Three rules to apply so that everyone will understand you. Five conversations with your manager. ChatGPT: optimizing language models.

Welcome to the 35th issue of the newsletter, “Journal of discoveries.” Each week, I check a list of hundreds of sources of inspiration to spot exciting articles, videos, podcasts, and books on personal development, leadership, management, technology, and innovation.

Let’s dive in!

One “must read” for this week

“3 rules to express your thoughts so that everyone will understand you”

It can be challenging to express our thoughts clearly. Alan Alda recommends making no more than three points, explaining difficult ideas in three ways, and repeating key points three times. However, these strategies will fall flat if not paired with an honest desire to connect with others.

By BigThink.

Personal development

• 3 rules to express your thoughts so that everyone will understand you.
• What really matters at the end of life.
• Forget what you've heard about stress. As it turns out, it's actually good for you .
• 4 questions for better productivity.
• Epigenetic age reduction world record.
• What hunter-gatherers can teach us about the frustrations of modern work.
• Shankar Vedantam: you don't actually know what your future self wants.
• Carol Dweck: a summary of the two mindsets.

Innovation

Note: the first three are on the interesting topic of generative AI.

• The AI-generated art debate is here. And it's very messy.
• The lifecycle of uncomfortable tech.
• ChatGPT: optimizing language models for dialogue.
• 432 startup failure post-mortems.
• No, the metaverse is not dead – it’s inevitable.
• Can you transplant a brain into a young new body? And would you?
• Tackle the monkey first.
• The long view: web3 and user ownership.

Leadership and management

• Planning for five conversations with your manager.
• Careers and chance: how much control do you really have?
• Jim Collins: relationships vs. transactions.
• What is servant leadership?
• Marketing babble.
• Using experience maps to accelerate development.
• Tuckman’s model and team longevity.
• Should you work from home or go to the office? It all depends on the conversations you're trying to have.

One book

“Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know about Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong” by Eric Barker.

Twitter lists

Here are the Twitter lists from which I get most of the ideas and inspirations. Please note that the categorization is, of course, quite subjective.

• Innovation
• Entrepreneurship
• Management and Leadership
• Visual Ideas
• Personal development