A Learning a Day

First we work to feed our stomach.

Then we work to feed our desires.

And then, at the very end of that road, awaits the work to feed our soul.

We recently watched Nonnas, a Vince Vaughn movie based on a true story about a New York restaurant staffed entirely by grandmothers (or Nonnas) as chefs.

The film follows the team’s journey through the classic phases of storming, norming, and performing. The four grandmothers begin with conflict and chaos, then slowly learn to understand and respect one another until they become a truly cohesive team.

Beyond the obvious lesson about the process of storming, norming, and performing in team development, what struck me most was the role of setbacks in that process.

Teams that rely on a single leader often crumble when things fall apart. But great teams discover that leadership can and should come from different places at different times.

Setbacks test resolve. They reveal character. And they remind everyone that when the moment comes, anyone can step up to lead.

That was on full display at Nonnas. And it was a wonderful reminder of what makes teams great.

A simple way to tell if you really care about an idea is whether you care enough to seek feedback on it.

Most of the feedback you’ll hear won’t perfectly validate what you’re trying to do – and that’s okay. The goal isn’t validation.

Feedback helps you uncover weaknesses, refine your argument, and keep iterating until you have the strongest possible version of the idea.

That willingness to endure discomfort – to open your thinking to scrutiny and still keep going – is the clearest sign that you actually care.

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.

Indeed.

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.

Someone recently told me a remarkable story.

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.

The key, IMHO, is not to expect windfalls.

Expect the grind. Anything else is just a bonus.

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.

One of the biggest challenges of our uber-connected lives is remembering this simple truth: the only business worth focusing on is our own.

That means not counting someone else’s money.

Not chasing someone else’s milestone.

Not wishing we had their vacation, their house, or their version of “success.”

The only sustainable path to a life well lived is to focus on the sequence of steps in our journey – and tune out the rest. Everything else is noise.

“Mind your own business” might have once sounded like a harsh takedown.

Today, it might just be the most valuable piece of feedback we could ever receive.