Insightful thoughts, Tom. Thank you for sharing them. Over the last couple of years, I experienced a number of times both ways, which led me to think about the word "enough": interesting enough and interested enough to take a specific action (whatever threshold stands behind enough). The other aspect is the oscillation of interest over time and across different contexts. As I sense, our motivational drivers are modulating these oscillations.
A hands-on example is my "interestedness" in your work and ideas shared on the Tetradian blog and here on Small Changes: for years, I was interested enough in your blog posts to curate, read, digest/outline, and visually map them out, while trying to understand the bigger picture of your mesh/network of thinking around RBPEA, while lately, given the changes or (temporary) suspension of some of my interests, my interest faltered in Tetradian posts, while I find most of your Small Changes posts enjoyable interesting. So much so that I'm often wondering how I could arouse other people's interest in your thinking besides occasionally sharing some of your posts here and there with a limited number of people (while I'm in a similar social situation as you).
Sometimes I think that Substack is more than just a walled garden; it is a walled graveyard where many valuable ideas end up dying. Same with LinkedIn comment threads, which are often insightful, but at the same time, hard to find and, when finally found, hard to follow. Other times I'm contemplating along the "the medium is the message" line: how your writings, considering how foundational they are, could be made more accessible in addition to the current "plain text"? In this sense, I greatly enjoyed your YouTube video series, especially those involving hand sketching or Lego figurines.
On 'enough', I likewise keep coming back to to the word 'satisfaction', which literally translates as 'enough-making'.
(Separate topic, I know, but on your mapping and digest of my blogs and suchlike, that's a _really_ important piece of curation that we _really_ do need to make more publicly available - and encourage others to do the same with other people's work too, of course. Maybe we could get together somewhen with Darryl Carr https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylcarr/ - he runs the EA Professional Journal, among other things - and see if we can get something going. I do have the tetradian.org domain, and the whole aim for that was to make it community website where people could add to and extend my work, so maybe we might be able to start there?)
I'm _really_ glad/gratified that you like the SmallChanges posts! And yes, we do need to get it out there more (and yeah, _I_ need to get out there more, don't I? :-| :-) )
"[Substack] is a walled graveyard where many valuable ideas end up dying" - yeah, I do take your point there, though that's a bit disappointing for Substack... And I guess the same could be said for Wattpad, in relation to fiction - a similar 'graveyard' for good stories. How do we curate those places, to find the hidden good-material that's currently drowned out by the flood of dross and the overhyped-bestseller 'fluffy bunnies' that proliferate there? A real challenge...
On the videos, again, many thanks for the feedback on that. I'd currently stalled on that - particularly the drawings and the Lego-figures ones - because this place where I living has huge problems with sound, from the industrial-fans of the factories over the other side of the railway line. I have to go to the field on the far side of the house to be able to record anything usable at all. I'll find a way to start doing it again somehow, though I don't yet know how. (Severe depression, burnout and lockdowns didn't help, either: I'm still only slowing clawing my out of that now. Oh well.)
Anyway, many thanks again - much appreciated and all that!
Amanda Palmer reminds us that it's important to ask. Benjamin Franklin also turned an enemy into a friend by asking them to lend an obscure and valuable book. Friends and allies ask for help, ask for time, ask for insight. Asking should be part of the formula.
"Asking should be part of the formula" - very, very good point, Shawn!
In the post, there's a sort-of example of 'asking' in the bit about 'sharing the stage'. But simplifying it down to "asking should be part of the formula" is a much better and simpler way to put it. Many thanks for that!
This reflects my experiences last year starting the Bridge and The Campfire.
I'm curious about your interested and interesting framing. I was certainly doing something I was passionate about without being attached to any outcome.
Thanks Tom. And thanks Bard for helping me find the connection 😁
The 'interested and interesting' framing is actually in part lifted from a line in Terry Pratchett's 'Good Omens': when Aziraphale's bookshop catches fire, Pratchett's says that many of the passers-by came to see what was happening because they were interested, but some came by to be interesting (very bad paraphrase, but it's maybe enough?)
Or, in a (I hope) simpler form: people become allies because they are interested in what we do and/or think (and/or feel, sometimes). We provide a reason for them to be interested by being 'interesting'. And (the actual point here) one of the key ways we become 'interesting is by being honest about who we are, and by _being_ who we are (aka 'passion'). That's in contrast to faking it, which seems depressingly common (and is often short-lived one the fakery is exposed) Likewise forced-conformity (e.g. most corporate environments and/or cults) is usually uninteresting to anyone outside of the cult (see 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' https://www.cluetrain.com/ for some great commentary on this.
Insightful thoughts, Tom. Thank you for sharing them. Over the last couple of years, I experienced a number of times both ways, which led me to think about the word "enough": interesting enough and interested enough to take a specific action (whatever threshold stands behind enough). The other aspect is the oscillation of interest over time and across different contexts. As I sense, our motivational drivers are modulating these oscillations.
A hands-on example is my "interestedness" in your work and ideas shared on the Tetradian blog and here on Small Changes: for years, I was interested enough in your blog posts to curate, read, digest/outline, and visually map them out, while trying to understand the bigger picture of your mesh/network of thinking around RBPEA, while lately, given the changes or (temporary) suspension of some of my interests, my interest faltered in Tetradian posts, while I find most of your Small Changes posts enjoyable interesting. So much so that I'm often wondering how I could arouse other people's interest in your thinking besides occasionally sharing some of your posts here and there with a limited number of people (while I'm in a similar social situation as you).
Sometimes I think that Substack is more than just a walled garden; it is a walled graveyard where many valuable ideas end up dying. Same with LinkedIn comment threads, which are often insightful, but at the same time, hard to find and, when finally found, hard to follow. Other times I'm contemplating along the "the medium is the message" line: how your writings, considering how foundational they are, could be made more accessible in addition to the current "plain text"? In this sense, I greatly enjoyed your YouTube video series, especially those involving hand sketching or Lego figurines.
Many thanks for this, Daniel!
On 'enough', I likewise keep coming back to to the word 'satisfaction', which literally translates as 'enough-making'.
(Separate topic, I know, but on your mapping and digest of my blogs and suchlike, that's a _really_ important piece of curation that we _really_ do need to make more publicly available - and encourage others to do the same with other people's work too, of course. Maybe we could get together somewhen with Darryl Carr https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylcarr/ - he runs the EA Professional Journal, among other things - and see if we can get something going. I do have the tetradian.org domain, and the whole aim for that was to make it community website where people could add to and extend my work, so maybe we might be able to start there?)
I'm _really_ glad/gratified that you like the SmallChanges posts! And yes, we do need to get it out there more (and yeah, _I_ need to get out there more, don't I? :-| :-) )
"[Substack] is a walled graveyard where many valuable ideas end up dying" - yeah, I do take your point there, though that's a bit disappointing for Substack... And I guess the same could be said for Wattpad, in relation to fiction - a similar 'graveyard' for good stories. How do we curate those places, to find the hidden good-material that's currently drowned out by the flood of dross and the overhyped-bestseller 'fluffy bunnies' that proliferate there? A real challenge...
On the videos, again, many thanks for the feedback on that. I'd currently stalled on that - particularly the drawings and the Lego-figures ones - because this place where I living has huge problems with sound, from the industrial-fans of the factories over the other side of the railway line. I have to go to the field on the far side of the house to be able to record anything usable at all. I'll find a way to start doing it again somehow, though I don't yet know how. (Severe depression, burnout and lockdowns didn't help, either: I'm still only slowing clawing my out of that now. Oh well.)
Anyway, many thanks again - much appreciated and all that!
Amanda Palmer reminds us that it's important to ask. Benjamin Franklin also turned an enemy into a friend by asking them to lend an obscure and valuable book. Friends and allies ask for help, ask for time, ask for insight. Asking should be part of the formula.
"Asking should be part of the formula" - very, very good point, Shawn!
In the post, there's a sort-of example of 'asking' in the bit about 'sharing the stage'. But simplifying it down to "asking should be part of the formula" is a much better and simpler way to put it. Many thanks for that!
This reflects my experiences last year starting the Bridge and The Campfire.
I'm curious about your interested and interesting framing. I was certainly doing something I was passionate about without being attached to any outcome.
Thanks Tom. And thanks Bard for helping me find the connection 😁
Thanks for this, Alex.
The 'interested and interesting' framing is actually in part lifted from a line in Terry Pratchett's 'Good Omens': when Aziraphale's bookshop catches fire, Pratchett's says that many of the passers-by came to see what was happening because they were interested, but some came by to be interesting (very bad paraphrase, but it's maybe enough?)
Or, in a (I hope) simpler form: people become allies because they are interested in what we do and/or think (and/or feel, sometimes). We provide a reason for them to be interested by being 'interesting'. And (the actual point here) one of the key ways we become 'interesting is by being honest about who we are, and by _being_ who we are (aka 'passion'). That's in contrast to faking it, which seems depressingly common (and is often short-lived one the fakery is exposed) Likewise forced-conformity (e.g. most corporate environments and/or cults) is usually uninteresting to anyone outside of the cult (see 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' https://www.cluetrain.com/ for some great commentary on this.
I hope that makes some degree of sense?