I had a lot of fun watching this five minute video not only because the underlying point is interesting (pop hits use the same four chords) but also because I knew almost every one:
Other videos:
I remember standing in the parking lot outside the offices of potential client several years ago before a big presentation. I was shaking with nervousness. Palms sweaty, knees weak, arms heavy. I was nervous about how I'd win over a group of skeptical managers. I was nervous about not being taken seriously due to my age (14). Nervous about being mentally outmatched.
I remember arriving at a business networking function in San Francisco. I surveyed the room of strangers standing around small tall circular tables holding drinks and chatting. My muscles tightened as I contemplated having to penetrate seemingly closed circles, insert myself into conversation, and then make small talk with all the formally dressed men and women with many more years of experience.
So I made a bee line to the bathroom, went into a stall, locked the door, put the cover seat down, and sat on the toilet for 30 minutes. Eventually I left my self-imposed bathroom stall imprisonment and chatted with the other attendees at the event, but it was not easy-going. The whole while I asked myself questions like, "Am I saying the right things? Do they think I'm dumb?" This happened at most business social functions I attended.
I remember countless phone call screw-ups. One time I called a guy as part of a sales pitch. He was a big deal and I wanted to nail the call. I reached his voicemail, and started leaving a message, and when I was done with my bit I realized I didn't know how to close. I stumbled through a few "OK well look forward to hearing back from you" lines before saying: "thanks so much again Richard, talk to you soon, take care, thanks, thanks thanks." Then I hung up. I literally said "thanks, thanks thanks" three times in a row before hanging up the phone. Man, did I feel like an idiot and not at all on the level of the guy I was courting.
These were shock experiences. Two reflections:
First, as I experienced these embarrassing moments I did not attribute my missteps to social inexperience or immaturity but I instead concluded that I was less intelligent than the other people at these events. This may explain my drive to keep learning and improving so as to avoid this kind of embarrassment in the future.
Second, there is such a thing as an optimal number of embarrassing / failure experiences. Too many too young and it can destroy foundational self-confidence. Too few, and arrogance reigns.
There is such a thing as an optimal level of insecurity in a person.
…With your friends, your family, and your spouse / romantic interest?
I don’t think a friend catch-up session is complete without this question.
I support probing directly and following up specifically. The conversation is always enlightening and sometimes brings us closer. As one friend of mine likes to say, “People should pry more.”
Relationships are the lifeblood of happiness. They deserve to be discussed and analyzed!
###
Ariel Levy’s review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir on marriage is decent. I liked this paragraph:
Ultimately, Gilbert is clear about what she, like most people, wants: everything. We want intimacy and autonomy, security and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it. Gilbert understands this, yet she tries to convince herself and her readers that she has found a loophole. She tells herself a familiar story, that her marriage will be different. And she is, of course, right—everyone’s marriage is different. But everyone’s marriage is a compromise.
Justin Wehr summarizes the research on "interest." According to one paper by Paul Silva he dug up, something is interesting if it is: a) new, complex, or unexpected, and b) comprehensible.
Silva's extrapolation for writers:
According to educational research, the largest predictors of a text’s interestingness are (a) a cluster of novelty–complexity variables (the material’s novelty, vividness, complexity, and surprisingness) and (b) a cluster of comprehension variables (coherence, concreteness, and ease of processing). Intuition tells us that we can make writing interesting by "spicing it up"; research reminds us that clarity, structure, and coherence enhance a reader’s interest, too.
Compound interest:
Interest motivates learning about something new and complex; once people understand the thing, it is not interesting anymore. The new knowledge, in turn, enables more things to be interesting. … In a sense, interest is self-propelling: It motivates people to learn, thereby giving them the knowledge needed to be interested.
This would suggest that sometimes you're not going to be interested in something right out of the gate — you first need to acquire some knowledge in the area, some experiences, some expertise. Map this to careers and you arrive at Cal Newport's view that you should try to generate passion at work, not find your passion.
You can be interested in things but not be happy:
Second, interest and happiness connect to different abstract dimensions of personality. Interest connects to openness to experience, a broad trait associated with curiosity, unconventionality, and creativity. Happiness, in contrast, connects to extraversion, a broad trait associated with positive emotions and gregariousness.
#
When I think about the people I most enjoy spending time with, they are high on two scales: interestingness and humor.
Here are Andy McKenzie's thoughts on the link between interest and the potential for a reward. Here's Andy on why happiness and sadness on are different dimensions.
Last week I spent five nights in the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile. It is beautiful, remote, relaxing, and very much worth visiting during a trip to the southern cone.
Atacama is the driest desert in the world. In some parts, there has been no recorded rainfall since recording began. It looks and feels like a bigger, grander, sandier version of the Grand Canyon and Utah canyons, though grander only by a bit.
The town of San Pedro was erected in the middle of the desert to service tourists. It's not as cheesy a town as it could be, and does a nice job providing basic infrastructure and tours to see the desert, canyons, and sand mountains. The food in San Pedro was surprisingly good. There were many excellent menús to choose from — the set, three course meals is how you eat well and cheaply in Chile (and all of Latin America).
There are three main tours to do in Atacama. Two involve early wake-ups (4 and 6 AM, respectively) which ruled them out for us. That left an afternoon hiking tour through a moon-like landscape followed by a view of the sun setting behind mountains way out in the distance. We watched it perched on a top of a rock formation. Beautiful. The rest of the time we lounged around the hotel pool and enjoyed the still, dry desert air.
The most annoying part of San Pedro is the stray dogs. They sleep by day, and wander the streets by night. They bark and growl and make so much noise that they keep you up at night, even if your hotel is far away. Mostly, it's rape. Male dogs pinning female dogs and trying to have their way. Yelps and barks ensue. I know: I saw this happen more than once up-close. Why don't poor countries more aggressively neuter dogs?
My friend Steve Dodson visited Chile for a couple weeks and we went up there together. After our epic swing through Argentina last summer, a reunion was in order. We had a blast. We chatted for several hours each day, sometimes shooting the shit, sometimes discussing a set topic around which there was structure. About a fourth of the time we discussed relationships (generally), a fourth on business / entrepreneurship / finance, a fourth blogging / information diet, and a fourth other stuff. Thanks to our conversations I must issue a retroactive and prospective hat tip to Steve for helping me think through a handful of blog posts.
I recommend visiting the Atacama Desert on your trip to Chile. A good southern cone trip would involve visiting B.A., Valparaiso, Atacama, Iguazu Falls, and Patagonia if you have time / money. Don't forget little Uruguay, too.