SD#35: Systems vs goals, happiness and sharing meals
September 11, 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 dirty tricks of social media One of the ongoing patterns in cyberland is the lag time between the point at which a platform achieves great success and the point at which the public learns what creepy shit they’re up to. Such is the case with Chinese-owned social media sensation TikTok. In recent weeks, for national security reasons, the FCC asked both Apple and Google to remove the TikTok app from their app stores as well as Forbes claimed that several hundred TikTok employees had connections to Chinese state media. The New York Times reported about how election misinformation was thriving on TikTok. But the cherry on the top has been researchers finding that under certain circumstances TikTok can collect keystroke information. In other words, they can collect anything you type on your phone’s keypad, including passwords and credit card numbers, without you knowing it. According to The Times this “is often a feature of malware and other hacking tools.” The Ad Contrarian |
2. (Psychology) It’s time we let mental health stats sink in According to a study from Amplify, (1) 81% of young men struggled with mental health in the last year; (2) 86% consistently face body shaming; (3) 1/3 of men reported anxiety and depression in the past year. Mental health is a dear topic to me and such statistics shed light on how bad the situation might be. I won’t try delving into why the situation is so dire, for now, I’d just like us to absorb the magnitude of these statistics, and sit with them for a moment… |
3. (Marketing) Social proof as a marketing technique From the outset, Apple has been unrivalled at tapping into behavioural science techniques. Apple launched iPod in 2001. They couldn’t yet claim market leadership and popularity. However, other market leaders at the time grew complacent, allowing their position to become invisible. MP3 hardware was in consumer pockets as they listened. Indistinguishable black headphones were all you could see. Apple set itself apart with distinctive white earbuds. They immediately stood out in the market, making them look like market leaders. People with white headphones were wearing them proudly like a status symbol – a simple and creative stroke of genius from Apple. The most powerful tool in the behavioural science toolbox appears to be social proof. We are hugely influenced by others around us, especially when making complex decisions. Now, this is true of people we know, as well as strangers in a crowd. However, the closer in proximity to your life, the more it resonates. Marisa Crimlis-Brown |
4. (Psychology) Nobody optimises happiness Everyone is scheming for the future. They’ve got big goals and get up every day and work like mad to try to achieve them. There’s something odd about that: despite all this effort, people don’t seem to think too much about the specifics of what would happen after their goal is achieved. Like—say your startup goes public and you become a billionaire. What now? What will you buy, where will you live, what will you eat for lunch? If you achieved your goals, you’d need to make a huge number of decisions to convert them into a “life” and then (hopefully) happiness. And people don’t seem to think much about those decisions. So if we aren’t optimizing happiness, why not? Well there are several possibilities: (1) increasing happiness is impossible, maybe changes in our lives only have a fleeting effect on happiness, after which hedonic adaptation returns us to our fixed baseline. (2) Maybe small life changes get eaten away by hedonic adaptation, but it’s only grand achievements that provide lasting satisfaction, things like publishing a novel or starting a company or inventing a new medical treatment or raising some new amazing humans. (3) Perhaps it is hard to climb out of local optima, maybe happiness improvement is possible, but we don’t have the willpower to leave our leaving local optima. (4) Increasing happiness is easy, maybe it’s totally feasible to increase happiness—there are lots of ways most of us could move the needle, and it would be pretty easy to do them, but we just don’t. (5) It’s the hunt, maybe it’s not the achieving stuff that makes us happy, but rather the act of chasing after achievements. Dynomight |
5. (Psychology) The power of being you At birth, each of us is original. Our DNA has never existed before on this planet. No one will ever have our unique set of experiences. No one will ever have our totally unique point of view. There has never been anyone like us…and there never will be again. We have been given a complete and total monopoly over the business of being us. Yet what do we do with this rarest of rarities? We give it up! We choose not to be ourselves. We become our trustbuster. Peter Thiel has said before that the only kind of business worth making is one where you can have a monopoly. The profits, he said, are in owning an entire market. So it goes with ourselves as individuals. Too many people pointlessly enter contests where the outcome is dependent on forces outside their control. They think it’s safer to be like everyone else…when in fact, what they’re doing is hiding in the chorus, protecting themselves from judgment. They’re less likely to be singled out and laughed at, sure, but they’re guaranteeing that they’ll never really be noticed or appreciated. Theirs becomes the Indian restaurant that will never be great, but it will never be closed. That is the best you can expect when you’re not playing to win…you’re playing not to lose. Ryan Holiday |
6. (Productivity) Systems trump goals If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. One should have a system instead of a goal. The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavours. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your energy in the right direction. Scott Adams |
7. (Culture) Would you offer a meal to a visiting friend? If a friend was visiting your home and it was dinnertime, would you invite them to the table? Or would you … chow down without sharing a bite? These questions are the crux of a Twitter thread that went viral in May. It all began when a user on Reddit told how they once went to a Swedish friend’s house “and while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled that dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to WAIT in his room while they ate.” Some Twitter users shared that this kind of non-hospitality was common in Sweden and other parts of Northern Europe. That’s because some Swedes think feeding a guest creates a sense of obligation. And in a society that values equality and independence, people don’t want to put a burden on someone or feel like they owe someone something. Still, the online debate does raise the question: If folks in certain countries are more willing to share meals, what’s the reason for this generosity? NPR |
Fun things to click on:
An interactive tool compares the new Webb telescope images to Hubble’s. In 1983, Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery worked at the Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, California. Nearly 40 years later, Tarantino and Avery have teamed up to host The Video Archives Podcast, where they talk about their favorite cult movies of the era.
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