Morning Walk #46
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Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. I’m a product person and an entrepreneur. I’ve been working in 🏙 govtech for eight years and currently work at a UK-based 🏦 fintech startup Silverbird while building a new company in 👩🏼⚕️ health tech on the side.
Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, digital healthcare, working on startups, productivity, some nerdy stuff and an occasional share of reflections on the Ukraine war and how it feels being Russian at this moment in history.
This issue was sent out to 217 subscribers (+9 from the previous week). Last week’s issue received 563 views.
💭 On being negative
I’ve been going through the list of ideas for the future Morning Walk issues and noticed a disturbing pattern of mine. I really like complaining. Well, maybe complaining is a strong word here. Still, I’m willing to put a lot of time and energy into explaining stuff I don’t believe in and being negative about certain trends or ideas.
Here is an example. I feel very skeptical about the rising popularity of AI-powered writing assistants. There are dozens of them nowadays, and new ones popping up daily (really). Let’s be honest with ourselves – most of them are made to generate more content. What these tools would bring to the world is mostly more soulless SEO-driven clickbait articles and blog posts that do more harm long-term than good. I don’t expect life-changing, curiosity-driving pieces from those kinds of tools. Yes, some exceptions use AI to actually help writers write better (e.g., Grammarly). Still, most of them are made with the intention to simply generate content faster and in higher volumes. Because content is attention. And attention is money.
But what strikes me the most is my default reaction to complain about it and be pessimistic about this trend. I stumbled upon a post on AI-assisted writing by Jack Cheng, one of my favorite writers. His positive, optimistic, and, most importantly, curious perspective struck a chord in me. Why am I willing to put so much of my energy into condemning this phenomenon? I could have focused on finding positive aspects of that or simply not fixating on this topic altogether. Instead, my conscious chose destructive behavior. I even drafted a piece about why I believe it’s such a bad idea, and our society needs to rethink that 🤦🏻♂️
And I have plenty of other examples. I hate society’s obsession with short videos and the whole culture around them. I believe people ought to stop doing that and instead focus on long-form content. The same goes for some other recent unhealthy trends. Fifteen-minute delivery (it’s great, but it has gotten to the point of unhealthy obsession), chatbot coaches, 5-minute book summaries, and many more. I believe these are just bad inventions, or at least they exploit the worst behavior in people, and we shouldn’t be producing them unconsciously.
But why these are bad is not my point. I realize it’s just useless for me to complain about it like an old man. Until I’m not doing anything about it, I would much rather just shut up and focus my time and energy on creating value rather than explaining what something is wrong. That would be much more helpful. Most importantly, to me. And the society would take care of itself.
Recommendations of the week
🏀 Basketball fans and atmosphere USA vs. Europe (video)
More Americans should know about supporters’ culture in Europe just because it is so much different than in the US, and it’s breathtaking. It’s the only reason I go to stadiums, the atmosphere is something special. It’s even wilder in Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, and especially in Latin America, but this video pictures a great comparison of the supporting culture. If you like this, look at the football fans in Morocco and Argentina. Oh, and expect to see this in person in 2026 during the FIFA World Cup in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
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👶🏻 Childhood amnesia (wikipedia page)
Something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around recently. Why do we have so very few memories of our early childhood? It seems like 95% of everything that happened prior your 7th or 8th birthday is completely wiped out. Why? Is it possible for someone to have a memory of their birth? What’s the earliest one could possibly have their memory of?
It turns out there is a term for that called childhood amnesia. And the short answer to many questions above would be: we know very little about the nature of this phenomenon so far (although we have some guesses).
According to a study by West and Bauer, their research suggests that earlier memories have less emotional content than later memories, and are less personally meaningful, unique, or intense. Earlier memories also do not seem to differ greatly in perspective.
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🌱 Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children (research paper)
Fun research I’ve stumbled upon on my favorite twitter account. Not a surprising fact that is now backed by science: kids whose parents were entrepreneurs are more likely to become founders (60% more likely, to be precise). But here is the interesting part:
But startup parents need time to parent: entrepreneurial transmission from parents only happens if the founder parents spend quality time with their kids. If your mom was a founder when you were little, or your dad when you were a pre-teen, you are more likely to be a founder.
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That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻
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