Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”
Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:
- Testosterone – Episode #220 – This American Life. “We’re all getting older, and Man-o-pause is a thing. This American Life dug into Testosterone 15 years ago, and recently re-broadcast the episode. The cast and crew tested themselves, with some controversial results. Turns out NPR radio hosts are low on this hormone – some dangerously so, according to doctors. Correlation, causality, or sampling bias?” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Best Printer 2024, Best Printer For Home Use, Office Use, Printing Labels, Printer For School, Homework Printer You Are A Printer We Are All Printers – The Verge. “Poetry, of sorts, from The Verge. Campbell’s Law says that ‘the more important a metric is, the more likely it is to be manipulated.’ And Goodhart’s Law says, ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ In other words, once we incentivize something, we’ll start to try and change the metric itself rather than the thing it represents. And so it is with the Internet: Metrics to manage engagement lead to clickbait and outrage, because that’s what creates engagement. Recipe sites are full of preamble because they want to show you ads. And so on. But no article has underscored this better for me that this updated (and clearly sarcastic) printer recommendation. And yeah, that Brother printer is great.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Stick Trick For Height Measure – ArbCan – YouTube. “My guess is an easy 75% chance that Alistair already knows this geometry trick, but it was new to me, and is pretty cool. Here’s how you can measure the height of tall things like trees and buildings.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- How To Learn Anything With The Feynman Technique – ToDoist. “Richard Feynman was one of the great quantum physicists of of the past century, loved playing the bongos, solved the riddle of why NASA‘s Challenger exploded, and was good at learning stuff. Here’s his method, roughly: Decide what you want to learn, break it into small, digestible concepts that you don’t know, explain it to someone else so they understand it, return to source, and keep repeating until the thing seems obvious.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent? – Rory Sutherland – Behavioral Scientist. “I shared a link last week of Rory Sutherland ranting for a few hours about all sorts of interesting things. This week, is an article authored by him about something that I have long been thinking about. Do we have the time to be intelligent? Meaning… Some of the best ideas come after a long period of gestation. What we read, what we see, what we feel… And more importantly, the time to think about it. I have been proactively bringing in new habits that force me to take more time to think. From handwriting notes to making sure that I am constantly reading some kind of a book. In a world where the feed can capture your imagination and, at the same time, hold it hostage… Patience may be one of the greatest assets anyone can have for success. As Rory writes: ‘… we’ve sometimes allowed the urgent to drown out the important. The short-term consideration drowns out the long-term consideration.’ We need to break this cycle.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- A Key Part Of Creativity Is Picking Up On What Others Overlook – Psyche. “How often do you find yourself saying, ‘am I the only one who sees this?’ It happens in my life… Maybe not as often as I would like. I do find myself scurrying online in the hopes of looking for some kind of affirmation/confirmation that I am not alone. Often, I do find it, but it is in smaller batches than I would’ve expected. This article does a great job of explaining that feeling. It also does a great job of demonstrating that something new is always a creation of two or more sources that we have seen in other ways. Why do creative people often see these things much more frequently? This article digs into just that question and it’s fascinating…” (Mitch for Hugh)
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
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Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.