• TIME MANAGEMENT IS SIMPLY ABOUT ALLOCATING PERSONAL ENERGY TO OPTIMALLY ACCOMPLISH PRIORITY TASKS in a realistic time frame. The biggest causes of time pressure causing stress are almost always: (1) Failure to set priorities, (2) Inability to just say “No” which then pre-empts priorities, (3) Interruptions & distractions – which surveys suggest can usurp up to 50% of daily business activity and efficiency. Along with a regularly updated Priority List, a useful strategy can also be a ‘Stop-Doing List’ of tasks & responsibilities or habits that somehow evolved as part of your daily routine, but which may be unnecessary, unproductive, or repetitive and could be systematized or simply done by others (even faster, cheaper or better). The objective is to align your time with highest priorities, while also allowing space for strategic thinking, creativity and better decision-making. Combining a Stop-Doing strategy with prioritizing to handle important matters (while delaying or delegating less important and non-urgent matters) can almost certainly reduce time pressure, frustration, stress, and improve productivity & work-life balance. DCG provides ‘Lunch & Learn’ presentations on these and other tools & techniques to optimize time management.

 

  • TODAY’S CRUEL PARADOX: “While the American dream of upward mobility built our nation’s mythology, the reality of downward mobility may be what destabilizes it, from the increasing radicalization of seemingly well-off people rallying to causes at odds with their own standing in society, now becoming one of the defining political movements of the past decade.” Examples are behavior which supports issues like BLM, Palestinian aspirations for Israeli genocide, and socialist government for the largest cities in our country. Studies now find that six-in-ten children born into the richest 20% of households don’t stay there, and “having never faced genuine poverty have suddenly experienced the sting of loss, watched job security fade (as the digital economy made their skills obsolete), learned that highly coveted jobs in academia/ media/ politics are far fewer than promised, are dismayed that their dream of artistic freedom & flexible work doesn’t lead to prosperity, and are angered at the system they believe failed them. When reality disappoints those raised in privilege, this gap between expectation and outcome produces rage and malicious envy – resentment at others’ success – resulting in their power to unsettle politics in ways that hardship alone rarely does. Today’s wealthy activists, the meritocratic descendants of America’s ruling class, are now facing their own reckoning.” [FREE PRESS]

 

  • “A NEW COLD WAR IS BEING FOUGHT ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES, as the Communist Chinese Party increasingly pursues the next ideological struggle for world dominance.” By providing direct funding and full tuition for Chinese students to study, which allows Ivy League universities to pay top dollars to tenured faculty and maintain ever-growing endowments, the CCP can pressure avoidance of anything on campus involving the Dalai Lama or touching on China’s conquest of Tibet, through “cyberbullying from the Chinese Embassy and/or the on-campus student groups that work in suspiciously close coordination with it. The result is cancellation of speakers and events intended to introduce students to any point of view China would rather not hear, as well as threats to the safety of Chinese students and their families back home… Having no grounded values on human rights does not mean that universities are free of suppression, only that they are susceptible to having another system imposed on them.” [WASHINGTON EXAMINER]

 

  • WHILE GENERATIVE AI HELPS ENHANCE PERFORMANCE, ‘LEARNING’ AND ‘CRITICAL THINKING’ ARE PAYING THE PRICE. Latest from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon points to “significant potential drawbacks, including hindering developing skills and a general overreliance on the tools, with Chatbot users putting too much dependence and trust. Compared to older technologies, AI Chatbots are different in that they are a ‘thinking’ partner to a certain extent, but often provide inaccurate info, with users taking output at face value without critically considering the text that algorithms produce. In general, researchers found that “using Chatbots tends to change the nature of the effort people invest in critical thinking, shifting from gathering info to info verification, from problem-solving to just incorporating the AI’s output, and steering the Chatbot with prompts to assess whether the response is sufficient for their work.” A Pew survey found over a third of high school teachers suggesting that AI in Education can do more harm than good, and an Anthropic analysis of one million anonymized university student conversations found that its Chatbot was “primarily used for higher-order cognitive tasks, like ‘creating’ and ‘analyzing,’ noting concerns about critical thinking, cheating, and academic integrity.” And this is just the start…https://undark.org/2025/09/12/critical-thinking-chatbots/

 
THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

  • Social media scams have no boundaries. IRS has announced that Tax Saving schemes aimed at businesses and self-employed people have so far led to over 32,000 penalty assessments of $5,000 each for filing of frivolous claims, with public notice of likely future tax audits and enforcement actions on those filers. The schemes stem from posts falsely claiming that virtually everybody qualifies for certain tax credits, promising ‘easy’ or ‘fast’ refunds despite minimal documentation, and offering to prepare amended returns for $X, as well as encouraging taxpayers to either ignore any IRS letters or to respond with false info. [ACCOUNTING TODAY]

 

  • Beer Drinkers are Mosquito magnets, according to a Netherlands music festival study which put volunteers in a pop-up lab, with arms then placed in a cage filled with the insects. Video measured how many landed on their arms compared with those drawn to a sugar feeder next to the cage to find: (1) those who drank beer were nearly 40% more attractive to the bugs, and (2) those who used sunscreen and/or recently showered were less attracted.
  • There is a long-standing historical correlation between admired leaders and baby-names in most societies (George, Adolph, Winston, for example). But Britain was an outlier this last few years, with top names manifesting a serious Islamist problem as: (1) top spot went to Mohamed, and (2) biggest increases in male popularity went to ‘Yahya’ – the late Hamas leader responsible for the rampage of murder/ rape /torture/ kidnapping in Israel, along with ‘Vinnie,’ a tribute to Britain’s “hooligan soccer player notorious for impeding an opposing player’s progress by grabbing his testicles, as well as portraying on-screen gangsters. What’s in a name? A world of trouble.” [WASHINGTON EXAMINER]