Some Assembly Required* I didn’t start this newsletter because I wanted to be heard. I started it because I needed somewhere to think. For most of my career, thinking happened inside other systems—client briefs, pitch decks, workshops, frameworks, deadlines. Useful thinking, applied thinking, paid thinking. But always thinking with a destination already chosen. The work was to get there faster, cleaner, more convincingly. At some point—quietly, then all at once—that stopped being enough. The world sped up. Work fragmented. Technology collapsed distance, time, and effort into a single always-on blur. And suddenly, many of the things we’d spent decades mastering—craft, judgment, experience, intuition—felt oddly unanchored. Not obsolete. Just… displaced. Some Assembly Required* is where I go to put those pieces back on the table. This Is not a newsletter about answers. If you’re looking for hot takes, hacks, or weekly predictions about the future of AI, this probably isn’t the place. I don’t write to resolve things quickly. I write to stay with questions longer than the algorithm would like. Most of what I publish here starts with friction: a sentence that won’t leave me alone, a trend that feels true but incomplete, a piece of received wisdom that works in theory but collapses in practice. This is writing as orientation, not instruction. I’m less interested in what to think than in how people are learning to think again—especially now that machines can do so much of the mechanical work for us. Why “Some Assembly Required*”? Because meaning doesn’t arrive fully formed anymore. Careers don’t. Identities don’t. Ideas don’t, Even technology doesn’t—despite how confidently it’s marketed. We are living in an era where tools arrive before habits, capability arrives before judgment, speed arrives before direction. So we’re left assembling things ourselves - a way of working that still feels human, a relationship with AI that isn’t submissive or defensive, a sense of progress that isn’t just velocity in disguise. This newsletter exists in that space between parts and purpose. What I Write About (And Why It Might Feel Eclectic) On the surface, the topics may look wide: AI as Applied Intelligence, time, focus, and attention, creativity, craft, and systems, work, aging, reinvention, and transitions, media, advertising, design, culture. Underneath, it’s one continuous line of inquiry: What still matters when the old structures don’t? AI didn’t create this question. It simply made it impossible to ignore. When machines remove friction, humans are left with judgment. When automation removes effort, meaning becomes the work. That’s the territory I’m mapping here—not as an academic, not as a futurist, but as a practitioner who is very much inside the mess. The Motivation Beneath the Writing This is the part I don’t always say out loud. Much of this writing is for people in transition. Some by choice. Some by force. Some who can’t yet name it, but feel it in their bones. People who sense that the next chapter won’t be a clean continuation of the last. People who’ve accumulated experience, only to discover that experience now needs translation. People who are no longer interested in optimisation for its own sake. I’m writing for those who are rebuilding orientation, not resumes. And yes—some of this writing is also for me. Because I am not standing outside these shifts. I am assembling alongside everyone else. How to Read This Newsletter Not linearly. Not dutifully. Not with the pressure to “keep up.” Think of it more like Tsundoku—the Japanese idea of collecting books you don’t immediately read but their presence still matters. These essays aren’t meant to be consumed on schedule. They’re meant to be returned to when life catches up to the idea. Some will land immediately. Some won’t make sense for years. That’s not a failure of relevance—it’s a feature. At its core, Some Assembly Required* is a quiet refusal. A refusal to treat speed as wisdom. A refusal to confuse tools with thinking. A refusal to believe that the most valuable parts of human experience are behind us. It’s a place to slow down without opting out. To engage deeply without pretending certainty. To assemble a way forward—piece by imperfect piece. If that resonates, you’re in the right place. Life, as we know it, doesn’t come with a set of instructions. Some assembly is required.