Post-Covid Speed Run

Our lives have been accelerating and splintering for a while now. Digital, then Internet, then Social, then Mobile. But COVID-19 was disruption of a different nature.

Is it just me, or are people driving like maniacs these days? And don't people seem more binary...ping-ponging between zoned out and acting out? Less courtesy. Less care for our social rituals and spaces. More than usual. More than before.

No Going Back to the Beforetime

Covid response measures are in the rear-view mirror it seems. But their effects remain. We didn't go full Mad Max, but a lot was wiped out.

Millions of small businesses and solo operators went out of business. Millions of people dropped the work commute forever, and commercial real estate worldwide now has no function. Huge cohorts of schoolkids missed developmental milestones, and remain behind in basic skills.

I interviewed a Covid-era college grad recently. She paid full fare with student loans but had to educate herself for her last 2 years, Zoom notwithstanding. She learned she didn't need the institution. It was a just a gatekeeper with a steep toll. How will her generation view the workplace and government?

What Happened with the Response

In a way, the Apocalypse happened. All at once, everyone lost control over basic life: Living together as a family (or attending a dying loved one), socializing with friends, going to work and earning money, sending the kids to school. Public authorities seemed united in scaring the living hell out of everyone, and they succeeded.

I managed to make it to my hometown during the pandemic. The local Spectrum News ran nothing but COVID stories for months. It was relentless. Every single story was about COVID or had a COVID angle, even the weather. Every story was about helplessness, fear, and death. After just a few moments, I had to turn it off to stay sane.

It Was Like AIDS

A lot of people didn't survive the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. For those of us who did, COVID-haunted daily life brought back unwelcome memories. Death was invisible and everywhere. Inescapable and incurable. You felt a low grade terror that rapid extinction could spring from your next human interaction. COVID fear felt like AIDS fear all over again, except this time for everyone.

Not Back to Normal

We’re still freaked out to realize we have no control over our lives. Bedrock social structures and family routines can be taken away in an instant. Do you know why so many are still on edge? Because we can't escape the sense that it could happen again. Two weeks turned into two years easily. Covid round XXXIII, an ultra flu strain, environmental disaster...could the lockdown hammer fall again?

A Thunderdome World

People are still in fight-or-flight mode, so nobody else matters. It's not a moral failure. What's the point when the present and the future are uncertain? Traumatized people and institutions don't plan for the future. It's about staying alive in the arena today.

So no, there is no time for the old courtesies. There is little time or energy to think about consequences.

I'd like to think we're rebooting...starting a new game with fresh supplies and Max Health.

But it doesn't feel that way. We’re all trapped in a speed run through life now, still on red alert, mouths on full blast.

The WGA Strike is Over...But Is Hollywood Facing a Greater Danger?

With the resolution of the Writers Guild of America strike, and the expected end of the SAG-AFTRA actors union strike shortly, it seems it's back to the business of making shows for Hollywood.

But as former Amazon Head of Film and longtime Indie Film superproducer Ted Hope notes in his recent essay, "Won't Get Fooled Again," Hollywood is suffering from a dangerously limited perspective.

https://open.substack.com/pub/tedhope/p/they-wont-get-fooled-again-or-will

Why is Ted Hope creating such a stir?

Because he throws a spotlight on the 800 pound gorilla in the room that we could sort of smell, but not really see. And the gorilla turns out to be wearing a suit and he is actually the new Boss of Everyone.

The gorilla is Big Tech, of course, and its backers Venture Capital and Wall Street. They have taken over Hollywood without a shot, without anyone really noticing.

The new framework is: Shows are 100% an expense. Not an investment. Content is a resource that must be obtained as cheaply as possible, as they are working against hard ceilings of total addressable market and maximum monthly fees, which limits profit, their only goal. That’s how Wall Street operates and I don’t have a problem with that.

But Hollywood is not just a business like any other that happens to make shows. It is a culture-making business. It cannot function without being art in some form. Even now, the Academy does not honor the highest-grossing films; it recognizes the “best” films. The best films affect the lives and spirits of billions of people for the better, and help us understand ourselves. They also become landmarks in our lives and the life of our culture. This is an intangibile quality that nevertheless has global impact. And a value that is almost too big to be calculated.

Big Tech substituted a commodity model for Hollywood without a discussion because it looked like consumer choice. But this approach may lead Hollywood down the wrong path. What's cheap but holds eyeballs? Shock, lust, envy & outrage programming on a reality tv model. Hello, naked men TV dating show.

Hollywood lost the knowledge of itself as an industry apart, as a culture business that makes money because it creates culture that people enjoy. The big media corporations that own the major studios are not excused from their fiduciary duty to stand up for Hollywood itself...to protect the way the industry makes money and perpetuates itself. They are not doing that.

The gorilla is backstage, and all we get is thumps, and screams, and things moving behind the curtains. Ted Hope's essay is one of the few to ask, “Hey, what’s going on back there?”

To put it another way: As a business, Hollywood projects need to be break-even to moderately to massively profitable. This allows the whole show to continue in a steady state kind of way. Along the way, talented people and smart studios can make a fortune. There can even be growth in the size of the industry itself (although Hollywood needs to get more bold in this area).

On the other hand, as a business, Tech projects must show huge and rapid growth continuously: double-digit gains, quarter over quarter, until competitors are eliminated and markets are captured, and investors can cash out and/or rely on constantly rising profits and dividends. But most of all, size and market capitalization.

In Tech and Finance, no growth is failure. Slow growth is failure. Anything but the hockey stick is failure.

The people running Hollywood today are financial leaders. They want the hockey stick. They want Team Hollywood all suited up and ready to play for the money.

But they can’t see that hiding under their team’s uniform and helmet is the Big Tech Gorilla.

They can’t see body check that’s coming.

The Gazelles and the Lion

A parable of late Web 2.0 social media, inspired by Jaron Lanier

Has Big Tech escaped meaningful scrutiny and consequences because they are already so powerful...the biggest lions whom everyone fears?

Or is it the case that they are the swift gazelles of the economy, now grown bigger than the dinosaurs of the previous age? They seem to be the dominant new herd by right of outpacing all others. So, a boundless new land is theirs to claim. It seems that they can, for now, race far ahead of the plodding old lion of society.

Yet their scent remains in the air. A muzzle lifts. Their intention is known. Could it be that like a squadron of careless aviators who fly into a box canyon, the swift herd of Big Tech sees only a horizon without obstacles? They trample smaller creatures and scare up clouds of fleeing birds. Do they run in a mistaken panic for survival—is that why they pay no mind to the tightening hills?

The deadly tragedy of the box canyon is the wall suddenly towering ahead. There is no room to turn. There is no time to climb. It is inescapable, save for earlier, wiser decisions. The day may yet come when Big Tech meets its wall, and there is nothing left for it to do but wait as slow, approaching footfalls herald a reckoning.

A Short Essay on Short Emails

Waaay back at the beginning of my career, I thought it was very important to explain myself fully in emails.

Explain the situation, the background, the options, the pros and cons, what to do next.

My very favorite thing to do was to point out what is wrong, and why it's wrong, and how to fix it. I was sure all my lucky recipients appreciated my timely thoughts and helpful suggestions.

I didn't just write emails, I wrote reports. I wrote the whole story as I saw it and poured out my views. I was therapizing my out of control ego. I had very patient friends and colleagues.

Of course I finally came to realize that my emails weren't having the effect I hoped. They were going straight into the trash. Today we have an acronym for it: TLDR, for "too long, didn't read."

Today, we get more emails than ever. And I've completely changed my approach to them.

The best emails today are short and sweet, terse and telegraphic, brief and all-business.

Since nine out of ten emails are really requests for information, a to-do being assigned, or a delivery of information, it's best to start crafting your emails to make their purpose drop-dead obvious. Being short is the best thing you can possibly be in an email.

Pro Tips for Awesome Emails

• One topic or item per email. No "compound emails." Got multiple, separate things to communicate? Send each in a separate email.

• The very best email is just a short, substantive subject line followed by (eom) "end of message." The recipient does not even need to open the email.

• If you're working on a named project with others, consider using that project's name as a prefix to your email subject line. For example, "Q4 All Hands Zoom: Link & Agenda" or "Omega project: Meeting notes: September 30, 2021"

• Consider adding (fyi) "for your information" as a prefix to the subject line if you're delivering information that the recipient can read later

• Three line emails only...yes, that's right, limit yourself to three lines of text in your email (excluding your salutation and your close).

• Be really clear and direct. There should be no confusion about what you're saying or asking for

Communicate Better with One Pagers

A lot of "work" consists of large volumes of low information writing

At work, we're reading and writing all day—texts, emails (often with long chains), messages, channel posts, chats. We constantly monitor multiple streams of short, transactional, conversational messages, emails, and posts.

This is a huge amount of communication. Yet it has a low information density.

We're also talking on the phone, and going to meetings, where we talk some more. Sometimes, we get to read presentations. Really long presentations with lots of preamble, discussion, tables and graphs, and appendices. Sometimes there is a clear point.

This means we have to wade through a lot of texting and talking to chip away at our problem. That problem is trying to get a sufficient amount of the right information to do one of three things:

1. Define a business thing, problem, or opportunity

2. Decide to do the thing, and prioritize it against other efforts, or not do the thing

3. Understand what happened with a thing—Get a report of outcomes, progress, results, findings, and what to do about it

Low information density in our communications makes it difficult and time consuming to gain full understanding and then decide with confidence.

Break through the noise with a One Pager strategy

Win friends and influence people by adding a new tool to your communication strategy: The one pager. It's a single sheet—real or digital, but real is often better—that contains:

• A clear, concise definition of the topic or proposal, or reporting of findings

• A distillation and aggregation of all and only the relevant supporting information in an easy-to-scan format

• Pros & cons

• Costs & benefits, plus CODN (cost of doing nothing)

• Implementation: Ease or difficulty, with remedies to possible problems

• Dependencies, impact on others

• Pro Tip: Take a stance in your one pager that will force the readers to react. Use the one pager to declare what you intend to do unless you hear otherwise. If there are choices, identify your recommended option and why. If there are priorities, stack rank them and identify which ones are for now and which ones will be backlogged. If there are multiple next steps, state the one you will take immediately. If you need action from others, make your ask.

Communication strategy with one pagers:

• Send out 24-48 hours ahead of time

• Meet

• Present and/or distribute your one pager

• Discuss

• Take note of any adjustments, changes, and most importantly, the decision

• Issue a revised one pager with the decision stated explicitly

One pagers are approachable and easy to deal with, yet their high information density cuts through the usual fog of business. They save time. They promote focused discussion. They clarify decision making. They promote consensus and action.

Notebooks Make You Smarter

It started innocently enough.

In my earlier career, working on UX projects for Fortune 500 companies, I needed a way to keep track of all the insights, facts, diagrams, players, requirements, and plain old to-do's.

So I returned to a habit I thought I had left behind: Taking notes in a physical notebook. Now, 20-mumble years on, I am never without a notebook. I take notes on everything: Books, podcasts, meetups, conferences, Twitter threads, everything. And I have a whole system of physical notebooks with handwritten notes.

Why?

The research is long in: Handwritten notes make your brain remember concepts better. When you activate the hand-brain connection to write, you process information more deeply. You can condense, restate, annotate, illustrate, and cross-reference other entries. Most importantly, you will remember information better. When you talk, you'll have more substantive, better structured things to say from memory.

My current notebook lineup includes:

Morning pages notebook

Daily mind dump...automatic writing in a big, cheap spiral bound notebook like you had in the eighth grade. Get your swirling thoughts down on paper so focused thinking can begin.

UX work notebook

Big, sturdy Rhodias. Always at hand. Every note & to-do goes here. With these handwritten records, I can reconstruct the memory of a meeting, utterance, or decision going back months (if you choose to keep them). 1st IA, flow diagrams, and wireframes happen here. https://rhodiapads.com/collections_spiral_4colorbook.php

Professional/Industry notebook

Small, softback Leuchtturm handbooks (fit in any bag or coat pocket) for professional training notes, meetups, conferences, speaker notes, business book notes and especially deconstructed podcasts. Indexed and saved when full. https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/notebook-classic.html

Personal journal and commonplace book

Small, hardback Leuchtturm notebooks that house my own journal entries. It's also a commonplace book: A copied record of anything good from your reading, watching or anyplace else. Memorable quotes, pithy tweets, excerpts from fiction and non-fiction, recipes, whole poems. Indexed and saved when full. Writer Ryan Holliday says more: https://ryanholiday.net/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/

Pro Tip: Make an Index for Your Notebook

• Save 4-5 blank pages at the front of each notebook. Label them "Index"

• Number the pages of your notebook. Or buy pre-numbered notebooks

• When your notebook is full, review the pages for what's good. These will go in your index

• Give each important topic or concept a descriptive line on an Index page. Add the page number or range

• If the topic appears in multiple places in your notes, keep the single line item for it in the index. Add additional page numbers or page ranges next to it

• Later, to find a note, you only need to scan the index, not flip through all the pages

Morning Pages: Clear Your Mind, Fight Dopamine Addiction

What if there was a way you could clear your mind, strengthen your ability to show up, and also push back on your smartphone social media dopamine-hit-addicting doomscrolling?

There's a way that's working for me, and it might work for you, too.

It's called Morning Pages. It's a writing practice launched by Julia Cameron in her book, "The Artist's Way." https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

Morning pages are a stream-of-consciousness writing practice meant to clear the mind and get it ready to do real writing work. Or get ready for whatever your work is. It's throwaway writing, like sweeping your mind of the night's detritus.

And it's just 3 longhand pages a day, every morning. Write anything and everything that comes to your mind. Your dreams, your worries, your fears, and even silly, useless thoughts. Just get them out of your head and onto paper.

Sometimes a good idea pops up in your morning writing routine. You'd be surprised. Copy it over to another notebook or to your digital notes.

"There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages—they are not high art. They are not even 'writing.'” —Julia Cameron

Added bonus: If you sit down to Morning Pages first thing every day, then you're training yourself not to pick up your phone. That's less doomscrolling social media, checking email, scanning Slack channels, and the million other little time wasters that give us that morning dopamine hit we are all hooked on. Doing Morning Pages weans you from your morning phone addiction.

How to Do Morning Pages

1. Buy a fat, cheap composition notebook. The cheaper the better. You're not actually going to keep this notebook—You'll toss it, shred it, burn it when it's full.

2. Get some pens or pencils

3. Find a morning writing spot and put your notebook and pen there.

4. At night, hide your phone away or turn it off. Keep it out of your writing spot.

5. First thing in the morning (with a stop for coffee), sit down and start writing without thinking. Just keep your pen moving.

6. Stop when you hit 3 pages. Some days, my flow stops at 1 or 2 pages. That's OK.

7. Repeat every day for a few weeks.

8. Start enjoying a calmer mind and a cooler relationship to your phone

Writing My Way Forward

Social feeds stuffed with videos, streaming television and films, an explosion of digital gaming of all types...this is our Internet now. This has led many pundits to say that the age of the written word is over. They say we are becoming a visual image and spoken word culture once again...modern primitives, in a way.

But here and there, in corners of our digital culture, writing seems to be making a comeback. Or more precisely, writing seems to be appreciated by more and more people for the focus and weight it can offer to our distracted minds and noisy world. These people are the real knowledge workers of today: People who seek to clarify their thinking on topics that matter to them. These thoughts can also be put into the world to help others and influence things for the better. Thoughts that are honed through writing seem to survive better in our chaotic digital culture. We want to find like-minded friends, allies, contacts, and employers. We may even want to find ourselves. For all of these goals, there is no substitute for writing.

Recently, I've been browsing and trying a variety of writing techniques. So far, the ones that have stuck are morning pages and making reading notes in journals. But both of these are background activities. Something is missing.

The missing piece is becoming a daily writer. To that end, I've joined up with the Ship 30 for 30 folks. My fellow writers and I will be sending our Atomic Essays into the world, one a day for the next 30 days.

On my left is the pile of my experience of life. I am knee-deep. I must process it, compost stuff, maybe even uncover something long buried.

On my right is the way forward, but there is no path.

Writing, I will make bricks, one by one. I'll uncover the good stuff in the pile. And brick by brick, I will build a path, even though I don't know where it may lead.

Coming Soon...

I will be with you shortly.