Creator economy; Green aviation; Network effect
Issue #356
💡Think
Happy Sunday 👋
I’ve been thinking about productivity recently, and what it means to actually be it whilst in a fast moving team.
It’s really easy for us to load work up on our plate or start a new initiative, or just…be in meetings, but there’s no real understanding of whether that is helping you or the team move positively forward.
Something I personally find useful is asking myself this question: if I stop working on this thing, will anybody notice?
If the answer is no, then that is not the best use of your time, and it might be worth switching gears onto something else. It should also help remove “busy work” from the day-to-day as well.
Have a great week!
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ What happened to the creator economy?
Remember a few years ago when we were all led to believe we could make $$ just by opening our laptop, becoming a “creator” and producing stuff? YouTube Channels, Instagram Business accounts, Substacks, Gumroads, the list goes on. This article puts a magnifying glass on that and looks a bit more at the maths. It turns out that we didn’t end up all becoming millionaires after all. Who would’ve known!
❷ The seductive vision of green aviation
What if we were told we could fly, at 75% less emissions than existing airplanes? Sounds cool, right. But would it still be as impressive if it was 5 times slower to get anywhere? This is the promise of the Airlander, which is not only humongous (300 feet long), but in production now. This article looks at the reality of these becoming “railway carriages for the sky”. I would definitely use it.
❸ Farewell to the network effect
To the surprise of absolutely no one, VC backed businesses often sprint into a world of bloated features and bad user experience. This often also ends up in a world of copycat features, or in Meta’s latest shot copycat entire businesses in Threads. I guess the question is, when is simplicity ever enough?
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Bonus round
🎧 Listen
Algorithmic hiring
Did you know that most of the big boss companies use algorithms to analyse your CV? As you can imagine, this is preeeeetty problematic when it comes to issues of bias and getting a fair shot at the job. It’s becoming more popular too, because we all love an algorithm. What’s a bit scarier too is that soon we’ll likely go through many stages of the interview process without talking to anyone. What ever happened to that holy grail – “culture”?
Listen to this podcast
Spotify – Others (it’s not available on Apple for some reason)
Have a great week,
@disco_lu