Project 35

5:00PM There’s a new app that people are talking about on Twitter called Clubhouse. I saw today a few people posting about how many hours they’ve spent on the app, …

5:00PM

There’s a new app that people are talking about on Twitter called Clubhouse. I saw today a few people posting about how many hours they’ve spent on the app, almost boasting to others that they’ve spent more. Some of them showed over 36 hours on the app in just one week.

I sometimes wonder if the essence of business is just getting people addicted to something. I mean, it seems obvious to me that is a core aspect of the drug business—get people addicted to tobacco, alcohol, weed, and more, and they will keep coming back. I think it also applies to many other businesses, if not most. People talk about the importance of “repeat customers” and “demand.” I wonder if there are any successful businesses that don’t get people addicted.

Maybe addicted is not the word. Maybe it’s more about attachment. I think the difference may be slight, but I see addiction as doing something over and over again and not wanting to do it, whereas attachment as doing something over and over and wanting to do it. I also think the two can oscillate back and forth, with the attachment to addiction direction more frequent.

I think about some of the largest industries in the world—oil, automotive, air travel, social media, even porn—and almost all of them drive high repeat behavior. Perhaps the auto industry doesn’t feel addictive to some, but I wonder how many people are having car withdrawals right now, or travel withdrawals, as we’ve been in our houses for over a month now. I wonder how long people can go without accessing their phones, reading the news or seeing what their friends are doing, or even more so, looking something up on Google (the drive to know things).

I see Clubhouse as something that could drive very strong attachment and cross into addiction. I don’t know how I feel about that. I have felt a lot of fear in making people addicted to something that I’ve built. I tried to make iFeelio not addictive. I tried to make my blog not addictive. I’ve tried to even make my presence not so addictive.

And yet, in the same way, I believe I’ve also pushed away strong connection and strong attachment. We humans seem to crave attachment—to other humans, to animals, to things—really, to anything.

I wonder if business, and life really, is behaving in a way where people want to attach to us and letting them attach, but being mindful of when that falls into addiction and helping them and ourselves manage the pitfalls of over-attachment.

Is there such a thing as over-attachment? I’m not sure, but I kind of like the ring of it.

I don’t know what will become of Clubhouse.

5:10PM

1:00PM I sat at the kitchen table a few minutes ago, deeply focused on fixing the website and then my mom asked me something or handed me something from the …

1:00PM

I sat at the kitchen table a few minutes ago, deeply focused on fixing the website and then my mom asked me something or handed me something from the mail, I can’t even remember. What she did was break my focus and for something, again, I don’t even remember.

I think this happens very often in my life, where I’ll be focused on something and someone will interrupt me, and then as a result, I’ll feel some sort of ill will towards them—angry, annoyed, confused, frustrated, etc. In this case, I felt it rising and then realized: if I wanted to be undistracted, I could have worked in a place with fewer distractions.

While I think I naturally react aversely to the person, I try to catch it and realize what I could have done differently to change the situation. Yes, they could have noticed that I’m very focused on the screen. Yes, they could have known that when I’m on the computer, I go into intense problem solving. Yes, they could know that I have specific deadlines and schedules.

And yet they’re also human, and as I said this morning, or alluded to, most of us don’t really know what’s going on in our own lives, let alone the lives of others. So someone interrupting me may not be doing it to “break my focus” but to share something that excited them, or confused them, or really made them feel something.

As I think of this, I remember how yesterday I went to my mom and shared something from my phone that I found hilarious—or if I break down the language from an “objective” adjective to a subjective experience, made me laugh. Only after I shared it did I realize that she was staring at a computer and looked somewhat deep in focus.

Instead of being in the environment that may tempt conversation and distraction, I could put myself in a different environment (i.e., the basement) and rid the temptation. If my mom feels super excited about something, will she feel excited enough to walk downstairs and find me or will she just wait?

I find this happens in so many scenarios in life. I remember being at a formal dinner somewhere, sitting at round tables and everyone going up to the buffet line to grab food. I sat with my back to another table and people kept squeezing behind me, bumping into me. I felt so annoyed and wished they would find another path. At one point, instead of blaming them, I tried something new. I moved my chair back just far enough that I was close to the other table behind me, to make it really uncomfortable for them to squeeze through. When the next person came up to me, he tried to squeeze and it was, yes, too awkward for him, and he rerouted behind the next table. I think one other person tried it behind me, and then rerouted as well. After that, all other people followed those two people behind the other table. It almost felt as if fish were trying to find their way through the river and I had dammed one part, and they just followed their friends elsewhere.

I tell this story to say that yes, we can sit here and blame other people for doing things to us, and most likely it won’t change anything. Or we can change the environment so that they are likely to change their behavior.

I prefer the latter—when I remember.

1:10PM

9:00AM “I dont know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” I said this to myself repeatedly this morning after I hit snooze/changed the time …

9:00AM

“I dont know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I said this to myself repeatedly this morning after I hit snooze/changed the time on my alarm for the third time. I had dreams where many crazy things were happening and then I woke up and kept trying to interpret the dreams.

For example, in one dream, it had rained outside my childhood home in the suburbs of Detroit and it had rained so hard that I started to see things. I went outside and noticed there two very large fish jumping across the neighbor’s grass. Just skipping merrily through the swampy grass. I got so confused. Then I saw a few seals somehow emerge from the swampy grass. Mind you, the grass is normally only a few inches tall (or 2.54x in centimeters for my non-American friends). I saw a few other people and tried to ask them what was happening and they said they didn’t even see the seals or fish. Then, out of nowhere, a young gay man and his partner came up to me and started to ask about my house—whether I liked it, whether it had been good to me, and other questions I can’t remember. I just remember feeling really suspicious and awkward, not sure of their motivations, and then the conversation turned towards the partner’s career in mechanical engineering as I tried to slowly close the front door.

In another dream, I was back in Tanzania, or explaining it to someone, and was trying to remember the name of the rich neighborhood where I worked—I could remember the name of the Msasani peninsula, which was the overall area, but I couldn’t remember the name of the exact neighborhood—it was something that started with the letter k, I thought. After waking, and struggling and struggling, I realized that it was Masaki. Triumph!

I think I put so much pressure on myself to connect the dots, even when they may not be able to be connected. I read an article saying that we as humans have a complexity bias, that we prefer complex things to simple things and that when things are chaotically organized, we assume that there’s some underlying complexity to it, some underlying connection that flows from dot to dot. This same bias leads us to see conspiracies in otherwise chaotic situations, where there is no logical connection but we try to make it anyway.

I have a strong tendency to try to find these connections. And it sometimes drives me crazy. I remember a few years ago I wanted to start a gym called the IDK Leadership Gym. The reason? Because I thought being able to say “I don’t know” and accept the uncertainty of the world was one of the most important skills for a leader. This morning, I luckily remembered this practice and after repeating “I don’t know,” I felt so much better.

5:00PM Who am I too write a book? Who am I too write a blog? Who am I to do or say anything? I spoke with another author from the …

5:00PM

Who am I too write a book? Who am I too write a blog? Who am I to do or say anything?

I spoke with another author from the support group this afternoon and we talked about finding one’s voice. As the conversation developed, I started to realize that while so many of us are doing or saying the same things, we all say them a little differently.

I remember taking a class in Krav Maga and we were lucky to have one of the top instructors travel from Israel to lead the class. At the end of class, he had us sit down, cross our legs, interlock our hands, put our thumbs together, keep our heads forward, and slowly raise our hands to the top and then down to the floor, while tracking our hands with our eyes. One guy from the back asked, “Is this meditation?”

I was living in Berkeley, California at the time and if you had asked me to go to a class on meditation, I wouldn’t have gone. If you would asked me to go to yoga and meditate there, nope. I had a strong resistance to doing it, I don’t know why. But when this world-class martial artist runs me through a meditation exercise, I dig it.

So who am I to write a book? I’m a person who speaks with a specific language and represents different things to different people. Even if I say almost the exact same thing as someone else, perhaps some people will trust it coming from me more than others (and vice versa). Maybe people will feel more comfortable receiving this message from me, based on my identity, my background, how I look, or how I write. The “same” information can be transmitted in many ways—just see how different comedians tell the same joke, or the different musicians play the same song. Each person adds their own unique spin to the same subject, adding their own secret spice to the dish.

This doesn’t mean that it will gel with everyone. Just as there people who will be more likely to receive it from me, there may be others who feel more reticent. That because of who I am or what I represent (or how I say it), they will reject the message and accept it from someone else.

And that’s OK.

I guess I just feel a lot more relaxed in writing and speaking when I realize that some people jive better with it when I do it, reasons unknown. Gives me the courage to say things that others have said time and time and time again, but just adding my own flavor to it. Helps me feel humble realizing that not everyone will accept it and it’s not because there’s something wrong with me or how I say it, but because the compatibility is off because of other things in their life. Makes me feel confident to keep writing these scribbles.

Perhaps this style works for someone. Looking forward to finding out who it does! Carry on!

1:00PM If you choose option A, people die. If you choose option B, people die. If you choose option C, D, E, F, and all the way to Z, people …

1:00PM

If you choose option A, people die. If you choose option B, people die. If you choose option C, D, E, F, and all the way to Z, people die.

Right now, leaders are making history and inevitably history that will leave many dead and many grieving, no matter which way they go. It is an age-old problem in ethics, often called the trolley problem. In one version of it, I believe a trolley is going down the tracks towards 5 people. If the train doesn’t move, it will kill the 5 people. However, you have the ability to shift the train to another set of tracks, saving those 5 people, but there is 1 person on the other tracks, and if you make the decision to switch, that person will die.

I guess the main difference here is that there are many many more people and many many different tracks to which one could switch the train. Stay at home? Social distance? Do nothing? Which businesses stay open and which close? Which drugs do you approve and which don’t you? What do you do about schools? Suicides? Who gets money and who doesn’t? How quickly do you decide all of these things?

I don’t envy leaders right now of any type, especially political ones. I feel a deep pain in my heart when I actually think about the decisions they have to not only make, but live with for the rest of their lives, and have people remind them of the decisions as well. I think most politicians are used to deliberating on decisions, taking their time, passing legislation when the schedule deems fit. Yes, there is some last-minute deadline pressure as always, but once that’s over, there is some breathing room. With this, there seems to be decision after decision, moving at lightning speed, and seemingly never-ending. I wonder how many politicians have those skills to make those decisions but also have the skills to maintain their health in light of it.

This is maybe where I worry the most. I worry that almost all of us are going to feeling the pain of this pandemic for many years to come, if not for most of our lives. I particularly worry that our politicians will. That the current politicians and the future politicians will have deep trauma related to this and lead from the trauma. That the pain will bleed into decisions, communications, and overall ways forward for humanity.

I remember reading somewhere that someone said they didn’t like politicians until they realized that being a politician was about having to make a decision between two shitty alternatives. When you finally make the decision, people blame you for choosing a shitty alternative without realizing you only had shitty alternatives.

I hope that politicians and civic leaders have the strength to apologize, to forgive, to grieve, and to come back to the joy of living and having faith in humanity. May we recover.