Gratitude is magic
2025 Week 5: Headlines, Hubris, and Happy Places
As an application of the above (where I'll be laying out exactly how I'm thinking about content in the post-GenAI apocalypse) we've reshaped out Editions comes out. As a reminder, there's a front-of-the-week Edition of FWD that hits on an actionable topic (and often related tool) for Trust-Made Growth™️. The end of the week is for links, stories, and recommendations to help you digest this weird and wild world I'm calling "Headlines, Hubris, and Happy Places."
Let's begin.
SEO Awakening: SEOs are finally addressing a decade-long shift away from keyword-gaming and toward quality. A final escape hatch from the "you need to pump your content with these words to get clicks" anachronism. One of the best I've seen is this post from Newfangled—an agency that has made bank doing SEO—saying the quiet parts out loud.
Slow Productivity: This was one of my favorite books of 2024, and one that seems particularly relevant as the Efficiency Cult™️ is raising its head as the solution to everything. Knowledge work is inherently nonlinear in its ability to produce, and so if you sell knowledge or advice, you can't organize your work like a 1906 Ford production plant where they just bury people in the back when they get crushed in the machines.
Productivity or Hustle? On my podcast Working/Broken, we recently did a quick but intense deep dive into hustle culture and whether it's fulfilling its lofty promises, actually pay out. You can get it on your favorite podcast app too.
Speaking of books: The world's best online bookshop that doesn't have labor issues or pay for fantasy bottle rocket trips to the moon is bookshop.org. They recently announced their long-gestating eBook platform... Hurrah! (PS - you can also do what I do which is use your local library's eBook catalog which connects directly to my Kobo eReader, a device that also provides no funds for Martian exploration.
AI is going nowhere: I always want to give you signal flares đź’Ą when my thinking is evolving (smart people change their minds). While much about the AI marketplace is a grift factory, the forces of production are absorbing it at a rabid rate. I'm not (and will never be) in the "AI or die" camp. I had my first client meeting this week where ChatGPT played a meaningful role in thinking about client experience. Stay tuned to this newsletter as thoughts evolve.
Severance: Speaking of losing our minds to keep our jobs, Severance is back, baby! I'm trying my darndest to enroll my teenage sons and my wife with a Season 1 rewatch before I jump into Season 2. Who's watching?
DeepSeek fallout continues: A hegemony of hyper-religious tech heads telling us that we either succumb to their chips and unhelpful AI add-ons (I'm looking at you Zoom and Apple) is not good for anyone. Innovation is a place for challenge and dissent. Now that our government run by people who own other AI companies are seeking to ban DeepSeek in the U.S., we know they must be on to something.
The Superb Owl: The big game's ads are going to be bad tomorrow. You heard it here first.
And lastly, as promised: Gratitude. Many of you know from this video recounting all our shared successes, what an incredible ride my team had working with Sequoia Financial throughout 2023 and 2024. I just got reports back from their 2025 State of the Firm, and they are thriving like never before.
The update came with a beautiful note of gratitude from my friend and co-conspirator over there, Annie, and it just absolutely made my week.
So here's the lesson: In these wild days, tell people they matter to you. Notice what a difference they've made. And then say. the. words. You won't regret it.
See you next week after Travis proposes to Taylor.