Strands of Genius: Travel Ache, Attention Planning, ID Flora & Fauna
plus: our thoughts on motivation, acceptance, mindfulness, taoism, life plans and strategy
WRITING FROM | Greenville, SC
WORKING ON | finalizing two presentations for remote speaking gigs this week
LOOKING AHEAD | workin on the next big asset for SoSG — on Integrative Brand Strategy
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Where you at, cat? We’re about halfway though this year and ‘still no idea’ through this ongoing and unsettled situation. We’ve noticed in conversations we’ve been having with clients/groups/friends in various countries something we’ve observed before, namely that the pandemic affects everyone, but very differently.
More recently, as the initial shock finally registered and flares up and new lockdowns begin to appear, we’ve started thinking more about duration. What happens to us, to people, when situational uncertainty continues for such a long time? And what we’ve observed is that (of course) it affects different people differently. Intersecting with the specific conditions where you are and the immediate context of your work is your own psychological and social context. People have been moving through the stages of grief, sure, but perhaps over and over, rather than just once. You can feel the waves on social, as people retract and emerge, over and over, feeling despondent or suddenly more settled. Faris took the news pretty hard at the beginning, for example, because his catastrophizing brain insisted on immediately assuming this was a very bad, long term situation, but he found it hard to respond emotionally to that idea. He’s feeling better now, more accepting, more able to carve out spaces to think and work without connecting everything back to the macro situation. Many believed, or hoped, in a quick conclusion, and so were set up to have their hopes dashed and frustrations magnified. It’s hard for everyone to grapple with immediate needs and long term issues at the best of times.
Acceptance can be hard in general but especially when the thing is still happening. How acceptance allows room for hope, and impact motivation and action, is something we are still thinking about a lot.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Hamilton, of course, and watching it with newbie friends and family. Said friends and family, especially Rosie’s sister Marion who celebrated her 30th birthday [Happy Birthday Marion!]. Doom Patrol [HBO Max], Mrs America [Hulu], 13 [Netflix], The Outer Worlds. Our lovely paying clients. Acid for the Children [Flea from RHCP’s memoir reads like a beat poet bildungsroman]. Walks with a dog, or with children, or with a podcast. Summer weather. Not summer storms as much, at least not to drive in. Oh and speaking of walks we are loving the SEEK app from iNaturalist - see below.
THE SCHOOL OF STOLEN GENIUS PRESENTS
BEYOND BORING BRIEFS
Thursday, July 16th: 11a PDT / 2p EDT / &p GMT
It’s been our most requested presentation and workshop, ever since we initially delivered it. We’ve helped big agencies, small agencies, red agencies, and blue agencies re-think their briefs and briefing process.
This week we are delivering Beyond Boring Briefs for our client, ICA - Institute of Communication Agencies in Canada, and they have opened up subsidizing ticketing at $99.
:: THE LINKS ::
THE TRAVEL ‘ACHE’ YOU CAN’T TRANSLATE
We experience wanderlust and homesickness, but what if our “lust for travel causes us a deep yearning pain, an ache that reminds us we have to get out and see the world? What if we’re trapped inside our homes because a virus has taken the Earth and its inhabitants hostage and we feel despair that we simply cannot travel at all?” Well, it turns out the Germans have a word for that too: Fernweh and this article unpacks the term, so now you have a word for that feeling you might be having. (BBC Why We Are What We Are)
ATTENTION PLANNING
Faris’ column this month looks at the most recent research and thinking on advertising and attention, highlighting a new book and research and new attention metrics, and the newly formed Attention Council. Learn how the industry is increasingly researching, planning, and trading with, attention and how to think about it. (Warc)
SEEK APP IDENTIFIES FLORA AND FAUNA
Are you walking more? Getting out anywhere into or near to some nature has been very helpful for us but we also get bored very quickly. Seek is an app the localizes you and then has a usually successful attempt at identifying anything you can get to stay still long enough to get into the camera frame. OK sure it’s like Pokemon Go but for nature, but we’ve learned some things, and an unexpected impact has been Faris getting a little bit more comfortable about [some] spiders, so he can Seek them. (iNaturalist SEEK phone app)
Strands of Genius is currently read by 12,000 subscribers. Support us by sponsoring an issue, becoming a member of The School of Stolen Genius or encouraging friends or colleagues to subscribe.
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: WHERE YOU AT? ACCEPTANCE AND STRATEGY ::
One of the paradoxes we’ve been mulling over of late is spun out from our thoughts on motivation a few weeks ago. In essence, motivational theory suggests that we experience a delta between our own lived experience and how we think we could and should be, and that gap creates motivation. However, that if that gap seems insurmountable, it can demotivate people. This is why the same situation can be motivating and demotivating [humans are complex] and the difference rests on something entirely made up, which is to say the imagined delta. It was never real, it isn’t real, and it definitely doesn’t become more real depending on how we are feeling… but how we think about it certainly does.
Humans use memory to imagine futures and we use this unique ability to learn and to scenario plan. That’s extremely useful. This ability has inevitable side effects in that memories also create regrets and imagined futures also create anxieties, and sometimes those side effects interfere with the day to day executions of plans, creating more regrets and anxieties.
In mindfulness practices, one looks to focus intently on the present moment to reclaim it from a mind that naturally lives in the past and the future. There are lots of aspects of this work and we make no claim to expertise here — but one thought that comes through, in various traditions, is acceptance. Meditation is often misunderstood as eliminating worries, or even thoughts, from the mind, which is impossible. Rather, when thoughts arise, as they naturally do, the guidance is to register them without attaching to them, and let them pass. It’s much easier said than done. Other aspects of acceptance consider accepting the self - here’s a yoga example:
“Set an intention that focuses on loving the self and accepting all that arises in the present moment such as: I willingly accept what I see, think or feel. I am not my thoughts or feelings. I practice my yoga without attaching to the outcomes.”
And ultimately, the task is to accept the world. You can route this back to the second noble truth of the buddha - desire is the root of all suffering. Or rather attachment to it is:
“the attachment to the desire to have (craving), the attachment to the desire not to have (aversion) and the attachment to ignorant views“.
So, being attached to what you want, don’t want, and untrue beliefs is the cause of all suffering. It sets you up to be constantly out of sync with reality, forever, which creates frustration and fear. By creating fictions in our minds that reality stubbornly refuses to conform to, we suffer.
Where I (Faris) get stuck is in between the acceptance that work is necessary and improvement, and the idea that ‘acceptance of what is’ is the only route to peace of mind. If “all progress depends on the unreasonable man,” adapting the world to his or herself, how can that be reconciled with acceptance? Indeed, how can any progress be made at all?
So, the first thing to remember, is that all plans are fiction, and any assessment of their difficulty are also fictions. Just because they are all fiction doesn’t make them all equally likely, but it doesn’t make them reality either. Your plans, for lunch, your career, your vacation, your weekend, your brand, your campaign, your start-up, and your marriage are all fictions.
These particular fictions are not usually understood as such, although the clue is there when we call them hopes and fears, because they have a unique property. Whether or not they happen, those fictions still interact with our reality, creating anticipation, hope, anxiety, fear, pride, momentum, social cohesion and pretty much everything else in the qualitative human experience of living through time.
At its heart, the paradox I’m wrestling with is how to act in a world with acceptance. And I’ve found some shred of an answer in Taoism and Emergent Strategy.
“The Tao never acts but nothing remains undone” seems to us to be a statement about action and acceptance, because taoism emphasizes living in harmony with The Tao [The Way]. In some ways that is reducing the difference between the fictions we create and WHAT IS, and in some ways it is recognizing that whatever we do is also WHAT IS, and that actions are always occurring in an unfolding WHAT IS.
Which is also a premise of emergent strategy, which is to assume change — and therefore that our plans will inevitably have to adapt as well. So, perhaps the key here is that acceptance has to be ongoing. It’s not a steady state, it is constant and endless, the work of constantly letting fictions die, of killing our darlings. That’s why strategy is a constant process and meditation is the work of a lifetime.
Managing paradoxes is an inherent task of being human because the real world doesn’t resolve itself in simple binaries. This one, if it is one, depends on it. If we believe that acceptance is a key to wellbeing, then people who desire to create change have to achieve acceptance first, even if that is accepting that things aren’t the way we wish them to be. Recent research from the World Economic Forum supports this:
“There is increasing evidence that effective change can only be achieved if the wellbeing of the change-maker is secure. It can be cultivated in the first instance through greater awareness and a better understanding of self. This in-turn can have a positive ripple affect across organizations, improving innovation, collaboration and creativity.”
:: AND NOW…CHASING THE HORIZON ::
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
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!
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 :)