There are seasons in life when you can see clearly months – even a year – ahead. The path feels steady.
And then there are other times when clarity shrinks to a few weeks, a few days, or even just the next 24 hours.
It just depends on the nature of uncertainty you’re dealing with.
When you or someone close to you faces a health challenge, your world narrows to getting through today or tomorrow.
During transitions – a job change, a move, a loss – you might only see what needs to get done this week. If you’ve just had a baby, you might not be thinking beyond the month.
The key is knowing which zone you’re in and setting expectations accordingly. Frustration often comes from expecting a long horizon of clarity when your circumstances only allow a short one.
The important thing is to calibrate our expectations – low enough that we always give reality a shot at exceeding them.
The Works in Progress newsletter had a thoughtful article by Deena Mousa on AI and radiologists.
Radiology accounts for the vast majority of AI medical devices cleared for use. As advances in AI showed positive progress in studying scans, Geoffrey Hinton – Turing Award winner and one of the fathers of the modern AI wave – declared in 2016 that ‘people should stop training radiologists now’.
However, the opposite has happened.
“In 2025, American diagnostic radiology residency programs offered a record 1,208 positions across all radiology specialties, a four percent increase from 2024, and the field’s vacancy rates are at all-time highs. In 2025, radiology was the second-highest-paid medical specialty in the country, with an average income of $520,000, over 48 percent higher than the average salary in 2015.”
As Deena explains, there are three things that explain this.
First, while models beat humans on benchmarks, the standardized tests designed to measure AI performance, they struggle to replicate this performance in hospital conditions. Most tools can only diagnose abnormalities that are common in training data, and models often don’t work as well outside of their test conditions.
Second, attempts to give models more tasks have run into legal hurdles: regulators and medical insurers so far are reluctant to approve or cover fully autonomous radiology models.
Third, even when they do diagnose accurately, models replace only a small share of a radiologist’s job. Human radiologists spend a minority of their time on diagnostics and the majority on other activities, like talking to patients and fellow clinicians.
She also calls out “Jevon’s paradox” – the cheaper something becomes, the more likely we are to use it.
In many jobs, tasks are diverse, stakes are high, and demand is elastic. When this is the case, we should expect software to initially lead to more human work, not less. The lesson from a decade of radiology models is neither optimism about increased output nor dread about replacement. Models can lift productivity, but their implementation depends on behavior, institutions and incentives. For now, the paradox has held: the better the machines, the busier radiologists have become.
She makes a beautiful point as she extrapolates her lessons learnt from this.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly spreading across the economy and society. But radiology shows us that it will not necessarily dominate every field in its first years of diffusion — at least until these common hurdles are overcome. Exploiting all of its benefits will involve adapting it to society, and society’s rules to it.
At age 26 in 1960, Jane Goodallbegan immersive, long-term fieldwork studying wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.
Her approach was unconventional – she named them (vs. numbered them), observed behavior with minimal interference, and allowed patterns to emerge.
Her observations shattered preconceived notions – she observed that chimps used tools, exhibited personality, formed complex social bonds, and even engaged in violence. Many of these were thought to be exclusively human actions and her findings pushed the boundaries of how we define “human.”
She became a wildlife activist for the rest of her life – showcasing remarkable energy giving talks around the world for most of the year.
I appreciated her approach to talking about the climate crisis. She cautioned against doom and gloom and instead urged us to make better systemic choices – “Focus on the present and make choices today whose impact will build over time.”
We had a short conversation about Jane Goodall the day before we learnt she passed.
She was in Los Angeles and had been scheduled to meet with students and teachers on Wednesday to launch the planting of 5,000 trees around wildfire burn zones in the Los Angeles area.
Even as she passed, she was making choices whose impact will build over time.
A startup founder they knew had been working on an idea. Their startup got acquired. Ten days later, the acquiring company itself was bought – for billions. Overnight, this hopeful founder went from years of uncertainty to tens of millions in net worth.
Every so often, we hear these stories. They’re intoxicating. But, every time I hear them, I remind myself that they’re also the exception, not the rule.
For the rest of us, the path is far less glamorous. It’s long, often messy, and built the old-fashioned way – through thoughtful choices, strategic thinking, relentless hard work, and yes, the occasional dollop of luck.
A good friend recently shared a story that moved me deeply.
She’d met a former colleague after several years. During their conversation, this colleague revealed that back when they worked together, she had been going through an incredibly dark time – so dark that she was suicidal.
One day, she had decided that was it; she was going to end her life at the end of the day.
At work on that day, this friend took a moment to express a heartfelt thank you – telling her how much she was appreciated and how lucky the team was to have her.
It turns out that simple act of appreciation changed her mind. She proceeded to turn her life around and get to a much better place.
Meeting again years later, she finally shared the impact those words had on her.
My friend was moved to tears. And I was blown away.
We rarely know the impact we’re having on someone else. A kind word, a small gesture, can mean more than we ever realize.
As the saying goes, it’s more important to be kind than to be clever. This story showed me just how true – and how powerful – that can be.
There’s a great bit in Modern Family with Phil Dunphy and his longtime rival – a fellow geek who always seemed cooler.
In one episode, Phil pretends Gloria (Sofía Vergara) is his wife. This old rival looks at him and says: “Wait… I thought you married Claire. I was always so jealous. I thought you were the luckiest guy on the planet.”
And that’s when it hits Phil – and us.
We spend so much time looking at others, wishing we had a piece of their life. But the truth is, more often than not, they’re looking back at us thinking the same.
It’s played for laughs, but like the best humor, it lands with a powerful truth: we are often luckier than we realize.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to speak with middle and high school students. It’s always hard to know what will resonate at that age, but I shared these three reflections:
1. There is no one path. Careers don’t follow a straight line – they zig and zag in unexpected ways. Most importantly, everyone’s journey looks different, and that’s okay. The real work is in being curious, figuring out the path you want to take, and making sure you take the best next step.
2. Hard work is just the entrance ticket. Hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but without it, your chances drop dramatically. Opportunities have a way of showing up after you put in the work.
3. A healthy body and a calm mind are the foundation. No matter what career you pursue, everything rests on your physical and mental health. Your energy, sleep, fitness, and peace of mind are the foundation on which you build your career and impact over the long run.
Given their age, it felt too early to talk choosing your life partner. That would be #1 on my list. Great partners are like great teammates – they complement us and make 1+1 > 2. That choice shapes more of your life – and your career – than you might imagine.
We watched the one and only Sir David Attenborough’s Oceans on Netflix recently. It was both sobering and awe-inspiring. 5 reflections:
1. Industrial fishing is devastating. There is a segment in the documentary where you just follow a trawler/dredger under the ocean. These vessels and their equipment don’t just harvest fish, they bulldoze entire ecosystems, tearing up sea beds and discarding huge amounts of life.
“Overfishing” feels too mild a term for the scale of destruction. It has made me think differently about seafood.
2.Phytoplankton absorb more carbon than all the world’s forests combined and generate about half the oxygen we breathe. Yet only ~2–3% of the ocean is effectively protected, far short of the 30% global goal by 2030. Protecting the ocean is about climate balance as much as biodiversity.
3. Oceans have magical powers of recovery and protection leads to spillover gains. While the section on industrial fishing definitely evokes feelings of despair, Sir David Attenborough goes onto show examples where protection of marine ecosystems has enabled marine life to rebound.
Sanctuaries in Hawaii, Scotland, and the Channel Islands demonstrate the “spillover effect” – when ecosystems recover inside marine reserves, life spills outward, strengthening surrounding waters too.
4. Inspiration can drive real change. Greece just announced two National Marine Parks covering ~27,500 km² (about the size of Belgium). Bottom trawling will be banned there, and Prime Minister Mitsotakis explicitly cited Oceans as inspiration. It’s a reminder that stories and images can catalyze policy.
5. The ocean’s fate is humanity’s fate. The health of our oceans shapes global weather systems, food security, and planetary stability. I appreciated that Sir David Attenborough didn’t sugarcoat the destruction – he shows it plainly, alongside beauty and hope. The message is clear: the next few years are critical. Bold action now can still bend the curve toward recovery.
Watching Oceans left me shuddering at the destruction but also hopeful about the possibility of renewal. Sir David Attenborough makes the main takeaway plain and simple – the ocean is not just something we protect, it is what protects us.
A Learning a Day 