If the answer is over there, then we’re off the hook. If it comes from the future, comes from away, comes from someone else, then our job is to simply wait for it to arrive.
But it could be that your organization already has all the resources it needs to change the dynamic in the marketplace. It could be that your keyboard has all the letters needed to allow you to type the book you have inside you. And the interactions we’re struggling with–the fear is inside us, but so is the bravery and generosity we need to move forward.
The solution isn’t coming. The solution is already here.
Solar and wind are already cheaper than the alternatives. We have the tech in hand to make a serious dent in our climate problem. Medicine is waiting on some silver bullet magic cures, but in the meantime, doctors have developed the expertise and the tools to alleviate the suffering of billions. Off-grid energy for two billion people is a solved problem waiting for distribution and implementation.
In a rapidly evolving world, hope is a natural response when things are always getting better/getting worse.
Acting like we have what we need already, though, gives us the chance to take action right here and right now.
November 8, 2025
We can’t change the past.
But the future might be up to us.
It might be best to daydream about what might be, not what already happened.
November 7, 2025
Each task brings three options. But first, let’s be clear what we mean by “delegate.”
If I can hire someone to do a task so well that my customer can’t tell, I can choose to delegate this work.
The Uber driver is probably capable of changing the oil in the car, but if the passenger can’t tell, doing it herself is a choice, not a requirement. Same goes for the restaurant that buys pre-minced garlic, or the executive who has her team do much of the work…
If it can be delegated, doing so is a choice and an opportunity.
So, the three options:
Delegate everything. Find people or AI systems to do every delegatable task, reserving for yourself only the work that can’t be delegated.
Delegate some things. Hire yourself to do some of the delegatable tasks. Perhaps it’s to build up insight or skill or reputation that will help you serve people in the future. Or perhaps you are hiring yourself as a way to hide from other, more difficult tasks, or because it’s fun.
(And it might be because you don’t want to support some of the encroaching systems that offer outsourcing–our work and our dollars are also a vote about the future we’re building).
Delegate no things. Do the work with your own two hands, because the craft and the doing are giving you joy and satisfaction.
It’s a choice. Now, more than ever, it’s a choice because access to freelancers and AI lowers the cost and increases the quality of the work we delegate.
The opportunity is to use leveraged delegation to create opportunities that cannot possibly be delegated. To make our craft more particular, more human and more distinctive.
The alternative is to race to the bottom. That’s no fun.
November 6, 2025
Landlords collect rent, tenants pay it. Landlords own an asset that increases in value over time. Tenants have the freedom to move on.
If you’re building a business, it pays to own an asset. Your labor doesn’t scale well, and success can be exhausting.
It’s better to be Google than it is to be hoping for traffic from Google. And it’s better to own trust and attention than it is to have to borrow or lease it.
What do you own?
Do you own shelf space? A proprietary technology or machine? A significant reputation? A well-trafficked place online or off?
Is it possible to re-arrange your day to produce just a little more ownership each day?
If we’re busy paying rent, it’s often difficult to find the focus and resources to build an asset, and so the cycle persists.
If you’re not sure where you stand, you’re probably a tenant.
November 5, 2025
The second time you install vacuum tubes into a handmade 2A3 stereo amplifier, you’ll know that two of the four pins are slightly larger than the other two. And you’ll know that the tubes go in pretty easily, you don’t have to force them.
You may know these things because the first time you did it, you pushed really hard and wrecked the tube.
Experience has easily measured value. If it’s important, don’t hire a rookie.
November 4, 2025
This is not a promise to be made lightly.
It’s not, “I’ve got your back until it becomes difficult or inconvenient for me.”
It puts us on the hook, without exception.
This is a powerful promise, a commitment that can change the life of both parties. Don’t do it lightly, but do it. It’s worth it.
November 3, 2025
Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to see:
- Shifts in trade routes
- Loss of political capital status
- Slow environmental changes (silting harbors, soil exhaustion)
- Incremental population drift
Now, we can see it happening in a single generation. Rust Belt cities, projects in China, mining towns–they come and they go. The reasons are a bit different:
- Economic specialization
- Mobility
- Speed of technological change
- Capital flight
But I’m not writing about cities here. It’s a useful metaphor for software, online networks and the tools we use to do our jobs and live our digital lives.
Your ability to find a new game for your Amiga, or join a chat with your AOL buddies is mostly gone. I have no idea if it’s possible to log into myspace or second life, and my blog is no longer visible at Typepad. A relentless cycle of creative destruction, fueled by VC churn, technological advances and the network effect means that networks and software are growing faster than ever (an online network can become bigger than many countries in just a few weeks). But as these networks grow, they suck the energy out of the ones that came before.
Most of us, most of the time, are living in a ghost city.
Of course, as in almost all discussions, this is multiplied by a thousand when we add AI to the mix.
There are problems to consider and, perhaps, opportunities for contribution here.
DUMBER: In general, the arc of tools and networks that seek critical mass is to be simpler, easier to get started with and deskilled. The good news is that this gives more people a chance to participate. The bad news is that deskilling the user moves the power to the network creator. In a paint by numbers world, Picasso doesn’t often show up.
WASTE: Those old files, hard-won skills and valuable human networks from the old software stack are difficult and expensive to replace or reproduce. We’ve done almost nothing to increase adversarial interoperability and provide ownership and interchange for network users… because it’s not in the interest of the old network to make it easy for people to leave with their data, and the members of the new networks don’t care–until they become members of old networks.
AMNESIA: Not only do we lose access to our data and our social graph, we lose particular skills and the ability to pass them on to others. The new architects don’t know what we did, and since we’re often starting over, we reproduce past mistakes.
DECREASING VASTNESS: I got my first email address 50 years ago. During that lifetime online, there’s always been room for doubling. The speed of human connection, the size of the network, the bandwidth–it felt infinite, doubling every few years. But we’ve hit our last doubling. We can’t spend twice as much time online. We can’t double the number of people using the networks. We won’t notice if our bandwidth doubles…
Just as the westward expansion of Europeans in North America eventually hit the Pacific Ocean, sooner or later we have to settle in and make where we are better, not relentlessly head west.
The system is far more powerful than any individual. When a network or a software stack gains critical mass, there’s not a lot an isolated person can do about it. But just as LEED and and local building codes pushed architecture in a certain direction, organized individuals can create more digital resilience. Email’s persistence is a miracle, but that’s partly because standards bodies kept its API open and thriving.
We’re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic.
Software isn’t just a nerd in a basement writing code. It’s a craft. The UX and UI, the design of the data stack, the culture of the organization that builds and supports it–this is the architecture of our time. Except it’s not Frank Lloyd Wright building a few houses in Buffalo, it’s contagious.
November 2, 2025
We wait and hope for the first kind, the magic that arrives just when we need it. This is the magic of inspiration, or of good fortune. The magic of opportunties offered and connections made.
There never seems to be enough of this sort of magic.
The other kind, though, is surprisingly abundant. This is the magic of being able to turn on lights for others. It happens when we cause connection or open doors. It’s the magic that comes from creation, and it’s based on abundance.
November 1, 2025
The first things humans invented, before fire, the wheel or baked brie, was trust.
Trusting the others in the village. Trusting that you could get a good night’s sleep. Trusting that what you heard was true.
We’ve expanded the village from twenty people to billions. Walter Cronkite was effective because millions of people trusted him, and he earned that trust. And as the media became more powerful and fragmented, that contract began to erode.
We’ve created methods of exchange and interaction that were unimaginable just a generation ago.
And, at the same time that we’ve expanded our circles of trust, we’ve pushed to make many of them digital.
Interactions by email and zoom. Documents that are written and certified by unseen intermediaries. Stories and images that feel real and local, but might be neither one.
This only works because we’ve applied our same 20-person trust instincts to each of these interactions, billions of times, around the world.
Aided by AI, the thieves and scammers are now relentlessly working to hack this basic human instinct. They’re stealing more than money.
That email might not be from the person you think it’s from. And that online recruiter, or the text you just got–it might not be worthy of the benefit of the doubt. Even phone calls from people who aren’t who they say they are–AI bots with familiar voices and plenty of specific knowledge.
Like all things amplified by computer chips and the network, this one is going to accelerate–very quickly.
People are going to be deceived, victimized and ripped off. And the sort of intimacy that marketers and institutions counted on will erode fairly quickly.
Halloween is here, and it’s not just little kids who are wearing costumes. If someone in a clown mask walks into a bank, the tellers know something’s up… trust is the first thing to go.
The short-term response is to change our bias about digital interactions–when in doubt, be more human. When in doubt, take your time. When in doubt, ask someone else to double check.
In the long run, I think we’re going to see our circles of trust shrinking. That’s sad, it’s going to fracture networks we’ve been counting on for a long time and it’s going to be confusing since the defaults will be shifting.
Marketers will discover the costs of this, but it’s individuals that will have to rebuild what they think of as community.
Watch out for tricks. All year round.
October 31, 2025
When we’re a little behind, we borrow to catch up.
Perhaps we borrow goodwill and spend less time than we might on a project.
Or we need some money to pay the rent, so we borrow against a paycheck.
And a good night’s sleep is tempting to borrow from as well.
The borrowing compounds, with small debts turning into bigger ones.
On the other hand, when we’re a little ahead, we’re not charged interest, we earn it.
The slack in our workday gives us a chance to plan, to do work on our own account and to see the big picture.
The difference between behind and ahead often comes down to how much we’ve promised the world. If our apartment is too expensive, our customer list is too big or our social media platform is hard to keep up with, it’s easy to fall a bit behind.
This is under our control.
Overdelivering on smaller promises is a shortcut to trust, loyalty and resilience.
October 30, 2025
