Dima reads #9

I share highlights and reflections from my reading — spanning marketplaces, technology, productivity, AI, sci-fi, and whatever else grabs my curiosity

Excellence Through Elimination

Another angle to look at important of focus from Farnam Street's latest piece: "Your capacity for excellence is inversely proportional to the number of your commitments." It's mathematical reality.

Most professionals treat focus like a renewable resource. They pile on projects, thinking they can optimize their way out of overcommitment. But excellence requires concentrated energy that gets diluted with each additional priority.

The Via Negativa approach reinforces this: decision-making becomes exponentially better when you focus on eliminating bad options rather than endlessly adding good ones. Most business books push you to do more, learn more, optimize more.

Rethinking Burnout's Real Driver

Everyone thinks burnout comes from working too hard, so they prescribe breaks and boundaries. Blake Scholl's research reveals the real culprit: lack of believable motivation, not overwork.

The concept of "gratification windows" - the time period where you need believable rewards to stay motivated - explains why some founders can grind for decades while others burn out in months. It's not about work volume; it's about reward visibility.

This connects directly to the focus principle above. When your commitments are scattered, your gratification windows become impossibly long. You're working toward too many distant goals simultaneously, making none feel achievable. The antidote isn't working less - it's concentrating your efforts so you can see tangible progress more frequently.

AI's Attention Economics

The third lens comes from Scott Belsky's analysis on how AI will reshape our relationship with time and attention. As AI handles more routine tasks, human attention becomes the scarcest resource. This creates a premium on "time-rich, handcrafted experiences."

But here's the twist: this isn't just about consumer behavior. In professional settings, the ability to give someone your undivided minutes will become a superpower. As a16z's AI consumer data shows, we're already seeing the stabilization of the AI app ecosystem - meaning the novelty phase is ending and the utility phase is beginning.

Smart professionals are already rationing their attention more carefully, becoming protective of where they invest their cognitive resources. The brands, ideas, and people that win will be those that justify the "sensation of giving someone your minutes."

Week’s takeaway

While everyone's adding tools, frameworks, and commitments to their arsenal, the real edge comes from strategic elimination. Question: What would happen if you measured success not by what you've added to your routine, but by what you've elegantly removed?

These ideas are my intellectual breadcrumbs. Some will resonate, some will provoke, some you'll dismiss - and that's the point.

Dima