Hello and happy Sunday! 

We’re continuing our Sunday Digest experiment with another round of rankings of everything we published this week. We also have some reading suggestions from the team at the end!

Do you like the new Sunday digest format? Do you hate it? We’d love to hear from you! Please let us know what you think using the feedback form at the end of this email.

Enjoy!

What we published this week

We published four new articles this week totaling ~6,000 words, recorded two podcast episodes, and launched a new publication, Means of Creation. We learned about labor regulation, how to “autofocus”, and how a VC partner thinks through media deals.

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This Week’s Top Posts

(Ranked by the % of people who said the post was “amazing” in our feedback forms.)

1. ⚡️ Organizing Superorganizers, by Dan Shipper & Temirlan Nugmanov in Superorganizers (270 words)
   
2. ⚡️How Josh Kaufman Does Research, by Dan Shipper in Superorganizers (3,075 words)
   
3. 📐How AB 5 Will Break Uber’s Business, by Adam Keesling in Napkin Math (1,958 words)
   
4. 💞#21 - What's the right kind of bad? 🎧, by Dan Shipper & Nathan Baschez in Talk Therapy (17 min)

Our first-ever Talk Therapy x Means of Creation crossover episode

💞 #22 - A behind-the-scenes look into a media deal ft. Li Jin | Dan Shipper & Nathan Baschez | Talk Therapy (20 min)

The first post from Means of Creation

💝 Sahil Lavingia wants creators to get interest on their interests | Li Jin & Nathan Baschez | Means of Creation (1,037 words)

⚡️ Reading suggestions from Superorganizers

Fire and Motion, by Joel Spolsky (1,499 words)

Fire and Motion struck me because it’s old but its message is still fresh. It’s an article by Joel Spolsky, creator of StackOverflow, Trello, and more talking about having days where he’s tired and demotivated and has trouble getting himself to work. I’ve written about the same thing in Productivity Cycles — but it’s always reassuring to hear about it from someone I respect as much as Joel. — Dan

Why efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better, by Barry Schwartz in Psyche (1,777 words)

AI Slays Top F-16 Pilot In DARPA Dogfight Simulation, by Theresa Hitches in Breaking Defense (616 words)

Poem of the week: To Begin With, the Sweet Grass, Painted Path (668 words)

🔮 Reading suggestions from Divinations

NYT CEO Mark Thompson on subscriptions, platforms and internal Slack fights 🎧, by Peter Kafka in the Recode Media podcast (57 min)

“Great podcast with the outgoing NYT CEO who presided over their subscription strategy for the past 8 years. Two really tangible take-aways: 1) they don’t care so much about individual viral articles as they care about creating direct, habitual readership, 2) long discounted trial periods work well to move people from ‘interested’ to ‘loyal’.”

—Nathan

Why People Can’t Stand Tech Journalists: An Interview With Casey Newton, by Alex Kantrowitz in OneZero (3,907 words)

Tweet thread of the week:

https://twitter.com/sgorlick/status/1295398477644664832

This issue was written by Saanya Jain and edited by Nathan Baschez. Thanks, and see you next Sunday :)

How did you feel about this week’s digest?

Amazing • Good • Meh • Bad

Dan + Tiago Live: The 4 Levels of PKM

Save the date: Monday August 24th at 2 PM EST.

We’re hosting a one-hour live presentation and conversation to discuss Tiago’s new framework The 4 Levels of PKM. We’ll also answer any questions you have.

Interested? You can register here.