeling the pinch of changing government priorities and funding. If you're facing tough questions about sustainability, strategy, or staffing, we have a few spots that have opened up. Here's the link to register.
• April 4 | NSFW + SuperCollider: On April 4th, learn how to connect your organization's purpose to strategy and work the rest of the day (solo or with your team) at Filament and CIC. 
• April 18 | PlayDays: Unlike traditional workshops, PlayDays aren’t about expertise — they’re about exploring, experimenting, and learning together. In our first PlayDay, we'll demystify essential AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

You can find all of Filament's upcoming events here.

Ideas + Insights

Every project needs a Victory Plan:

A specific tool that I’ve found critical for staying oriented and updating quickly is a detailed plan for victory, i.e., a list of steps, as concrete as possible, that end with the goal being achieved.

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic might be as disruptive as AI:

If you told someone in 1850 that air conditioning would reshape the global economy, they'd think you were crazy. But it made the American South habitable year-round, revolutionized manufacturing in hot climates, and enabled computing by keeping servers cool. The most significant changes arise from the most surprising sources.

GLP-1 drugs are our air conditioner moment. We're not just talking about weight loss. We're discussing the first medication that effectively regulates human impulse control. Think about that.

Our economy is built on impulses. These include midnight snacks, impulse purchases, extra drinks, and the "treat yourself" mentality driving trillion-dollar industries.

How to like everything more:

In my experience, high-level enjoyment, like a sport, is composed of many interlocking micro-skills that must be trained individually, but which reinforce each other. This is not how enjoyment is taught—the only tip people typically receive re enjoyment is to “be mindful.”

I think this is a suggestion to adopt what meditators call “one-pointed focus,” a form of concentrated, narrowed attention on a small portion of conscious experience. It’s a mediocre suggestion for a couple of reasons. First, this is hard to do well, even for seasoned meditators. Second, it is far from the only enjoyment-producing mental motion.

The world needs more of the second bravest person:

Whenever a scandal breaks—a CEO has been embezzling money, a Hollywood producer has been sexually assaulting people, a scientist has been faking data—people are always like “wow, crazy that no one spoke up about it.” But there’s always someone speaking up about it. They whisper it to a friend, they try to bring it up to their boss, they write an anonymous post on Reddit about how they’re working at a scam company and they don’t know what to do.

Wrongdoing often goes unchecked not because we’re missing the bravest person, but because we’re missing the second-bravest person, the one who hears the whistleblower and starts blowing their own whistle too.

I've already shared this when-a-difficult-colleague-gets-fired ritual from The Friction Project, but discussed it in a recent talk I gave and promised I'd post it again:

When a difficult colleague gets fired, even if coworkers feel relief, it’s still jarring. Kursat and Margaret created the “mourning for the recently left” ritual for such occasions. The team gathers and writes notes about everything they won’t miss about their departed colleague. Then they write notes about everything they will miss. Each member claims one of those good things and commits to doing it. Then both lists are destroyed—burned, shredded, or, if generated online, deleted.

You haven’t failed enough.

Mistakes are the only source of truth. Not the thoughts in your head. Not the advice of a billionaire. Failure is the only teacher that is absolutely 100% tailored to your situation. Failure has a signal to noise ratio or 100:1.

Here's a beautiful way to reach out to all those people we've been meaning to call:

Forgive me, friend, I’ve been meaning to call. It’s been so long now you must think I’m avoiding you.

I am not avoiding you. I think about you often. I do. I thought about you this morning on my way to work. The snow in the fields made me think of you, the frost on the trees. Maybe it was the way the sun came up, etching the world into shape. Maybe it was the contemplative quiet of early morning highways across America. Maybe it was the longing in the grayness of dawn, the belief something better is coming.

Will AI take your job? It depends on how you "chunk" your day:

In Silicon Valley, where I live and where the cutting edge of AI development is found, the graphs people are paying attention to are the changes in the lengths of time an AI agent can complete autonomously. This represents how long the technology can—like a good employee—operate without external intervention. It’s shorthand for self-directed work.

The key idea where the American worker is concerned is that your job is as automatable as the smallest, fully self-contained task is. For example, call center jobs might be (and are!) very vulnerable to automation, as they consist of a day of 10- to 20-minute or so tasks stacked back-to-back. Ditto for many forms of many types of freelancer services, or paralegals drafting contracts, or journalists rewriting articles.

Compare this to a CEO who, even in a day broken up into similar 30-minute activities—a meeting, a decision, a public appearance—each required years of experiential context that a machine can’t yet simply replicate. 

Writing a first draft but still feeling stuck? Make it look weird with these writing rules:

-begin each paragraph with a hyphen. lower-case the first letter of every sentence. Don’t put a period at the end of a sentence (a question mark or exclamation point is fine)? Instead… in lieu of a period, end each sentence using two forward-slashes, like this //

It makes it look like it’s not really “official” writing. And this, in turn, helps prevent me from becoming too wedded to what I’m writing. I can regard the sentences and paragraphs as a form of clay that I’m still just sort of generally shifting around into place. Every time I look at that strange-looking formatting, I mentally know, “this is still under construction.”

Working solo? AI can help you innovate like you're on a team:

Our findings reveal that AI significantly enhances performance: individuals with AI matched the performance of teams without AI, demonstrating that AI can effectively replicate certain benefits of human collaboration.

Sorry, but you don't get an A for effort:

I’m seeing a growing number of students complain: “My grade doesn’t reflect the effort I put into the course.” Public service announcement: High marks are for mastery, not for motivation. The true measure of learning is not the time and energy you put in—it’s the knowledge and skills you take out.

Fun Finds

• Music videos, but without the music.
• Forget BC and AD in dates and use relative time instead.
• The Ultimate Book List curates recommendations "by the celebrities and experts you admire most."
• Manage your multiple award miles with AwardTool.
• A fascinating story on the M16 rifle and the comic book that saved thousands of lives.

Words of Wisdom

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness. – Alejandro Jodorowsky

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire. – Ferdinand Foch

You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety. – Elizabeth Gilbert

Even bad luck is a source of opportunity—but only if you live each day as if that is true. – James Clear

Saints always have a past and sinners always have a future. – Oscar Wilde

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. – Kurt Vonnegut

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety. – Abraham Maslow

He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has already arrived. – ancient parable