I was told “You should have a newsletter".

Since stepping off the day job of Operator, I’ve been looking for a way to manage all the big ideas swirling around in my head.

As we talked in our show launch, one of my big reasons for wanting to do a podcast was to talk things through.  What I’ve found, is I am both circling back on ideas multiple times with new insights AND discovering new things to ponder.  This is both joyful and overwhelming for me - I can only imagine what it’s like for Amy (!).

Things are getting so far out of hand I struggle to keep myself organized (and I have a very low bar for organization - think mad scientist/Doc Brown vs. Marie Kondo).

My lists have lists.

At Successfactors I had the following summary in my slack

I really do read all the things, I can’t stop myself.  It’s an intersection of interest and skill.  The interest side is self explanatory, but the skill bit I get asked about a lot.

The backstory is that every summer when we visited my dad we were required to learn stuff based on a random curriculum he created for our time together.  One summer it was all about ancient Rome (my dad was WAY ahead of his time), another Cosmos, most summers Tai Chi and one specific summer it was speed reading.

I was a pre-teen/teen and hated all these things with a passion, but speed reading was something I accidentally retained and still find useful.  I skim things quickly and push ideas into ever more complex mental models in my right hemisphere then bring them back with my slightly absurd associative memory (this is also how I am able to always find that random video clip or meme).   The background processing can cause a time gap between when I read or hear something and when an insight sparks.

Turning these non verbal insights into language is the complicated bit for me (a clue that the heavy lifting is in my right hemisphere where language doesn’t thrive but insight and intuition abound).  In other words, adding language is one of my biggest bottlenecks.

Another bottleneck is the segmentation of ideas by the audience.  Since my topics and interests are so broad, I tend to filter groups for conversations to try to avoid being too much (not just annoying, but also confusing).  In the past I would share subsets - some ideas to LinkedIn, some on internal networks, some directly to friends and family etc.

In writing this newsletter, I’m letting go of the filters and just sharing the inputs.  My goal is to share a listicle of things I found interesting with a [hopefully low effort and scalable] taxonomy and notes to serve as breadcrumbs for myself and others.

You should not expect to be interested in all the links, but in case you are, this is an ongoing invitation to share your thoughts and add to my future reading.

Several interesting reflections on the importance of joy and fun.

Technical chops dividing perspectives - h/t Thomas Otter for this video. It’s getting harder and harder to parse hype from opportunity when so much of AI still feels like magic and the wealth of dunning-kruger opportunities expand.  Also Karpathy’s people spirits* concept of AI is even more solid than his vibe coding name.

*which is different from the market's animal spirits and  yet somehow related…

Thanks for reading, listening, sharing, and helping us think better. We love hearing where you agree, where you disagree, and what you're seeing from your seat.

If someone forwarded this to you, join the Insight Loop to get the next issue directly in your inbox.

And if you're already in the Loop, help us grow: forward this to someone who would enjoy it, and follow/subscribe to The Meg & Amy Show wherever you listen or watch.

Have a question you'd like us to tackle in a Leadership Corner? Send it to: [email protected]

** Typos and poor grammar either because I'm too lazy to edit properly, or to make you feel confident this was written by a flawed human and not AI generated.