Themes for Study and Learning in March

So, first a recap for February:

  1. Future of Work.  This is robots, guaranteed annual income, future of labor, AI, etc.  Did almost no reading in this area in February.  I could give a lot of excuses, but, bottom line, it just didn’t happen.
  2. Antiquity.  I’m interested in the glory that was Greece (and Rome :-)), why it got hammered, and what we can learn about classicism, faith, science, curiosity, paganism, etc.  Read “The Swerve”, some of “The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox”, and most of “Rubicon”.  Did some posting on the topics.
  3. Morning Routines.  I’m trying (yet again) to “Kaizen” my morning routine, so I’ll be looking at stuff like Tim Ferris’ “Tools of Titans”, Mason Currey’s “Daily Rituals”, etc.  I re-read the descriptions of the Pomodoro Technique from the founder and from others.  I understood better why some of the quirky things about Pomodoro are in there — always completing a Pomodoro, for example, and how to combine little tasks into a single Pomo — and generally upped my game here.  At the very end of the month, started thinking about a daily routine variant when on the road, since I’m going on the road a bit more lately.  Basically it’s a matter of making the daily routine portable and pruning things that make no sense on the road (e.g., emptying my study inbox).

OK, so now the new themes for March, which reflect a “swerve” toward a somewhat different project for the year, which I’ll describe in a subsequent post.

  1. Team Formation in startups.  What’s a good team, how do founders pick teams, and how might they do so more effectively.
  2. “Purpose” and startups.  I believe that startups have to stand for something more than making money (although they should also make money!), for practical as well as idealistic reasons.  I want to review the literature and evidence for this point of view.  I guess I’ll start here with “Built to Last”.
  3. “Know-how” and startups.  I want to review the literature on better outcomes for startups where the founder(s) know something special about the domain where they are working, something that gives them an unfair advantage.

As usual, please let me know your thoughts.

2 thoughts on “Themes for Study and Learning in March”

  1. The March agenda is interesting .

    I’m waiting with mild anticipation to see how you tie this to your journey through antiquity.

  2. Sadly (or not!) this is a pivot, not a continuation of the Feb. themes. The new themes bear on a new book project — not the “7 Hard Problems” — that I’m embarked on. More urgent (and also more important) because it involves some outside interest and collaboration. Happy to chat offline.

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