Top Articles

A roundup of the week's most popular articles and essays from Playtext.

1. Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki and the Pursuit of Mastery (37 min)

Seinfeld made a fortune by creating his eponymous sitcom and still maintains an impressive work pace. Why does he continue to work so hard?

“Because the only thing in life that's really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. The things that money buys are fine. They're good. I like them. But having a skill is the most important thing.”

2. The End of Software (3 min)

“Before the internet, media behaved very differently—it was expensive to create. You had to pay people to make content, edit it, and distribute it. Because content was expensive to create, it had to make money. And consumers paid—newspapers, magazines, books, cable, and pay per view. When the internet happened, media companies viewed it as a way to reach broader audiences and reduce their distribution costs.”

3. “Friends” as the Ideal Community (22 min)

“There's this meme that everybody and their friends want to fuck off and buy 100 acres with their 10 best friends and build houses and do regenerative farming—the whole thing. But like, you're a tech bro at fucking Google, what do you mean?”

3. A Useful Productivity Measure? (12 min)

“Software productivity is famously unmeasurable. So now what do I do? That’s it, I’m screwed, make up some bullshit metric and watch my soul die, McKinsey style? Fight with my CEO about his impossible request until he gives up and fires me?”

5. How I Run a Software Book Club (9 min)

This article shares the author's experience running software book clubs and offers practical advice for starting your own. It covers the structure of the book clubs, which include both in-person and virtual meetings with large groups of participants. Key tips include using Google Groups for organization, selecting discussion leaders to spread the workload, and keeping the tone friendly and inclusive.

Notes

• Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Get in touch here.

• Love reading? Playtext turns any text into an audiobook. Upload unlimited books, PDFs, and articles, listen on the go, and read 2x faster!

• More books? Playtext Books has over 100 summaries on business, science, and productivity.