Welcome to the Friday Wrap-Up for June 5, 2026. This is a short newsletter where I talk about 3 things: What’s on my mind this week, Recommended Reading, and Recommended Media. Here's what's on my mind...
On My Mind
What's the point of summarizing everything? I wrote about this back in December — calling it my AI Manifesto — but I've gotten pitched on a number of services recently that claim to "read more" with summaries...which you know, isn't true for a number of reasons.
Reading summaries isn't the same as reading source. I'll put it to you this way: every day, I ask my kids, "How was school?" I get what I might generously call a summary. They tell me the things that they remember best. And while I get these short reports daily, it's not until I go in for parent-teacher conferences that I actually get a full picture, with context, of what my kids' school life looks like.
With summaries, you get a peek; you don't get the full story. I personally think you do a great disservice to yourself when you do not read the full text of something. It shows that you don't care to take the time to fully learn, consume, or enjoy it.
Think about the difference between reading a summary of a movie, and watching the movie. Sure you know what happens. But you lose the experience. You don't get the emotional impact. You don't get insights or comparisons that you can use in your life.
I also don't want you to misconstrue what I'm saying: I'm not saying "never summarize." I'm saying summarize things you've consumed the primary source for.
And I know what you're thinking: that's true for certain things. But what about podcasts or business books, where there's a lot of fluff? I would say you should opt to skip rather than summarize. I include chapter markers in most of my podcast episodes now for that reason. If there's a chapter in a book I feel is getting long, I skim it. If you find yourself doing it a lot, it's probably not worth consuming...then the summary wouldn't be worth it either.
Summaries remove important context / supporting arguments / stories that the original creator clearly thought were important to include. But more importantly, they rob us of the ability to form our own opinion on the work. I often think about a Bo Burnham joke: "I only know my ideas of other people's ideas."
I know a lot of people turn to this because there's not enough time to do everything they want. But unlike Neo in The Matrix, just downloading the information doesn't mean we know it. I'd rather spend 2 weeks reading one thing and having it stick, than 14 summaries I'm going to forget about.
Recommended Reading
Ben Sasse Is Teaching Us How to Die—And Live—Well: This is a heavy read for a few reasons. It's about a relatively young man with teenagers dying from cancer; and he's doing it in public. But it's also a little charged. Sasse was a Republican Senator. He also spoke out against Donald Trump despite being a member of the same party, and the personal attacks he faced for it. And his Christianity guides everything he does. But I think it's worth reading for several reasons.
The way Sasse has handled his public life has been deeply admirable to me. He's facing certain death with poise and grace. It seems he always said what he believed was right. I don't know him personally, but he seems guided by principles...something we're seeing alarmingly less in our public servants.
He talks a lot about what really matters: spending our time wisely, and being present with our families — especially if you have young kids.
I've designed my business to maximize time with my family; it's something I learned from my father, who would leave for work at 5am, so he got in by 7am, so he could be home in time for dinner with all of us. He went to all of our extracurricular activities (and there are 4 of us). I think it's easy to think you'll always have more time. But among other things, Ben Sasse is reminding us to take advantage of what we have now.
Recommended Media
Lou Gehrig's Luckiest Man Speech: This week, Lou Gehrig Day was celebrated across baseball; a day to raise awareness and money for research to help put an end to ALS (known as Lou Gehrig Disease). In his last public appearance, he gives what I reckon is one of the most famous sports speeches ever.
It's short — the entire thing wasn't recorded — but sticking with this week's apparent theme, Gehrig shows us that it's not how much time you have, but how you spend it.
Automation of the Week
Send Posts from Notion to LinkedIn: This is an experimental one, and I'm not sold on it yet — but it's worth writing about.
I recently signed up for the free version of Typefully, which allows for one connected social account, and 15 posts per month. It also has MCP, so I decided to try something. I keep all of my LinkedIn Posts in Notion. This allows me to track status and it gives my VA visibility into my content plan. I built a Claude Skill that looks in Notion for any LinkedIn post marked as "Ready for Publish." Then I have it send those posts to Typefully, scheduled for the Publish Date at 8am ET. So far, it's worked perfectly.
The reason it's experimental is actually because I'm curious to see if posting from a 3rd party app kills reach. I'm going to try it for a couple of weeks. If I'm seeing less reach, I will have my VA post directly to LinkedIn. If it doesn't, I'll keep the skill, and have my VA review the posts in Typefully to make sure they look OK, and that they posted properly.
And hey...if you're wondering what kind of systems you can built to take stuff like this off of your plate, let's chat.
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