Getting back into the swing of things

Just returning from vacation and wanted to share some of the topics on my mind lately. I’ll be back to the regular newsletter format next week.

As a side note - I’ve been thinking about changing the frequency of this newsletter but wanted a little feedback from you before I do anything. Let me know what you think in the 1 question poll below.

National Schooling Is A Slow Moving Train Wreck That’s Crashing In Realtime

Nationalized schooling is entering a phase where the slow moving train has started to drive itself off the cliff.

There are so many digital age trends that don’t get properly taught in school like using ChatGPT (and AI in general), social media networks, personal brand building, digital distribution on a global scale, crypto (the ability to send, receive, and interact with people & programs anywhere on earth without permission), remote work and the ability to work with and for anyone on Earth regardless of location, how the reduced cost of travel and access to the internet are reshaping the world, and many other trends.

These tech trends are accelerating and expanding the scope of their impact on society.

Standardized systems (like governments) are struggling and outright failing to keep up with the changes tech bring to society. That includes standardized and public schooling. It’s just hard for the nation-state apparatus to identify relevant trends, invest in the tooling & infrastructure of those trends, and bring the lessons learned to educate their youth in a timely process. Said simply, governments can’t keep up and they aren’t able to quickly retrain teachers and rebuild school curriculums to keep up with the changes created by digital society.

As tech trends and the impacts they have on society continue to accelerate, you have to stop and ask yourself, are we entering a period of time where parents have a moral obligation to find alternative education options for their children? If you think a growing number of people will answer yes to that question, you’ve got to start thinking about how that impacts society at scale.

Apathy Is Incompatible With Self Sovereignty

Self sovereignty is in many ways the antithesis of apathy. You have to care enough about your life and your community to take action. If you’re apathetic, you’re more likely to go with the flow, follow the herd, and get programmed to think how others want you to think.

Self sovereignty requires you to resist apathy. To resist the pull to follow the herd. To resist the urge to adopt another person or groups beliefs without thinking them through.

Self sovereignty is built on the ideal that you are actively and consistently engaged with defining your sense of self, your lifestyle, and your personal belief systems.

You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not defined by the likes, comments, or shares from your social posts. You are not the ideas you embody from the trendy ideological movements of the moment. You are 1 in 8 billion in an era defined by choosing you're own destiny.

Leave Home Without A Phone

I’ve been leaving home without a phone a lot lately and it’s been an interesting experience to say the least.

Most of my day is spent online and when I leave the house it offers the most pristine opportunity to detox, live an analog life, and fully immerse myself in the moment.

Life “outside” and “offline” is an overwhelmingly positive experience that most people seem to have become disconnected from. (whether they realize it or not) It’s mostly because we all carry phones now and are almost always “connected” for one reason or another.

But here’s the thing - you don’t need to be constantly connected to your network and you already intuitively know that. You don’t need to be available at all times. And you really don’t want to look back in time and realize that you missed viewing the world around you with your own eyes because your head was buried in your phone.

I saw this tweet and it made me realize that life just 15 years ago (before the iPhone) looked so incredibly different from life today How might life look in another 15 years?

For example:

I’m not telling you to become a digital luddite.

Nor am I ignoring the realities of life in the digital age that require constant connection.

But I am advocating the importance of clearing time for a digital sabbath. A block of pristine time in your week with no connection to the digital world. Time where you’re forced to listen to your thoughts, forced to engage with the physical environment you’re in, and forced to decompress from the onslaught of artificial sensory bombardment.

Rapid Fire

• What if San Francisco never pulls out of its “doom loop”? - Is San Francisco at risk of becoming the next Detroit?

• Americans Have Never Been So Unwilling to Relocate for a New Job - Americans unwilling to relocate is a byproduct of remote work. It’s an interesting counter concept to the many people using remote work to conduct location-arbitrage.

• China Seeks to Counter Musk’s Starlink With Own Satellite Network - Competition in the satellite based internet industry is good. But of course, when an authoritarian nation known for censorship aggressively invests in the industry you have to wonder what rival nations are thinking and more importantly, what they’re choosing to do about it.

• The U.S. Needs Minerals for Electric Cars. Everyone Else Wants Them Too - “On Saturday, the leaders of the Group of 7 countries reaffirmed the need to manage the risks caused by vulnerable mineral supply chains and build more resilient sources.“ Anytime you see nations talk about diversifying vulnerable supply chains and building resilience you should interpret that as multipolar forces trying to siphon power and influence form a few superpowers into a new, more equalized global order.

• US Imposes Sanctions on Some of Russia’s Biggest Gold Miners - oh boy. Maybe they should have done this from the start? It’s almost as if the US Government has no understanding of the downstream consequences of it’s own actions. IE: the US weaponized the dollar and financial markets against a sovereign nation and are suprised when the sovereign nation aggressively adopts an “outside money” to bypass US control.

• The new 9-to-5 starts at 6 p.m. for many Gen Zers and millennials—and they’ll walk out on employers who don’t accommodate their schedule - I'm less interested in the statistical accuracy of the claim here and more interested in the trend and what it means more broadly. ie: work-styles can drastically change in a world with remote work. That includes untethering when work is completed.

• Millennials and Gen Zers are quietly working second jobs as they live paycheck to paycheck - This is the quarter time job.

Extras

Big trends are like slow moving trains, they may take a long time to reach their destination, but if you follow the rail, it’s not hard to guess where they’re heading.

I wrote this 2 years ago and got made fun of for it but the prediction is exactly what is happening right now.

Remote work is a society-wide game changer. It's reorganizing the way we live, work & interact with each other.

Embrace the change or get left behind.