Strands of Genius: Productivity Dismorphia, When Change Upends Your Sense of Self, 3 Questions to Ask About Trends, Money Talks
plus our thoughts on: Good Grief
WRITING FROM | Mexico City, MX
WORKING ON | new business pitches & proposals - it’s that time of year!
LOOKING AHEAD
Jan 26-Feb 5 | Isla Mujeres, Mexico
Feb 5-26 | Mexico City, Mexico
Feb 26-March 7 | Isla Mujeres, Mexico
March 7-10 | Isla Holbox, Mexico
March 10-16 | TBD: Holbox or Cancun, Mexico
March 16-20 | TBD: Atlanta, GA
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Last week my godmother (also my grandmother’s sister), Faith Young, Fafie to me, died. She was an incredible woman, and lived to the ripe age of 94, where she passed peacefully surrounded by her family. And so we continue on this journey of grief and grieving. She was the original rebel in my family, and a force to be reckoned with. Her house was built in 1798 and is literally a museum on the historic register — but whenever I’d visit, she’d encourage me to ignore all of the ‘do not touch’ signs for visitors — When Faris and I visited once, we found an entry in the house guest book from 1797, Louis Philippe (then the Duke of Orleans, and later the King of France). Fafie and I shared a love of NYC, where she also lived and worked in an advertising agency. She moved to Atlanta to work at a CBS station but ended up moving back to NYC to be Walter Cronkite’s personal assistant while he was on the evening news. But even when she settled down with her husband Billy in Tennessee, she continued to be a mover and shaker. Fafie was arrested and went to jail for protesting a nuclear power plant the TVA was building, and an academic paper she was mentioned in described her as “infamous for regionally transgressive behavior” and “challenging the patriarchy” with “direct confrontations with the male board members.” And she was an avid lover of travel — she lived in France for years, went on safaris in Africa, explored the Galapagos and more. I’m thankful to have so many memories, and to have had such an amazing role model in my life, but I’m sad that there won’t be new memories to come. Such is grief, though.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
memories of Fafie & Pam & Pete, micheladas, making new friends at Soggy Peso, our return to Mexico City, Elsa, Penafiel, Succession, el angel de la independencia, Chetito, tacos, Succession, our new Heyday microphone & YOU.
:: MONEY TALKS - TWITTER SPACES - THURS 12p CT / 6p GMT ::
This Thursday, we’ll be talking to two of our all time favorite people, Nicole and Jason about one of those things that people don’t like talking about - finances. More specifically, we’ll talk about finances between couples, and speak to what we’ve learned through running a business together. We hope you’ll join!
:: THE LINKS ::
HOW TO OVERCOME PRODUCTIVITY DYSMORPHIA
“Productivity Dysmorphia” was coined by Anna Codrea-Rado and she defines it as “the intersection of burnout, imposter syndrome, and anxiety.” In our modern world, a lot is required of us, both in and outside of work and it can be easy to fall prey to negative thoughts. So what can we do? Well, for one, to-do lists are your friends. A physical manifestation, where you can check off activities and key accomplishments is great — but if you’re not into that, you can always spend some time each day thinking back on all that you accomplished. We also can work to reframe our idea of ‘productivity’ — yes, getting out of bed and brushing your teeth can go on your list of daily accomplishments :) Lindsey Ellefson also suggests doing more to take positive feedback to heart. I’ve got a “feel good” folder in my gmail, and whenever I get positive feedback, I tag it. On the days that suck, I’ve got a whole folder filled with positive words to revisit. Ellefson writes, “Don’t rely entirely on outside validation, but take care to remember that people notice the work you do and their lives would be more difficult without it.” (Lifehacker)
WHEN A MAJOR LIFE CHANGE UPENDS YOUR SENSE OF SELF
While change is inevitable, and regardless of whether the change is perceived as positive or negative, many people struggle to move on from their past selves/identities, something the authors of this article call identity paralysis. Over the last 10 years they’ve been studying how people can prevent identity paralysis and ‘move forward on a path of identity growth.’ They dive into a number of strategies including picking a symbolic moment or ritual to define the change, crafting a story that ties the past and present together, focusing on meaningful, non-work identities, and even cultivating fantasies. Lots of great nuance in the article, and worth a read whether these tactics are something to employ now or in the future. (Harvard Business Review)
3 QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT TRENDS
The new year is trend report season as agencies of all flavors market their knowledge and expertise as guides to the present and near future. Faris read a lot of them and has begun to notice a lot of the same trends cropping up year after year, so in his column this month he gives you a way to think about them and three important questions to ask. Also, he originally called the piece “I’m Feeling Trendy Two” which the editor wisely changed but he felt you should know. (WARC)
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Hello! It’s me, Faris
According to my publisher, the new edition of Paid Attention has sold between four and five hundred copies since it came out late last year. This is AWESOME - most business books sell less than that in a year. In fact “The average U.S. book is now selling less than 200 copies per year and less than 1,000 copies over its lifetime.”
So THANK YOU to everyone who has bought a copy or mentioned it to someone who might find it useful or tweeted about it, it all really helps and means a lot to me.
If I might further impose upon your kindness, the new edition means all the reviews are now for the old edition, so if you have bought it and read it and liked it, it would be super cool if you could drop me a review or some stars over on Amazon.
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: GOOD GRIEF ::
It was only on writing this headline that it even occurred to me that there is the expression “Good grief!”, so favored by Charlie Brown. In this usage it’s basically a euphemism for “Good God”, a soften swear for children and polite people.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms defines it as an “exclamation expressing surprise, alarm, dismay, or some other, usually negative, emotion. For example, Good Grief! He’s dropped the cake.”
The earliest mention of it in the OED defines it as “a mild imprecation.” (with imprecation meaning a “spoken curse”, nothing I love more than a definition that requires another) and the second citation sees it in a list of exclamations including “good Godfrey,” “holy gumdrops,” “great goldfish,” “golly Moses,” and “gosh all hemlock.”
It’s testament to how difficult we, I, find it to talk about death that it’s taken me a few paragraphs of etymology and cartoons to work my way up to it but Good grief! All three core members of Genius Steals have experienced a death in the family since Christmas.
Now, like Google said back in their founder’s IPO letter, Genius Steals is not a conventional company and we do not intend to become one, but we are a business and we have clients and a community. How do we talk about things like this, when we live in a society that elides death from our minds and conversations, even during a raging pandemic?
We have been always been fortunate to have, almost always, lovely clients who we become friendly and sometimes good friends with. As much as your boss at the agency says bring your whole self to work (which you really shouldn’t anyway) it’s jarring to have these deep emotional conversations at the beginning of a Zoom and then shift gears and talk brand strategy or creative effectiveness. It feels unfair to lay our grief on them but equally unfair to not explain why we had to reschedule some calls and might not be bringing our most enthusiastic selves to the table right now, especially since one our popular products are energetic, inspiring talks.
So we’re having the conversations, and we’re doing the work, and everyone has been really good about it. They say try to treat yourself with the compassion you would treat a friend, and we’re trying to, and trying to give our clients the same compassion, because they are humans too, and everyone has gone through something like this, especially in the last couple of years.
But it did get me thinking about what good grief might be.
In modern wealthy parts of the world we are uncomfortable around death in real life, even as much as we see it on television. It is handled and sanitized and made invisible and we hate to talk about it. We have a dear friend who is a psychiatrist whose job used to be to clinically evaluate candidates for liver transfers. She had to assess whether they were likely to relapse because you can never, ever drink again after a liver transfer. Those people she didn’t recommend for transfers were going to die and a lot her of work was helping them come to terms with that, how to emotionally and literally put their affairs in order, and make peace with what they now knew was coming. Of course, we all know it’s coming but it’s different when you know when and how. She said one of the hardest things is helping them find ways to talk about what is coming, with their families, with themselves. We don’t know how.
In other cultures, death is handled very differently, personally, collectively. In Judaism family members sit shiva for a week, as friends and family come to give condolences. Burials are done as soon as is possible, which is also the case in Islam and in Hinduism, which requires the family to keep vigil over the body for 24 hours for guests to visit, after which it is immediately cremated. I am not an expert I’m looking things up so if I’m getting anything wrong I apologize, I mean no disrespect. The immediacy of burial after death is likely to have been a hygiene requirement originally but it also gives the family rapid closure.
Right now there are still months long backlogs in the UK to get cremated because of the pandemic.
Lots of cultures have collective grief rituals. In ancient Rome, the wealthy would hire professional mourners to march and wail loudly in the funeral procession. More mourners showed people how wealthy you were. This was a widespread practice in the ancient world, across China, Egypt and beyond and they were always women because women are allowed to express emotions but men were supposed to be strong and stoic. The Irish have the famous wake, referring back to when wake meant vigil, and New Orleans still hold ‘jazz funerals’. All these things give us a chance to heal by forcing us to really feel, while we support each other and to celebrate the life together.
In Ghana, funerals are big community events to celebrate the deceased entry into the afterlife and they are often advertised on billboards. In contrast to the stark coffins we think of, “'fantasy coffins' are hugely popular in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, where it's not unusual to bury someone in a giant replica Coke bottle, race car or cigarette packet. Caskets are handcrafted by local carpenters to reflect the life, passions and social status of the person who has died.”
I don’t know what we do, I don’t know how to talk about it, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to grieve.
There is no right way, it’s different for all of us, but I don’t think you ever really get over death, especially of a close family member. It forever changes the world and you, but we adapt and we heal and rebuild around what we have lost. I’m extremely uncomfortable talking about it, as, again, you may have noticed I diverted this into anthropological comparative culture essay, somewhere I feel more comfortable, but perhaps need to talk about it more because death is a part of life, it’s what gives life meaning, and we are all in mourning, as a society, for the lives and years we have lost.
“You aren’t defined by your accomplishments. Your accomplishments should be defined by you. You are more than the deadlines you meet, the subscribers you rack up, or the money you earn. And that’s good news, because you’ve done a lot, no matter what your productivity dysmorphia tells you.” - Lindsey Ellefson
:: AND NOW… THE SWEETEST LITTLE GHOST ON THE INTERNET TALKS ABOUT LOSING SOMEONE ::
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)