I’m returning to the kinds of things you return to at the end of the year: focus and progression. I do feel as if I have had a handle on focus for quite some time, even more so since I’ve been able to process the lessons of Four Thousand Weeks. But that focus has been directed on minutia for the most part. Makes sense. Having two small kids has you swimming in a lot of minutia. But I do feel as if I’m in a good place to try and progress forward my focus. And that’s what I’ll be trying to do.
Reading
I read a post once with some incredible and straightforward advice about reading:
Read fiction in as few sittings as possible, but take my time reading nonfiction. Immersive storytelling benefits from few interruptions. Nonfiction benefits from reading only short amounts at once and reading multiple books at once. Always have at least two nonfiction books going.
So I’ve picked up two nonfiction books: The Bullet Journal Method and Drive.
I first read The Bullet Journal Method back a little bit after it was published in like 2018. Of course, by then, the bullet journal was a pretty popular concept and there were lots of people doing that. Since then, I’ve pretty much always had a notebook around, but I’ve definitely tried out different digital approaches and apps. But I’m back to a notebook (and a single notes app)(it’s Obsidian)! And I’m reading the book as a refresher.
Drive was recommended to me. I don’t know a ton about it, but I am very interested in setting direction and focus (there it is again) among teams. At this point, the introduction was worth the price of admission.
And the always insightful Ryan Broderick on the current cycle of viral clips which are staged as podcasts and crafted on TikTok specifically to spark an outrage cycle on Twitter in a ruse that is so obvious it doesn’t even belong in a Bond film. Anyway, Broderick sums it up nicely.
There are a few big takeaways here for me. The first, and funniest, is that X users have become so right-wing and reactionary that they’re spending their time raging over literal ads for porn. The second takeaway is how savvy new porn operations have become. They’ve built these labyrinthian networks of SFW viral content on major platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube that guide users to their OnlyFans pages. And the final takeaway for me is that at our current late stage of Web 2.0 everyone is having such a Bad Time Online at such a consistent level that you can build an entire media company off of short videos of young women saying random stuff that makes weird men angry. Inspiring, really.
Watching
Lupin Season 3. Constructed evenly and methodically as always, even as it raises the stakes. The threat of violence has been an incredible foil in every iteration of Lupin, because it is such a clumsy and vicious instrument. And Assane’s ability to weave around and manipulate violence, even when confronted with dire circumstances, makes him that much more of a hero. Always a blast to watch. The music is incredible.
