Focus on the Essential

Hey everyone,

A special welcome this week to our new subscribers—great to have you here!

This is your Sunday Space, where I serve up the best ideas, tools and resources I’ve found each week as we explore the technology shaping the future.

If you find something thought-provoking, forward it to a friend.

IDEAS
Focus on the Essential

Recently, I’ve felt like I’m doing a tonne of busy work without progressing toward my big goals.

Even with this newsletter—posting consistently at the moment is a grind.

However, I feel that building No-Code/AI products has slipped the most. I’ve kept pushing out my targets—first, by days, then weeks.

Fortunately, I saw an old framework based on Greg McKeown’s Essentialism that’s helping to reframe everything:

The daily reality we all face, whether you’re a founder, writer, or engineer, is that we have major goals (the “vital few”) and minor goals (the “trivial many”).

The “vital few” are the high-leverage activities/tasks that lead to exponential growth.

The “trivial few” are the activities/tasks (most meetings fall into this category) that you sort of have to do but won’t really move the needle.

The core problem is that we ignore the “vital few” (the hard tasks that require a lot of activation energy) for the “trivial many.”

The simplest framework to counteract this is to reserve 2-4 hours every day to make progress against the “vital few.”

This includes defining what the “vital few” are in the first place.

The 2-4 hour block is one of intense focus—no phone, no email, no Slack.

This is something we can all apply today. I certainly plan to.

If you remember nothing else from this, focus on the “vital few” and ignore the “trivial many.”

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RESEARCH
AI’s Impact on Finance

Citigroup just released a startling report on AI’s potential impact on finance. Unsurprisingly, it’s going to be massive.

While this isn’t the first time Citi has reported on AI’s impact on banking, ChatGPT’s launch changed everything, shortening the timeline to complete disruption of the financial sector.

Since this is the AI vertical I’m most focussed on, I dug in. Here are my biggest takeaways from Citi’s report:

• AI will have the biggest impact on Banking compared to any other industry, with 54% of jobs having the potential for automation.

• 93% of survey respondents believe AI will improve bank profits, with nearly half estimating growth to exceed 10%.

• AI could add $170B (9%) to global banking profits by 2028.

• Finance companies are still playing catch-up, with ~90% of banks and insurance companies just beginning to implement AI in their business.

I’ve said before that AI will massively disrupt finance. This report is another data point to support that claim.

If you or your friends plan to get into banking, make sure you get a job that is among the 46% of jobs that can’t be automated.

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AI Word of the Day

Fine-Tuning

Also referred to as ‘Post-Training’, this is the process of taking a pre-trained model and continuing the training (typically on a smaller, specialised dataset) to adjust the weights specifically for the desired additional tasks.

E.g. Fine-Tuning Llama 3 with specific financial data to become specialised in predicting company earnings.

INSIGHTS
1 Article

Perplexity fires more shots at Google

Despite being on the end of regulatory scrutiny from publishers like Forbes and Wired, Perplexity continues to ship. Two weeks ago, they dropped a feature that turns user searches into shareable pages. This week, it displays search results in eloquently designed cards, just like Google does.

Luca’s take: Perplexity is already my default search engine, and honestly, this was the feature I’ve been waiting for them to drop. Basic searches, like weather and currency conversions, have been the only reason I still use Google. I’m not sure I’ll have a reason to use Google Search again. And I’m confident that many other Perplexity users will feel the same way.

1 Post

1 Video

TOOLS
Notion

Notion is my second brain, personal operating system and content catalogue.

It’s the engine driving my efforts with this newsletter and my No-Code/AI product development—from brainstorming ideas and writing drafts to hosting databases and coding.

With their community-driven templates for your personal or professional goals, Notion is the canvas for your ideas to come to life.

The icing on the cake is that the Notion team ships—their AI features give your workspace intelligence and will, in turn, allow you and your team to ship faster.

If you want to 100x your productivity, give Notion a try today*

THOUGHTS
Quote I’m Pondering

Roger Federer on perfection:

“Perfection is impossible.

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

But what percentage of points did I win?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half the points they play.

When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think:

'Okay, I double-faulted...it's only a point.'

'Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again...it's only a point.'

Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 playlist—that too is just a point.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. And it is.

But when it's behind you, it's behind you.

This mindset is really crucial—because it frees you to fully commit to the next point with intensity, clarity, and focus.”

Source: 2024 Commencement Address at Dartmouth

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Thanks for reading,

— Luca

P.S. “How many H100s can SSI buy for $1 trillion?”