Tis the season to hear from almost everybody how frazzled, burnt out, at wits end they are! No energy! No motivation! No drive! Exploited and driven to exhaustion, with no energy to make things better, let alone make dinner tonight.
ENERGY
Sam Altman on burnout:
This quote is the clincher for me:
“Oh, actually when I’m doing this thing that I like and that is working I have a huge amount of energy and I can get a lot of stuff done.”
When I am doing things I loathe, I have zero energy, drive, or ambition.
Takeaway – do more of the things that give you energy.
Be around people that give you energy.
Watch and listen to things that give you energy.
HAUNTING PARTY MERRY LITTLE XMAS TAPE
This is a wonderful little bit of Christmas music, and a nice break from my usual holiay listening.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA TRAP
Why is it so hard to quit social media?
“(Social media) platforms are designed to trap viewers in a social media rabbit hole: They offer bite-sized content that makes it easy to quickly consume several videos or posts in a row, they often automatically suggest similar content, and many of them even automatically start playing similar videos, reducing the potential for interruptions.”
More, more, more. Unending more. This from ‘The Psychology of Your Scrolling Addiction,’ via The Trend Report.
STOP SHRINKING
Love this by @madebynelson from Instagram.
“Stop shrinking into places you’ve outgrown 🌸✨
It’s important to continue to plant ourselves in bigger pots and new gardens as we continue to grow and evolve.
Enjoy your week! I cannot believe it’s December”
See the full post here.
BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER
A wonderful interview with Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swiss Miss), talking about creating and hosting Creative Mornings, and so many other gatherings of people.
“Be really clear why you’re gathering people.”
It also mentions The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker, such a wonderful book and something I’ve been re-reading as I’ve been hosting more Zoom calls.
I mean it – career / work wise I’ve been WAITING. Hoping that someone would come along and just drop the perfect job / gig / NEXT THING in my lap. That’s how I’ve been for many years in my career… fortunate enough that some things led to other things, but in the last decade a lot of that work was work I settled on because I needed the money, which duh – is plenty okay, of course.
But now, lately, in these past two years, I’ve been deliberately carving out something, and in the last few MONTHS I’ve leaned hard into this “why not get together more often with energetic people?” space, and I swear, things are buzzing for me now, and I love it.
MARKET YOU
From Mike Cessario, the CEO and co-founder of Liquid Death:
Most brands are marketing their liquid, not their company. Your company is your brand. You cant actually own your liquid. It’s easily replicated. But no one can copy your company, what you stand for, what you care about more than anyone else, what makes you laugh, what you love, what you hate. Making people love your company creates far longer term success than only being able to make them love your liquid.
Stop marketing your vinyl, your tour dates, your next class, your whatever, and sell everything that is YOU, through and through.
Riffs? I got riffs. How-to guides? Got a million on YouTube.
But I will support people with less flashy videos, with basic websites, because of who they are.
TRANSFER
Found via Instagram, but it seems the original image is from the Whitney Museum of American Art.
CONNECT WITH THREE NEW FANS EACH DAY
This is it, right here (from Neil Mason):
Connect with 3 new fans each day, and you’re building a broad and deep audience.
Imagine — 1,095 new friends who can open doors to opportunities and insights.
Create value and connect.
Start there, then rinse, and repeat.
The algorithms will always work against you, but for now you can always DM a fan, you can always reply to someone who likes your work.
The vault is still open, take what you can get.
ZUCKERBERG’S SOLDIERS
This from ‘In 2024, the Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War,’ by Ted Gioia:
I’m still puzzled why NPR and CNN and Harvard and other legacy institutions haven’t set up on Substack. But they clearly have zero interest in doing so—even if they could make money and expand their audience.
Yet these same institutions launched on Threads the very first day. They couldn’t sign up as soliders for Mark Zuckerberg’s new empire fast enough.
Also true for bands, record labels, and independent musicians.
That somehow the thing that has ruined our lives will also save our lives, our careers, our music, our art.
I don’t fucking get it.
These social media platforms are not on our side. Spotify is not on our side. Fuck, Bandcamp hardly seems to be on our side, now.
Can Substack shit the bed, too? Absolutely (and some will say they already have).
But with Substack I can export my fucking email list and go somewhere else. I will always have that. The day I’m fed up and walk, I didn’t lose a fucking thing.
Spending more than one god damn hour on Threads is just building share-holder value for Meta and making sure Zuck can top off his yachts gas tank this weekend.