Linknote — — 129 words

Media

Meet the people who listen to podcasts at super-fast speeds

While commuting I normally listen to podcasts at 1.5× speed. Alex thinks I’m crazy for doing that. But my behaviour pales in comparison to some of what’s described here.

[Rachel Kenny] estimates that she listens to five to seven hours of podcasts a day (which equals 15 to 21 hours at normal speed), “so maybe 20 to 40 episodes a day or 100 to 250 a week,” she said. She tracks her listening habits on a spreadsheet.

I have never tried going faster than 1.5×, because I doubt I would find it enjoyable. For me, 1.5× sounds very normal. I have no trouble understanding and following anything (though music is jarring). In fact, when I find myself listening to familiar podcasts at 1× speed, it always sounds too slow.

Linknote — — 158 words

Business

[Your strategy should be a hypothesis you constantly adjust](https://hbr.org/2017/11/your-strategy-should-be-a-hypothesis-you-constantly-adjust)

Why do strategies often “break down in the execution stage”? According to this study, it is often because big companies fail to learn from new information.

Staff on the ground will often fail to raise the alarm for fear of being blamed for failing to execute the strategy correctly. But often, the flaw was in the plan itself.

The Volkswagen diesel emissions case is one stark example:

> VW’s culture — specifically, its executives’ lack of tolerance for pushback from people lower in the organization — seems to have played a major role in its diesel-emissions fiasco… VW leaders lost out on the opportunity to revisit and update the strategy. Meanwhile, engineers had developed software to fool the regulators — postponing the inevitable.

This article suggests taking a ‘strategy-as-learning’ perspective instead. It’s an approach that reminds me a lot of [Lean UX methods](http://www.jeffgothelf.com/lean-ux-book/).

Linknote — — 74 words

Architecture

These pictures capture Britain’s brutalist vision of urban utopias

A selection of lecture slides from John Richings James. He was chief planner of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government during the 1960s, when many of the country’s most controversial developments were constructed.

When he became a lecturer, he took with him a fascinating selection of photos that show the good, bad and ugly of the brave new world while it was being developed.