#MundaneLife
You have to hold the sandwich if you want a turn to talk.
What Has My Attention
It’s never easy to quit social media, but doing so right as a genuinely new and buzzy service is making the rounds is a recipe for extreme FOMO. I’m talking, of course, about Clubhouse. Fernando Gros does a good job laying out the details of why it’s interesting in his recent article and recent episodes of Upgrade and Accidental Tech Podcast dive into it, too.
I’ve resolved to watch this one from the sidelines, though. The same reasons I left Twitter are the same reasons why jumping into a new public arena for the sharing of thoughts is probably not a great idea for me. My podcast listening habit is already bordering on problematic and the last thing I need is an even easier way to ambiently fill my mind with others’ thoughts.
Creativity and productivity require silence — or at least space — and the past couple weeks of a social media-less existence has been helping reacquaint me with those concepts. I feel like I’m starting to make progress and there are interesting things waking up below the surface of my conscious thought. I’m worried Clubhouse would scratch the same part of my brain that Twitter so effectively scratched for so long, just as I’m starting to learn how to soothe that itch in better ways (or ignore it all together).
Virtual Reality, Connecting with Colleagues, and a Personal Review Process
This week The Ready conducted it’s third virtual retreat since the pandemic started and this time we all received an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset as part of our retreat swag. I played some Top Golf while chatting with colleagues, a couple rounds of putt-putt with people I haven’t ever had a chance to hang out with in real life, and some virtual ping pong that felt disturbingly like the real thing. And, to top it off, we all got into the same virtual space a couple times a day to do check in and closing rounds (as evidenced by the very cool/disturbing screenshot I used to open this newsletter).
It was all very wild and very cool. I left the experience feeling much more bullish on VR as a potentially generally useful tool for bringing people together in meaningful ways. The part of me that was craving hanging out in a common space with my colleagues and doing a real activity, like we used to when we could travel for our retreats, was definitely activated by doing it in VR.
As part of our company retreat I took a bunch of time to do my own personal reflection process, too. I shared these templates with my colleagues but I figured I’d go ahead and share them with you all, too. You’ll just have to ignore some of the The Ready specific language/references in the explanations. I’ll be working on a larger and more detailed article series on these ideas, soon. Grab the Trimesterly Review Template here, the Monthly Review Template here, and the Weekly Review template here.
Follow-Up
If you tried to follow the link for last week’s episode of Fields of Work it probably didn’t work for you. The best way to listen to it is in your podcast player of choice, but if you want to listen to it in your browser here is a fixed link. Sorry for the error!
For Your Attentional Consideration
We recorded another episode of Fields of Work! Whereas last week we kind of “reset” the podcast by going over our origin stories again, this week we dive deep into Max’s recent work at his new farm, including a very fraught relationship he has with a goose. I talked a little bit about the VR-centric retreat I just completed with The Ready. Listen here.
George Saunders on Kindness, Capitalism and the Human Condition on The Ezra Klein Show
“Saunders’s central topic, literalized in his famous 2013 commencement speech, is about what it means to be kind in an unkind world. And that’s also the organizing question of this conversation on my podcast “The Ezra Klein Show.” We discuss the collisions between capitalism and human relations, the relationship between writing and meditation, Saunders’s personal editing process, the tension between empathizing with others and holding them to account, the promise of re-localizing our politics, the way our minds deceive us, Tolstoy’s unusual theory of personal transformation, and much more.”
25 Years and 2,000 Miles of Hikes with Friends by Julie Beck
“… a group of friends who have been going on monthly hikes for 25 years. They discuss why the hike organizer has absolute authority, how they’ve shown up for one another through tragedies, and why hiking together has bonded them more deeply than other ways of keeping in touch.”
Patagonia’s Former C.E.O Retreats to the Rainforest by David Gelles
“These are really big, intractable problems that our society faces. You can’t just say, “We’re not going to do anything, because everything we do does harm.” That’s like saying we’re never going to innovate, we’re never going to try. We have to act with a sense of urgency. Time is running out. And I still think that business can be the greatest agent for positive change in the world.”
“There’s that expression in Buddhism about a happy warrior. It doesn’t mean you let people walk all over you. Instead, you cultivate a fearless heart, you’re fierce and you call out wrongdoing. People do their best work when they’re joyful. They don’t do their best work when they’re intimidated or scared or shamed.”
I’ve received a bunch of questions about my escape (exodus?) from Twitter and I’m planning on pulling together a more comprehensive article responding to those questions soon. If you have a question, practical or philosophical, about it feel free to respond to this email and I’ll be sure to consider it for the article!
Thank you to everyone who sent me a nice email after last week’s issue. Getting replies from newsletter readers is my favorite thing.
Until next time,
Sam