SD#71: Innovation, tears and creativity
September 17, 2023
Welcome to the 71 edition of Seven Dawns, a weekly newsletter by me, Tomas Ausra, with a focus on getting better every day. A very warm welcome to the new subscribers who joined since last week. I’m glad you’re here.
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Hi friends,
I’ve written extensively about innovation and technological change in the past, arguing that the pace is slower than we like to think. Yes, we’re getting faster phones, more efficient cars, fridges, planes, better-suited tools. But is there anything actually new that’s disrupting our world? Aside from smartphones, there’s been very few innovations in the past few decades and that’s because improving the efficiency of a car’s fuel consumption is a more cost-effecting risk-free way to reap profit. I can’t tell you how we’ll escape this mindset nor when we might do that, but it’s worth noticing when we think the world is flying at a million miles per hour.
🔎 Our seven ideas this week:
1. Innovation doesn’t have to be disruptive For the past 20 years “disruption” has been a leading battle cry in business: Disrupt this. Disrupt that. Disrupt or die. Whether it comes from the low end—the basis of Clay Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation—or from the high end, the way commercial jet travel overtook ocean liners and Apple’s iPhone dominated mobile phones, corporate leaders have continually been told that the only way to innovate and grow is to disrupt their industries or even their own companies. Not surprisingly, many have come to see “disruption” as a near-synonym for “innovation.” But the obsession with disruption obscures an important truth: market-creating innovation isn’t always disruptive. Disruption may be what people talk about. It’s certainly important, and it’s all around us. But it’s only one end of what we think of as the spectrum of market-creating innovation. 👉 Harvard Business Review |
2. Isn’t it strange that in 2023 we consider a man weak when he loses control of his feelings and cries but somehow the opposite is true when a man loses control of his temper and breaks something or hurts someone? When Marcus Aurelius (the Roman emperor) was young, it was said that he wept so violently over the loss of a beloved tutor that the palace servants went to admonish him. Marcus’s stepfather intervened. “Let him be only a man for once,” he said, “for neither philosophy nor empire takes away natural feelings.” A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, Marcus wrote. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength. There is another tale about Marcus. In this one, he’s now much older and more or less ruling the known world. While judging a court case, he broke into tears after hearing one of the lawyers reference the human devastation of what has come to be called the Antonine Plague. Marcus wrote in his Meditations that people are arrogant, deceitful, and ungrateful but that we have to put up with them, love them, and take care of them. The pandemic was an opportunity to practice that in front of our children. Sure, it was sad to miss out on some parties and events, and it’s not fun to get a shot, but this is our job. 👉 Men’s Health |
3. Creativity is finite so spend it wisely The creative energy we have each day is finite. Even the best, most focused writers claim to only be able to write for 4-hours each day. Because of this, it’s really important to consider creative leverage. When we find the right project or pursuit to focus our creativity, leverage happens and overwhelming change is made possible. It was Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Creativity is finite so spend it wisely. 👉 Honey Copy |
4. Maximise the small moments throughout the day to learn things you’ve always wanted Rajiv Surendra created a video explaining how he goes about his day and uses small breaks of downtime to focus on learning something he wants to. It can be a 20-minute journaling session to summarise your day, a small notebook to sketch the lamppost in front of you while you’re waiting for your friends to arrive, a moment to knit a line in your future hat, or an opportunity to practice a musical instrument. It’s at the end of the video that he left the shiniest nugget of learning – if you’re waiting at the grocery store line, or your dentist, or to pick up your kids from school, why not spend that few extra moments thinking? Think about how you feel, what you see, how you feel about what you see, what thoughts are in your head. And once that’s done, why not take notice of your breath? We forget how important our breathing is and these small moments throughout the day give us a magical opportunity to take a deep breath and feel the effects. 👉 YouTube |
5. When someone tells you something is wrong (with your writing), they’re right. It’s not working for them Does that mean they know how to fix it? No. Or even that you should fix it? No, it may well be that they’re not the audience you’re aiming for. But you cannot — with your writing, with your kids, with anyone — tell them that their reaction is incorrect. Hear what they are saying, respect it, then decide what you’re going to do about it (which may well just be letting them know that you heard them and you appreciate the time they took to say it). 👉 Ryan Holiday |
6. Almost all new technology not only fails to save time, but ends up wasting it McKinsey & Company said generative AI could add between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion worth of annual productivity globally, which feels sensible, especially compared to the time they said the Metaverse would add $5 trillion by 2030. There are a few issues with this. What is AI exactly? Like all new technologies, what starts as something quite specific, such as connected sensors or bigger databases, rapidly becomes a meaningless marketing term, such as “the Internet of things” or “big data.” As a result, these concepts become bigger, more interesting, and more profound, but ultimately impossible to define. In the same way that “big data” meant knowing more things, AI is rapidly becoming “doing smarter things,” which is generally impossible to measure the impact of. We use tech wrong. Recent history suggests that almost all new technology not only fails to save time, but ends up wasting it. While smartphones can be used to teach us French, they can also be a source of distraction with funny videos and social media. In fact, tools that can have a massive impact on productivity, such as Excel, collaborative documents, and better use of digital calendars, are often overlooked because implementing change takes time. 👉 Nowism |
7. Those who are chasing after money aren’t doing it for the money A great example of this comes from How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, an incredibly honest account of what it feels like to get wealthy. As Dennis states: “Still let me repeat it one more time. Becoming rich does not guarantee happiness. In fact, it is almost certain to impose the opposite condition — if not from the stresses and strains of protecting wealth, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival.” While the data suggests that those who make more money are happier than those who make less, we don’t know which way the causality runs between money and happiness. Did the money cause the happiness or did the happiness cause the money? Perhaps those people who are happier make more money because they are doing something they love. After all, if you’re doing something that you find fulfilling, you probably would be willing to work more (and would likely earn more) as a result. It shows that those who are chasing after money aren’t doing it for the money. So why should we? Even if we get the wealth we so desire, it won’t make us feel whole. It won’t provide us with a deeper sense of meaning. No, we will be right back where we started. So what should we do instead of solving for wealth? We should solve for purpose. We should solve for substance. We should solve for the things that make life worth living. Because no one ever asks: If you’re so fulfilled, why aren’t you rich? 👉 Of Dollars and Data |
👨🏫 Quote of the week:
“All experience happens in the now. Even to remember the past or anticipate the future is a present-moment event.”
Deepak Chopra
🎁 Fun things to click on:
The world’s biggest collection of obsolete sounds. Bees teach their babies how to dance. How flip-flop art helps clean Kenya’s beaches. A 13-year-old girl asks a question to Warren Buffett.
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom