Welcome to Verstreuen—meaning “to scatter”—where I unpack the ideas I’ve collected this week in my 🗃️ Zettelkasten, “note box,” personal knowledge management system. Here, I’ll share the highlights, insights, and stories I find interesting—and think you will too!

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🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week brought 122 new notes into the Zettelkasten—here are three that rose to the top:

🟨 Gen Z & AI: The Illusion of Experience – Exploring how secondhand knowledge shapes understanding.

🟦 Principles of Exceptional Client Work – Insights from Base Design on refining creative work.

🟥 Strategies for Underdogs: Deception, Coalitions & Endurance – Lessons from Lawrence Freedman.

There's a recurring anxiety about Gen Z that we are learning more about life through TikTok and YouTube instead of living it firsthand.

After watching "Gen Z’s Unique Oversocialisation" by Jules on YouTube, I felt this deeply, especially reflecting on my own experience growing up, often spending free time watching videos about various skills and aspects of life without having those lived experiences myself.

It’s true. Our generation has absorbed more through secondhand sources than any before us. We’ve grown up on curated, edited, commentated, optimized reflections of reality.

Yet, as I sat with this idea, a paradox emerged:

If learning through secondhand representations is problematic, why is AI—trained exclusively on these reflections—becoming so remarkably effective?

AI has never felt or experienced "real life" firsthand, yet it writes essays, diagnoses illnesses, codes apps, and even coaches leadership teams. As AI's capabilities expand without perceiving life's inherent richness, and as we increasingly delegate responsibility to these systems, what does that imply for our future?

Are concerns about Gen Z overstated, or are those same concerns applicable to the AI we increasingly rely upon to boost productivity?

Certainly, embodied learning holds inherent value—there's undeniable richness in experiencing things firsthand. Yet, the benchmark for what constitutes “real learning” might be evolving. Perhaps capability no longer strictly requires direct experience but can emerge from structured exposure, compression, and synthesis.

if AI can get useful from reading the internet, maybe we can too.

That doesn’t mean we stop living. It just means we stop assuming lived experience is the only path to understanding.

**🗃️**

I've always believed that doing exceptional work isn’t about having endless great ideas, but about refining the few you choose to act upon. Recently, I encountered a powerful yet beautifully simple framework from Base Design that captures exactly what makes creative work resonate:

1. Insights: Your client isn’t just another name on your roster—they have a story, context, and unique needs. Don't hesitate to dig deeper. The real insights come not from superficial conversations or industry clichés, but from the subtle details that make them unique.

2. Intention: Every great idea needs a clear and focused foundation. Build your entire project around one core concept. Resist the urge to pile on features, messages, or visuals. Clarity comes from subtraction, not addition. The best ideas are often those that can be expressed simply and with clear purpose.

3. Intensity: Push every chosen idea or design to its fullest expression. If you've decided an idea is worth doing, it's worth doing boldly. Intensity isn't about loudness; it's about confidence. It’s about expressing your idea so vividly and fully that it’s impossible for others not to understand and feel something.

This is exactly the framework I’ve been embracing with this newsletter. Verstreuen is distinctive because it’s grounded in one core idea—the Zettelkasten method, the "note box," my personal knowledge management system. This concept isn’t just a background process; it’s the clear foundation I've been building upon. Week by week, I’ve tried to express this idea vividly—not just through the thoughtful selection of insights, but also visually, by intentionally integrating the "slip box" and the imagery of organized files into the newsletter’s visual identity.

At first glance, these principles might seem intuitive, even obvious. But true mastery in creative work demands restraint and discipline. The best ideas don’t overwhelm—they distill complexity into clear, cohesive expressions.

This framework continues to remind me that authentic creativity isn’t merely about boundless imagination. It’s about intentional choice, disciplined refinement, and thoughtful execution.

**🗃️**

Most strategic advice presupposes existing strength—resources, leverage, power. But Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History points to an essential truth: winning doesn’t always require strength—it requires strategy. Particularly if you’re the outsider, the underdog, the long-shot.

In business, politics, sports, and war, history is filled with examples of underdogs rewriting the rules to win against seemingly insurmountable odds. Freedman identifies three powerful strategies that underdogs have consistently leveraged:

1. Cunning & Deception
   The underdog’s greatest asset often isn’t strength—it’s surprise. Doing the unexpected disrupts assumptions and allows you to redefine the playing field. But deception can only carry you so far. Once you're predictable, your edge fades. Use deception strategically, but don’t lean on it as your only approach.

2. Coalitions
   Individual strength can easily be overshadowed by collective power. This is perhaps the most underrated truth: underdogs win when they don’t go alone. Building alliances—finding others with aligned incentives, even if temporarily—is how you shift the balance. Often, the strongest position isn’t leading alone, but orchestrating many who share a common interest.

3. Endurance
   Patience is perhaps the most misunderstood weapon. It's not flashy. It rarely makes headlines. But endurance can outlast power. While bigger players rush, exhaust themselves, or lose focus, the patient player watches, waits, and strategically chooses the moment to act. Sometimes victory doesn’t belong to the fastest or strongest—it belongs to the one who simply refuses to quit.

These strategies challenge conventional wisdom: the assumption that "might makes right." History—and Freedman's detailed exploration—clearly illustrates that raw power can be outsmarted, outnumbered, or simply outlasted.

Victory isn't achieved by playing the same game as everyone else. Instead, it's about recognizing and leveraging your unique strengths—being cunning enough to disrupt, wise enough to build alliances, and patient enough to seize the moment.

In short: underdogs don't win through strength alone. They win through strategy—leveraging deception thoughtfully, coalitions effectively, and patience strategically. Because when you're not the favorite, victory doesn't come from more power—it comes from more clarity, more intentionality, and a smarter approach to the game itself.

**🗃️**

Closing Thoughts

This week's insights all converge on a powerful truth: exceptional outcomes come from doing fewer things, but with greater clarity, intensity, and strategic patience.

• Experience isn't just about direct encounters—it's deepened through thoughtful reflection and intentional synthesis.

• Creativity isn't born from an overflow of ideas but from boldly refining and intensely expressing a carefully selected few.

• Victory isn't won through brute force, but through the patient execution of strategic, asymmetric bets—leveraging alliances, embracing uniqueness, and waiting for the perfect moment.

In short, dilution of effort is the enemy of excellence. Instead, focus on the few, decisive moves that compound your leverage and create unstoppable momentum.

Thanks for reading Verstreuen

Thanks for taking the time to explore and reflect on my notes with me. If any ideas particularly resonated or challenged you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

👋 Until next week.

-GH

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