And one more time, I find myself sitting on a flight back from New York and working on the most important thing I do at the end of the week: pick seven stories (from dozens) for you to read.  After a rocking PaidContent 2012 conference and hanging out with lots of great friends, I am looking to chill out over next few days, and so should you.

• To Think Lists: We all have to-do lists. They don’t end. They help us try to make sense of our days. However, the important thing for us to do is to ask why this item is on your to-do list, argues Rajesh Shetty. It is a great way to think.
• Ten reasons to slow down. I just need one reason to slow down. But other nine are pretty darn good reasons as well. You should check them out.
• From telegraph and tubes to Skype — how the world of communication has changed. A great, fun piece that you should check out and marvel at how far we have come.
• Once you are done reading the previous post, check out Martin Geddes’s essay on the end of the phone system, what it means and where we are going. It will give you context and a sense of the decay in the “phone system.”
• Distributed and destination thinking. Neil Perkin writes about how the changes in the media landscape are fundamental and it is too bad we don’t seem to realize that.
• My buddy Brian Lam writes about robot boats and their epic voyage across the Pacific Ocean. It is just fun reading.
• And for some heavy thinking: Is Finland a model for tomorrow’s society? Not sure, but I know I love my Finnish friends.