When it’s late March in Vermont, you start your onions under the grow lights.
It doesn’t matter what’s happening with AI agents or GitHub stars or the latest round of tech layoffs.
Some things never change.
This week, I’ve been deep in the manuscript for Return to Real.
Long days. Chapter revisions. Cover design decisions.
And honestly? I’m pretty spent.
So this is going to be a shorter issue than usual.
Instead of a big think piece this week, I thought I’d share something a little different…
Three things I’m watching, listening to, and reading right now.
Each one is genuinely worth your time.
And there’s a pattern connecting all three that I didn’t fully see until I sat down to write this…
1 | Watching: Chip Kidd's TED Talk on Book Cover Design.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone through 24 different cover design concepts for Return to Real.
Twenty-four.
In the process, I’ve gone deep down the rabbit hole of studying what separates a world-class book cover from a forgettable one.
And one of the most valuable things I came across was a TED Talk by Chip Kidd, who is arguably the most famous book cover designer alive.
(He designed the cover for Jurassic Park, among hundreds of others.)
In the talk, which was recommended to me by Mike Kim (whom you may remember from last week’s issue of TDC: [#091] What’s YOUR “AI Barbell” Strategy?), Kidd introduces a framework that cracked something open for me:
Every great design is a calibration between clarity and mystery.
Clarity means showing the viewer exactly what something is.
Mystery means giving them just enough to make them curious.
Too much clarity and you’ve got a textbook.
Too much mystery and nobody knows what they’re looking at.
The best covers live in the tension between both.
Here’s the thing…
The more I sat with this idea, the more I realized it extends way beyond book covers.
It applies to how we position ourselves in the market.
How we communicate with our audience.
How we build trust.
How we tell stories.
The whole talk is about 17 minutes.
Here’s the YouTube link:
Very much worth watching.
2 | Listening: Lex Fridman #491 with Peter Steinberger (Creator of OpenClaw)
My friend Michelle Falzon recently recommended a Lex Fridman interview that completely floored me.
The guest is Peter Steinberger, the Austrian software developer who created OpenClaw.
(The open-source AI agent that went from zero to 180,000+ stars on GitHub in a matter of days.)
It became the fastest-growing project in GitHub history.
And the reason it matters is because OpenClaw represents a fundamental shift in what AI can do…
This is AI moving from conversation to action.
We’re talking about an autonomous agent that lives on your computer, has access to your files, talks to you through your messaging apps, and can take real-world steps on your behalf.
It can even modify its own source code.
Now, here’s why I think this interview is worth your time…
Steinberger is someone who is on the absolute cutting edge of AI, further down the rabbit hole than most of humanity…
And he approaches it all from a place of genuine humility.
He’s the first to say we should be both excited and deeply concerned about what’s coming.
The full interview is about 3 hours. If you’re short on time, start around the 15-minute mark with the origin story.
Here’s the link to the podcast episode:
Dense. But very much worth listening to.
3 | Reading: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from OpenClaw…
I’m currently reading Morgan Housel’s Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes.
This one was actually recommended to me by Tylene. (Her usual stack is historical fiction, so when she tells me I need to read a business book, I listen.)
If you read The Psychology of Money, you already know Housel is one of the best writers working in the business/ideas space right now.
(He’s someone whose writing I admire and aspire to.)
The premise of Same as Ever is beautifully simple:
Stop trying to predict what’s coming.
Instead, focus on what has never changed about human behavior.
Greed. Fear. Envy. The craving for story and connection. The way rising expectations can extinguish virtually any level of success…
These patterns have been constant for centuries.
And according to Housel, they’re your most reliable guide to the future.
I’m about halfway through, and it’s one of those books where I keep frantically taking notes on passage after passage.
Here’s the link on Amazon:
The Pattern Behind All Three
So here’s what’s interesting…
One of these recommendations is about what’s changing.
(OpenClaw, AI agents, the frontier moving at breakneck speed.)
One is about what never changes.
(Human behavior, timeless psychology, patterns that have held for centuries.)
And one is about navigating the space in between.
(The art of designing something that has to work in a shifting landscape while honoring timeless principles.)
That last one is what I’ve been living this week.
You can’t put a literal piece of technology on a book cover because it’ll feel dated in 18 months. You can’t go full nature imagery or the book reads like a wilderness memoir. You have to work within genre convention while breaking enough to stand out.
You’re applying timeless design principles… in a landscape that’s shifting under your feet.
That’s also the position that every single one of us is in right now.
And it’s the central thesis of Return to Real.
The things that are changing are changing faster than ever.
The things that don’t change have never changed.
And the real work (and the real opportunity) is in learning how to hold both of those truths at the same time.
* * *
Okay, that’s all I’ve got for today.
Short and sweet.
Back to the manuscript tomorrow.
Have a GREAT rest of your weekend…
Remember to hug the ones you love.
And until next week,
Ryan :-)
P.S. No, I’m not revealing the cover design yet. But I will say this: we’re getting close. Stay tuned…
P.P.S. Speaking of the “Return to Real” thesis… saw this from Gary Vaynerchuk on my feed this week:
Seems like the idea is catching on. ;-)
