- Wisdom of the Bold
- Posts
- What if your greatest work hasn't even started yet?
What if your greatest work hasn't even started yet?
Sallyann Della Casa
January 22, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
Dear Lovely Human,
We rarely say this out loud, but many high-achieving people live with a low-grade fear that their most meaningful chapter is already behind them. The promotion that defined them. The project that put them on the map. The version of themselves that felt sharper, faster, more visible. Everything since then can start to feel like maintenance rather than creation.
Our culture reinforces this anxiety in subtle ways. We celebrate early wins, youthful disruption, “30 under 30” lists, while quietly suggesting that anything that comes later is incremental at best. So when momentum slows or ambition changes shape, we interpret it as decline instead of transition. We tell ourselves we should already be “there,” wherever there was supposed to be.
But here’s the pattern I keep seeing at GLEAC: the most consequential work rarely comes from people chasing their first peak. It comes from those standing at the base of a second one, armed not with raw hunger, but with discernment. With fewer illusions. With a clearer sense of what’s actually worth building.
The first mountain is about proving you can climb.
The second is about choosing the right mountain at all.
So the real question isn’t whether your best years are behind you.
It’s whether you’re brave enough to stop replaying an old definition of success long enough to begin something truer.
Let’s get honest about what might be waiting on the other side of that pause…
Your first peak proved you could climb. The next one asks why.
Past success is a credential, not a destination.
The work that matters most often arrives quietly.
What if the most important capital we have doesn’t show up on a balance sheet?
🎙️ In my second podcast of the year, Shaken Not Burned, I explore Quiet Capital (the asset I can’t stop stressing the importance of) and why it often determines whether organisations endure or quietly fail…
🤖 What is the latest news in AI & Emerging Tech?
1 - AI That Diagnoses You While You Sleep
Stanford researchers built an AI that predicts future disease risk from a single night of sleep data. Health warnings are present long before symptoms appear.
2 - Fitness, Rewritten by Biomarkers
PointFit is developing non-invasive sweat sensors that deliver real-time biomarker data. Training and recovery may soon be guided by biology, not intuition.
3 - Grok Restricts Image Generation
Elon Musk’s Grok disabled image generation for non-paying users after deepfake backlash. AI guardrails are still being built in response to misuse.
4 - Your Hand as the Interface
Apple’s “HumanOS” concept suggests your hand could become the primary interface. The move away from screens is closer than expected.
5 - When AI Runs a Business
The WSJ let an AI manage a vending machine and it lost all the money. LLMs remain powerful, but highly vulnerable to human manipulation.
AI-native CRM
“When I first opened Attio, I instantly got the feeling this was the next generation of CRM.”
— Margaret Shen, Head of GTM at Modal
Attio is the AI-native CRM for modern teams. With automatic enrichment, call intelligence, AI agents, flexible workflows and more, Attio works for any business and only takes minutes to set up.
Join industry leaders like Granola, Taskrabbit, Flatfile and more.
📚 How Can I Stay Ahead in Learning & Development?
1 - The Knowledge Project: Peter Kaufman
Peter Kaufman shares how multidisciplinary thinking actually works in practice. A masterclass in building better judgment over decades, not quarters.
2 - The Purpose Gap
New research shows 61% of people believe their company’s actions don’t match its stated purpose. Progress without coherence is starting to erode trust.
3 - The 20-Hour CEO
This course is a game changer and heavily discounted right now! I have our entire Gleac team taking it.
4 - NotebookLM as Your AI Marketing Department
NotebookLM turns long-form podcasts, talks, and documents into conversations, insights, and presentation-ready outputs.
📖 Looking to publish and market your book in 2026?
Learn how to turn an idea into a real book, publish it without gatekeepers, and market it using the same tools you already use every day on our next Unstructured Lab. Gleac community only!
Community members join all 12 labs this year for $500/year, plus 3 months of dedicated networking, earnings and marketing coaching with your own AI agent and our team. Otherwise, each lab is $50 (register and we will send you the payment link).
💡 How Do I Broaden my Global Worldview? Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism makes a difficult demand.
It doesn’t allow goodness to stay private or theoretical.
Good thoughts don’t count on their own.
Neither do good intentions.
They have to move.
They have to show up as work, honesty, service.
Because in modern life, belief is often allowed to be abstract.
You can care — without changing your behaviour.
You can value ethics — without letting them slow you down.
Zoroastrinism doesn’t leave that escape route open.
It collapses the distance between what you believe and what you do.
Between values and labour.
Between spirituality and responsibility.
It means your job is no longer neutral.
Your craft is no longer just a livelihood.
Caregiving, trade, service - these become moral acts, whether you want them to or not.
For a small and increasingly invisible community, this creates quiet pressure:
to work with integrity in systems that don’t reward it,
to remain honest in environments that prize speed over care,
to hold long-term responsibility in a short-term world.
The cost of living as if goodness must be enacted, not declared.
In a culture that often separates meaning from labour,
this way of seeing the world can feel heavy.
But it’s also clarifying, because it asks a question many try to avoid.
Guiding question:
What becomes harder when you believe your values must show up in your work?
🍀 What Can I Do to Impact, Live Sustainably and Make the World a Better Place?
1 - Elizabethan Warmth Secrets for Today
An Elizabethan mansion used clever design to stay warm during the Little Ice Age. Old techniques show how passive design still matters for energy efficiency.
2 - Giant Panda No Longer Endangered
The giant panda has been reclassified from “endangered” to “vulnerable.”
Sustained conservation and habitat protection delivered measurable recovery.
3 - Historic High Seas Treaty
Governments and environmental groups celebrate a landmark agreement to protect biodiversity beyond national waters.
4 - Whole-Genome Sequencing for Families (tellmeGen)
Three 30× whole-genome kits promise health and wellness reports based on billions of DNA variants. Useful, but worth reading the privacy fine print.
✨ Lovely Human Guest Writer of the Month
Jenson Goh — Singapore
A systems thinker with a storyteller’s instinct.
Many leaders don’t fear failure as much as they fear being exposed, especially in moments of uncertainty. This week’s reflection explores how imposter syndrome, fractured trust, and unstable environments quietly interrupt meaningful work before it begins. Drawing on systems thinking, it reframes uncertainty not as a threat to performance, but as the very condition where adaptability, courage, and real innovation can emerge.
Your fans,
— Sal & the Gleac team
Reply