5-Bullet Friday

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of 5-Bullet Friday, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring.

This issue is brought to you by Incogni, which automatically removes your personal information from the web, helping to keep you safe online and off. Data protection is fast becoming a necessity and not a luxury. Be sure to check out their offer in the P.S.

Earplugs I’m enjoying

​PQ Silicone Gel Earplugs. For sleep, I’ve used Mack’s silicone earplugs for more than a decade. But they’re not without issues: the putty is too large for my ears, but a half is too small, and I constantly run out while on the road. The PQ earplugs come in a package of 50, and they’re just the right size. Thus far, these have become my default.

Article I’m reading

“Inside the Secret Factory That Supplies Ukraine’s War Drones.” (Alternate link.) For a good pairing on the future of war-tech, watch “Palmer Luckey Wants America to Win.”

Blog post I’m reading

“From Hierarchy to Intelligence” by Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha. Here are a few excerpts to give you some idea of the gist:​
​​
​Block is remote-first. Everything we do creates artifacts. Decisions, discussions, code, designs, plans, problems, and progress all exist as recorded actions. It’s the raw material for a company world model. In a traditional company, a manager’s job is to know what’s happening across their team and relay that context up and down the chain. In a remote-first company where work is already machine-readable, AI can build and maintain that picture continuously. What’s being built, what’s blocked, where resources are allocated, what’s working and what isn’t. That’s the information the hierarchy used to carry. The company world model carries it instead.​
​
...
​
​[An intelligence layer] is what composes capabilities into solutions for specific customers at specific moments and delivers them proactively. A restaurant’s cash flow is tightening ahead of a seasonal dip the model has seen before. The intelligence layer composes a short-term loan from the lending capability, adjusts the repayment schedule using the payments capability, and surfaces it to the merchant before they even think to look for financing. A Cash App user’s spending pattern shifts in a way the model associates with a move to a new city. The intelligence layer composes a new direct deposit setup, a Cash App Card with boosted categories for their new neighborhood, and a savings goal calibrated to their updated income. No product manager decided to build either solution. The capabilities existed. The intelligence layer recognized the moment and composed them.
​
​…
​​
​We’re writing about it now because we believe every company will eventually need to confront the same question we did: what does your company understand that is genuinely hard to understand, and is that understanding getting deeper every day?
​
If the answer is nothing, AI is just a cost optimization story. You cut headcount, improve margins for a few quarters, and eventually get absorbed by something smarter. If the answer is deep, AI doesn’t augment your company. It reveals what your company actually is.​
​
Pairs well with the real-world examples in this video from Tom Blomfield, and you only need 1–2 minutes to get the gist.
​
Thanks to Tomas Hoyos for recommending both of the above. He’s putting it into practice at Apt, the world’s first AI-powered career test and career mentor. His super-short “here’s what happened this week” AI synopsis newsletter is also worth checking out.

What I’m watching from start to finish

​Parks and Recreation (Peacock, Apple TV, Amazon Prime). OK, I realize I’m late to the party here, but, MY GOD, what a wonderful nightly palate cleanser!
​
Like millions of people, I’d seen tons of social clips of Parks and Rec and even 1–2 scattered episodes. But I’d never watched it as one should: starting at the beginning. The character development over time is incredible, and having a reliable “Oh, I feel so much better!” at the end of every day has become one of my favorite rituals.
​
If you want to sample just one episode, try “Sister City” (Season 2, Episode 5) or one of their other top-rated eps. But I’d suggest starting at S1E1 and just watching them all. As someone who grew up on Richard Pryor, I never thought I’d be so grateful for (mostly) wholesome laughs. And if you like it, you’ll have 120+ eps over 7 seasons to keep you laughing, which should be enough to fuel at least a few months of exhaling before bed.
​
To really go down the rabbit hole, pair this with my conversation with Michael Schur. Michael created the critically acclaimed NBC comedy The Good Place and co-created Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Rutherford Falls. Prior to “Parks,” Michael spent four years as a writer-producer on the Emmy Award-winning NBC hit The Office.

Quotes I’m pondering

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
​— Ray Bradbury​
(Click to share on X.)​

“In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”
​— Anton Chekhov advising his brother, which was paraphrased later into the succinct writing advice “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

You can complement this edition of 5-Bullet Friday with my brand-new interview with neuroscientist and Stanford University School of Medicine professor Dr. Andrew Huberman. We cover peptides, physical and mental performance, and much more.
​
And, as always, please give me feedback on X. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @tferriss and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.
​
Have a wonderful weekend, all.
​
Much love to you and yours,
​
Tim

P.S. Deal of the Week — Incogni: Keep strangers from accessing your personal information online.

Anyone can look you up online in about a minute. Search for yourself on a people-search site; you’ll probably find your address, phone number, and relatives sitting there for the taking. Scary stuff.

​Incogni removes your personal info from the web. It automatically contacts the sites and companies that collect and sell your personal details and submits removal requests on your behalf then keeps re-checking, since those sites tend to sneakily re-post your info over time. On the Unlimited plan, you can also flag specific sites the automated sweep might miss.

Deloitte completed an independent assurance report on Incogni’s practices, confirming how many sites it covers, that it keeps re-sending removal requests, and that it doesn’t sell your information. Incogni was the first service of its kind to put itself through that kind of third-party review, which is part of why it’s earned Editors’ Choice from both PCMag and PCWorld. Right now Incogni is offering 60% off annual subscriptions with code TIMTIM at checkout, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee.