How to overcome burnout, Latest AI Breakthroughs & 🛸 Space Adventures to put things into perspective

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Avoiding burnout, AI updates, and a little bit of space to put things into perspective, starting with...

Thing 1 - How to Avoid Burnout

Burnout is real. It gets even realer when your days are packed with endless emails and meetings that act like bunnies and multiply.
Dr. Cal Newport and Dr. Andrew Huberman dive into this in a podcast episode on focus and productivity.

Here’s what they suggest to keep burnout at bay:

Dive in Wholeheartedly

Love what you do and face challenges head-on instead of feeling swamped. Maintain a true desire to be present and explore challenges, as opposed to feeling disengaged and overwhelmed.

Easier said than done, I know... Keep your hands on your work and your mind will follow.

Cut Down on Commitments

Say 'no' more often.
Every 'yes' piles on more tasks that can distract you from your real work.

What is easier to accomplish, one thing, or 5 unrelated ones?

Focus.

Group Your Tasks

Do all those little admin tasks in batches. This way, you avoid constant interruptions and get longer stretches for important work.

And you need deep work time to accomplish... deep work. That's deep, Z...

Push for a Healthier Culture

Encourage a workplace vibe that prioritizes well-being. If the culture glorifies toxic behavior, guess what happens?

Inspire Organizational Change

Promote new ways for teams to collaborate that don't rely so much on non-stop digital chatter. Dare I say "async work" (when it makes sense)?

Thing 2 - AI of the week

• Shengshu Technology and Tsinghua University introduced Vidu, an AI video model to compete with OpenAI's Sora

Vidu vs Sora comparison side by side (<2 min)

• OpenAI deployed memories across chats. It now remembers some key things about you from your conversations so it can help you better. Yes, you can manage what it remembers.
• Wendy's is using FreshAI to replace people taking orders in the drive-through

This is how it works in the wild

• Synthesia rolled out expressive AI avatars that can convey tone, facial expressions, and body language.
• Hume AI launched API access to their Empathetic Voice Interface (EVI). This will allow devs to integrate it into their applications.

Thing 3 - Our cosmic bubble

Image from Chris Hadfield

You snatch an alien spaceship and zip past Pluto, to the very edge of the solar system. Way beyond where 🛰️ Voyager 1 and 2 got to.

You arrive into the Oort Cloud, a gigantic sphere around our solar system, packed with icy giants larger than mountains.

This mysterious zone might just be the cosmic nursery of long-period comets. They take their sweet time orbiting the Sun, some taking over 200 years!

The Oort Cloud starts at about 2,000 astronomical units from the Sun and stretches possibly up to 100,000 AU.
1 AU = average distance between the Earth and the Sun, ~149.6 million kilometers (a.k.a. 93 million miles).

We're a tiny spec of dust floating in the vastness of the space - and we're all related...

Cheers, Zvonimir