What Skills Will Matter Most?

August 10,  2026

Good morning! I just saw the list.I drive the most-often-stolen vehicle model in the United States… and it’s among the least expensive cars!  Go figure.Oh, it’s a Hyundai Elantra — and 21,732 were apparently stolen last year.  (Morning Brew, Inc.) You don’t have to steal… make me a deal. Daily August Menu:  Vine-Ripe Tomato — Vine-Ripe Cucumber — Just-Picked Corn — WaWa Melon (carefully vetted store-bought)… Repeat.

• Six years ago during the height of the plague my son and I conducted extensive research on sandwiches.
  • He is a sandwich expert, I have opinions about sandwiches.  Sixty years ago I was taught by the best.
  • Notwithstanding my son’s home in Downtown New Jersey, he was unbiased and methodical in his research, harboring no positive or negative thoughts about sandwiches from New Jersey.
  • At no time throughout our research did the Jersey Mike’s sandwich break into the top ten…
  • What then do you make of the meteoric rise of Jersey Mike’s these last eight years?!  (Doubling the number of sandwiches sold — and quadrupling its revenue.  –WSJ)
  • Could it ALL be attributed to Danny DeVito — and/or to Peyton Manning?  (No, his brother, I can’t think of his name.)
  • Now, new owner, Blackstone, is going public… soon.  Tulips?
  • Billion$/ Million$ to be made from non-Top Ten sandwiches… maybe.
    • (Important disclaimer:  This is neither an offer to buy nor an offer to sell securities — or sandwiches… this is a personal opinion based upon ZERO knowledge of any kind.)
• Agree?  Disagree?
  • “The great virtue of a free-market system is it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is;
    • it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy.
    • It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and to help one another.”  (Friedman)
• Putting things off exacts a hefty toll.
  • One study ranked ~22,000 people on a procrastination scale of one to five.
  • Each increase of one point on a procrastination scale was associated with a decrease of $15,000 in annual income.  (The Economist)
• Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and Italy — in that order — oooops, let’s add one more, the Norwegians — are the most liked countries in the world.
  • Israel, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and the United States — in that order — are the least liked countries in the world.  (Williams)
  • It’s a Global Net Perception Score… I don’t know more than that; I just report ’em.
• Between now and 2030 — the next four years — several core skills (at work) are expected to increase in relative importance:
  • Artificial intelligence and big data
  • Technological literacy
  • Curiosity and lifelong learning (personal fav for a long time now)
  • Leadership and social influence
  • Creative thinking
  • Resilience, flexibility, agility
  • Analytical thinking   (Kraaljebrink, Etc., et al.)
• Between now and 2030 — the next four years — several historical and traditional core skills are expected to decrease in relative importance:
  • Manual dexterity, physical endurance
  • Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic (Can you believe it?!  And everyone has been worried about those declining scores.)
  • Global citizenship  (Remember when this was at the top of the other list?!)
  • Computer programming
  • Multi-lingualism
  • Detail-oriented
  • Quality control
  • Marketing and advertising (Ibid.)
• “The loudest booos will always come from the cheapest seats.  People who invest the least in you will have the most to say about you…
  • … trust your work… ignore the booos and keep pushing forward.”  (G. Ruth)
• Artificial intelligence is proving far more expensive than many companies anticipated.
  • As CNBC reports, some Fortune 500 companies are exhausting their annual artificial intelligence budgets in just one or two months.
  • Much of the problem stems from indiscriminate use… directing simple work loads to lower-cost models could help by up to ten-fold.  (Panas)
• “In the prosecution of a favourite scheme, the best of (humans) are subject to forget the bounds of moderation.”  (Gibbon)
• “The task never gets bigger, only your imagination (fear) of it does.”  (Eades)
• In the angry churning sea of restaurant mediocrity, Chilis is unexplainably buoyant and resilient.
  • Why?  Not because of better chips or better salsa or better ambience or better anything (except for its Three for Me screaming deal).
  • WiFi
  • That’s right.  Better WiFi