Ah, completely forgot they needed a shining.  Maybe they look effortlessly vintage? Dishevelled is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

“Wish we were hanging tonight.” The dog tilts her head as the door shuts in her face. 

Slide stiffly into the car and pull on the seatbelt trying oh so hard not to wrinkle. Or sweat. Crawl through traffic. Feel that to-do list spore.

Finally. The door. Threshold to a fresh disposition. A freshold, if you will. Nice. Gonna use that later.

Big smile. Loving, awkward, enthusiastic handshake hugs. Who cares. Greetings are the best.

It’s so good to see you. It is. But why is that all I can think of to say. Maybe I’m not listening. Are you? I actually really want to be I swear.

That drink went down prettay easy. 

Okey said hi to everyone I know. Cool cool cool. Is alcohol small talk fertilizer? Save it, too early.

Double, please. In a tall glass. For hydration. Tall enough to drown that “do-morrow” list, amirite? Nailed it.

Back in. We made it! Here we are! How lucky are we?

Actually though. Can you even comprehend what crazy marvel of physics, what miracles had to occur, what odds we had to beat for this right here to be happening? Can you? Ah shoot, did I lock the door.

What the heck man. Keep it in the room. This is a special occasion dammit. Save the worries for later when I’m tossing and turning in bed.

Wait. Is that a spoon hitting a glass? You bet. I’m no ENT but that for sure is a ceremonial throat clearing. 

I do not recognize this guy. But he may as well be the mayor the way I’m mentally rolling out the red carpet for him for doing this.

Oohh some people seem to be nervous about what he’s going to say. I’m even more excited now. Here we go.

Whoa. His speech is like a cool wind on a mid-summer deck. Refreshing and energizing.

It is nice to be here. The world does need more of exactly what’s happening in this room. We should appreciate this fleeting moment while we have it.

Honestly it doesn’t matter all that much what he said. It was how. And that he took the time to tell stories and compliments you for some reason wouldn’t in “normal” life.

Really it’s the way that all these disparate parts of me that were meandering around imaginary places and problems were yanked right back into the room. How I can actually feel the ground under my feet, the love in the air. And gosh darn if everyone else isn’t in here feeling it too.

Every speech is unique, sure. But there’s only one thing I really want from each of them. Grab the whole room by the shoulders and shake. Make me unabashedly feel the most timeless of truths. 

That we only get to do exactly this exactly once.

You can borrow that one. Cheers.

 “According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. 

Death is number two. Does that sound right? 

This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

―Jerry Seinfeld

“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard… Some of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst company.”

—William Hazlitt, On the Conversation of Authors (1820) shared in David Robson’s The Science of Having a Great Conversation

Roasted.

“Maybe this would have been obvious to someone who knew more about speaking, but it was a revelation to me how much less ideas mattered in speaking than writing.”

—Paul Graham, Writing and Speaking

Oof again.

“I know that freedom is earned by confronting things that embarrass and trigger you, over and over again, until you are cringe-proof in your desired environment.”

My journey with toasts. And I don’t regret any that I’ve done, even the stumbling bad ones. But I do regret a few that I almost did and then chickened out.

“I know that there are two modes of experience: appreciative, and evaluative. Concrete example: let’s say you’re listening to a piece of music. Are you sinking into it, awash in emotions? You’re in the appreciative mode. Are you the mixing engineer, listening to the snare hits to make sure they’re consistent? You’re in the evaluative mode. Much of sanity, and happiness, consists of finding the right mode for the right moment.”

Preach.

—Sasha Chapin, #40 and #27 of the 50 things he knows

“I grieve that everyone I love the most is so spread out that now it is physically impossible to be local to all of them at once.”

—, On How To Be Rooted

I do. And I think that fuels my reverence for a good toast.

“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”

― Bhagavad Gita

When I was 18, I got caught in a heavy mental health storm. I didn’t drown. But it took me a long time to learn to swim.

First it got called “Depression” and turned into therapy and SSRIs. Digging for root causes. Anaesthetizing the “imbalance.”

The label helped me to feel not at fault and it softened the jagged edges. But it also excused me from taking chances. Or even doing the darn basics, like eating properly or moving around outside.

I dragged it around with me for years. Though it changed shape somewhere up Lake Ontario.

It became a lightning show they called “ADHD.” And came with ritalin. Hyper focus on things I didn’t care about during the day. At night, burnt out beyond being able to care about anything at all.

“I just can’t focus” I heard myself say over and over. Anything to explain why I wasn’t moving forward. Why I kept leaving things half done.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the grandfather of Flow, “control of consciousness determines the quality of life.” Which is of negative consolation when consciousness feels anything but in control.

Finally, and surprisingly, some blue sky taunted me when my girlfriend of 7 years (and 7 “breaks”) left the country. She wanted more. And I understood.

“You can just do that?” I marveled. Maybe I could do something, too.

I had always wanted to get better. But now my main social fibres were severed, so I needed to rebuild. Action, however small, seemed both possible and imperative. That finally got me pulling at the ripcord, instead of staring at a motionless engine.

After I’d built up some social strength and flexibility, it was time to do the same physically. And lucky for me the combination brought me to the hot yoga studio.

I got hooked. But, to my surprise, not for the fitness or the women. For the way the mental exercise helped me accept my mind. It helped my body feel more spacious for sure, but it was the distance from my thoughts that made the biggest difference.

“Yoga allows you to find a new kind of freedom that you may not have known even existed.”

—B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life

Formerly esoteric quotes started to make a bit of sense. The practice of noticing tension and slowly exhaling through it sounds so simple. Though any physical habit probably would have helped.

After months I noticed something else rebuild: my focus. I could devote attention outside my own turmoil. And that turned out to be a hidden pre-requisite for an upward spiral.

To be clear, the storm has never totally gone away. But it no longer defines me.

Somewhere along the way I realized something. The “Depression” and “ADHD” labels were life rafts that probably saved me from catastrophe—but they sure didn’t teach me how to swim.

—

Thank you Stella Vanstone, , , , and for all the thoughtful help and encouragement on this one.

“If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.”

—Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small

“Everything that we are, is the result of habit. That gives us consolation, because if it is only habit, we can make and unmake it at any time.”

― Patanjali, Patanjali Yoga Sutras

“Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being… Love draws you out of your cocoon of self-absorption to attune to others. Love allows you to really see another person, holistically, with care, concern, and compassion.”

― Barbara L. Fredrickson, Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become

Something about the question immediately got my hackles up. “Rule” sounds so hardline. And “live by”? Like all the time? Yikes.

But alas, the main point of compiling a newsletter and taking the course is to take time reflecting and crisping up thoughts in hopes of being more conscientious away from the keyboard.

So this edition starts with a rule I try to live by: interrupt wisely. And then it’s music-, parenting-, and tweet-heavy.

🎧 Compiled to Shadows by Bonobo feat. Jordan Rakei

I moved to a new email service. Check it out and click on the hearts if the spirit moves you.

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Interrupt wisely

Interrupting is impolite, yes, but it's way more than that. It risks short-circuiting something wonderful.

A toddler shaking a new object, a puppy exploring off leash, a friend sharing excitedly. Isn't this exactly what I want for them? To be on their own roll? As long as they are safe from serious harm, I want to be very careful about disrupting.

Of course, if someone is in danger then INTERRUPT. It doesn't matter how important that phone call is if you're about to step in front of a yellow cab. On the other hand a little pain is an effective teacher. It takes wisdom to find the line between a stretch and a strain.

It also takes wisdom to interrupt encouragingly. Maybe some positive reinforcement will help someone further into their zone. Maybe that person’s train of thought is derailing wondering if they have my attention.

Attention unlocks so much good—learning, connecting, soulfulness. So I’m really trying to pay it well, respect it in others, and steal it only wisely.

“No one knows me like the piano in my mother’s home. You would show me I had something some people call a soul. And you dropped out the sky, oh, you arrived when I was three years old.”

— Sampha, (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano (Spotify, Live performance)

Hey G, is that a drumset I see in the sky?

“I know you're struggling what to call it. But why you gotta call it anything at all?”

—Leif Vollebekk, Hot Tears (Spotify, Live performance)

Interrupt attachment

the key differentiator between the ‘secure’ & ‘insecure’ kids is *how much interest they show in the rest of their environment*…

The anxiously preoccupied kids cling to mom upon her return, whereas the avoidant kids pay her little heed; but, crucially, neither type of kid shows as much independent interest & initiative in exploring the rest of the room as the securely attached kid…

‘the world is a place where I can thrive, and it's up to me to do it.’ …

We're free to love & connect with others, partly because we aren't paralyzed by the fear of losing them; we know our ability to function in the world does not fundamentally depend on them.

Interrupt myself

“Usually, when I’m doing something boring but necessary—the washing up, or walking to the post office—I’ll constantly interrupt myself; there’s a little Joycean warbling from the back of my brain. ‘Boredom is the dream bird that broods the egg of experience.’ But when I’m listlessly killing time on the internet, there is nothing. The mind does not wander. I am not there.”

—Sam Kriss, The internet is already over

“It’s an old joke among jazz musicians,” Cecchini said. “You ask, ‘Can you read music?’, and the guy says, ‘Not enough to hurt my playing.’”

—David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triump in a Specialized World

Tense-relax-respond, tense-relax-respond. All day long.

Honestly feels like it has become my life's work. Though maybe I just didn't notice that, really, it always has been.

This is a collection about how it's a beautiful thing to give and get wise responses. That we long for them instead of quick reactions or, worse yet, getting nothing at all. And how we might summon more of the good stuff.

Inspired by Sasha Chapin. Featuring lots of quotes, thoughts on responsiveness imbalance and stretching vs. straining. And a photo of someone's first daycare visit 🥺

🎧 Typed to The Look by Metronomy.

"When you say anything at all, she turns her whole person towards you, and you are the fixed point of the universe. The moment after you speak, she replies in a way that makes it clear she’s listened to you with every ounce of her...

The power of responsiveness extends past the domain of social charm... Responsiveness is a core human need/desire... People are happy enough rich, and people are happy enough poor. But it’s hard to imagine anyone happy without a feeling that their actions have some impact, however small... Life is good if it squishes nicely when you poke it...

When people put energy into you, attune to it, and give them harmonious energy back."

— Sasha Chapin, What the humans like is responsiveness

Highly recommend.

"I ain't doing this shit for nothin"

— Ja Rule, I'm Real by J.Lo

Being 1 of many to someone who is 1 of 1 to you is a clear power imbalance. Less appreciated is that it's a responsiveness imbalance. One side has more capacity to respond well than the other.

Leaders who call their team "a family", affair-havers, and celebs acting "approachable" share a trait: they try to obscure the imbalance.

Sasha Chapin: "What if (burnout) is partially a failure of responsiveness? Emmett Shear thinks something along these lines"

"If you had to compress (the regrets of the dying) into a single piece of advice, it might be: don't be a cog... who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances, then turns dutifully till he stops."

— Paul Graham, The Top of My Todo List

Could the ultimate of all regrets also comes from a failure of responsiveness? Not of the world failing to respond to us, but of us failing to be responsive to our friends, our family, our inner desires?

Sasha Chapin: "But there are even worse feelings than being a cog—at the very least, that role involves the transfer of mechanical energy. What’s worse is just feeling like a banana lying in the dust."

"Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone...

The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity.

​Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation."

— David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You (from 5-Bullet Friday newsletter)

"I am telling you you gotta pay attention this time. When life reaches out at a moment like this it's a sin if you don't reach back, I'm telling you its a sin if you don't reach back!"

— Pat Sr./Robert De Niro's crescendo speech (spoiler) in Silver Linings Playbook

🎧 Reason number 4917992 to love this movie: it gave us Always Alright by Alabama Shakes.

Root emotions usually refer to anger, fear, sadness, joy, attraction, disgust, shame, surprise.

Stretching vs. straining

The difference between stretching and straining is a sense of ease.

When tissue lengthens there is a reflexive tension. Stretching happens when you can relax it away. Strain happens when you can't.

Stretching makes tissue more malleable and ready to respond to future surprises. Straining doesn't. Straining leads to more rigidity.

A muscle needs to be flexible to respond skilfully. And I think that goes for people, too.

Tense-relax-respond. All day long

It’s also about relationships and the brain.

But it’s really about feedback loops.

And it was mostly typed to Know Ya Wrong by The Alchemist. (Georgia wants me to mention Losing You by Solange.)

Thank you for giving it a shot. If you know anyone with a lot of time on their hands, feel free to share.

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I keep running into the same communication wall. What’s my point and what details are relevant to it?

Making sense of anything means abstracting. Communicating it means carving out boundaries and skillfully omitting details. (Something I swear I tried to do in this email.)

But the closer I look at anything the more complicated interconnections get revealed. And the more backstory swirls off into infinity.

Maybe it's a reckoning of the different areas of the brain?

"The left hemisphere deals with an explicit world, where things are named and counted, where time is kept, and step-by-step plans remove uncertainty from the future. The right hemisphere exists in the moment, in a timeless, implicit world, where things are buried in context, and complicated outlooks are constantly changing.

Impatient with the right hemisphere's view of the complex whole, the competitive left hemisphere tends to jump quickly into a task, bringing language to bear, even though it may be unsuited to that particular task.”

—Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Can we blame the linear nature of language for encouraging understanding in terms of oversimplified cause and effect?

A then B then C. So and so “made me” do something. [World event] happened because [actor] [did something].

Systems Theory has a little something to say about this.

“Every person we encounter, every organization, every animal, garden, tree, and forest is a complex system.”

“A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.”

“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.”

“The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system's response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.”

“On the one hand, we have been taught to analyze, to use our rational ability, to trace direct paths from cause to effect, to look at things in small and understandable pieces, to solve problems by acting on or controlling the world around us… 

On the other hand, long before we were educated in rational analysis, we all dealt with complex systems… We have built up intuitively, without analysis, often without words, a practical understanding of how these systems work, and how to work with them.”

“Feedback loops are the key to understanding the behavior of a system.”

(Feedback loops are self-perpetuating cycles where the output of one component becomes the input of another.)

"If you see a behavior that persists over time, there is likely a mechanism for creating that consistent behavior... a feedback loop."

—Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Some vices apply pressure, holding things in place.

Some vices create pressure, holding people in place. First by providing relief and then by doing just enough harm to to create a stronger need for that relief. And so on.

Tale #1

A traveler came upon an old farmer hoeing in his field beside the road. Eager to rest his feet, the wanderer hailed the countryman, who seemed happy enough to straighten his back and talk for a moment.

“What sort of people live in the next town?” asked the stranger.

“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer, answering the question with another question.

“They were a bad lot. Troublemakers all, and lazy too. The most selfish people in the world, and not a one of them to be trusted. I’m happy to be leaving the scoundrels.”

“Is that so?” replied the old farmer. “Well, I’m afraid that you’ll find the same sort in the next town.

Disappointed, the traveler trudged on his way, and the farmer returned to his work.

Some time later another stranger, coming from the same direction, hailed the farmer, and they stopped to talk. “What sort of people live in the next town?” he asked.

“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer once again.

“They were the best people in the world. Hard working, honest, and friendly. I’m sorry to be leaving them.”

“Fear not,” said the farmer. “You’ll find the same sort in the next town.”

—Unknown

Tale #2

Once upon a time, Charlie and Blake date. Charlie is into Blake but Blake isn’t so sure. 

Charlie senses Blake’s reservation, perhaps subconsciously. Charlie feels insecure, gets self-conscious, and clamors for validation. 

Blake doesn’t like the way Charlie is acting and becomes even less sure. Charlie’s confidence gets even shakier. 

And so on.

One day, Blake hears the old farmer’s wisdom, takes a leap of faith, and gives Charlie some positive reinforcement. Charlie relaxes a little.

Blake likes Charlie more at ease and becomes even more supportive. Charlie blossoms. Blake swoons.

And so on.

“(1) Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electric signal traveling through a chain of neurons—a circuit of nerve fibers. (2) Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. (3) The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit”

―Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

—Hebb’s Law

And then take less effort to fire together. And so on.

At first using shampoo to rid your hair of its natural oils makes it feel clean. But when hair’s oil production over corrects it feels like it needs to be washed again. And so on. 

Down with Big Shampoo.

— George Orwell, 1984

We all know that exertion leads to results. You face a challenge, you grow. Lift weights, become strong.

But this misses the critical middle step: you face a challenge; you rest; then you grow. Lift weights; drink, eat, stretch, and sleep well; get strong.

It's intuitive physically—you can't just on keep running and running. It's also important to acknowledge how critical the middle step is for emotional health and connection building. Challenges can make them more resilient, but only when given the proper conditions for repair.

This collection is part on subject, part random, and includes a personal story. It was typed to two new Khruangbin songs.

I

"And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.

Does the thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?"

— Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Once upon a time

We retreated to different rooms. Defiantly. The only ground that either of us would give was the physical space of the living room where things exploded.

On our way home we had passed by people protesting abortion. To my discomfort, Stella confronted one of them. He wouldn't respond to her or even look at her. So then reflexively I got in his face in a way I would not want to repeat. No matter how fucking smug he looked.

Needless to say, not a peaceful walk home. As we got in the door we got a little heated with each other. Then it boiled over.

My memory isn't good enough to confidently say this was our first big fight—but it was early on. What I am sure about is that in other relationships after a fight like this the topic would have become off limits.

Not explicitly, but there would have been an understanding. The subject would get treated like an inopportune bump-in at the grocery store: quick polite head nods at first, eventually masterclass proactive avoidance.

*Shrugs* "I dunno, it just never came up again."

In those cases, even when not addressed directly, residual hurt from the fight would still "heal". But only in the way a sprained ankle "heals" if you avoid ever moving it again.

Not this time around with SV thank freaking goodness. I feel very lucky that the temperature on this kind of discussion somehow manages to drop from scalding hot and come to rest at cozy warm.

Maybe a bit of laughter, maybe reassuring words—maybe begrudgingly at first. But with that cushioning, plus some distance and reflection, the topic gets re-approached*.

And I think this is a key thing about cherished relationships of all kinds: they challenge AND they repair better. They are anti-fragile.

We have difficult or awkward moments. I fall short in some way. And with the right environment, including a charitable view of intentions, it ends up unlocking a new level of understanding.

The abrasions get the attention, nutrition, and rest they need to repair. And the connection, like muscle fiber, repairs, stronger.

*In this specific case, it meant I got to feel a raw emotional resonance with the frustrating reality women face, constantly being told what to do with their bodies and for their health. Sometimes by medical professionals who admit causes are "unknown" while confidently doling out pharmaceutical band-aids. It put into new perspective for me how a random man using guilt, horror, and shock to try and exert control over women's bodies can become an example of a wider issue.

Plus it forced me to look squarely at my own aversion to confrontation. And what compels me to annoyingly and forcibly explore "the other side". Maybe I'm afraid of being misunderstood. And I want to be forgiven for the sins I commit as a result.

III

"Contrary to the cliché, it isn't really the thought that counts, but the effort which is to say, the inconvenience."

— Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

IV

"Imagine that you have a thorn in your arm that directly touches a nerve... is a constant source of disturbance, and to solve the problem you have two choices.

The first choice is... you need to make sure nothing touches it. The second choice is to decide that since it's so disturbing when things touch the thorn, you need to take it out...

If you decide you have to keep things from touching the thorn that becomes the work of a lifetime... It affects all your decisions, including where you go, whom you're comfortable with, and who's comfortable with you."

— Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

"Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you.

If we treat trauma as an external event, something that happens to or around us, then it becomes a piece of history we can never dislodge. If, on the other hand, trauma is what took place inside us as a result of what happened... then healing and reconnection become tangible possibilities...

Facing it directly without either denial or over-identification becomes a doorway to health and balance."

— Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal

A new psychologist friend specializes in PTSD and sees people who've been through hell I can probably barely understand. She said that her patients who can't, or weren't allowed, to discuss their disturbing events end up living with it day in and day out. But those who were able, or invited, to acknowledge, validate, and give their hell healthy attention are miraculously no longer defined by it.

MDMA therapy

"When you take MDMA it floods the brain with hormones and neurotransmitters that evoke feelings oftrust and well-being researchers say this allows patients to re-examine traumatic memories."

— The Economist, How MDMA is being used to treat PTSD

VII

"All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy... There are billions of other galaxies in the Universe. Only three galaxies outside our own can be seen without a telescope, and appear as fuzzy patches in the sky with the naked eye."

— NASA, The Milky Way Galaxy

Sniff sniff relax

Lord Huberman tells us that physiological sighs are the quickest way to get into a state of relaxation. He recommends 5 between each set in order to kick start the body's recovery process—where the real growth happens. The double inhale to open the lung sacs cycles more air and then the long exhale activates the parasympathetic system.

IX

"When Diapers.com refused Amazon’s acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100mn on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until Diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar."

— Cory Doctorow, ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything

X

"Nature does not bury or cremate her dead; she merely recycles it in naturally clean and pleasant ways. Death and decay are only horrifying in artificial contexts designed to foster illusions of timelessness, like monumental human built environments. Roadkill on a highway is fundamentally more horrifying than half-eaten carrion on a nature trail...

A world that desperately celebrates optimism and medicates pessimism is a world that is not truly willing to look at itself and contemplate the death and decay that must necessarily accompany life and growth."

— Venkatesh Rao, Charnel Vision

Last laughs

Fred Armisen, the niceguy comedic genius, can do every american accent? (YouTube)

Jacqueline Novak is an enlightening force (Netflix)

Shane Gillis on advice he got for his SNL monologue:

"Louis called me and said 'Just do your best jokes. Most of the people watching have never seen you do stand up.'

I was like 'Didn't you do new for your monologues?'

And he said, 'Shane, I'm so much better at stand up than you.'" (YouTube)

Los linkz

• George Orwell, 1984 (Goodreads)

• Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (Goodreads, 5 Bullet Friday newsletter)

• Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul (Goodreads)

• Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks (Goodreads)

• Dr. Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal (Goodreads)

• The Economist, How MDMA is being used to treat PTSD (YouTube)

• NASA, The Milky Way Galaxy (Article)

• Cory Doctorow, ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything (Article)

• Venkatesh Rao, Charnel Vision (Article)

Las chicas

Please keep sharing. Both thoughts on the stuff in here AND things to check out.

Steer my attention, please 😉
psv

I
"Attention is the beginning of devotion"
–Mary Oliver

II. Phil-osophizing
"Giving" your attention has a nice generous ring to it, accentuating the gift of expansive energy that it is. Seems fitting for an action that is the basis of connection. While "paying" attention to something sounds like a lot of work. And clearly it often is.

Both are active verbs that put you in the driver's seat. But you can just as easily become a passenger when your attention gets "grabbed" and "held". And I absolutely love the effortless state of getting lost in something—when it feels worthy.

In other words, I like to give my attention to things I deem to be good. And certainly do not want it hijacked by the bad.

But can you judge something when you're engrossed by it? Or do you need to step back from it to evaluate?

I can't even imagine the number of words written about the nature of attention and learning to steer it. I get why.

Letting its light shine seems necessary to be able to appreciate, understand, and do almost all the other good human stuff. It wants to flow freely, to wander after earnest curiosities.

At the same time, we're constantly forced into the house of mirrors of trying to pay attention to our attention.

Because the demand for it is red freaking hot staying aware of where it is going is critical. Fortunes are being made by building tools that can reliably grab on to it. So now we live a swipe away from the most outrage-ous, beautiful, weird things that 8 billion people are capable of.

So then what do we do? How do we do our curiosity justice and let it fly free without it getting trapped somewhere we don't like?

How can we skim so much while maintaining the ability to spot and appreciate less new and less crazy but more subtle and more worthy stuff? How do we decide what is worth our oh so finite attention? And how do we reliably give it?

I'm not sure. But clearly it's a delicate balance. It takes some kind of vigilance to intentionally steer attention. But then it's just as important to relax into the direction and ride the current—even when it gets choppy.

III. Attention is a magnifying glass
"You might think that attention is a window between our brains and the world. You peer over here, you peer over there, like a submarine twisting its periscope around. And that’s mostly true, except the window is also a magnifying glass, enlarging whatever you see through it. Simply attending to something can make that thing seem more important than it really is."
– Adam Mastroianni

IV.
"Cultivating a garden is all about keeping some stuff out (bunnies, birds, bugs) and keeping other things in (water, fertilizer, sunlight). You can’t grow anything directly; you don’t make sunflowers taller by yanking on their stalks. All you can do is create the right environment and hope the seedlings reach for the sky.

Cultivating a human mind works the same way. You have to keep some stuff out (lies, noise, fear) and some stuff in (knowledge, experience, love). You can’t grow your mind directly; you don’t get smarter by yanking on your frontal lobe. All you can do is create the right environment and hope your brain-folds get deeper."

–Adam Mastroianni

V. Accelerating addictiveness
"What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. And we wouldn't want to stop it."

"Technological progress means making things do more of what we want." It's good "when we want to want it" (more efficient energy production) and bad when we don't want to want it (tastier junk food).

As technological progress speeds up: "More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about... and we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us." One cited example: it took 100 years for smoking to be forced outside into specific areas.

So we need to be ok with being eccentric, to doing things differently from the norm: "As the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. One sense of "normal" is statistically normal: what everyone else does. The other is the sense we mean when we talk about the normal operating range of a piece of machinery: what works best."

"These two senses are already quite far apart. Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced."

–Paul Graham

This was from 2010. With quaint old Facebook as an example. Shout out to KH for giving me a print version of the PG archives.

VI. News is the new smoking
"The world is full of bad things and you should do something about them. The news is just a bad way of figuring out what the bad things are and what to do about them."

"I hope that news-reading goes the same way as smoking: a gross thing that our grandparents did because they didn’t know any better."

Life without news feels better:
"It feels like a war that used to be fought in my backyard is now being fought on Neptune instead."

Including for the people we interact with:
"I stopped importing my grand anxieties into conversations with friends, punishing them with my sullenness because I just read an article... as if nobody was allowed to feel good as long as bad things are happening... That’s how I came to see reading the news like smoking: harmful not just to the consumer, but to anyone nearby."

–Adam Mastroianni

VII
"Could I interest you in everything? All of the time?"
–Bo Burnham

VIII. 3 P's of depressive thinking
Pervasiveness, permanence, personalization. Characterized by reflexively responding to a "negative" event by: a) thinking it affects everything in one's life, b) expecting it to last, and c) attributing it to oneself over other possible explanations.

These were defined (ironically?) by Martin Seligman, a pioneer of the Positive Psychology movement, studying human flourishing instead of the classic approach of focusing solely on disorder.

Thanks to SV for giving me this during a tough spell in undergrad. If only I appreciated the insight sooner.

IX. The social media blast radius
"As you surface from an hour inadvertently frittered away on Facebook, you'd be forgiven for assuming that the damage, in terms of wasted time, was limited to that single misspent hour. But you'd be wrong. Because the attention economy is designed to prioritize whatever's most compelling-instead of whatever's most true, or most useful-it systematically distorts the picture of the world we carry in our heads at all times... If social media convinces you, for example, that violent crime is a far bigger problem in your city than it really is, you might find yourself walking the streets with unwarranted fear, staying home instead of venturing out, and avoiding interactions with strangers and voting for a demagogue with a tough-on-crime platform. If all you ever see of your ideological opponents online is their very worst behavior, you're liable to assume that even family members who differ from you politically must be similarly, irredeemably bad, making relationships with them hard to maintain. So it's not simply that our devices distract us from more important matters. It's that they change how we're defining "important matters" in the first place."
–Oliver Burkeman

X. Focus on what you want to see more of

XI
"Where your focus goes, your energy flows."
–Disclosure

XII. On recommending
Suggesting something might be worthy of attention is tricky business. Best case is that the way the recommendation framing guides you to enjoyment. Worst case is the opposite.

XIII. Music
Twice recently artists I already loved released songs that are contenders for my favourites that they've each made: 
- Take What's Given by BADBADNOTGOOD(Spotify, YouTube)
- Weight of You by Ryan Harris(Spotify, YouTube)

JH suggested watching Parcels live, pointing to the skill it takes to play those rhythms and sing. And oh effing yeah:
- Lightenup (YouTube)

DH sent another great based on seeing the show and saying "what a character":
- KD and Lunch Meat by Golden Boy (Spotify)

Here's a Spotify playlist with these and others I've been listening to a lot lately.

XIV. Wow thank you for reading all that
These past couple weeks my mind kept wandering to the question "why on earth did I want to send out a newsletter?" Hence the theme of this edition. And its length (yikes). But I like the answer that eventually landed. So, lest I forget: It's an attempt to more intentionally steer my attention. To take the time to reflect, share, and hopefully instigate more conversations about things that are attention-worthy. Away from the just new, towards the good. From crafty strangers, towards ideas and recommendations from friends.

XV. Link list
I. Upstream by Mary Oliver (Book)
III. Underrated Ideas in Psychology by Adam Mastroianni (Article)
IV & VI. Reading News is the New Smoking by Adam Mastroianni (Article)
V. The Acceleration of Addictiveness by Paul Graham (Article)
VII. Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham (YouTube)
VIII. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (Book)
IX. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Book)
X. Tweet by Visakanv (X)
XI. ENERGY by Disclosure (Spotify)

Articles are grouped in Reader.

—

Hey hey,

Below you'll find the first of a regular email I intend to write. Ideally without overthinking it. It's stuff I recently saved that was still interesting upon a second look. So I hope it's interesting to you at least once. Plus I love me a newsletter.

Please click here if you want to receive future editions. And feel free to tell me what you think or to share if you think of someone who'd like this. But less than zero pressure on all that. There are more than enough emails in the world as it is.

Thank you, 🙏 Phil

I

"We've been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action."

- Oliver Burkman, Four Thousand Weeks: Productivity for Mortals (book)

So far, this book is a cathartic reminder that productivity systems are worse than unhelpful.

II

"The most important thing for learning is not the way information is presented but what is happening in the learner’s head."

- The Biggest Myth in Education from Veritasium (video)

\ Learning styles - the idea that some people learn better when they watch something vs hear it, etc. - has been debunked. Mixed media is more effective for everyone - but in the end it's all about how much the learner is mentally engaging with the material.

Also, best teacher ever? His videos get me fired up about the state of education. Watch him explain the prisoner's dilemma.

III

"I am there to make sure (a leader's) intent is aligned with their behaviour."

- Blake Eastman, 'Non-verbal behavior expert', offhand comment on Knowledge Project podcast #185 explaining what his consulting work is and isn't.

I find this clarity of purpose really powerful. My number 2 pat leave goal, after loving G, is being able to state mine just as succinctly so I can make sure my future work aligns with it. Maybe it'll be something related to something else Blake said:

"People are most effective when they are comfortable."


IV

How often is "soullessness" the byproduct of the creator focusing on something other than the craft at hand? Like when a business earns revenue from something separate, maybe even at odds with, their stated mission. Or when an artist is thinking about what people liked about their previous work rather than losing themself in where they are now.

Me wondering.


V

"Someone suggests a way out of my predicament and I go, 'Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exactly like I'm doing it right now, and getting better outcomes?'"

"Um, excuse me! I've been doing all of this very diligent desiring for things to be different, and yet they remain the same, could someone please look into this?'"

"All of my effort is currently accounted for somewhere. If I want to spend more of it on something, I have to spend less of it on something else. If I’m consistently not getting something done, it’s probably because I don’t want to—at least, not enough to cannibalize that time from something else—and I haven’t admitted that to myself yet."

- So You Wanna De-bog Yourself by Adam Mastroianni (article)

Lots of oh shit moments in this delightful article.

VI

"It's a core human need to be seen and appreciated."

- Hugh Jackman on Tim Ferriss podcast

What a lovely man, that Wolverine.


VII

From 5 Tweet Tuesday (newsletter)

The better a hold I get on my Twitter habit, the more I love this weekly fix.


VII

Andrew has a gift.