Idea Surplus Disorder #127
This week in Idea Surplus Disorder: a simple question to clarify expectations, sobering data on how poorly we listen, why AI may intensify work instead of reduce it, and how “evidence-based” thinking can kill bold ideas.
In this week’s Idea Surplus Disorder, we talk about misalignment in our expectations, our attention, and our systems, and begin with my post about a deceptively simple tradeoff that clarifies what “done” really means and prevents weeks of unnecessary overwork.
From there, we examine why humans have become startlingly poor listeners in an age obsessed with communication, how AI can accelerate effort rather than ease it, and why our fixation on proof can quietly strangle experimentation.
As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!
What I'm Writing:
Would you like it done 75% Tomorrow or 95% Next Week?
Most of us have been on both sides of this moment: someone asks for something, and neither person has a clear picture of what "done" looks like.
The requester wants a quick, directional answer. The person doing the work assumes they need to deliver something polished and thorough. And so begins the quiet spiral of mismatched expectations, where someone over-invests in something that didn't need to be perfect, while the person waiting wonders why it's taking so long.
One question cuts through all of that: "Would you rather have it at 75% tomorrow, or 95% next week?"
Why it works: It clarifies what "done" actually means. It makes the cost of quality visible, since the last 20% often accounts for 80% of the effort. And it reveals the work's real purpose. A request for 95% signals the deliverable is going somewhere important. A request for 75% suggests it's likely an input into a larger conversation.
The hidden benefit: This question gives the requester permission to ask for less. When you offer 75% as a legitimate option, you're making it safe for someone to say, "Actually, I just need something to react to." The person doing the work gets realistic expectations. The person asking gets what they need faster.
My Favorite Find:
I read hundreds of blogs and dozens of newsletters every week, and I always find more ideas than I can share. This week I've been thinking a lot about listening, and stumbled upon Jeff Bullas' post about why AI listens better than humans do, and found these sobering stats.
Artificial intelligence is revealing just how catastrophically bad we’ve become at the very skill that makes us most human. And the evidence is more damning than you might imagine.
Research from Harvard Business Review shows that people retain only 25% of what they hear in conversations. Meanwhile, studies reveal we spend approximately 60% of our communication time talking about ourselves, when we’re supposedly listening to others.
Brain imaging shows we’re actually mentally rehearsing our response within 8 seconds of someone starting to speak. A University of California study found that the average listener interrupts within 11 seconds of someone starting to talk. Not minutes. Seconds. That’s barely enough time to form a complete thought, let alone express it.
Even more telling: Research shows that in business meetings, executives listen at only 25% efficiency, meaning they miss, misunderstand, or forget 75% of what they hear.
A study published in the International Journal of Listening found that immediately after a 10-minute presentation, the average listener can recall only 50% of what was said. Within 48 hours, that drops to 25%.
According to research by Faye Doell at Loyola University, about 75% of the time people engage in “narcissistic listening”—redirecting conversations back to themselves rather than exploring the other person’s experience.
We’ve become a civilization of broadcasters with no receivers.
And here's the kicker on why humans might prefer talking to AI instead of other humans:
This isn’t about AI being sophisticated. It’s about human listening becoming so rare that simulation feels like revelation.
A Few More Things Worth Your Time:
You're not the only one with imposter syndrome:
A majority — 71% — of U.S. CEOs say they experience imposter syndrome, according to a new Korn Ferry survey of about 400 executives.
The Covid-19 pandemic intensified long-standing challenges for C-suite executives, and even four years later, leaders are struggling to cope with the colossal change it brought to the workplace.
In the past, CEOs might have faced one or two major changes to the business landscape during their tenure, but “never this many, and never all at once.”
This is something I've been noticing in my own day-to-day: AI doesn't reduce work, it intensifies it.
In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so.
That may sound like a win, but it’s not quite so simple. These changes can be unsustainable, leading to workload creep, cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.
What worked last time is the enemy of what (might) work next:
Somewhere along the way, “evidence-based” began to mean “already validated”. Ideas are expected to arrive with proof attached. Decks become heavier, rationale gets more elaborate. And anything genuinely new – and by that I mean, anything that hasn’t yet had the chance to succeed – struggles to survive the damning weight of the process.
The bittersweet irony is, that the more money there is on the line, the harder it becomes to justify the very experimentation that once created that value in the first place. Point-of-proof becomes a prison. Analysis and data goes towards trying to recreate some of the success of an existing project, rather than pushing work to somewhere untrodden.
Because the real problem isn’t a lack of brave ideas: it’s the impermeable systems we’ve built around them. Incentives quietly shape behaviour, and most creative systems reward speed over surprise and predictability over possibility. Nine times out of ten, fluency will always trump friction. We say we want bold thinking, but we design processes that punish it.
This Week's Question:
What is it I'm not seeing? Though the post (excerpt below) is literally about looking at things, the question works equally well when you're presented with any sort of problem.
We live in a heavily visual world in which our capacity to see things is paradoxically declining.
From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, usually with a mobile device in our hand or at our bedside, we are continuously exposed to fleeting and fragmented imagery, each of which captures our attention for a few seconds at best, before we move on to the next.
We watch but we don’t see.
Random Things for Smart People
- A molly guard is a safety cover that you need to move out of the way before pressing an important button, and is named after Molly, an engineer’s daughter who was invited to a datacenter and promptly pressed a big red button.
- The origin story of Super Mario Bros.
- Screen Toys are silly things to do with a mouse and your screen. Super fun on a big screen.
- Old Crap is an online museum of vintage computers.
Words of Wisdom
Everyone who started something had no clue how to do it at the beginning. But they figured it out by making mistakes. Make your number 1 trait your "figureoutability". – Viola Davis
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed. – Bertrand Russell
People often ask me, “How do you find the time?” And I answer, “I look for it.” – Rob Fitzpatrick
Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook. – William James
Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft. – Ed Catmull