The Great Reversal in 2026

Community has been a big theme this year, and it’s only going to intensify in 2026. Below are a few reversals in human behavior I’m betting on, many of them driven by the growing demand for real-world connection.

1. Digital Detox Will Become Real

Most people are exhausted by social media. It overwhelms attention and pulls time away from the things that actually make life feel full.

If you cut your social media use by 90%, you probably wouldn’t miss much. You’d gain back a lot of time and mental space.

Entrepreneurs can appeal to digitally exhausted consumers with a community-first approach. IRL world isn’t nearly as saturated as digital space.

2. Reasonable Posting Volume Will Normalize Again

From a consumer standpoint, people are fatigued with doom scrolling. They’ll check apps less often, scroll less, and rely more on whatever algorithms surface as “most relevant.”

If attention becomes more selective, posting constantly won’t matter as much.

From an entrepreneur’s standpoint, keeping up with the pace is unsustainable either. Posting less and getting sharper on one platform will outperform spreading yourself thin across ten.

Do less online. Do more offline. Engaging 100 people at an event beats getting 100 likes.

3. Long-Form Content Will Beat Short-Form

Long-form content compounds. Short-form doesn’t.

A viral Reel might buy you 48 hours of momentum. A highly actionable 10-page step-by-step guide can live for years and keep paying dividends, especially as LLMs route attention toward deeper, more specific material.

Use Jeffersonian-style or Junto-style lunches and dinners as content inputs. Structured roundtables are a powerful way to learn. For example, a lunch I hosted on the rise of people as brands inspired this post, which got meaningful traction.

4. Action Will Beat Learning

Before LLMs, you needed weeks of research before executing. Now you can learn almost anything in minutes.

The advantage will shift to teams that move. The bottleneck isn’t knowing what to do. It’s overplanning, overanalyzing, and delaying execution. Figure out how to align your team faster.

Joining a founder community reliably increases you follow-through. Not through motivation, but through social accountability. So go ahead and find your tribe.

5. Everyone Will Have an AI Business Coach

I’m late to this, but I’ve been blown away by the impact. Working alongside an AI coach changed how I think, prioritize, and operate day to day.

Setting one up in ChatGPT is pretty straightforward if you’re willing to spend a couple of focused hours providing context. More people will do this in 2026, and the bar for operational efficiency will rise quickly.

I first learned about AI coaches through a community I’m part of. I went deep enough that I put together a step-by-step guide.

6. Community 2.0

There are a lot of “communities” today. Many of them aren’t real…yet.

I’d say Resident isn’t a real community yet either, but that’s changing as we’re crossing 50% occupancy in our first location.

The best communities will feel less like audiences and more like places you show up to. Real community is where you can be fully yourself without judgment. It also requires time investment from everyone, which is the hardest part.

That’s why we’re building community inside a workspace. You can easily spend 40 hours a week there. You might as well spend it with people who share your ambition and values.