Strands of Genius: Productivity Isn't Working, Deadly Sins, Raincoat Academy
plus: our thoughts on effort and alignment
WRITING FROM | Beersheba Springs, TN
WORKING ON | Stakeholder interviews [Client], SoSG Module, prep for our first ELC
LOOKING AHEAD |
Aug 21-Sept 10: Beersheba Springs, TN
Sept 3/4: Insight Training Workshops [Closed to the Public]
Sept 10 - Oct 9: Athens, GA
Aug 26th: #SoSG Monthly Module: Scenius & Collaboration
Sept 2nd: Next Community Meetup | #SoSG Out of Office Hours [1st Weds every month]
Sept 3rd: Zee Melt 2020 | $39 for a shi^load of good content if we do say so ourselves
Sept 15th - October 28: ELC 1 - Experimental Learning Community | 6wk Commitment
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We are back in the mountains for a couple of weeks which is great because we have a few things going on, including an agency consulting project, some new business Zooms, a talk to deliver to a German crowd, and the monthly module for SoSG. On Sunday, Rosie found Faris staring out into the distance in the kitchen whilst nominally baking and asked him what he was thinking. It began: “Well, I noticed I was adjusting my posture while standing … the rest below].
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Having a couple of weeks locked in to focus on a project, time to reflect, having work to focus on to limit reflection, baking cookies, High Score [great on Netflix, exploring the origins and inspirations of creative works], Avatar the Last Airbender [it begins], Project Power + The Sleepover [Netflix], Mel&Chelle and a steak dinner, grocery shopping without a meal plan (whaaaaaaaat?!), The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, The Goldfinch, the local watering hole, and rain on the copper roof.
THE SCHOOL OF STOLEN GENIUS PRESENTS
Monthly Module: The Myth of The Lone Genius & How To Inspire Collaboration |
Timing Update: Weds Aug 26th, 10a PT / 1p CT / 6P GMT
Out of Office Hours | recurring the 1st Weds of each month
Experimental Learning Community | Sept 15-Oct 28
Limited Spots Available | Free for Apprentices
:: THE LINKS ::
PRODUCTIVITY ISN’T WORKING
Being productive isn’t bad, per se, but the cult of productivity has metastasized beyond its original focus to absorb all aspects of human behavior, which seems misguided at best. As a framework for living, as opposed to getting work done efficiently, it seems to create inherent dissatisfaction. Perhaps because it isn’t simply about getting work done, but rather about proving our worth in a work/money obsessed culture that only values us based on how well we convert our lives into money. “Frantic productivity is a fear response. It’s a fear response for 21st-century humans in general and millennial humans in particular, as we’ve collectively awoken from the American dream with a strange headache and stacks of bills to pay.” [Wired]
DEADLY SINS OR BANANA SKINS
We are big fans in general but especially of this, Stephen Fry’s 7 Deadly Sins podcast — in which he explores the notions of sin from a modern, atheist perspective, as a way of considering the current state of the human condition. The introductory episode beautifully encapsulates the discordant modern discourse from ‘both’ sides, and it’s delightful to hear a well written monologue from a writer who loves words, and ideas, and people. (Stephen Fry’s 7 Deadly Sins Podcast)
THE RAINCOAT ACADEMY
A few months ago an aspiring film maker called King Vader picked up a little social media attention on the back of a number of ‘homemade’ shorts inspired by super hero films. Combine that with Netflix property The Umbrella Academy by giving the director a budget and - ta-da! - a 30 min film that is brand content satire/homage/adaption/advertising/authentic/influencer marketing. Brilliant. And beautifully done. (Netflix Youtube)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: ALIGNMENT AND EFFORT ::
[Faris] So, as I was saying, I had just noticed I was adjusting my posture while standing in the kitchen.
I happen to have been thinking about posture in various ways of late. I’ve been taking long walks semi-regularly and had noticed that my little toe on my left foot always hurts afterwards. It turns in/under a little, something I’ve noticed previously from spreading my toes when placing my feet in yoga, trying to get my weight more evenly distributed. I bought some toe separating socks and had gone for a walk in them and noticed that I could push/was pushing into the balls of my feet differently, more consciously.
Earlier on Sunday I had been reading the Tao of Pooh/Te of Piglet, which elucidates some of the ideas of Taoism using Winnie-the-Pooh. One of the key precepts is Wu Wei - ‘effortless action’. This is central to ‘Taosim in action’, which in the book they describe as “The Pooh Way”. Literally, Wu Wei means ‘causing/making without doing’ which to us seems like a paradox. How can something be made without anything being done? How can “the tao never act but leave nothing undone”?
Back to my complaints about getting older. My right knee was a little sore because I had gone for a long walk without my support bandage. I was running a lot for a while and noticed my knee got sore, so I bought a support, and when I ran with it my knee didn’t hurt. I assume something in the knee joint gets rubbed somewhere by the running. My brother had a similar problem and recently told me he had sorted it out another way. He took a year off running and went to the gym, especially focused on strengthening the muscles of that leg, and after a year he could run again without discomfort. Ultimately, it’s not the knee that’s the root of the problem despite being the locus of pain.
Etymology aside, Wu Wei’s deeper meaning is causing/making “without meddlesome, combative, or egotistical effort”. It means working with, rather than against, all the things.
“The efficiency of Wu Wei is like that of water flowing over and around rocks in its path - not the mechanical, straight-line approach that usually ends up short-circuiting natural laws, but one that evolves from an inner sensitivity to the natural rhythm of things … when we learn to work with our own inner nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei.
Then we work with natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort.” [Tao of Pooh]
You can see how this idea of work is almost directly opposed to how we think about work in the USA. Hard work is positioned as a natural good, something of moral benefit regardless, to some extent, of the result. No pain, no gain. Thus the cult of productivity, the glorification of the hustle, despite, or rather because of, the statistical impossibility that you, personally, will hustle your way to being the next Musk/Zuck/Bez. Why is working harder better than working smarter? Or indeed, hardly working at all, if it creates the same or more impact?
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- Leisure by W.H. Davies
I had started considering my posture a while ago. My shoulder is sometimes a little sore, I assume from spending too much time on a laptop / carrying a rucksack. Rosie’s gets even worse. We started doing, and forgetting, and remembering, some stretches for that. Then I got aggressively stalked by an Instagram ad for an expensive tech toy that you stick to your back and it beeps to remind you to pull your shoulders down from your ears. I decided to buy a very cheap analogue posture corrector first, and immediately left it somewhere, but I’d used it a couple of times and began to catch myself defaulting to a slouch.
This idea of ‘catching yourself doing something you didn’t realize you were doing’ is at the heart of meditation practice. You sit and focus on the breath and, inevitably, the mind will wander. You eventually notice and then very gently, without judgment, [which will also inevitably arise, so you have to remind yourself not to get angry with yourself, because your mind is only doing what it is supposed to do: think] draw your attention back to the breath, like ‘a feather across glass’.
The point then isn’t to punish oneself and work even harder at meditating.
Rather, it’s to train your mind to identify and challenge the defaults, the choices your brain is making without you realizing. Then, the hope is, you can escalate the ability up into other situations.
By giving yourself a moment of distance between you and your thoughts you create the space to recognize your defaults, and consider if they serve you.
It’s not about bad and good, or constantly fighting against your own wicked/lazy/selfish nature, trying to make yourself be the person you think you should be, through effort, imposing your will on reality.
Rather, it’s about understanding what choices are currently being made without your conscious awareness, and what impact they might have, on your life and relationships.
How we experience effort is misleading because our bodies and minds are always compensating to make things work in the background.
So, if we do something often enough, our bodies get used to doing it and grow or atrophies in complementary places, which causes us discomfort somewhere else, later on. Everything in the body is connected and we build technical debt over time with ‘bad’ practice, which we cease to notice. And so it seems like we are doing nothing, expending less ‘effort’, when we act without thinking.
Most of us have ‘bad’ posture from “muscle tension caused by poor sitting and standing habits.” Again we see the moral framing of right and wrong, of shame and blame, but are we really standing and sitting ‘badly’? Teasing this out seems crucial, since we are certainly achieving our goals, of standing and sitting, with what seems to be the least amount of effort. Indeed, it takes more effort to constantly be aware of your shoulders and pull them down. This is because our ever-willing bodies have optimized to the way we behave, and now we don’t think about it, and longer term that adaption is causing us pain. Ultimately, until you are aware of and can notice the defaults your body and brain uses to do the jobs it has to do, you are not aware of the choices you have already made that you keep making without realizing it.
When we stand correctly, we optimize our behavior in line with the physical nature of our bodies and so ultimately can stand with the least effort and negative consequences. Pushing too hard creates conflict, making things push back. Ultimately, being aware of our default posture, and its consequences, allows us to act with intention instead of mindlessly, with regard to now and the future.
So, I guess I was thinking about alignment, how it takes effort to get into alignment, to address the bad habits that naturally developed before, but once you achieve it it becomes easier, even effortless. Only through focused attention can we become aware of the defaults we are operating to, the choices we are consciously making, and whether they lead to consequences we want, short and long term.
I was thinking that it’s not so much about constant vigilance of ones’s own behavior, but rather giving oneself the freedom back to choose how we act.
That the ideal isn’t hard work but effortless action, not hustle but flow, acting in harmony with our inner nature and the nature of the world around.
And that standing up straight, staring into space can be a good teacher, if you have done your homework. The truly important things can’t be taught, only learned.
So, what’s the point?
That’s really up to you, says Pooh.
:: AND NOW… NETFLIX DREAMS ::
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
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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.
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