Three tips for your work week, and de-hyping AIPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #179: the top highlight on Medium last week + a clear-eyed perspective on AIBy Harris SockelHere are three pieces of wisdom to carry with you this week.One of the toughest skills for me (and many people!) is asking for help. Im great at gritting my teeth to finish something in isolation, but delegating is harder. If you, too, struggle with letting go, former engineering manager Vinita offers one piece of wisdom: Map the right problems to the right people. And make sure youre giving them something thats actually worth doing (not just something that seems like it should get done). A crucial mistake most managers make is delegating work that shouldnt be done at all.The term impostor syndrome was coined in 1978 by two self-doubting psychologists who named a feeling theyd had their entire lives. But its usually a sign youre doing something right. Youre shedding your skin and becoming someone new.Motivation is not the cause of an action; its the effect. If you want to feel motivated to do something, take one small step toward it.Were also reading: 30 observations about AIAccording to AI researcher Alberto Romero, the next wave of generative AI tools will obviate the human need to be the best at anything. The most defensible human activities of the future? Ones youll never possibly optimize. Sympathy. Humor. Imperfection. Writing surprising stuff instead of smart-sounding stuff.Recently, Romero published a list of 30 observations about the past, present, and future of AI. You may not agree with all of them, but theyll probably make you think. Heres one worth noting, true of AI and many things: Those who over-hype in the extreme and those who anti-hype in the extreme are often cut from the same cloth.Your responses: On building great teamsLast week, we published a newsletter about how monogamy is overrated (at work!) and why tech teams should operate more like film crews. Many of you disagreed (we love to see it). Heres one of our favorite responses, via Younghee Kwon:Movies are fundamentally different from software (and often hardware) products in the tech industry. While movies are produced once and can be enjoyed for years / decades without changes, software is continuously developed, maintained, and updated, making it more like a service rather than a static productWe also asked: Whats the best team youve ever been part of? Jeffrey Pillow replied:I was a senior marketing manager at a Fortune 500 company for years. Our community development team also reported directly to me. [] My team and I led a collaborative effort with Feeding America and Remote Area Medical (RAM) to provide take-home grocery boxes to everyone who attended a large medical clinic in Far Southwest Virginia one weekendThe appreciation and gratitude from medical clinic attendees was perhaps the most fulfilling moment of my work life.We came together with an idea. Met over a two month span. Transformed the idea into a reality. For me, thats how most projects should be.Lastly, in response to this story about how The New Yorker goes hard on edits, Jeffrey Anthony wrote:Ive found that editing is the difference between an okay article and a great one. Now, I spend as much time editing as I do researching & writing, sometimes even more. I can easily spend 68 hours editing a 3,500-word piece, often over two days. This allows some distance so when I return, Im seeing it with fresh eyes.Its similar to recording a song: you might spend 10 hours in the studio laying down a track and doing a rough mix, convinced youve recorded a hit. But its the next morning, when you sit down in front of those monitors and hit play again, where the distance produces the necessary space for honest reflection, and in a matter of seconds you know whether or not you have something. The top highlight on Medium last weekTrue vulnerability requires that you dont know. You dont know how your share will be received; you dont know how others will perceive you for sharing it; you dont know if theres a happy ending yet. Ally Sprague, Fake Vulnerability Is Keeping You Stuck, featured in issue #174.