If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)."
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When I start to feel those feelings, I can just sit down and start thinking with my fingers, working on a book or a blog-post. Or working on an illustration to go with one of these posts, which is the most delicious distraction, leaving me with just enough capacity to mull over the structure of the argument that will accompany it.
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I can't do anything about the impending energy catastrophe, apart from being part of a network of mutual aid and political organizing, so it makes sense not to fixate on it. But there are things that upset me - problems my friends and loved ones are having - where there's such a thing as *too much* compartmentalization.
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I can't do anything about the impending energy catastrophe, apart from being part of a network of mutual aid and political organizing, so it makes sense not to fixate on it. But there are things that upset me - problems my friends and loved ones are having - where there's such a thing as *too much* compartmentalization.
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It's one thing to lose myself in work until the heat of emotion cools so I can think rationally about an issue that's got me seeing red, and another to use work as a way to neglect a loved one who needs attention in the hope that the moment will pass before I have to do any difficult emotional labor.
Compartmentalization, in other words, but not *too much* compartmentalization.
12/
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It's one thing to lose myself in work until the heat of emotion cools so I can think rationally about an issue that's got me seeing red, and another to use work as a way to neglect a loved one who needs attention in the hope that the moment will pass before I have to do any difficult emotional labor.
Compartmentalization, in other words, but not *too much* compartmentalization.
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During the lockdown years, I transformed myself into a machine for turning Talking Heads bootlegs into science fiction novels and technology criticism, and that was better than spending that time boozing or scrolling or fighting - but in retrospect, there's probably more I could have done during those hard months to support the people around me. In my defense - in *all* our defenses - that was an unprecedented situation and we all did the best we could.
13/
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During the lockdown years, I transformed myself into a machine for turning Talking Heads bootlegs into science fiction novels and technology criticism, and that was better than spending that time boozing or scrolling or fighting - but in retrospect, there's probably more I could have done during those hard months to support the people around me. In my defense - in *all* our defenses - that was an unprecedented situation and we all did the best we could.
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Creative work takes me away from my pain - physical and emotional - because creative work takes me to a "flow" state. This useful word comes to us from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term in the 1960s while investigating a seeming paradox: how was it that we modern people had mastered so many of the useful arts and sciences, and yet we seemed no happier than the ancients? How could we make so much progress in so many fields, and so little progress in being happy?
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As Derek Thompson says, the word "flow" implies an effortlessness, but really, it's the *effort* - just enough, not too much - that defines flow-states. We aren't happiest in a frictionless world, but rather, in a world of "achievable challenges":
How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture
Or: If you're so smart, why aren't you happier?
(www.derekthompson.org)
Thompson relates this to "the law of familiar surprises," an idea he developed in his book *Hit Makers*, which investigated why some media, ideas and people found fame, while others languished.
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As Derek Thompson says, the word "flow" implies an effortlessness, but really, it's the *effort* - just enough, not too much - that defines flow-states. We aren't happiest in a frictionless world, but rather, in a world of "achievable challenges":
How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture
Or: If you're so smart, why aren't you happier?
(www.derekthompson.org)
Thompson relates this to "the law of familiar surprises," an idea he developed in his book *Hit Makers*, which investigated why some media, ideas and people found fame, while others languished.
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A "familiar surprise" is something that's "familiar but not too familiar."
He thinks Hollywood's mania for sequels and reboots is the result of media execs chasing "familiar surprises." I think there's something to this, but we shouldn't discount the effect of media monopolization: as companies get larger and larger, they end up committing to larger and larger projects, and you just don't take the kinds of risks with a $500m movie that you can take with a $5m one.
17/
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A "familiar surprise" is something that's "familiar but not too familiar."
He thinks Hollywood's mania for sequels and reboots is the result of media execs chasing "familiar surprises." I think there's something to this, but we shouldn't discount the effect of media monopolization: as companies get larger and larger, they end up committing to larger and larger projects, and you just don't take the kinds of risks with a $500m movie that you can take with a $5m one.
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If you're spending $500m, you want to hedge that investment with as many safe bets as you can find - big name stars, successful IP, and familiar narrative structures. If the movie still tanks, at least no one will get fired for taking a big, bold risk.
Today, we're living in a world of extremely familiar, and progressively less surprising culture.
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If you're spending $500m, you want to hedge that investment with as many safe bets as you can find - big name stars, successful IP, and familiar narrative structures. If the movie still tanks, at least no one will get fired for taking a big, bold risk.
Today, we're living in a world of extremely familiar, and progressively less surprising culture.
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AI slop is the epitome of familiarity, since by definition, AI tries to make a future that is similar to the past, because all it can do is extrapolate from previous data. That's a fundamentally conservative, uncreative way to think about the world:
The tracks the Spotify algorithm picks out of the catalog are going to be as similar to the ones you've played in the past as it can make them.
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AI slop is the epitome of familiarity, since by definition, AI tries to make a future that is similar to the past, because all it can do is extrapolate from previous data. That's a fundamentally conservative, uncreative way to think about the world:
The tracks the Spotify algorithm picks out of the catalog are going to be as similar to the ones you've played in the past as it can make them.
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The royalty-free slop tracks that Spotify generates with AI or commissions from no-name artists will be even more insipidly unsurprising:
Thompson cites Shishi Wu's dissertation on "Passive Flow," a term she coined to describe how teens fall into social media scroll-trances:
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The royalty-free slop tracks that Spotify generates with AI or commissions from no-name artists will be even more insipidly unsurprising:
Thompson cites Shishi Wu's dissertation on "Passive Flow," a term she coined to describe how teens fall into social media scroll-trances:
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Wu says it's a mistake to attribute the regretted hours of scrolling to addiction or a failure of self-control. Rather, the user is falling into "passive flow," a condition arising from three factors:
I. Engagement without a clear goal;
II. A loss of self-awareness - of your body and your mental state;
III. Losing track of time.
I instantly recognize II. and III. - they're the hallmarks of the flow states that abstract me away from my own pain when I'm working.
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Wu says it's a mistake to attribute the regretted hours of scrolling to addiction or a failure of self-control. Rather, the user is falling into "passive flow," a condition arising from three factors:
I. Engagement without a clear goal;
II. A loss of self-awareness - of your body and your mental state;
III. Losing track of time.
I instantly recognize II. and III. - they're the hallmarks of the flow states that abstract me away from my own pain when I'm working.
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The big difference here is I. - I go to work with the clearest of goals, while "passive flow" is undirected (Thompson also cites psychologist Paul Bloom, who calls the scroll-trance "shitty flow." In shitty flow, you lose track of the world and its sensations - but in a way that you later regret.)
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The big difference here is I. - I go to work with the clearest of goals, while "passive flow" is undirected (Thompson also cites psychologist Paul Bloom, who calls the scroll-trance "shitty flow." In shitty flow, you lose track of the world and its sensations - but in a way that you later regret.)
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Thompson has his own name for this phenomenon of algorithmically induced, regret-inducing flow: he calls it "zombie flow." It's flow that "recapitulates the goal of flow while evacuating the purpose."
Zombie flow is "progress without pleasure" - it's frictionless, and so it gives us nothing except that sense of the world going away, and when it stops, the world is still there.
23/
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Thompson has his own name for this phenomenon of algorithmically induced, regret-inducing flow: he calls it "zombie flow." It's flow that "recapitulates the goal of flow while evacuating the purpose."
Zombie flow is "progress without pleasure" - it's frictionless, and so it gives us nothing except that sense of the world going away, and when it stops, the world is still there.
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The trick is to find a way of compartmentalizing that rewards attention with some kind of productive residue that you can look back on with pride and pleasure.
I wouldn't call myself a happy person. I don't think I know *any* happy people right now.
24/
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The trick is to find a way of compartmentalizing that rewards attention with some kind of productive residue that you can look back on with pride and pleasure.
I wouldn't call myself a happy person. I don't think I know *any* happy people right now.
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But I'm an extremely *hopeful* person, because I can see so many ways that we can make things better (an admittedly very low bar), and I have mastered the trick of harnessing my unhappiness to the pursuit of things that might make the world better, and I'm gradually learning when to stop escaping the pain and confront it.
25/
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But I'm an extremely *hopeful* person, because I can see so many ways that we can make things better (an admittedly very low bar), and I have mastered the trick of harnessing my unhappiness to the pursuit of things that might make the world better, and I'm gradually learning when to stop escaping the pain and confront it.
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Image:
marsupium photography (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2.8_hours_later_-_Zombie_Apocalypse_(14315382305).jpgCC BY-SA 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.eneof/
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If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)." The long answer is more complicated.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic 404 on the link there
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@pluralistic 404 on the link there
@wendynather Argh, I screwed up a ridrect. I've killed it, but I think it's cached. Gonna give it a few to see if it fixes itself
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@wendynather Argh, I screwed up a ridrect. I've killed it, but I think it's cached. Gonna give it a few to see if it fixes itself
@pluralistic @wendynather weird, it’s still broken for me. I tried loading it for the first time just a few minutes ago.
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