"Tik Tok" , "Insta" "Tweet" ..imho, it is no mistake these brand names underpin fast and fleeting measures of time as a way of life.
The attention span of a gnat requires no critical thinking.
Critical thinking, informed decision making, is nearing extinction. No one takes the time nor values the results of effort. Having the gnat** model constantly reinforced precludes it.
this line: "Are you really proud of anything that was handed to you or you didn’t work for? Probably not."
while i agree, this helps make a case against* generational wealth. our instinctive desire for children to have better lives than us can indeed be taken too far. we even have a joke for it: trust-fund babies.
so i struggle to rectify suggestions like "make your kid's first home down payment, help them get a good job," when to an extent you're just settting them up with perks they didn't earn. that they can't be proud of.
i personally would feel 5-10% gutted for my entire adult life if my parents did either of those things for me. i wouldn't have felt this way at the time (22-25 range), but i would now (34 years old). i'm glad i had to struggle, and categorically for this reason i don't blame boomers for anything.
I think it's okay to ensure your kids never starve or are homeless if you have the means. Helping them here is good, lindy even! But ensuring they don't degenerate is also really important. The kids with wealth who get jobs while young end up turning out well (vs those given extravagant gifts and cars etc).
This has been my biggest frustration with boomers. Rather than helping their kids get established they are using their accumulated wealth on themselves (vacations, second homes, etc. while they kids struggle to purchase a first home, for example). Obviously a gross generalization but its the story that arises for me when my cost of living gets me down haha. As you say, it's Lindy to help your offspring thrive. You can never "pay back" your parents so you pay it forward into your kids, and the cycle continues. I think some version of that mentality is innate to humans and modern notions of individualism are contrary to our nature.
This is a great re-frame for me. I can simultaneously be proud of willpower and strive for high agency *and* let myself drift into bitterness and anger toward boomers. But regardless of the historical or generational factors, its always better to believe that you're the master of your destiny.
Agree with the sentiment but admittedly it can be tough to find the line between taking advantage of a modern technology enabled convivence and cheating yourself of the satisfaction of a well earned result. (IMO Ozempic is net positive, TikTok is net negative, but so many other things are gray)
From 'Make the Bread, Buy the Butter', ”People think nothing of buying frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Uncrustables) for their children’s lunch boxes.’ …I felt briefly smug in the certainty that I was not so lazy or compromised that I would ever buy mass-produced peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then I thought, People probably once said that about peanut butter. And bread. And jelly. They almost certainly said it about waffles, and pie crust, and pudding. Not so long ago, people must have wondered who couldn’t fry her own donuts, grind her own sausage, cure her own bacon. Kill her own bacon! The more I thought about it, the more arbitrary it seemed to draw a line in the sand at the frozen PB&J.”
It's a great point but don't forget diminishing returns are a real too we must remain vigilant on, because the incentives aren't always aligned for us. Not having to butcher your own pig to get bacon is great! Adding lots of chemicals to keep it on the shelf longer (vs buying additive free and freezing if you need to) is not better for us.
Pretty much agree on the phones, social media and scrolling. However there’s also an upside. I scroll for insights, inspiration and education. (And sometimes
I find them I. Articles like yours) and Yeah there’s a lot of crap. But there’s also a lot of gems and good ideas to be had.
Substack and text-based social can be great. YouTube used productively as well. TikTok and Instagram are existentially empty places though, life much better if you avoid them
I've been thinking a lot about this concept in relation to the use of AI in my workplace.
I work in corporate comms for a fairly complex company—there is a high learning curve for new employees, and it's basically an internal axiom that it will take 1-2 years before one truly "gets" how the business operates.
My managers were quick to embrace a ChatGPT-type program, so much so that our generated word count was monitored (to make sure we were actually using it and being efficient or something I guess).
As helpful as it has been in getting things done quickly (especially large, report-type projects), I can't help but think how I am impeding the growth of my business acumen by relying on the easy option to write, as opposed to struggling through the information and truly understanding it before I am able to "output".
Totally agree and I wrote about agency vs. adiction recently in response to a person on LinkedIn talking about the 'addiction economy' and telling people "It's not you, it's them" and ripping their agency away.
Good thoughts all around. Pushing ourselves socially is something that is in severe decline for my generation. It's sad to see.
As for helping our children -- I think we need to give them help while we show them the ropes at the same time. Giving the kid $100k to for a downpayment on a home is not as beneficial as giving the kid $100k for a downpayment on a home that you teach them how to be a landlord for while getting down and dirty with them.
I've landed on a little mantra that relates to this (from years of telling it to fitness coaching clients in regards to habit change): intentionality feels good. There's an intrinsic reward that comes from flexing willpower, making a principled sacrifice, or delaying gratification. We can come to crave that feeling as well (though we often need to white knuckle it long enough to develop a taste for it). I've been stewing on the idea of "tuning your taste" and it might be finally time to explore it more in writing (I'll probably end up citing this article). Great piece! Thank you.
Wall-E is such a powerful movie and it always makes me happy to see reference. You’ve articulated the problem well yet it’s not just a modern problem. 25 years ago, people would sit in front of a television and mindlessly channel surf, in the hopes of finding something interesting. As we’ve made that easier, more people succumb to being entertained as a way of living.
A different kind of reframing to consider, that I believe is an extension of your thought. Retirement. The idea that we work hard then at some point it all ends and we rest easy. Many people spend a life time in pursuit of the days of leisure because of the promise of easy living and yet in their day to day they kind of know it’s not true. What if instead people expected to be busy and active their entire life, no retirement? My guess, people would choose a slower pace, they’d approach life like a marathon and they’d take need pit stops along the way to be healthy. If that were true, just maybe we wouldn’t get so overwhelmed that we need to mass stupefy.
We do have both free will and agency, but what sentence didn't you like here specifically perhaps I can clarify my thinking for you. Agency is appropriate within the context of discussing self-control, personal responsibility and our ability to act deliberately. This essay would look very different if the focus was on free will (we'd be talking about whether individuals even have the ability to make choices at all). I can write on on this subject later if you'd like.
How specifically would you define “free will” in the theoretical “Adam Singer dictionary”? Doesn’t have to be more than one sentence, but I’d like to hear what comes to mind if you’ve got something.
Yeah sure, free will is the ability to make independent choices at all vs us being purely deterministic creatures (I don't think this is true, some may!) while agency is the capacity to act on any choices and actually do anything about them within a given context or environment. Appreciate the comments btw it's good to share thinking
"Tik Tok" , "Insta" "Tweet" ..imho, it is no mistake these brand names underpin fast and fleeting measures of time as a way of life.
The attention span of a gnat requires no critical thinking.
Critical thinking, informed decision making, is nearing extinction. No one takes the time nor values the results of effort. Having the gnat** model constantly reinforced precludes it.
**apologies to gnats
this line: "Are you really proud of anything that was handed to you or you didn’t work for? Probably not."
while i agree, this helps make a case against* generational wealth. our instinctive desire for children to have better lives than us can indeed be taken too far. we even have a joke for it: trust-fund babies.
so i struggle to rectify suggestions like "make your kid's first home down payment, help them get a good job," when to an extent you're just settting them up with perks they didn't earn. that they can't be proud of.
i personally would feel 5-10% gutted for my entire adult life if my parents did either of those things for me. i wouldn't have felt this way at the time (22-25 range), but i would now (34 years old). i'm glad i had to struggle, and categorically for this reason i don't blame boomers for anything.
I think it's okay to ensure your kids never starve or are homeless if you have the means. Helping them here is good, lindy even! But ensuring they don't degenerate is also really important. The kids with wealth who get jobs while young end up turning out well (vs those given extravagant gifts and cars etc).
This has been my biggest frustration with boomers. Rather than helping their kids get established they are using their accumulated wealth on themselves (vacations, second homes, etc. while they kids struggle to purchase a first home, for example). Obviously a gross generalization but its the story that arises for me when my cost of living gets me down haha. As you say, it's Lindy to help your offspring thrive. You can never "pay back" your parents so you pay it forward into your kids, and the cycle continues. I think some version of that mentality is innate to humans and modern notions of individualism are contrary to our nature.
This is a great re-frame for me. I can simultaneously be proud of willpower and strive for high agency *and* let myself drift into bitterness and anger toward boomers. But regardless of the historical or generational factors, its always better to believe that you're the master of your destiny.
"But a life without friction is a life without traction" I love that. Great piece Adam!
My favorite line. This piece was brilliant.
Agree with the sentiment but admittedly it can be tough to find the line between taking advantage of a modern technology enabled convivence and cheating yourself of the satisfaction of a well earned result. (IMO Ozempic is net positive, TikTok is net negative, but so many other things are gray)
From 'Make the Bread, Buy the Butter', ”People think nothing of buying frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Uncrustables) for their children’s lunch boxes.’ …I felt briefly smug in the certainty that I was not so lazy or compromised that I would ever buy mass-produced peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then I thought, People probably once said that about peanut butter. And bread. And jelly. They almost certainly said it about waffles, and pie crust, and pudding. Not so long ago, people must have wondered who couldn’t fry her own donuts, grind her own sausage, cure her own bacon. Kill her own bacon! The more I thought about it, the more arbitrary it seemed to draw a line in the sand at the frozen PB&J.”
It's a great point but don't forget diminishing returns are a real too we must remain vigilant on, because the incentives aren't always aligned for us. Not having to butcher your own pig to get bacon is great! Adding lots of chemicals to keep it on the shelf longer (vs buying additive free and freezing if you need to) is not better for us.
Pretty much agree on the phones, social media and scrolling. However there’s also an upside. I scroll for insights, inspiration and education. (And sometimes
I find them I. Articles like yours) and Yeah there’s a lot of crap. But there’s also a lot of gems and good ideas to be had.
Substack and text-based social can be great. YouTube used productively as well. TikTok and Instagram are existentially empty places though, life much better if you avoid them
Nice. Reminds me a bit of an old piece by Tim Wu called the The Tyranny of Convenience. This is the way.
I've been thinking a lot about this concept in relation to the use of AI in my workplace.
I work in corporate comms for a fairly complex company—there is a high learning curve for new employees, and it's basically an internal axiom that it will take 1-2 years before one truly "gets" how the business operates.
My managers were quick to embrace a ChatGPT-type program, so much so that our generated word count was monitored (to make sure we were actually using it and being efficient or something I guess).
As helpful as it has been in getting things done quickly (especially large, report-type projects), I can't help but think how I am impeding the growth of my business acumen by relying on the easy option to write, as opposed to struggling through the information and truly understanding it before I am able to "output".
Totally agree and I wrote about agency vs. adiction recently in response to a person on LinkedIn talking about the 'addiction economy' and telling people "It's not you, it's them" and ripping their agency away.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/agency-vs-addiction
The private taxi for my burrito meme made me LOL.
Good thoughts all around. Pushing ourselves socially is something that is in severe decline for my generation. It's sad to see.
As for helping our children -- I think we need to give them help while we show them the ropes at the same time. Giving the kid $100k to for a downpayment on a home is not as beneficial as giving the kid $100k for a downpayment on a home that you teach them how to be a landlord for while getting down and dirty with them.
I've landed on a little mantra that relates to this (from years of telling it to fitness coaching clients in regards to habit change): intentionality feels good. There's an intrinsic reward that comes from flexing willpower, making a principled sacrifice, or delaying gratification. We can come to crave that feeling as well (though we often need to white knuckle it long enough to develop a taste for it). I've been stewing on the idea of "tuning your taste" and it might be finally time to explore it more in writing (I'll probably end up citing this article). Great piece! Thank you.
Wall-E is such a powerful movie and it always makes me happy to see reference. You’ve articulated the problem well yet it’s not just a modern problem. 25 years ago, people would sit in front of a television and mindlessly channel surf, in the hopes of finding something interesting. As we’ve made that easier, more people succumb to being entertained as a way of living.
A different kind of reframing to consider, that I believe is an extension of your thought. Retirement. The idea that we work hard then at some point it all ends and we rest easy. Many people spend a life time in pursuit of the days of leisure because of the promise of easy living and yet in their day to day they kind of know it’s not true. What if instead people expected to be busy and active their entire life, no retirement? My guess, people would choose a slower pace, they’d approach life like a marathon and they’d take need pit stops along the way to be healthy. If that were true, just maybe we wouldn’t get so overwhelmed that we need to mass stupefy.
Such an excellent post. Thank you, Adam.
This post gave me the final nudge to get a smartphone Brick so I can reclaim my time without constantly conceding to my bad habits. Thanks, friend <3
If I hear one more person use “agency” as synonymous with “free will,” I AM going to lose my mind.
Please stop.
We do have both free will and agency, but what sentence didn't you like here specifically perhaps I can clarify my thinking for you. Agency is appropriate within the context of discussing self-control, personal responsibility and our ability to act deliberately. This essay would look very different if the focus was on free will (we'd be talking about whether individuals even have the ability to make choices at all). I can write on on this subject later if you'd like.
Thanks for the reply.
How specifically would you define “free will” in the theoretical “Adam Singer dictionary”? Doesn’t have to be more than one sentence, but I’d like to hear what comes to mind if you’ve got something.
Yeah sure, free will is the ability to make independent choices at all vs us being purely deterministic creatures (I don't think this is true, some may!) while agency is the capacity to act on any choices and actually do anything about them within a given context or environment. Appreciate the comments btw it's good to share thinking