SD#31: Digital delusion, Brahman and Einstein’s focus
August 14, 2022
Hi friends,
Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more.
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) The digital delusion of the marketing industry Digital media have been the primary cause and the primary beneficiary of delusional thinking in marketing. The fascinating thing is that the cycle of delusion has been going on for well over 10 years and we still don’t recognize it. Here are the 6 stages of digital delusion: (1) The miracle is acknowledged: it may be blockchain or VR, 3D printing or Pokemon Go. Whatever it is, it is going to “change everything.” (2) The big success: a company somewhere reports a success. It is “proof” that the miracle is real. (3) Experts are hatched: clever snake-oil salesmen gather up a Powerpointful of cliches and bullshit, march it around from conference to conference. They write articles, and even books, on how not to be “left behind.” (4) The bndwagon rolls: everyone who knows nothing is suddenly asking the marketing department, “what is our (millennial, content, metaverse) strategy?” (5) Reality rears its ugly head: the numbers dribble in. Shit…people are ignoring our miracle by the billions. Proxy metrics are invented to hide the fact that the miracle is mostly worthless chitchat. (6) The back-pedaling begins: “well, it’s just part of an integrated program…” say the former zealots. The experts start blaming the victims, “hey, we never promised…We told you you had to…” This cycle has repeated itself so many times that it’s comical. Bob Hoffman |
2. (Psychology) How to dissolve your ego and why you should Even for those who aren’t self-absorbed, egos can get in the way more often than we’d like. Having a sense of self isn’t bad, but we can become so invested in the idea of who we are that we refuse to take necessary steps forward that would challenge that idea. Oftentimes this manifests as a fear of failure, an inability to start on new projects, or the evasion of responsibility. Here’s a system to change it: a person should have a friend who is their equal, better, and lessor in their field. When you’re working on starting a project, turn to your equals to stay motivated and to remind you that you’re all in the same boat. When coming off a success, turn to your better, who could be an accomplished mentor, to keep your ego from growing too much. Lastly, when you’ve failed, have somebody who you’re a mentor to around to explain the failing; that’ll help you realize that failure is just part of the process. Big Think |
3. (Productivity) Accomplishing more by doing less Last week we discussed how you’re doing something important when you aren’t doing anything. This week we’re turning to Einstein to accomplish more by doing less. Between 1912 to 1915, Einstein became increasingly obsessed with his push to formalize general relativity. As revealed by several sources, including his recently released letters, he worked so hard that his marriage became strained and his hair turned white from the stress But he got it done. In 1915 he published his full theory. It stands as one of the greatest scientific accomplishments — if not the single greatest — of the 20th century. Einstein’s push for general relativity highlights an important reality about accomplishment. We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects to which we can devote a large amount of attention. Achievements worth achieving require hard work. There is no shortcut here. Be it starting up a new college club or starting a new business, eventually, effort, sustained over a long amount of time, is required. But in reality, that’s difficult. Most of us will never fully satisfy the Einstein Principle. It’s too risky. If you invest fully in one thing, and then it fails, you’re left empty. More importantly, it can be boring. Life requires zigs and zags. That is why you need to undertake a purge of your activities and focus just on those most likely to yield results. Cal Newport |
4. (Marketing) Lack of communication between TV sets and streaming devices causes estimated waste of over $1 billion in ad dollars every year The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many streaming services can’t detect whether a TV is on or off. Consequently, advertisers paid over a billion dollars last year for ads on streaming channels that ran when TVs were off. Can’t make this shit up. According to the Journal, “17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device—including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles—are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by…GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv Inc.” You can add that billion to the 20% of ad fraud that has been reported in the connected TV (CTV) industry. We are so used to criminality, corruption, and incompetence in the online advertising business that this billion-dollar scandal hardly even made a ripple in adland. Bob Hoffman |
5. (Society) The shrinking of the middle-class neighbourhoods Nationally, only half of the American families living in metropolitan areas can say that their neighbourhood income level is within 25% of the regional median. A generation ago, 62% of families lived in these middle-income neighbourhoods. In one area, the share of families living in middle-class neighbourhoods dropped by 15 percentage points between 1990 and 2020. But the portion of families in wealthy ones jumped by 11 points, and the segment living in poor neighbourhoods grew by four points. In some ways, the pattern reflects how wealthy Americans are choosing to live near other wealthy people, and how poorer Americans are struggling to get by. But the pattern also indicates a broader trend of income inequality in the economy, as the population of families making more than $100K has grown much faster than other groups, even after adjusting for inflation, and the number of families earning less than $40K has increased at twice the rate of families in the middle. New York Times |
6. (Culture) The changing diversity of entrepreneurs Is entrepreneurship becoming more diverse? Kauffman Foundation details trends in the share of new entrepreneurs by sex, race and ethnicity, age, and nativity in the U.S. between 1996 and 2020. (1) In 2020, about 4 in 10 new entrepreneurs were women, consistent with recent years. (2) In 2020, more than half of new entrepreneurs were white and about 1 in 5 were Latino. The overall trend since 1996 has been a decline in the share of new entrepreneurs who are white, and an increase in the share who are Asian, Black, and Latino. (3) New entrepreneurs were largely under 44 years old in 1996 and were more likely to represent all ages by 2020. (4) More than 1 in 4 new entrepreneurs in 2020 were foreign-born, more than double the share in 1996. Kauffman Foundation |
7. (Philosophy) Chasing Maya, avoiding Brahman To steal a term from Hinduism, we spend most of our days in Maya: “that which is not.” The illusion. Maya is your job and the email you don’t want to answer and your worry about politics and the thing you’re mad about on Twitter. The opposite of Maya is Brahman, or absolute reality. It’s not on any map, but, as Melville said, “true places never are.” For you can indeed find Brahman, or, far more likely, it finds you. Some sterile space with fluorescent lighting and coffee in little cardboard cups from a break room with vending machines. That’s where Life really happens, because that’s where Death really happens. According to the Advaita philosophy, there is only one thing real in the universe, which it calls Brahman; everything else is unreal, manifested and manufactured out of Brahman by the power of Mâyâ. To reach back to that Brahman is our goal. We are, each one of us, that Brahman, that Reality, plus this Maya. If we can get rid of this Maya or ignorance, then we become what we really are. These Hindu terms (used in this admittedly idiosyncratic and secular way) help formalize the ontological hierarchy of problems. Hospitals, medical and psychiatric problems, personal rifts and damaging decisions, and so on, are all really real, that is, Brahman, whereas at least most of the time political and cultural issues are just kind of real, or Maya. When people say things “just got real” they are speaking, I think, quite literally. They have entered Brahman. One of the biggest fallacies in modernity is the flipping of the ontological pyramid, wherein one thinks that senate bills, cultural debates, a wayward opinion you don’t like, etc, are the foundation of personal reality when really they are its ghostly superstructure. Erik Hoel’s beautiful piece |
Fun things to click on:
Ever searched for a word in your mind but just couldn’t succeed? Tip of my tongue helps you track down the word you’re thinking of. The most watched Netflix films. Would you try ketchup popsicles?
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom