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Jurgen Appelo

@jurgenappelo

Redesigning the future of work—no hype, no hierarchies, no hegemonies. Aiming for open systems, responsible autonomy, and decentralized power. https://substack.jurgenappelo.com/

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11.12.2024
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Latest posts by Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo

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Autism Is My Superpower—Oops, I'm on the Spectrum How late autism diagnosis explained a lifetime of superpowers (and a bit of kryptonite)

I took three different online autism tests. (The fact that I studiously completed three questionnaires should tell you something about the very traits I was investigating.)

10.03.2026 17:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Anthropic Data Reveals AI's Real Job Impact: Three Hidden Mechanisms Already Reshaping Work The study shows AI is doing less than it could, but disruption has already begun. Three overlooked mechanisms are quietly compressing jobs, organizations, and labor demand across the economy.

"The fact that observed exposure remains so far below theoretical capability across every occupational category tells us that most organizations are still operating in the augmentative mode: AI assisting workers, not replacing workflows."

10.03.2026 13:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Escape Velocity—How AI Will Achieve Peak Bullshit Work AI removes the human bottlenecks that once kept meaningless bureaucracy in check. Prepare for a future of work where AI management is all bullshit.

When bullshit work was expensive, market forces kept it in check. When AI makes it free, those guardrails vanish. Every risk-averse manager now has unlimited capacity for process theater.

10.03.2026 12:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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AI Should Go Fast So We Can Go Slow Two days before release, I accidentally deleted the Kindle version of my new book.

Two days before my book launch, I accidentally deleted the Kindle version. Poof. Gone. Lost all pre-sales. Two hours of damage control. Stressed and multitasking. A digital self-own of the highest order.

10.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Why Bother? The Future of Learning. In the age of AI, what’s the point of learning anything? There are no knowledge workers in the future or work. The knowledge of the entire world is readily available at our fingertips.

In the age of AI, learning isn't about knowledge. (AI has that covered.) Learning is brain training. You don't lift weights to move barbells. You lift to build muscle. Same with your mind.

09.03.2026 17:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Escape Velocity—How AI Will Achieve Peak Bullshit Work AI removes the human bottlenecks that once kept meaningless bureaucracy in check. Prepare for a future of work where AI management is all bullshit.

Soon, AI agents will fill out compliance forms, generate reports other agents summarize, create tasks additional agents track. Administrative theater humming along while we stay oblivious.

09.03.2026 12:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Why Ravens May Rule the Future of Work M-Shaped Professionals Are Becoming the Ultimate Orchestrators—Beyond the Generalist vs Specialist Divide

Sergey Brin says managers are easiest to replace with AI. Sounds brutal until you realize most management was pattern matching with better health insurance.

09.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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AI Has Ruined Our Ignorance I Did Something Dumb and I'm Proud of It

At 24, I almost landed a million-pound game contract. The only problem: my team had no fucking clue what we were doing. Our entire project was mockups and make-believe. I'm still proud we tried.

08.03.2026 17:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Talking Around The AI Apocalypse You can say a lot that's true and leave out the kicker: who's responsible.

"The rise of AI and the complacency of our elected officials in the coming dispossession of white-collar workers are outgrowths of private power and moneyed interests coöpting democracy."

08.03.2026 14:15 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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AI Raised the Bar for My Keynote Presentations Building quality presentations in the age of AI takes more work, not less

Instead of using AI to shave hours off your day, use it to deliver your best work ever. Your audience deserves it.

08.03.2026 12:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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AI Raised the Bar for My Keynote Presentations Building quality presentations in the age of AI takes more work, not less

The story of a keynote should be spoken out loud, not written on a screen. Slides highlight the main point. Everything else goes in presenter notes.

08.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I'm Not Quitting Substack and I Refuse to Use Grok How to Change Yourself (and Others): Change Management 101

Want someone to change? Answer three questions:

Why should they care?\
What's in it for them?\
How do they start?

Skip one and your revolution dies as a toothless idea nobody acts on.

07.03.2026 17:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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You are NOT Alone Agile Moose is a reader-supported publication.

"If you are struggling, you are not alone. It’s not you, it’s the economy, the industry, the universe, and a perfect storm of local, national, and global events."

07.03.2026 15:45 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Your Job is Safe. Your Kid's Job Isn't... Anthropic's Real-World Data Changes Everything. Anthropic’s economists just dropped the first real-world AI jobs map. The gap between theory and reality is staggering. And the workers in the crosshairs aren’t who you think.

"The front door to a generation of careers is quietly closing. And the workers who look most like what AI does -- educated, analytical, document-heavy -- are the ones whose tasks are being covered first."

07.03.2026 15:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Why Ravens May Rule the Future of Work M-Shaped Professionals Are Becoming the Ultimate Orchestrators—Beyond the Generalist vs Specialist Divide

Managers and specialists are converging into the same role. Generalists picking up specializations. Specialists learning to orchestrate. One job title emerging everywhere: M-skilled orchestrator.

07.03.2026 12:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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“You are arrogant, condescending, and disrespectful.” Six Archetypes for Giving and Taking Feedback—From Peacemaker to Demagogue

Best advice I ever got about handling criticism came from Lyssa Adkins:

"What is your goal for your relationship with this person? Let that determine your next action."

Play the long game. Begin with the end in mind.

07.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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You’re Using AI Wrong at Work (and Your Boss Doesn’t Know Either) 88% of organisations say they use AI. Only 6% are doing it well. A five-question audit to close the gap.

"The outcomes were cognitive fatigue, burnout, weakened decision making, and lower quality work over time. The AI increased throughput. It decreased judgement. Nobody measured the second effect because nobody was looking for it."

07.03.2026 07:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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The Red Queen Says No to AI Agents So, when are we going to get true agentic AI? The paradox is that AI increases uncertainty, which breaks autonomous AI agents.

2025 is 'the year of AI agents.' By 2028, they'll work 8-hour days unsupervised.

I don't believe it.

True autonomy—where an agent works a full day without babysitting—requires AGI. And AGI is more than a few years away.

06.03.2026 17:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
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Value Stream Examples—From Signal to Impact Why Almost Every Value Stream Example You Know Is Wrong

My issue with the traditional description of the value stream is that it begins with a request or order from a customer. This is way too late! If you sit around waiting for customers to place an order with your company, you’ll soon be out of business.

substack.jurgenappelo.com/p/value-stre...

06.03.2026 12:44 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Escape Velocity—How AI Will Achieve Peak Bullshit Work AI removes the human bottlenecks that once kept meaningless bureaucracy in check. Prepare for a future of work where AI management is all bullshit.

Your bank demands UBO forms every few years. Nothing changed. They know nothing changed. You both know it's theater. Now imagine AI doing this dance with other AI. Forever. At zero cost.

06.03.2026 12:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I Started Drawing Maps Because M-Shaped Professionals Will Thrive in the AI Age Why T-shaped skills aren't enough anymore — and what M-shaped professionals do differently.

Ten years ago, the agile community told me: do one thing and do it well. I agreed and ditched my sketchbook. In 2025, with AI devouring every single-domain skill, that advice aged terribly.

06.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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How to debug a team that isn’t working: the Waterline Model A guide to solving team problems (without always blaming the people)

"Snorkel before you scuba. Start at the top, always. Snorkeling means checking the shared systems first—goals, roles, and decision-making—before you start diagnosing personalities."

06.03.2026 07:30 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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AI Alignment? How About Human Alignment? How to Use AI as a Real-Time Accountability Partner for Your Values

I programmed Claude with my personal values and turned it into my accountability partner. Every piece I write gets checked against my stated values while I'm still writing. A test harness for human behavior.

05.03.2026 17:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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How AI Will Reshape Public Opinion Social media democratised public opinion, shifting influence away from elites and experts to ordinary people. LLMs will partly reverse this trend. They are a powerful, new technocratising force.

"When considering the large-scale impact of this technology on public opinion, its most consequential feature is simple: it greatly improves people’s access to accurate, evidence-based information."

05.03.2026 15:45 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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How Many People Does It Take to Kill a ChatGPT? Let's run the numbers on the QuitGPT phenomenon

"ChatGPT was already losing ground structurally—through product dissatisfaction (who wants ads in their AGI?), rising competition, and near-zero cost of trying alternatives—and now also popularly, thanks to the rushed deal with the Pentagon and the subsequent backlash."

05.03.2026 15:30 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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The Solo Chief You're the strategist, the operator, and the single wringable neck. Welcome.

The role that was never supposed to be autonomous is becoming exactly that. Middle managers now inherit broader scopes, sharper targets, less support. They're turning into Solo Chiefs whether they like it or not.

05.03.2026 12:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Which AI Should I Use? A Guide for Solopreneurs (2026) Benchmark scores won’t tell you which AI to use.

DeepSeek grabbed attention by producing high-performance models at surprisingly low cost. Their efficiency made Western AI labs visibly uncomfortable. Sometimes the most interesting moves are economic ones.

05.03.2026 07:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Which AI Should I Use? A Guide for Solopreneurs (2026) Benchmark scores won’t tell you which AI to use.

I use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini constantly. Had no clue what the real differences were. So I asked them to explain each other. They argued like academics at a conference. Polite and passive-aggressive.

04.03.2026 17:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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The Problem of the 99%: Why Almost No One Uses AI Well (And How to Solve It) 1% of power users rule the world

"The people at the very top keep accumulating and compounding fundamental traits that multiply one another into an inexorable outcome: they’re at the better end of an unevenly distributed future."

04.03.2026 15:45 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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The AI you choose says something about your risk tolerance, your politics, your technical comfort level, and your relationship with control.

04.03.2026 15:42 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0