The Friday Focus #5: Loneliness and Closing Loops

Hey friends,

Happy Friday!

On Tuesday I talked about how many of us are pessimistic about the state of the world, why we shouldn’t be, and the incentives that others have to make us feel awful. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here!

Today I’m flipping the script and including a little bit more than normal in the free section of the Friday Focus, because I found some stuff I really want to talk about. Enjoy!

Here’s everything else I wanted to share this week:

Join or Die

What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis? And what can we do about it? From the death of the bowling league, to the rise of loneliness, to the political dysfunction fostered by our detachment from one another, Join or Die discusses Robert Putnam’s famous book “Bowling Alone” and dives into why you should join a club. Your life—and the future of our country—may depend on it.

Watch on Netflix

Robert Putnam Knows Why You’re Lonely (16 minutes): Pair this reading with the video above, or even read it as a primer. In the wake of Join or Die’s release, the New York Times sat down with Putnam to talk about today’s hyper-individualistic culture and its impacts. Putnam gives smart, easily understandable answers on complex topics like bonding social capital vs bridging social capital, the generalizability of personal experience, and the false hope of political power.

You Aren't Learning If You Don't Close the Loops (11 minutes): A little bit of a shift from the other two links. If you haven’t read any of Cedric Chin’s writing and you work in the private sector, you’re doing yourself a disservice. This article was a wake up call for me personally. In business, we always talk a lot about executing against a strategy. It’s easy to come up with a strategy and start executing against it. But then what? How do you know what you’ve gained from the process? Cedric talks about some of the traps that may distract us from closing the loop on a strategy, the value that many business leaders leave on the table, and the competitive costs of failing to close the loops.

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