Notes - July 25
All the future forward statements on a backward platform like LinkedIn, crack me up. Same for substack, how revolutionary of a platform (heavy sarcasm).
I really thought I cognitively declined. I’ve been sitting through meetings understanding progressively less and less of what’s being discussed. At first I thought I was simply too distracted or not interested enough. So I tried harder. Closed all the tabs and windows — Went full Call Newport, focus mode.
I knew corporate jobs have downsides such as jargon, politics, heavy processes, ambiguity… weird vibes. That’s the flip side of a stable and high income. But am I willing to sell my intellect? Can I only sell a reasonable fraction? How much is that? More reasonably speaking attention is a bigger issue in my case that intelligence. Since it’s the prerequisite that’s problematic beyond work.
For years I’ve been joking about my attention span decline. Its deep connection with cognitive abilities worried me but paycheck and weekend shrugged it off. I’ve been coping with Zoom meetings, google docs, comments threads until AI seriously started to make its way in. Today AI features are everywhere. I tried them.
Comments made in the media about how AI is homogenizing our thinking and output feel very accurate to my experience. There was already too many meetings and documents before AI. The hope that AI can amplify and wrangle it all may give me the final blow.
Who doesn’t have ADHD these days? The digital hygiene to avoid it is crazy. All the book and advocacy around how to manage it all is a proof of how much of an issue it is. We are all online trying to stay sane, having a hard time finish our sentences. Like carpenters talking about back pain.
Performing a Turing test on oneself to convince that you’re not dumb is so millennial. I read Foucault, Russel, and Illich again, just to see if that still resonates and can find my old mind. I did.
According to Seth Godin I should interrupt myself 18 times a day. and Call Newport’s latest thing is to single task. At the other end of the spectrum Alex Hormozi is the latest generation of hustlers since Tony Robbin’s started and Gary V. hard rebooted. Even academics and artists seem to inevitably fall close to one extreme of the spectrum when it comes to « work ». In praise for idleness by Bertrand Russell makes a clear suggestion.
I get the criticism or the critics of AI. New paradigms can easily be framed as a loss or even a regression. My issue with AI today is the timing and pace who seem wildly inappropriate for anything good to happen. But sure, incredible potential.
I was picking up some bike parts and noticed, that I often look for the cheapest, best thing. I guess it is very common.
Usually it starts by I creating a range by defining the 2 ends: Cheap and just gets the job done at one end; full proof and expensive at the other. "Best" is a blend of contextually relevant attributes.
In most products, the middle of the range is often unexistant, unsatisfying, or hard to find. Not only for bike stuff which I love to "research", this extends to every other goods.
Cheapest-best or very-good-cheap-guy is where I want to be professionally. I’m not selling myself an award-winning world-class visionary designer. I’m a decent web designer, right in the middle of the range (hopefully I can claim an extra 1%).
I had to ask for software and beg for hardware until I was 24. I shared a gameboy advance with my brother for years while everyone had a ps2. I worked 2 summers to buy a 700 euros Acer laptop where I could install cracked photoshop CS4. I took me 2 years to finally get a refurbished MacBook after agonizing and fixing my old acer. Then I got catapulted in San Francisco. I will always be in scarcity mode.
Same for food. Nice things were genuinely expensive enough to be a simple: no. Now food cost is something I can ignore. But I can’t seem to rewire my mind out scarcity. Now it’s self imposed scarcity. Which make for an absurd experience when walking into a Costco warehouse.
I’ve had another conversation about kids with an older dad who dropped something I already heard a few times: “I wish I had one more kid because when the casket closes the money won’t matter.”
I get the basis of the sentiment and I want to respect that they’re further along. Perhaps it is one of these insights that only comes with age. It’s also true that financially it won’t make much of a difference. It’s mostly a time and effort. A worthy, yet massive investment.
Not that I want to squeeze much more out of life. Kids are not blocking me from big travel, fitness, or any other goals. I’d just love to sleep a bit more, eat in quietly, and be able to poop peacefully… it’s a quality of life thing. At the same time, it’s incredibly fulfilling to have kids around.
As I got in line, the cashier noticed that my youngest had a bloody mouth from chewing on a dried banana piece, from his mouth sores. The oldest peed himself while hiding as the lady recognized him and offered him stickers.
I have anxiety and herpes. One of my kid has my herpes. The other is definitely anxious. They’re already better off than me who has both.
I’d like to go through a day unburdened by my sense of interoception. Feeling what’s going on in my gut is incredibly distracting.
My post "on speed" got more feedback than usual. 3 people felt compelled to tell me that fast is universally agreed as more fun than slow and that the cost of speed is almost always worth the fun or convenience.
Fair point fellas.
Until recently I would have agreed that fast is more fun, for most things. However I have come to appreciate that when I find something I really like, doing it as slow as possible yields tremendous pleasure. In my mind it fits in the same hedonic category as fun.
Life has its season. Speed is momentary and relative. Seeking speed at all time get us fast to the grave as Watts pointed out long ago. I’m done with the adrenaline and the scrappiness.
I swept my for patio that was covered in bird poop. It got 75% of it out in 10min. A pressure washer would have gotten everything. I obviously don’t have one, nor want one as it would be the only use case. I could also buy something more reasonable like a scrub brush and spend more time for an incremental gain and a lot more effort. I’m very happy about my input/output ratio.
Also, the fitness-influenced millennial in me noted that sweeping is a great core twist exercise.
Caring a little goes a long way. A little more doesn’t go necessarily much further.
Care is on my mind these days.
My wife puts most of her energy fixing. I put most of my energy enduring. I don’t fix much. She doesn’t endure much.
Her approach is pragmatic, socially rewarded because she cares (in the strict sense of the term). Mine is seen as stoic, praised publicly but not truly popular. Wisdom is balancing both while having a clear preference.
Standard of care varies by individual, cultures, epochs. My physical standards are low. Water, basic food and a safe place to sleep are accessible to almost all at very low cost, the rest is extra. Instead of pushing the comfort I index much more on emotional well being.
To a large extent I agree with the opposite. Physically comfortable bodies is the path to a stable world. Add the hedonic treadmill and capitalism and you may understand why I prefer my irrationally low standards.
Kids only boosted my confidence: resilience is care. Trying to guess then satisfy every single needs is a self defeating prophecy. You just need to be there for them. Even if I’m the worst version of myself right now, I’m here and that’s enough. It doesn’t mean to just sit here but being less uselessly proactive and reactive, to channel the energy productively into coping.
Being there is my standard of care.
I read Franck’s Chimero old posts and went down a rabbit hole reading references and stumbled upon Joan C. Tronto work. Franck weaves Tronto’s definition of care to the web— which touched me. I felt far behind him in my thinking as a designer.
“Society is a system that is woven together. The gallery goes with the street and the street sweeper. You can’t separate the buttons from the designers, the job from the work culture, the company from the economy, the economy from our policies, our policies from our values. It all goes together.” F. Chimero
This hits hard as I was taking a break while working on a Sunday afternoon on a freelance crypto project. Big facepalm moment.
When I wear a watch I’m more aware of time. That’s the point right? Time seems to either go by too quick or too slow. I also spend a lot of time thinking of checking the time or how I don’t check it often enough. I rarely take off the watch. If I do I often forget to put it back on, until I miss and meeting or my wife gets mad at my poor sense of time. During the span of time without watch, time as a concept fades quickly, the wrist recover a small but noticeable bit of mobility. I spent a couple weekends without watch, unintentionally. It’s reassuring to know that rewilding myself is an quick and easy process. It’s equally upsetting to know that it’s just a matter of time before I have to get it back on and go through the cycle.
Similarly to when I took off my fitness tracker the concept of health dissolved into a complex pattern of feelings. While wearing I was not paying much attention and delegated my awareness to crude metrics.
I also spent more than a week without stepping in a store which felt like the same type of qualitative insight.
If we stick around the central coast of California long enough I’ll likely end up wearing brewery tees and a moustache. Which, as of my standards today is not acceptable.
My last few days at GitHub felt odd. Emotionally loaded, 3.5 years, my 3rd job. I hung out in slack like I would walk aimlessly a building I would never step in again. My sendoff zoom party also had that missing physicality. Only few people I got to meet in person. I had a hard time finding closure, trying to define what wrapping up my time and leave something. Empty figma draft folder, a few notes and suggestions, last half assed report, saving contacts… until my slack account went off. Aja’s last message showed up on my phone but my GitHub had already disappeared from my workspaces.
Seeking some catharsis I drank the last topo Chico I was aging in the fridge for almost a year.
Another month ending with these 2 todo items: "shave, order sardines"
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