Diving in. It's all an experiment. Disappointing lessons. Enthusiasm's contagious. Black, white, and gray. Getting kinder. Another way social media's broken.
Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon.
It’ll just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut about like it’s won anyway.
– Shannon Alder
1. “No one wants to dive headfirst into the goo.”
Every ending is a new beginning – Katie Hawkins-Gaar – (My Sweet Dumb Brain)
The “goo” in this metaphor is that transformative in-between state between caterpillar and butterfly.
Every ending is a new beginning. But the only way to get there is by wading through the goo. It’s tedious. Sometimes painful. Definitely messy.
And, I might add, inevitable. The full essay is on life’s changes. It’s the last of a series of 40 life lessons leading up to the author’s 40th birthday. It’s worth a read.
Do this: Embrace the goo.
#change #beginnings #endings #transformation
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2. “Approach any area of work or life a little more like a scientist”
Making a Wicked Learning Environment More Kind – David Epstein – (Range Widely)
I suppose this caught my eye because of my own “every day is an experiment” mantra. The upshot of the article is that many processes have immediate feedback you can learn from, but many do not. In the latter case, you really want to come up with a way to measure outcomes, even if they’re not immediately available.
“If your process does not include a structured way to learn from outcomes, you need a better process.” I think that applies to just about everything.
“Just about everything”, to me, means every aspect of life, not just work. Improvement needs to be intentional, or it’s not going to happen.
Do this: Improve.
3. “Deliberately and consciously practicing disappointing others”
Be a disappointment – Oliver Burkeman – (The Imperfectionist)
I love counter-intuitive advice. Even if you end up disagreeing with it, you’ll have had a short journey of thought to get there.
I found this advice a little subversive.
And one main way to do that, of course, is to say no: to decline things, to politely refuse what’s demanded of you, or sometimes not to engage at all. And then to discover, time and again, a) that you can handle the feeling that someone might be judging you negatively, without it completely destroying your life and b) that most of the time, they weren’t making any negative judgments anyway.
It’s not as much about actively seeking disappointment as it is about realizing how infrequently anyone was judging you to begin with. That’s a very freeing place to land.
Do this: Don’t be afraid to disappoint. Chances are you won’t.
#disappointment #judgement #risk
4. “Confidence is impressive, but enthusiasm can change people’s lives.”
A Love Letter To People Who Believe in People – Tina Roth Eisenberg – (SwissMiss)
This is a love letter to all the people who believe in us and nudge us in new directions with their enthusiasm.
Eisenberg names names and thanks individuals who, throughout her life and career, have inspired or otherwise helped shape her progress. The underlying theme is that of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for people, enthusiasm for things, enthusiasm for ideas.
And that’s the power of enthusiasm. In a world that sometimes feels like it’s waiting to discourage you, we need to find and become uplifting, optimistic, heart-forward people more than ever. People who ask, “What if it turned out better than you ever imagined?”
Do this: Find and do your best to be that person.
5. “More like a dimmer than an on-off switch”
A Bright(er) Idea – A.J. Jacobs – (Experimental Living)
Black and white thinking has long been one of my hot buttons. Jacobs introduces an alternative metaphor: the dimmer switch.
Consider my mood. As I wrote in a previous post, when people ask me how I’m doing, I don’t say “great” or “terrible,” I say, “7 out of 10.” (Or sometimes 6 or 8 out of 10). I’m not all light or dark.
That’s an easy one, though. Consider all the things you feel, and all the things you have opinions on. Are they all all-or-nothing? Or are a majority somewhere on a scale of 1 to 10? Even better:
We are all complicated, we all contain multitudes of dimmers.
My mood might be a 7, but that’s an amalgamation of several aspects of my life at the moment, each with a different value on the dial.
Life is complicated. All or nothing thinking is both lazy, and dangerous. Nuance matters much more than we’re often willing to admit.
Do this: Replace your metaphorical switches with dimmers.
6. “Small acts of kindness have an unexpectedly large impact”
We are Kinder as We Age – Katharine Esty – (Blog)
I think many people have the preconceived image of the “grumpy old man” in mind when they try to correlate aging and kindness. Throw in politics, and the stereotype becomes that of the “downright angry, grumpy old man”. In reality, with life experience comes kindness.
Good thing, because we need it now more than ever, regardless of our age.
In today’s challenging times, many of us feel paralyzed, frustrated, and anxious. Kindness, especially across political divides, fosters space for dialogue and connection, which helps bridge the gaps that separate us.
Age gaps, ideology gaps, and more.
Do this: Be kind. Even small acts of kindness matter.
7. “Publishing like a human being instead of a content mill”
Notes from the Exit: Why I Left the Attention Economy – Joan Westenberg – (Blog)
Social media doesn’t work, at least not in how content creators were led to believe it would. To many, it was a free advertising platform and a way to get content in front of more eyeballs. The result would be more engagement. The cost, of course, was pandering to “The Algorithm”, and creating not what one wants (or needs) to create, but creating things that would engage. Unfortunately, we’ve learned audiences don’t engage for the reasons we might want them to, preferring self confirming click- or rage-bait over content that would actually inform and engage deeper thought.
I switched from social performance to sovereign publishing.
A few brave creators are leaving, or ignoring, social media and social media-like platforms, and returning to their own roots; “sovereign publishing”, as Westenberg calls it. Publish your own content on your own platform under your own rules. This may attract a smaller, but more intentional audience actually interested in what you have to say, and perhaps willing to think about it.
It’s risky, because it’s much harder to pay the bills when you don’t play the algorithm game. It’s one reason you’re seeing so many subscription models emerging for online publication.
Do this: Consider supporting those you can.
#creating #publishing #social-media
Random Links
What I’m reading now
- The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel – Jasper Fforde
- Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering – Joseph Nguyen (Audio)
My Reading List – everything I’ve read since 2021.
My Sources Page – the common sources I scan/read regularly.
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