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.
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.
The End of the NFL’s Concussion Crisis (21 minutes): I love football. I played it in high school and college. One of my nephews has fallen in love with the game and I can’t help but feel a rush every time I step into a stadium. But the specter of concussions has always loomed large over any discussion of the sport. Until recently. Reeves Wiedeman tells the story of the concussion crisis in the NFL, what the leagues has done, and the recent acceptance of the dangers of the sport.
Bon Iver, SABILE,
It’s only three songs long, but Bon Iver knocked it out of the park with this new release. After years of experimenting with new, electronic sounds that massively departed from what we all fell in love with in For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon has taken a step back to his roots. While this album is far more acoustic than his recent endeavors, you can hear the influence of his previous experimentation. The approach taken to mixing these songs is a departure from the norm for acoustic tracks, making this record feel both raw and loud, velvety and electric.
Listen Here
Liquid Mike, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
I recently saw The Wonder Years in concert. If you don’t know who that is, you’re either not my age or you never had an emo phase. Either way, Liquid Mike was one of the opening acts, and they absolutely crushed it. From the upbeat track K2 to the downtempo, introspective Mouse Trap, this album has put Liquid Mike on my to-watch list. Emo/pop-punk fans, expect Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot to be the starting point of a successful career.
❝
I thought that if I somehow managed to have the right record deal and the right girlfriend and the right apartment… everything in my life would be perfect. And then the universe, with its sort of challenging sense of humor, gave me everything I wanted but times a
thousand—and I was completely miserable.
Moby
Why do we so often hear about celebrities having drug issues, relationship problems, and more? The obvious answer is because paparazzi tell us everything about them and their lives. But there’s an additional reason here: because they’ve gotten to the promised land we all dream of from time to time, and they realize that the grass isn’t greener. We all know about what’s really important deep down, but we always get sidetracked by telling ourselves we’ll be set if we just get that raise, or just close this deal, or just own a house. But it’s all a lie. None of that matters.
What is your dream? What is your “I’ll be happy if I just have X”? Have other people gotten that? Has it fixed their problems? Why not?
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