👋 On time for your weekend: a weekly round-up of what was written or said at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design and #organisation, and stood out.
📚 Reading
Productive Uncertainty:
This inability to predict what will happen when a startup pursues an innovation keeps other companies from entering to compete: they will look at the opportunity and say things like “it looks like a toy” or “there’s no market for that.” Once the startup begins to succeed they will re-evaluate, but a smart startup will have built a moat by then. The uncertainty gives the startup time and competitive space.
🤭 Of course, sometimes it is a toy—Jerry Neumann
Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure:
Thinking about work while trying to relax induces panic, because feelings of time poverty are caused by how well activities fit together in our mind. If we are trying to be a committed parent while our work email goes off, we can’t help thinking we should be working on our next deadline instead of being present with our child [..] This conflict makes us feel like a bad parent and a bad employee.
😌 Get off The Treadmill (whether we like it or not)—Ashley Whillans
More Kuaishou, Less TikTok:
Crucially though, not all social media platforms are created equal. Topology matters. The shape of the connections matter. The monetization matters. The products, the features, the modes of communication, the algorithmic amplification… it all matters.
🤓 And how could they not all matter?—Pondering Durian
🎧 Listening
Rethinking the State:
How can we not alone use a redistribution lense towards inequality, but also a pre-distribution lense. So that the ways public and private interact [..] actually embedded within it contracts and relationships that get the structures right ex ante, so that we don’t have to pick up the mess ex post.
Mariana Mazzucato—Building Bridges
Mental Health, Depression and Mindfulness:
There is enough recognition and there have been enough stories of people who have been destroyed by mental illness, especially in the tech sector, founders who have taken their life, because they didn't see any way out. They didn't have any outlets, they had so much pressure. [..] It's five times more prevalence of mental illness among founders than any other work.
Matt Helt—The Seedtable Podcast
Recruiting From Anywhere:
One day we were doing an online drink with the team, and we said - okay com'on man, you have to show us your face, I mean, what can be that wrong. And then he put his camera on and he was 13 years old, and he was so worried that we realise that he was only 13 years old, that he lied since the beginning. But he is the best developer we have in the team.
The Family—Online Summit
📬 Suggestions?
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