The sweetness of it all
1
EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH
Y’all know that I worry about whether I’m enough of a creator to justify those times when I’m leaning into my consumer side. I feel better (emotionally and physically) when I’m making something than when I’m taking something, but I often want to go the easy route and take, despite my awareness that doing, making, and creating improves my mood.
Apparently, this is due to something called evolutionary mismatch (I always feel better when I have a term to describe my experience, so thank you, Outside Online, for expanding my vocabulary): over the millennia when we humans were evolving to improve our individual chances of survival, we adapted to seek short-term fulfillment. Makes sense—people dealt with food scarcity and unsafe environments more commonly than they do today. But now, ideally, we set ourselves up for success by seeking long-term fulfillment—saving and investing our income, for example, or eating nutritious foods and making an effort to stay fit regularly. So, there’s dissonance between what lights up our brains (scrolling, buy-it-now buttons, and Cheetos) and what secures our future (cardio, 401ks, and Cruciferae).
Back to tipping the scales toward creator: my brain fires happily on consumption—it’s easy to scroll the internet (ily, wild and wooly internet, but I’m carefully keeping our relationship casual); easier to read a compelling book someone else wrote and published; easiest to have food delivered to my doorstep.
It takes effort to create. Gumption. Oomph. Energy. Time.
It feels so good, though, to make something, to bring something new into existence, even if simply for the pleasure of making it. I don’t share much of my art online. I rarely remember to photograph cakes I bake, and even less often do I make time to post the few photos I manage to take. It’s the doing that’s fulfilling, the creating. And those moments when I hang my drawing on the wall or dig into a slice of hot apple pie aren’t too shabby either.
2
LIVE RICHLY
We live in an era of productivity obsession. It’s true that we accomplish much more in a single day than people could hundreds of years ago because most of us have the luxury of opting out of requisite daily tasks, those basics that keep us alive and sane—gathering and cooking food, making clothing, cultivating connection.
We don’t have to till the earth, sow the fields, harvest the crops; instead, hourly contract workers pick up our online grocery orders and deposit them at our doorsteps—or better yet, other people cook them for us and deposit them on our porches, piping hot.
We don’t have to shear the sheep, spin the wool into yarn, knit our own sweaters, darn the holes in our socks; instead, a vast and complex supply global chain supplies us with ready-to-wear fashion, one click away (I don’t want to beat this doorstep thing dead, but again, it arrives on your doorstep).
We don’t use quill and ink to write letters to family members far away, then entrust our missives to be delivered by a courier traveling on horseback across a continent; instead, we type notes on our phones, our computers, our tablets, speak messages to our cars and watches, all of which appear instantly in our recipients’ pocket, lap, wrist, vehicle. Conversation anywhere. Connection everywhere. (Closer than your doorstep! Too far, Meghan. Stop with the doorstep thing!)
Our global infrastructure has combined with leaps in technology to give us the illusion of more time, but the reality is that we all lead short, finite lives, and reading another GTD (getting things done) manual or watching a productivity-hacks video won’t give us more time—those things give us the illusion that if we cram more little stuff into every moment of every day, we’ll get more done and feel more accomplished. But that’s a lie.
During the pandemic, we saw people veering off the productivity course: quitting their jobs, taking advantage of mental health leave many large corporations have in place, or moving out of crowded cities so they could live at a slower pace.
We’re figuring it out—how to jump off the productivity train to live quieter lives that are still rich and abundant; how to savor these hours and days and weeks and years of ours; how to find meaning in our work, our play, our quiet and our loud moments.
3
FREAKY CUSTOMER SERVICE
Request a replacement LEGO piece, and you’re likely to get a “freaky” response, which is to say, Fun, Reliable, Knowledgeable, and Engaging (FRKE). LEGO’s warm communication style has earned them one of the highest net promoter scores (NPS) in all the land. My favorite people are fun, reliable, knowledgeable, and engaging, so I’d wager that LEGO’s customer service team has based their mission on a universal human truth.
4
JUST THE BASICS
Do you cringe every time someone says, “Send an email to my colleague and I,” or “Those gamers are going to loose that battle”? No? Time to read these easy-to-remember grammar rules and spiff up your written communication. The grammar nerds will notice and love you all the more for it.
5
A MOMENT OF SELF PROMOTION
You know when you should be shouting something from the rooftops, but you feel kinda weird being like, “Hey! Over here! Look at how great I am!”? No? Just shy-ish me?
In that vein, my work was featured in a Nielsen Norman Group article about how to (content) design a great empty state … and the article was published two years ago. Two years. *looks away* (If you’re curious, mine is the Power BI one.)
When I first learned about the Nielsen Norman Group article, I was so excited—my work! Way out there on the wild internet! Having its tiny moment!—and also, I didn’t know how tell people about it.
My little team at work? My safe people? Told. Nervously. But proudly too. On LinkedIn, though? No. I have upwards of 600 connections, and while many of them post when they get promoted or move companies or just when they’re thinking thoughts they want to share, I’m there quietly adding a reaction to someone else’s post every so often. Because this world? This time we live in? Where we’re supposed to be a brand unto ourselves, posting all the fab things we get up to here, there, and everywhere? To so many people all at once? That’s not my safe spot.
I work at a big company where I work on cool projects, then tell large groups of people about my work. Presenting my work is part of my job, and it’s something my child-self would be surprised to learn that my adult-self enjoys. But you won’t hear about that talk I gave or those videos I made unless we’re talking one-on-one or maaaybe in a small group. And definitely not on the internet. Unless two years have passed, and I’m posting to my website that I pretend no one reads. At the bottom.