Strands of Genius: Time Saving Bias, Distribution Matters, Sleep & Creativity
Plus: Have you considered voting early?
WRITING FROM | Chattanooga, TN
WORKING ON | writing, thinking, pottering, ruminating, celebrating
LOOKING AHEAD
Sept 29-? | Chattanooga, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Did you sleep well? How is Tuesday compared to Monday for you?
When Faris had a full time employee job he used to say Tuesday was harder than Monday, despite the fabled Sunday scaries, because it was essentially just a Monday but you’ve already used Monday to catch up on *everything* but without the cultural support that Monday can provide, simply through the general acknowledgement that it’s a bit tough.
[This applies broadly - one of the ‘data driven insights’ Faris got from working on 118-118 (a pre-google era phone number for general enquiries that had very famous advertising ) was that the busiest time of the week was 10.30am on a Monday because everyone had gotten into work and started doing life admin ;-)]
In fact, we moved Strands to Tuesday (shout out to the OGs who were here before!] because we eventually realized that even though our weekends don’t exactly work the same way, other people’s do, so we are often busy socially on weekends anyway (unless we are hard at work on a sprint or whatever - we flex).
Somehow Monday always comes as a bit of a surprise and so we try to avoid meetings on Mondays so we can sort out our week in various ways and, of course, write Strands for you.
Speaking of, it is October! Crikey, tempus fugit, etc.
Halloween is a thing now in the UK and it wasn’t when Faris was a kid or even when he left in 2008, but it definitely is now. The cultural vector for this apparently is Halloween used to be a pagan festival in Britain (more on that below), it got absorbed into Catholicism by the famously syncretive church colonialism, fell out of favor as something Papist when the Protestant reformation happened, fell out of popular tradition in the UK but was reserved in folk memory especially among the Irish who remained mostly Catholic, who then emigrated in large numbers to USA, who commercialized as they do so well, and eventually sold it back to the UK via cultural colonialism.
Faris has a very sad story about seeing trick or treating on The Simpsons and attempting it in the early 1990s in suburban London to be met only with confusion not candy.
The original festival was called Samhain and was on November 1st but celebrations started on October 31st because Celtic days began and ended at sunset (funny how arbitrary time is, eh?). By extension, the beginning of the year also happened when the dark half began and this was a moment of great seasonal duality since it’s the end of the harvest (hence the pumpkins in USA and thanksgiving to some degree). There would be plenty of meat available broadly because October was the month to slaughter animals (it’s getting cold enough to store meat in iceboxes and feeding animals during the winter was expensive). All this plenty supported feasting but always with an eye to the brutal, cold, dark winter that is coming. Of course, now we often have refrigeration and heating and such modcons but deep in our bones or genes or something we feel the seasons change, if indeed they do where we live.
We know this festival existed at least as far back as the ninth century thanks to literature but have no records of what actually went on until much, much later, so the origins are lost to mystery. Celebrate however you want!
This potted history is mostly stolen from The Rest is History - Hallowe’en and modern paganism. Now you have some fun esoterica to chat about while the kids trick or treat. Any good ideas for costumes? Ping us back.
HEY AUSTRALIAN FRIENDS! THIS IS FOR YOU! FREE!
Our dear friend Alex and his lovely colleagues at Clear Hayes are hosting a house for Sydney SXSW, which is next week (Oct 14-20). It’s FREE but you need to register.
They’re bringing the good stuff to this iconic venue at the heart of the precinct, filling this vibrant space with thought leadership, meetups, happy hours, parties, activations, a pub quiz, an Indie Agency Day and so much more.
Join leaders from across the industry for a week of thought-provoking content, networking and belly laughs at the most accessible House at SXSW Sydney.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Jewel&Tim&Max and The Roots yoga in a their forest (they are building a retreat and conservation area by themselves!), Stephanie&friends, Muppet Burlesque, Ashleigh&friends, 3 Sisters Bluegrass free festival (going to open events in Chattanooga is awesome and not too hectic, ideal for vintage ravers), Chattanooga Pride (so fun!), & YOU.
Yes, YOU, take this Tuesday and wring it dry. Here’s hug, it’s a little nippy out. It is genuinely a pleasure and a privilege to be invited into your inbox (love what you done with the place) and we are grateful.
Anything we can do better, even a random thought, let us know - we are here and this is absolutely NOT an no-reply address. Heart hands.
:: THE LINKS ::
TIME-SAVING BIAS
“Time-Saving Bias, a cognitive distortion that leads us to overvalue speed, assuming it always improves our experience (Zauberman & Lynch, 2005)." (HT Thinkerbell email, <3 y’all) This connected directly to Rory Sutherland’s recent write-up of his Nudgestock talk, which is very good. “There’s an extraordinary case of this bias toward time-saving, that faster must be better. Someone I know who is an expert at Transport for London found out that quite a lot of people, quite a lot of the time, actually enjoy commuting.”
You’re all familiar with the thing on the inside. That’s a speedometer, denoted in miles per hour. The thing around the outside is an interesting thing, which has only recently been, not invented, but publicized. It’s a paceometer, which shows how many minutes at that speed it will take you to go 10 miles. Assuming you’re going 10 miles at 10 miles an hour, it’ll take you an hour.
“If you’re going 10 miles, or 20 miles, or 30 miles, something in that order of magnitude, there’s a big time-saving by going at 30 miles an hour rather than 20 miles an hour. On the other hand, if you accelerate from 80 miles an hour to 90 for example, or 70 to 80, you basically save a minute.” (Behavioral Science)
DISTRIBUTION MATTERS
Distribution is always more important than advertising - if you can’t buy the thing all advertising is academic. That said, distribution online is a media and technology question and this presentation makes the equation underlying various eras of the modern interbweb very clear. “On the internet you are either selling traffic or seats…making money from traffic is simple and more common than you think. Distribution is THE bottleneck.” (Figma)
This is also true of DTC
WHY SLEEP IS THE SECRET ALLY OF A CREATIVE MIND
While Faris has always struggled with sleep, whereas I’ve always been an expert sleeper. I joke that I can fall asleep anywhere, and in fact, I have fallen asleep many places, with no shame. One of the best gifts we gave ourselves through our entrepreneurship was the ability to “wake up naturally” as we say, ie without an alarm, on the reg. Yes, we still have to set alarms for flights or the occasional morning yoga, but mostly we wake up when our bodies seem ready to wake up. (If you’re a parent of a baby reading this, don’t be mad at me. You’re going to get to sleep again, I promise!) And when one of us sleeps in (or when one of us is cranky), we say to each other ‘sleep is the foundation of mental health!’ It’s a reminder that we roll out frequently.
But sleep is also the foundation for cognitive performance. “A study published in the journal Sleep suggests that even moderate sleep deprivation (6 hours per night for 2 weeks) led to cognitive performance deficits equivalent to two full nights of total sleep deprivation.” Getting little sleep leads to a decline in cognitive skills during the day — from attention, to working memory, even processing speed. Ness Labs has some suggestions on how to enhance your ‘sleep-creativity cycle’ and I’ll also add that Calm’s sleep stories are one of our favorite ways to fall asleep. (The Beauty of the Outer Banks, narrated by Erik Braa is one of my all time favorites. «The link gives you a free 30 day trial if you’re interested!) (Ness Labs)
Want to chat, comment, question, compliment?
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:: USA - HAVE YOU CONSIDERED EARLY VOTING? ::
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 | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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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. We have a distributed team ourselves, an accounting team is based in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, 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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