Blaring, glaring, daring positivity
Let's talk about building stuff
If you missed the most recent weekend email, here it is again.
It’s Monday and I’m all about efficiency today, so let’s jump in today’s exercise:
A lady comes up to a man behind a counter and hands him an item. The man says “that will be ten dollars”. The lady nods and gives him the money. She then turns around and heads towards the exit, but leaves the item on the counter. The man watches her leave but makes no move to call her back. Why is this?
An answer, as usual, at the end.
An ode to building things
There’s an infuriating trend going around. I’d even go as far as to call it a personality stereotype. We’ll name it The Contrarian (no, not the Peter Thiel thing).
The Contrarian is a person who doesn’t have an actual opinion - which, in my opinion, is one of the most dangerous things imaginable. Their main goal is to just make everyone’s day worse (and get attention to themselves or their projects).
A lot of the time, they’re decent demagogues who manage to seemingly win arguments by either deflecting, changing the topic or a literal army of straw men (arguments).
They will make it their mission to convince you that something is wrong or meant to fail. We’ve all seen people like these out in the wild.
Some will argue that the way to counter a contrarian (see what I did there?) is to just show kindness. They’ll usually try to attack you personally or hurl insults in order to get you riled up. Being kind and considerate is usually a good way to fight that.
What I’ll argue, however, is that we shouldn’t be kind for the sake of being kind or for the sake of increasing our chances to win a debate.
I’d replace kindness with positivity and argue that we need to stay positive because that’s the way we keep building.
Don’t be kind to The Contrarians. But also don’t waste time or energy on them.
Build what, you might ask? Anything. Our life, our business, science, society. You name it.
The thing about The Contrarian (and their fans) is not that they’re toxic and give us all a headache. It’s that they built nothing. They take temporary joy out of criticizing things others have built while rarely contributing anything in return.
If you want to be happy - and, just as a a coincidence, also make the world a happier place for others - build.
Stop debating on social media or anywhere why something is bad, why that person is a Twitter troll or why another person has a shady strategy. Use that energy to build something better.
Even if you don’t succeed and you end up building something worse, the joy you take out of the process of making something from scratch is incomparable to the temporary rush of winning an argument by being a contrarian.
Talk less, build more.
Answer: the lady was returning a book at the library.
I’ve been receiving more and more messages from people jokingly complaining that the exercises are getting too easy because they know the answer, which is the best news I’ve heard in a while.
Joke’s on you - they’re not getting easier, you’re getting better.