Economies of 🍑
Plus: Seven Things on product communities, collages, canopy maps, and more
Hello friends!
Hope you’ve had a great start to the not-so-new year. Here’s what I wanted to share in this edition of Seven Things:
One — A story about focusing on more than just one thing
Two — Seven Things on product communities, collages, canopy maps, and more
Economies of Ass
Why do New Year's resolutions die? Like many of you, I launched into an intense daily exercise regime in January, but I'm under no illusions about its longevity. It is a temporary reset to counteract the excesses of the holidays rather than the dawn of a new me. Still, why couldn't it last? There may be fundamental issues with how we think about goals or achievements.
Name one thing. And only one thing. This is the guidance I received in my mailbox from one life coach after another in the middle of last year: To get ahead of 2025 by selecting one goal I'd like to hit and to concentrate all my energy on accomplishing it. On the face of it, this makes sense. We've all learned that focus yields success. But there are degrees of focus. And we aren't single-minded computer programs operating in an orderly and predictable world. There's more to life than a single goal. And so I struggled to even contemplate what my 'one thing' might be. I only know it isn't sweating to the beats of Insanity every morning.
Instead, I've found solace in another approach: Think of your life as a gas hob with four cook plates. Each represents work, family, friends, or health (or any other four areas you choose to split your life into). You only have enough gas to fire up two of them at any one time. Now, you can dial in the knobs and divert some gas around, but you can't make more. How do you choose to use your fuel? I suspect few of us will consistently only cook very hot on a single flame.
Even at work in the world of tech, we use OKRs in recognition of the multi-facettedness of goals and progress (itself, an imperfect concept that Tom Kerwin and I picked apart last year). And even here, we don't hope to meet all those goals. We simply set the direction of travel. So why do we judge ourselves and each other for lacking focus? For half-assing things.
In Oliver Burkeman's recent book Meditations for Mortals, this paragraph struck me as particularly lucid:
My mum used to get upset at what she perceived as my half-passing,' reads one splendid anonymous comment on a Washington Post article by the advice columnist Carolyn Has. 'I'm 48 now, have a PhD and a thriving and influential career, and I still think there is very little that's worthy of applying my whole entire ass. I'm not interested in burning myself [out] by whole-assing stuff that will be fine if I half- or quarter-ass it. Being able to achieve maximum economy of ass is an important adult's skill.
I've also observed that, on reflection, the share of ass that instinctively feels worth applying to a given endeavour is typically the amount of ass it deserves. The things I procrastinate over or even instinctively put off are frequently ones that weren't aligned with my goals in the first place. At times, I may still chastise myself for being lazy, but most of the time, it's just being sensible, economical, and living in line with my values.
Don't be too hard on yourself in a season where you might set ambitious targets for the year or already fall behind on your New Year's resolution. It's sensible to consider how you want to use your fuel and whether that's due to intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, but in some areas, don't be ashamed of being economical with your ass. You only have one, after all - life and ass, that is.
2. Seven Things I thought were worth sharing
Creator Showcase: Kathryn Cooper’s dreamy multiple exposures of starlings
Web: Space Type Generator, an open source tool that allows you to create your own kinetic type experiments
Design: An in-depth article about building communities around your software products the right way
Art: Itself a creator showcase, Revue Collé is a weekly email exploring the world of contemporary collage (and much cooler than it sounds)
Technology / AI: AI-generated video has become better once again with the reveal of Google’s latest video generation model Veo 2
Sustainability / AI: Last year, Meta launched a global map of tree canopy height at a 1-meter resolution. This data, along with the AI models used to create it, is freely available, and can be used for carbon credit verification.
Fun: A University of Cambridge study set out to measure scientific bullshit and what influences our receptivity to it.