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The superpowers of the 21th Century

David Heinemeier Hansson, a computer programming star who created the Ruby on Rails website development framework, which currently provides the faundation for some of the Web's most popular destinationd, including GitHub and Hulu. Hasson is a partner in the influential development firm Basecamp (called 37 signals until 2014). Hasson doesn't talk publicaly about the magnitude of his profit share from Basecamp or his other revenue sources, but we can assume they're lucrative given that Hasson splits his time between Chicago, Malibu, and Marbella, Spain, where he dabbles in high performance race-car driving.

Why I am telling you about this random guy you might not even know?There are two answers to this question. The first is that I want us to focus on the personality traits and tactics that helped drive this trio's rise. The second answer is that I want to focus less on the individual and more on the type of work he represent. Though both approaches to this core question are important, the second one will prove most relevant to our discussion, as they better illuminate what our current economy rewards.

Race Against the machine

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who in their influential 2011 book, Race Against the Machine, provide a compelling case that among various forces at play, it's the rise of digital technology in particular that's transforming our labor markets in unexpected ways.

"We are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring, " Brynjolfsson and McAfee explain early in the book. "Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organisations are laggind behind."

This reality is not, however universally grim. As the book says, this Great Restructuring is not driving down all jobs but is instead diving them. Though an increasing number of people will lose in this new economy as their skills becomes automatable or easily outsourced, there are others who will not only survive, but thrive becoming more valued (and as result more rewarded) than before.

Average is over

There are three groups of people that will fall on the lucrative side of this divide and reap a disproportionate amount of the benefits of the Intelligent Machine Age. Not suprisingly, it's one to these groups that Hansson happen to belong.

  1. The High-Skilled workers

    Advances such as robotics and voice recognition are automating many low-skilled positions. So those with the oracular ability to work with and tease valuable results out of increasingly complex machines will thrive. Tyler Cowen summarizes this reality more bluntly: The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?

  2. The superstars These individuals dominate their fields, benefiting from the global reach of digital platforms. Whether they’re artists, programmers, or thought leaders, their expertise commands attention and rewards.

  3. The owners This group controls capital—be it financial, intellectual, or technological. In the digital economy, owning platforms or equity in successful ventures leads to significant wealth accumulation.

How to become a Winner in the New Economy

I just Identified three groups that are poised to thrive and that I claim are accessible: those who can work creatively with intelligent machines and those who are stars in their field. What's the secret to landing in these lucrative sectors and of the widening digital divide? I argue that the following two core abilities are crucial

Two core abilities for thriving in the new economy

  1. The ability to quickly master hard things
  2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed

Law of productivity

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

By Maximizing your intensity when you work, it maximizes the results produced per unit of time spent working

Put another way, The type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work

Okay

That's it for today, if you have any questions or feedback you can always reach out to me. As you saw the newsletter was renamed to 10x Better to be more open to different topics and also focusing on becoming and 10x Engineer can not make you a 10x engineer but instead focus on different areas of growth as an engineer so I was long in the first place but we adapt also.... 😁😁😁

Best regards,
Irere Emmanuel