Month: June 2025

The key insight about adults having temper tantrums is often tied to the idea that they didn’t get what they wanted.

Another way to say this is that they didn’t get what they thought was fair.

In other words, they didn’t receive what they believed they were entitled to.

Regardless of who was right or wrong, it was often clear that one side or perhaps both was missing something that they felt they were owed.

In our minds, our relationships are usually better or worse than we think they are. Because our insight is one way, we don’t really know what anyone else is truly thinking. And often, what someone is thinking is truly illogical.

The dominant narrative in our lives is the one we choose to pay attention to. We ignore all the other parts of the story, the small and seemingly uninteresting parts. But the reality is those matter, too. The story you tell isn’t the only story to tell.

It can’t be underestimated the (miracle?) to be able to go to a McDonald’s in Barstow and Cleveland, and it tastes the same. But that doesn’t mean we asked for it. When you see a McDonald’s at every corner, you can begin to believe this is what people want. Perhaps the better way to think about it is: it’s what’s there. While good taste takes time to acquire, I think it’s clear the masses have better taste than we see.

I’ve been on record, and I believe Claude by Anthropic is a much better product than Chat GPT with Open AI. The concerns that arise from AI are indeed crucial and need careful consideration regarding how it is made. What are the deep insecurities of humans that we are afraid to ask that AI will tell us? Perhaps more worrisome is what bad actors will do (and what will this enable for the good ones?) What biases are we imprinting in the system? Even scarier to think about, what are the blind spots we can’t see?

Every piece of technology solves problems while simultaneously creating new ones. Automobile accidents didn’t exist before automobiles, but that didn’t stop us from producing them.

Running from the tech is not an option. So what are we going to do to create the best type of AI? What do we want it to do? Which problems are we trying to solve? Who should regulate? Who can? Where are we trying to go? How do we set the guardrails? I found this discussion so fascinating and think its worth a listen.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tetragrammaton-with-rick-rubin/id1671669052?i=1000711127134

Remember, if you don’t have AI working for you, soon you will be working for AI.

A useful framing:

Your problem is ___________. You might have rigid boundaries, you might critize too harshly, you may be too passive, or quiet…perhaps a better way to look at this is why. Why are you the way you are? And one answer is when I was a kid I had to do this to survive. But now you are not a child, you’re an adult. We can honor why we make the choices to survive and we can also have permission to make different choices now.

If you don’t know the reference, it is a wall on left field at Fenway Park in Boston. And the temptation when you’re a competitor is to try and hit over it. Of course, most that try don’t succeed. But the temptation is always there for us. We see a mountain, we want to climb it. And that pull for risk, adventure, to try something that may never been done before—it’s there in all of us. (It may not always be wise and prudent and just might cost you an out.)

It is worth pointing out that much of the information today isn’t new but repeated. While a re-tweet is technically a new tweet, its the same tweet republished. Multiplied millions of times, our psyches can be tricked into thinking, “Wow, look how much I have missed.” But that isn’t an accurate lens. Hitting the repeat button isn’t new information; it is amplified information. It’s an important distinction.

Establishing culture is much more difficult than following it. For example, trying to write a show’s pilot is much more difficult than starting season 10. The jokes, the characters, and the overall themes have already been established. You just need to follow the formula. However, making that formula takes way more guts to establish.

It isn’t just with sitcoms. Nine years of blogs is much easier to write today because an identity has been established—day one of a new job instead of a retirement party. The first day of school is much more difficult for a new teacher than a veteran.

Because “this is how we do things around here.” Setting that tone isn’t written in the policy and procedures manual. We get to make up these invisible rules (if we are fortunate enough to not follow someone else’s).

It was assumed that money emerged from the world of bartering despite the evidence. Once we assumed one “fact,” more “facts” emerged. But this is a missed thought experiment. We can make “assumptions” that can lead us to more “assumptions.” And when we do this however, we can now leave room to be surprised. Your train of thought is only as good as your starting point.