We do not learn from experience alone. We learn from reflecting on our experience. We learn by pausing to consider what life is trying to teach us each day.
Without reflection, twenty years of doing the same work can simply hardwire the same mistakes. Time passes, but learning does not happen.
If fact, if we are successful we begin to think that everything we did led to our success, no matter how stupid it may be!
Great leaders and professionals build a habit of reflection. They step back, think. The get feedback. They learn.
At the end of each day, take a few moments to ask yourself:
What did I learn about the world today?
What did I learn about myself?
How can I apply what I have learned to make tomorrow a little better?
Small moments of reflection can create meaningful change over time.
Life is good.
Marshall
Thanks to John Dewey for inspiring this reflection.
The cost of essential items continues to rise day by day. Higher expenses on food, housing, electricity, transport, and education are increasing the burden on employees and pensioners. A realistic revision of minimum pay under the 8th CPC, along with a decent DA increase, is essential to protect purchasing power and maintain a reasonable standard of living.
#8thpaycommission
What do the happiest, healthiest and longest living people have in common?
It is not fame, intellect, fortune or status.
Strong, meaningful relationships are the single most important predictor of long-term happiness, health, and a long life.
The so-called “calculator riots” of 1986 serve as a powerful reminder that today’s anxieties about artificial intelligence replacing human thinking are far from new.
In April 1986, a determined group of math educators staged a vocal protest outside the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) annual convention in Washington, D.C. Led by influential textbook author John Saxon, demonstrators carried signs declaring, “The Button’s Nothin’ ’Til the Brain’s Trained.”
They were opposing the NCTM’s new recommendation to incorporate electronic calculators into mathematics education at every grade level, including homework and exams.
The protesters worried that reliance on calculators would erode students’ mental arithmetic skills, numerical intuition, and deep conceptual understanding, potentially creating a generation of “calcuholics” overly dependent on machines.
The NCTM countered that calculators would free students from repetitive, low-level calculations, enabling them to tackle more complex problem-solving and higher-order thinking. Ultimately, the debate led to a pragmatic compromise: students would first master core mathematical concepts and mental strategies before using calculators as tools for more advanced work.
This balanced approach allowed technology to enhance, rather than replace, mathematical reasoning.
Today, as schools navigate the rapid rise of generative AI, the 1986 calculator compromise offers a valuable blueprint: prioritize genuine understanding first, then thoughtfully integrate powerful new tools.
The first trillionaire in human history
- Elon Musk
- Born in South Africa
- Bullied relentlessly as a kid
- Immigrated to North America
- Arrived with a backpack and a dream
- Built Zip2 with his brother
- Sold it 4 years later for $300 million
- Co-founded PayPal with the profits
- Revolutionised digital payments
- Sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion
- Bet everything on Tesla and SpaceX
- Got mocked for electric cars
- Got laughed at for reusable rockets
- Nearly went bankrupt in 2008
- Kept building anyway
- Turned Tesla into the world’s most valuable automaker
- Made EVs mainstream and transformed the automotive industry
- Made reusable rockets a reality
- Reduced the cost of reaching space by 95%
- Sparked the modern commercial space race
- Built Starlink and connected millions around the world to high-speed internet
- Turned SpaceX into the most valuable private company in history
- Bought Twitter for $44 billion
- The world said he overpaid
- He was called reckless, stupid & crazy
- Advertisers fled, media declared it dead
- Critics called it the worst acquisition in tech history
- Renamed it 𝕏
- Rebuilt the platform anyway
- Turned it into one of the most influential platforms on Earth
- Launched xAI and accelerated the global AI race
- Sent astronauts to space
- Is trying to get humans to mars
- Created millions of jobs
- Generated hundreds of billions in value
- Inspired an entire generation of builders
Before:
- Failed repeatedly
- Worked insane hours
- Slept in factories and offices
- Got bullied, laughed at and mocked
- Constantly told “it’s impossible”
- Kept building anyway
- Made it possible
Today:
- Richest person on Earth
- First trillionaire in human history
- Largest IPO in history $1.77 trillion
Most people quit when the world laughs at them.
Elon Musk built the future instead.
Love him or hate him…
Nobody has changed more industries in a single lifetime.
Payments. Cars. Energy. Space. Social Media. Communications. AI.
History won’t remember the people who said it couldn’t be done.
It will remember the people who did it anyway.
Congratulations Elon.
The first trillionaire. 🚀
You do not need to win every point to win the match.
Federer’s 54% rule is a beautiful reminder for health and life: one missed workout, one late night, one imperfect meal does not define the outcome.
What matters is the next point.
Longevity is not perfection. It is the ability to return.
Happy Weekend!
I watched a PhD student use NotebookLM to do in 3 hours what took me 3 months.
I asked him how. He showed me his setup. I have not studied the same way since.
Here is exactly what he did.
He did not use NotebookLM as a search engine.
He did not type questions like "explain this concept."
He uploaded an entire field.
12 textbooks. 40 research papers. Every review article published in the last 5 years on his
topic. All uploaded at once. Into a single notebook.
Then he asked one question that changed how I think about learning:
"If you could only teach this subject using 7 sentences — one for each core idea — what
would they be?"
Not a summary. Not an overview.
Seven sentences. For the entire field.
NotebookLM produced them. He read them.
He asked a follow-up:
"For each sentence, what is the single experiment or paper that proved it was true?"
Now he had the skeleton of an entire field — and the exact evidence underneath each bone.
Then he did something nobody told me about.
He uploaded his own notes alongside the source material.
Then asked:
"Where am I wrong? What have I misunderstood compared to what the literature actually says?"
The system found three misconceptions he had carried for two years. Two of them would
have cost him his PhD defense if they had gone uncorrected.
He called this the Misconception Audit. He runs it on every subject before any exam, any
paper submission, any conference presentation.
Then the final step.
"Generate 10 questions a hostile expert would ask someone who claims to understand this
field. Then answer each one using only the sources I uploaded."
He was not studying to pass.
He was studying to survive interrogation by the smartest people in the room.
He passed his qualifying exam on a subject he had started studying 11 days before.
I have been studying the wrong way my entire life.
Here is his exact setup if you want to replicate it:
1. Upload the entire field — not one source
2. Ask for the 7 core sentences
3. Find the evidence under each one
4. Run the Misconception Audit on your own notes
Survive the hostile expert interrogation
The information was always available.
The framing was the unlock.
He passed his qualifying exam on a subject he had started studying 11 days before.
I have been studying the wrong way my entire life.
Here is his exact setup if you want to replicate it:
1.Upload the entire field — not one source
2. Ask for the 7 core sentences
3. Find the evidence under each one
4. Run the Misconception Audit on your own notes
Survive the hostile expert interrogation
The information was always available.
The framing was the unlock.
🚨 England have been hit by a major setback after a large amount of team equipment was stolen ahead of their World Cup opener.
Players' boots, training gear, coaching staff equipment, balls and match-day uniforms are all understood to be among the missing items.
The England camp is now working alongside local police to recover the stolen equipment or secure replacements in time for training to continue as scheduled.
🇺🇸🗣️ Kansas City Police: “Two subjects of interest were taken into custody pending further investigation.”
(Source: @SkyNews)
🚨 Anthropic just showed a 24-minute workshop on how to actually do prompts for Claude.
Taught by the people who built it.
Free. No registration. No paywall.
I've seen $300 courses that don't cover what they teach in the first 8 minutes.
Watch it and bookmark it now.
Larry Ellison on Steve Jobs:
Apple became the most valuable company on earth and it wasn’t even one of Steve’s goals. He wasn’t trying to be rich. He wasn’t trying to be famous. He was obsessed with the creative process and building something beautiful.
Instead of watching an hour of Netflix, watch this 2 hour hour Stanford lecture will teach you more about how LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are built than most people working at top AI companies learn in their entire careers.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just said every engineer will manage hundreds of agents
But most people have not even configured one Claude project
You can't run 100 agents if your first one forgets the task after 3 messages
No CS class teaches this
Not harness engineering
Not agent memory
Not project context
Not workflows that remember your work
One builder mapped the whole thing out
Free
Step by step
No experience needed
Bookmark it for the weekend
INSTEAD OF WATCHING AN HOUR OF NETFLIX TONIGHT.
This 60-minute Cambridge lecture by Demis Hassabis will teach you more about the future of AI than most people will learn in the next 5 years.
Bookmark it and give it an hour, no matter what.
El paraguas más perfecto y natural del mundo existe y está hecho de plumas. ☔️ Ver a esta madre transformar su propio cuerpo en un refugio para mantener a sus polluelos secos y seguros es pura magia salvaje. ¿Habías visto algo igual? ❤️🐦