Competency is under-rated
Is this where "faking it 'til we make it" ends up breaking civil society? Thoughts on this, plus all the usual guidance, inspiration and sprinkles of fun to get you through the rest of your week.
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Every week feels momentous right now in terms of world events. Closer to home, we are being hit with a never ending stream of sickness infesting one or more members of our household of 3 kids, two adults, a cat and a dog. I fear the winter will bring more of the same. I’d be reading my newsletter for some ideas on how to cope and solace if I wasn’t already writing it. I’m dropping out of a dinner tomorrow night in an attempt to keep myself well before a trip south next week.
Noise Reduction Weekly Thread
Each week, I’ll kick us off with a weekly thread for us to connect with good things we did over the weekend, and something that we’re planning to do during the week ahead to nurture and care for ourselves. This week started off in excellent fashion, and is still open for comments - so please come on in, say hi and share your tips.
Here’s CS, kicking off our thread this week (thanks for this, CS - well worth a read, everyone):
Over the weekend, I came across this paper on "dual promotion" as a strategy.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4128132
Essentially, if you want to be appreciated for work you've done without being perceived as tooting your own horn, you could try combining self-promotion with promoting someone else. E.g. John and I finished working on <insert product>, which has improved our customer satisfaction by x points.
It's performance review season at my company so I will be looking to implement this strategy as soon as I can. Some more dough couldn't hurt, especially now.
Faking it is failing
Competence is highly under-rated. Strategy even more so. Governing requires a combination of running things competently and delivering on your policies, and five-dimensional chess playing in order to stay ahead of your competition. Of course, all this can be thrown by the impact of events.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” - Mike Tyson*
I’m not a fan of the universal application of the “fake it ‘til you make it” school of life. Sure, it’s good to get you started, but unless you also take time to up-skill, or build a team that has the skills, and continues to improve on them, you’ll get found out.
I think we are in a unique time in my lifetime where things just don’t seem to be working. And I think a lot of this is a consequence of the contracting out of state functions to private enterprise which has an entirely different set of KPIs to report on than whether is helps civil society to function and delivers for better outcomes for citizens.
Faking it is failing. We need to strategise for competence and the rebuilding of civil society again. More on this below.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Saving civil society … from itself?
What’s going on with the turmoil in so many societies today? This article from Dalibor Rohac is over 4 years old now, but well worth a read. It relates to what I was getting at in my recent article where I argue that loneliness is the open vulnerability that rapidly assembled online communities are designed to exploit. These online communities are the vector through which intolerance is spread.
Yet, could it be that an important part of our problem today is that people tend to cooperate too much? Namely, that it has become easier than ever to form communities that filter communication, suppress internal dissent, and consider their own standards above any outside criticism? According to the economic historian Timur Kuran, such “intolerant communities lay the foundations for tyranny by creating constituencies prepared to suspend the rule of law for some higher purpose.”
If it is indeed underway, such a balkanization of the public space into intolerant communities vying for power might count among the most important threat facing free societies at this time. Its consequences go far beyond the question of who the White House’s current occupant is, or what immigration and trade policies Western democracies ought to pursue. What is at stake is our ability to live in self-governing societies and to sort out political and social problems through civil association and democratic competition.
5 simple ways nature can help your mood
Thanks to Em Rc for this, which she shared in the weekly thread in our community this week. Check the link for the short video, where Emma Mitchell guides us through a natural take on wellbeing. It’s set in autumn but there are some great ideas in here, no matter what the season
How People Laugh Online in Different Languages
When it comes to in-person conversations, laughter is universal. You may not speak the same language, but you can understand one another through laughter. But what about online?
FRENCH
The most common is “MDR,” which means “Mort de Rire” (“dead laughing”). To laugh even harder, there's the abbreviation “PTDR“—Pété de Rire. Péte can mean farting, but it's generally a more familiar version of “casser,” which means “to break.” So, “PTDR” means “broken with laughter” and not necessarily “laughing so hard I farted,” but still…hilarious.
Follow the link for more laughter.
Is your smartphone ruining your memory?
Yes, we’ve long suspected this might true. But here’s an in-depth breakdown of what happens when we outsource part of our memory to digital devices.
Our brains and our smartphones form a complex web of interactions: the smartphonification of life has been rising since the mid 2000s, but was accelerated by the pandemic, as was internet use in general. Prolonged periods of stress, isolation and exhaustion – common themes since March 2020 – are well known for their impact on memory. Of those surveyed by memory researcher Catherine Loveday in 2021, 80% felt that their memories were worse than before the pandemic. We are – still – shattered, not just by Covid-19, but also by the miserable national and global news cycle. Many of us self-soothe with distractions like social media. Meanwhile, endless scrolling can, at times, create its own distress, and phone notifications and self interrupting to check for them, also seem to affect what, how and if we remember.
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How class and where you live influence your mental health
I know many people like to pretend they live in an egalitarian meritocracy where we get what we deserve. But we don’t, and we don’t. In this in-depth interview, Professor Paula Reavey speaks to Shaoni Bhattacharya about how someone’s class, context and environment influences their mental health.
Going back to your question earlier, about what an understanding of the environment has to offer… right down to the way that we design doorknobs and doors and windows, that can communicate something really important. A lot of patients that we’ve spoken to have said things like ‘you sit in your room and it’s like a prison cell’. And what that communicates is ‘I’m being detained, punished rather than treated for this mental health problem’.
Again, thinking about social class: you go into some services in deprived areas and the paint’s peeling off the wall and the chairs are all broken. To me, that sense of ‘we don’t give a shit about you’ comes across in the materials themselves, in environments themselves. And I think that’s really important to get right – it’s about creating environments where people feel that whatever position they are at in society, somebody cares and values and wants to invest in helping them through a difficult time and out the other side, towards a better future.
“I felt like my eyeballs were vibrating out of my sockets”
Dominican car audio culture is notorious in New York. I thought it was huge in London, and Auckland has its moment. But this is next level. There’s an audio version of the report after the jump to the NYTimes too - well worth a listen.
This is a culture born out of a love for sound, for community — a cradle of belonging in a country that is difficult to call yours. It is an echo of the din that saturates life in the Dominican Republic, the kind that occupies street corners, homes and colmados. An inherited sonic dissent, passed down through experiences of migration.
“I just love listening to loud music. I love people watching,” Manzueta said. “And there’s definitely a source of pride there.” One of his favorite genres to play is típico, a traditional Dominican style of merengue. “I love representing my country.”
What I’m watching: We’ve been catching up with Tehran Season 2 on AppleTV+ It’s super-compelling, hurtling along at great speed. It’s not exactly a relaxing watch though. It’s a spy thriller you really need to be paying attention to.
What I’m listening to: The Test Match Special recap podcasts of the England v India Men’s Test Match which was put back from last year, owing to a Covid outbreak.
It only seems like yesterday that I was at Lord’s watching a county match with friends, discussing the impact that Brendan McCullum would have on the England team. We knew it would be significant, but nothing like how it’s played out. Though I also wonder how much of the change may be due to the new Test Match ball that has come into use at the same time too.
What I’m reading: Still reading Life after Life, but my new issue of Private Eye has arrived so I’ll be digging into that over the next few days.
*I don’t support boxing at all, but there’s no escaping the fact that this is a brilliant quote.