Having a rethink
Hello and welcome back.
This month I’ve been mulling over the idea of rethinking and re-evaluating. You should strap in cos this gets a bit long.
The basic premise is that we all do things based on beliefs and established principles, and considering where these things come from can be enlightening for its own sake but also lead us to new conclusions. Let me take you down the rabbit hole with some links that link with this idea and then some that don’t.
Links that link
1. The article that made me think about this is about behavioural psychology but posits the question that if you have a model but there are, like 200 caveats to it, should you reconsider the model itself? Behavioural psychology uses the principal of the rational human being to describe the normal “state”, then 200 odd biases which describe how we kick against that description. So does that mean that there is no such thing? So is that even useful? Anyway, I have no answers but it popped into my brain when I was…
2. …listening to Adam Grant’s Think Again on Audible (he also has a podcast that’s rather good) which talks through how you can and should re-evaluate and not stick to your guns because it can lead to better outcomes. You don’t want to end up like Mike Laziridis, who invented the Blackberry do you? I didn’t think so. So I’m mulling and thinking about what I know, don’t know and what I believe and then I listen to…
3…this doozy of a podcast on Vox with Seth Stephens Davidowitz about his book “Don’t trust your gut” . The book essentially says that all our gut instincts are wrong and data can tell us more about what makes us happy, who is going to be successful, what matters when choosing a partner and a school and all that jazz way more than our stupid squishy feelings can.
So all of this led me to think about what I believed to be true rather than what I knew for a fact – things both in my personal life and my work life. Things I’ve held onto for years and years because someone once told me or I read something somewhere, or it is just accepted as the way to do things – and I’ve begun to question them. It’s led to some very chin strokey moments on dog walks but also some changes we’ve begun to implement at work. Just in terms of processes and research. Which is nice, you know…when you can actually use some knowledge and feel like all that reading on your phone had some purpose rather than just to avoid eye contact and talking to real people. So think and rethink on that. What do you think is worth rethinking?
Anyway…onto the non-linky links
4. There’s been a storm a-brewing about attention and advertising. Mark Ritson does a good job of explaining it here and then Bob Hoffman (who is definitely worth subscribing to if you haven’t already) gives his usual gruff view.
“I am concerned that in this debate my marketing friends are assiduously avoiding a discussion of what the media are delivering -- the message. I know it is supremely déclassé these days to contend that the most important part of an ad is the message, but I can't help believing that my successful recording career is not nearly as dependent on how many songs I release and where I release them as it is on whether or not I have any hits.
By having a hit I'm getting the best of both worlds. I'm getting a lot more attention and I'm not paying for it!”
5. Covid’s effect on workers and continuing effect on the economy.
This is only US based but tells a story about how many people we’ve lost and continue to lose through ill health.
6. People are hoarding workers like jam
because, even in an economic downturn, it makes better business sense to gamble on it not lasting long and hanging on to what you’ve got.
7. Moderate ties on LinkedIn are best when you want a new job.
The reason being:
“you hear about the new guy? – he took a dump in the sink!”
“but Tim said he was okay – Tim must also like to take dumps in the sink”
Or maybe it’s because you don’t really want to work with your best friend because you know what they’re really like. Either way, it’s worth a read.
And finally..things that have confused me:
This is an AMAZING LOOKING SITE…I’m not quite sure what it’s for though. I mean, you have to go through and read/collect all their values on your space journey (which, if I’m honest I couldn’t be bothered to do – so it definitely filtered me out). If you choose not to you can hit the join button and get spun out to a very plain looking jobs listing which does tell you who you will be working for (and it’s not Convexity Space if that’s what you were thinking). Anyway – have a look and weep that you haven’t spent this much time on a site promoting your values, whatever they are.
Till next time, toodles