Wednesday Medley
Images that pop in your mind
Twitter Warzone
Sometimes when you say something, there is a specific image that pops up in your mind and one may find it difficult to get rid of this. Imagine a purple cow. Now stop imagining the purple cow. Finding it difficult?
In the latest Joe Rogan podcast episode with Elon Musk, there is a casual conversation about twitter usage where Joe Rogan asks Musk how he finds time to use Twitter and not get distracted by the flood of messages that he might find himself surrounded by. When asked about how he is not affected by the hate messages or other personal attacks, he mentions that Twitter is almost like a war zone with bullets being fired on both sides. If a soldier is firing bullets at you, it doesnt mean that the soldier has anything personal against you.
The soldier is just attacking you because he is on the other side.
Now. That is a powerful mental model— Imagining twitter like a warzone.
And that’s actually helping him to maintain the equipoise.
Purple Cow
Another such mental model which I found to be useful is that of the purple cow.
The world we live in is dynamic: We can invent new and better things. Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.
In the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin, he urges us to put a purple cow into everything we create. To build something so noticeable that it sticks out from everyone else like a purple cow. Thus becoming a creative monopoly.
The purple cow image has personally helped me in not just taking decisions on the organisational front but also in every strategic decision we normally take.
For instance, How do I better utilise my time?
(1 to n: Incremental approach: Reduce the breaks in between for more productivity)
(0 to 1: Purple Cow approach: Hire a personal assistant? (just an example))
Or another example would be: How do I reduce my digital social media usage:
(1 to n: Incremental approach: Delete the apps for a while and get back once you have more free time)
(0 to 1: Purple Cow approach: Create a python script to automate the status updates)
The purple cow imagery has affected my thinking so much that I use it to think of any problem in this manner.
Ostrich burying its head
I was scrolling through various social media apps one after the other one day. It reminded me very much of an ostrich burying its head in the sand.
Sometimes, even though you do know for a fact that spending more time on such apps are a big waste of time, it is very difficult to get that ‘internal trigger’ to get yourself out of it. In these difficult moments to navigate and nudge yourself out of it, such imagery might help. The ostrich burying its head is a good metaphorical equivalent of a person getting sucked into the social media rabbit hole.
Chinese Water Torture
Hippolytus is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body.
Now think of all those small micro-breaks we take for opening our smartphones to access the notifications. At the onset, it seems so novel, it is just a small notification for which you would want to view it and close it as soon as you’re done.
But it is in a way, Chinese water torture. Drop by drop. Notification by notification. Becoming deadly as the time passes until you get traumatised by the overwhelming flux of noise. There is not much difference.