🥁 The OffBeat #76: Lead Sheet | Leadership Digest
Something to read, something to think about, something else
This is The OffBeat, from jazz drummer, two-decade marketing leader, and mom of two Allison Stadd: music-inspired answers for your leadership challenges, like how to hire like Duke Ellington.
Lead Sheet is The OffBeat’s every-other-week roundup of links, recs, and quotes. Like a lead sheet in music (just the essentials: melody, harmony, lyrics), it always has something to read, something to think about, and something else—all within the themes of leadership cues from music, cultural curiosity, and personal/professional balance.
15 creative people share their dream studios
80% of workers using AI say it’s making them less productive
The 25 fastest-growing jobs in the U.S.
93% of Gen Zers have taken a step toward exploring business ownership
Thinking of your career as a series of projects, not jobs
Google’s Rule of 4 for interviewing candidates
What is a family home without music?
“In fifty years, or five hundred, or five thousand, music will still do to people what it does to us now.” — David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue
In the U.S., teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes(!).
After struggling with his own increasing inability to focus, British journalist Johann Hari wrote a book on the modern attention crisis called Stolen Focus.
In it he covers our four types of attention:
Spotlight: your immediate, short-term focus (walking your dog, creating a deck)
Starlight: your medium-/long-term focus (wanting to be a good parent or start a business)
Daylight: your overall life focus (reflecting on what your medium- and long-term goals should be)
Stadium lights: our societal shared focus (openly communicating and collaborating towards collective goals)
When your spotlight’s constantly disrupted by things like texts, Slack notifications, even car horns outside your window, your starlight gets disrupted, which messes with your daylight. And when your daylight’s impacted, your community’s stadium lights are dimmed.
Even if you’re an extrovert, rest, space, and uninterrupted quiet are what flood your brain with clear light on any of—which means all of—these four levels.
For double the reading recommendations, including 29 lessons from owning a bookstore and how to give high-quality feedback, plus some things to listen to / watch, keep reading.