Issue 394
A notebook about how we work, and learn, and love and live.
"Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair." - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Last weekend I gathered together in a learning circle for the first time in 18 months. We were all vaccinated. We were all recently tested. The ceilings were very high, and the air was filtered. It felt so joyous to hold and share a learning field again.
The other side of "we've got to learn to live with each other", is "we cannot live without each other."
Let's keep learning.
Happy Friday.
Leadership
Business leaders are positioned to facilitate meaningful change — not only for our bottom lines, but for the collective good.
"For the first time in human history, we have together created a confluence of crises — environmental, economic and sociopolitical — that threaten our own survival. But during the recent pandemic, we all learned firsthand that when those of us in influential positions — e.g., business leaders and consumers — exert a massive, shared effort, there is little we can’t achieve. We must now extend the urgent and necessary COVID-19 response we undertook to solve our other, equally critical challenges — starting with the climate emergency and economic and social inequality.
"In the face of these multiple worldwide crises, we’re primed for the most expansive and substantive global economic evolution we’ve experienced since the Industrial Revolution. Business leaders are best positioned to facilitate meaningful change not only for our bottom lines — but for the collective good.
"It’s about time we start telling a different story along those lines. Editing, rewriting and revising the whole business narrative."
Article: ‘Lead With We’: How to Drive Business Growth Through Collectivized Purpose
Economics, Community
Where restorative justice and economic development meet
The Historic Clayborn Temple served as the home base for Memphis sanitation workers organizing and striking against unsafe and inhumane working conditions faced by Black garbage collectors in 1968. It is being rebuilt by a Community Leadership Council made up of 23 members from historic Black neighborhoods to house and support Restorative Economics work in South Memphis.
"While it is hard to imagine economic models beyond present-day capitalism, it is becoming clearer that our current economic system is deepening the chasm between the haves and have nots at the expense of communities on the frontlines of climate justice, economic disinvestment, and state-sanctioned violence.
"Restorative economics invites us to envision what a just economy might look like—to remake society with structures and systems that honor our humanity, invest in our collective healing and well-being, and help us transition towards a model of democratic governance where all communities can live and thrive together."
Article: Restorative Economics: A Values-Based Roadmap to a Just Economy
Learning, Innovation, Community
How to reinvent the concept of public libraries
Ralph Calhoun, Cloud901’s audio engineer coordinator, has worked in studios in Memphis and Nashville. He helps aspiring musicians and producers make their own records. Ariel Cobbert
"It’s difficult to summarize the myriad changes taking place in American public libraries, but one thing is certain. Libraries are no longer hushed repositories of books. Here at the Central branch in Memphis, ukulele flash mobs materialize and seniors dance the fox trot in upstairs rooms. The library hosts U.S. naturalization ceremonies, job fairs, financial literacy seminars, jazz concerts, cooking classes, film screenings and many other events—more than 7,000 at last count. You can check out books and movies, to be sure, but also sewing machines, bicycle repair kits and laptop computers. And late fees? A thing of the past.
"The hip-hop beats and power tool noise are coming from an 8,300-square-foot teenage learning facility called Cloud901 (the numerals are the Memphis area code). Two stories high, it contains a state-of-the-art recording studio staffed by a professional audio engineer, a robotics lab that fields a highly competitive team in regional and national championships, and a video lab where local teens have made award-winning films. Cloud901 also features a fully equipped maker space (a kind of DIY technology innovation workshop), a performance stage, a hang-out area and an art studio.
"Over the last two decades, as digital technology and the internet became dominant, public libraries have been increasingly described as obsolete, and many cities have slashed their library budgets and closed branches. Memphis, Tennessee, one of the poorest cities in the nation, chose instead to invest, recently opening three new branches, for a total of 18, and increasing the library budget from $15 million in 2007 to almost $23 million today. Attendance at library programs has quadrupled in the last six years. In 2019, before the pandemic, more than 7,000 people attended the annual Bookstock festival, a celebration of literacy and education. Memphis Public Libraries (MPL) is the only public library system in the country with its own television and radio station, and its branches receive more than two million visits a year."
Article: How Memphis Created the Nation’s Most Innovative Public Library
Architecture, Community
Four examples of the ability for architecture to spark joy.
"Architects are problem solvers by trade, and although it is unlikely that architecture will solve all of the world’s problems, designers hold a unique position in society; their work has the ability to influence and affect. The way human beings think, feel and conduct ourselves can be hugely impacted by the environment we find ourselves in."
"... by considering the societal and economic situation of where a project is to be built, architects can personally impact the lives of individuals in the area. Hormuz is a historic port in the Persian Gulf in Iran. Colorful and surreal landscapes surround the island, yet the local inhabitants struggle economically.
"Presence in Hormuz is a series of touristic developments envisioned to empower the island’s local community. The architects chose to not only add to the visual landscape but to support the local economy and tradespeople. Built-up of numerous domes — a shape familiar to locals — the project used traditional techniques and materials that did not require importation from elsewhere. Additionally, they earmarked far more of their budget to pay laborers than for buying materials. This money can then filter back into the society to benefit all the Iranians of the area."
Article: Can Architecture Bring Us Joy?
Learning, Neuroscience
How the emerging study of neuroscience is being used in the real world.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff reports that she is sometimes asked how she got into neuroscience. "In a previous life, I was working at Google in marketing. After several failed pivots in my career, including co-founding a startup in the nutrition space (another field I'm passionate about), I was utterly lost as to what my next steps should be.
"So I decided to go back to the drawing board. What was something I would love to keep on learning about, even if I wasn't paid to do so? What was something that would keep me awake at night, and get me out of bed in the morning?
"The answer was: the brain. I have always been fascinated with how the brain works, how conscious experiences emerge, how different our perceptions must be from what the world feels like to other living beings. So I decided to go back to school.
"With my unrelated background, I wasn't sure where to start, until I discovered applied neuroscience, a branch of neuroscience that aims to get research findings out of the lab and into the world, whether it's the world of education, work, food, or any other field where the way our brains work plays an important role."
She's written a concise article on the various ways we are learning to learn from neuroscience.
Article: An Introduction to Applied Neuroscience
Graphic Design, Productivity
The design of our calendars is a reflection of how we aspire to live our lives.
Regular readers have heard me bitch before about our always-on/always-producing/always-striving work culture. It seems that we weren't the first to try to squeeze more time from a week. Between 1929 and 1940 Joseph Stalin conducted a "radical economic overhaul that aimed to turn the Soviet Union into a ceaseless machine of productivity and its people into tireless cogs." Spoiler: it didn't go so well. Surprise, people got burnt out, depressed and disconnected from each other.
"In 1929, the Soviet government launched the nepreryvka, a new plan that completely upended the structure of the work week as we know it today. Colloquially called the “continuous working week,” the plan dictated that the week would become five days long. Then, less than two years later, the government changed it to six days (called the shestidnevka). Eventually, they returned the week to its original seven days, but only after thoroughly shattering people’s mental model of time.
"Under the nepreryvka, the government divided workers—primarily those in factories and offices—into five groups. Laborers worked seven hours a day for four days in a row with one day off. These free days were scattered throughout the week, which meant 80% of the labor force worked at the factory while 20% remained at home at any given time. This new work week ensured that the machines never stopped running."
Article: A Failed Soviet Experiment Offers A Warning To Today’s Burnout Generation
Marketing
Never ignore the power of the status quo.
"While we worry about our direct competitors, our customers are choosing the cheapest option: nothing. One Forrester analysis found that 43% of lost IT deals went not to another vendor, but to ‘no decision.’
"In other words, the customer decided that their current solution was just fine, thanks.
"The status quo could be a spreadsheet, an intern, or an email (as it often is for enterprise products). It could also be simply putting up with some frustration. Either way, these status quo competitors (SQCs) often have a larger market share than any of our traditional competitors.
"This isn’t just a problem in B2B sales. In fact, humans seem wired to avoid new solutions whenever possible. One 1988 study found strong status quo bias in the decision-making of university faculty. This bias has been observed in even the most important decisions, like choosing healthcare and retirement plans."
Article: Your Main Competitor Probably Isn’t Who You Think It Is.
Oneliners
Article: Bookshops Thrive as France Moves to Protect Sellers from Amazon
Article: What If We Taught Writing the Way We Teach Acting?
Article: U.S. Birthrate Fell By 4% In 2020, Hitting Another Record Low
Article: Mirriam-Webster Added 455 New Words to Their Dictionary This Year, Including Dad-Bod', Deplatform and Air Fryer.
Playlist
Video: Courtney Barnett - Rae Street (Official Video)
Very cool news: Courtney Barnett is releasing her first long player, Things Take Time, Take Time, since 2015. She's been hinting with releases of singles and an EP (see above), but it's so nice to know that there's more.
Rolling Stone (deep behind a paywall) said: New Courtney Barnett Record ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ Is Really Good, Really Good. One of the world’s sharpest songwriters turns inward, thinks deep, and blisses out.
Spin, more generously, cited her own discovery process during the pandemic.
"With Things Take Time, Take Time on the verge of release, Barnett’s patience is finally on the verge of paying off. 'I’ve spent so much of the last year and a half just playing guitar by myself…I’m just really excited for this album to come out. It’ll be so nice to get it into the world,' she said. 'It’s such a joy finishing an album, but I think the next step is when people hear it and can really connect with the songs or interpret the songs and it becomes its own kind of entity.'
"Patience is a virtue. Things take time. Take time."
Image of the Week
The image of the week is from Jenny Holzer's latest show, Hurt Earth. The quote that she is projecting onto the chimney of the Tate is by Jewish religious scholar, Hillel the Elder. It says, "If not now, then when". The words were projected onto the chimney from sundown to 10 each evening the weekend of October 29 - 31. The showing coincided with the museum's Power to Change weekend, which included workshops, talks, film screenings and food, focusing on sustainability to coincide with Cop26.
"Holzer, whose career began in the 1970s with street posters in New York, is well known for her series of light projection works, which have hit cities across the world, from Miami to Milan. She has been part of exhibitions at Venice Biennale, Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
"In Hurt Earth, she has used excerpts of writing, speeches, testimonies and interviews from more than 40 climate leaders and activists."
The show then went to Glasgow where it was projected onto the SEC Armadillo auditorium in the Blue Zone of Cop26 from November 8 through the last evening of the conference.
Article: Artist Projects Greta Thunberg's Words on London's Tate Modern Ahead of Cop26
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