Time Spent is a series of letters exploring how and why we should we read the news, do care work and generally spend our time. I’m also working on a book project about this.
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Good morning,
This was written on an Amtrak (double-masked) from upstate NY to the city on Sunday evening, the last day of February. Spotify recommended Pat Barrett’s Sparrows and Lilies in my weekly playlist so I listened to it as the sun set and I went through my notebook, looking for the lesson of the month.
And then he sang it: ain’t no rest in worry.
Here are two things that are both true but often in conflict: There’s a lot to worry about these days. We need to rest well in order to live well. They are often in conflict because worrying makes resting harder.
My biggest lesson this month has been realizing that we need to have something to rest for. I want to be able to do the things I love, and if I don’t rest well, I can’t make time for them. Self-care for care’s sake is too hard to sustain. But if attached to a greater goal, it is easier to prioritize.
All that said, here’s a list of things I have been reading, which I’m going to collate at some regular interval, at least monthly. If you’re new here, this whole project is an exploration of two questions about how we spend time.
This one covers both January & February.
And yes, I like to read many books at the same time slowly!
Key: 💌 Newsletter / 📕 Book / 🎧 Podcast
Month’s Links: Generative Care Work
One way to get ourselves (both as individuals and as a society) to value care work is by making sure it is generative. I define generative care as thoughtful care that sustains life, which can include health, raising a family, economic growth, self-actualization and more. Here are some things I have learned related to care in the past month.
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination is a thing you might do: I first heard about it from my 17-year-old writing mentee when I asked her to free-write on the prompt “how I sleep and how I wake,” and then a few weeks later Glamour published this and I had a worried laugh.
Complete the stress-cycle by moving: I'm reading 📕Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski which is summarized pretty well in 🎧 this interview with Brené Brown. The main point is that we get burned out because we accumulate stress in our bodies and never work it out, thinking that managing stress is simply about removing stressors. Which is not how it works. It's a good book. Side note: here’s a sweet 💌 In Her Words issue reminding everyone that if you're exhausted, you're not alone.
An incredibly easy way to inspire yourself is by learning about other people's daily routines, which, unsurprisingly, is a guilty pleasure of mine and so I’ve been enjoying this newsletter by the author of 📕Daily Rituals, which I read a few years ago. Example: A summary through screenshots of Hayao Miyazaki's creative life.
Don't be afraid to prepare for death, which includes everything from assessing the quality of your relationships, to what you believe in, to who you want to be, to what kind of medical intervention you want or don't want. I sincerely appreciate this approach to life and in📕The Lost Art of Dying Well, a doctor who specializes in medical ethics breaks it all down. See highlights in this interview in Columbia Magazine.
Somewhat related is a recent issue of 💌 Girls Night In, which offers setting rituals as an alternative to resolutions, because they require you to first decide what kind of person you want to be this year.
Which James Clear, author of 📕Atomic Habits, echoes in the 12/31 issue of his 💌3-2-1 Newsletter with, “If you genuinely care about the goal, you’ll focus on the system.” It also helps to focus on identity as a goal, instead of projects. In other words, if you want to read a book, create a system to become a reader. If you want to learn an instrument, create a system to become a musician.
And to round out this topic, I'm finally reading the book 📕Grit, and so far reading Grit and Burnout side-by-side is interesting. If you’re not familiar, the main point is that while talented people are enamoring and easy to compare ourselves to, grit is a better indicator of your success and you can increase it.
There’s also this great multi-step exercise in Burnout that asks you to redefine what “winning” looks like in whatever you’re working towards. When I did it, I realized nothing that would genuinely fulfill me or have impact at scale could be achieved in less than 10 years. Some things take a really long time and people who stick it out are amazing examples to seek out (like, say, Stacey Abrams for example).
A new report from Better Life Lab came out on what stops men from sharing the care work load, even though they say they value it as much as paid work: lack of experience. It’s a complicated chicken & egg situation but the times-are-a-changing and that there’s a growing body of work on this subject is so heartening. For a summary, see this article in Fortune.
Zebras Unite, which is a founder-led movement focused on developing alternative financing models for start-ups (that I’ve been watching with great respect for a while) recently published a thought-provoking manifesto using birth as a metaphor for building a company and the power of having a doula to guide you back to community.
Which is another month’s lesson: don’t underestimate the power of community. We’re incredibly bad at asking each other for help, but sometimes it’s all you need to do. This Modern Love piece is both a strange little time capsule of modern life and a reminder of the above. I also did a 🎧 podcast on my Buddhist community recently.
And finally, speaking of help, two little games on constructive feedback I learned through a workshop with the Op-Ed Project, which is an organization that trains and encourages more diverse thinkers to get their ideas out in print (I very highly recommend it, especially if you’re an academic or activist):
Game 1: If you have an idea you want to run by someone, ask a friend to hear it out, tell you that “You’re brilliant!” and validate what they liked about it because it’s okay to ask for help when you’re not confident about something that’s possibly brilliant.
Game 2: Do it again and ask them to say “That’s ridiculous!” and poke major holes in it. It’s better to be kind and helpful than polite.
I played it with someone about my theory that news literacy education entirely overlooks how we move through emotions and to consume information well, we need the skills to navigate our emotions concurrently (i.e.: if fear is holding people back from the covid vaccine, facts aren’t going to help, but informed, trusted sounding boards are and if more people had journalism skills and behavioral awareness, we could educate ourselves to be those sounding boards).
Which brings me to the news links for the month.
Month’s Links: Making Sense of Media
A lot is changing in the media world and it can be tough to stay on top of, but I stand by my desire to protect and redefine journalism and I’ve been reading to sustain that optimism in small and big ways.
A small example: Day-in-the-life stories are one of my all-time favorite examples of humanistic journalism and there is so much done right in this Chalkbeat story about a remote day in the life of NYC third graders.
A big example: The Atlantic’s Inheritance project on American history and Black life. This one on the Federal Writers’ Project is amazing.
And some news about news:
In the last 2 months, Tom Brokaw retired from NBC after 55 years, and both Larry King and Rush Limbaugh died. They both pioneered media formats and dramatically influenced public thought.
Relatedly, a colleague previously recommended this documentary that I keep thinking about, on how a woman’s father was brainwashed by right-wing media. It in itself is extreme, but she said it shed light on the problem we’re all currently observing: people becoming more extreme in their beliefs (on both the left and the right) based on media consumption.
I’ve been trying to make sense of it all as I write and frankly, to grasp the scale of change is unfathomable. But the human psychology behind it isn’t.
The short-term view is to follow the messaging, like what’s going to happen to the reign of Newsmax and OAN post-Trump. The medium-term view is to observe how platforms are evolving, like the growth of Substack and Clubhouse (here’s an illustrative example of how South Asians are using it and here’s a take from investors).
But I find the most useful place to rest curiosity is just by asking ourselves questions about how and why we communicate at all.
For example, Zeynep Tufekci’s take on Clubhouse very astutely points out that we have to reckon with a world built around print culture as a whole, because really, humans have mostly communicated by voice and sound and print culture is basically a power structure.
Another example: One of my favorite media researchers is Talia Stroud at the University of Texas and the results of a two-year long study on what makes a good digital social space that she did with Eli Pariser, author of 📕 The Filter Bubble just came out. See here for a write-up by Will Oremus. Why don’t we ask ourselves these questions as a society?
Relatedly, 💌 this is an excellent newsletter from Civic Signals on mutual aid + they are seeking voicemails on virtual connections we’ve made this year as we approach 1 year of U.S. quarantine. So is this one on 💌The Future of Belonging.
I also find it useful to observe the practices of journalists and educators, since we are all content creators on social media these days.
And here’s action being taken by society’s most crucial information care-givers: teachers explaining January 6 to their students.
I’ll leave you with one final book from the month that addresses generation-raising and sense-making overall, which is 📕The Fourth Turning, a theory on American history arguing that modern history moves in cycles the length of a long human life, comprised of 4 eras that always arrive in the same order: a high (confident expansion), an awakening (against the establishment), an unraveling (of crumbling institutions) and a crisis (2020 was due for one on their schedule). It was written decades ago and it’s imperfect but I’ve found it a tangible macro-perspective against which to make sense of where we are and where we ought to go.
Anyway, that’s the round-up. You’ve now seen the inside of my notebook. I hope you find something you enjoy reading.
Remember to rest towards something and move your body!
To a hopeful March filled with curiosity and care,
Jihii
P.S. Because I sometimes get messages about how to read more: for faster reading I’ve found Audm to be a worthy subscription (you can listen to a mix of longform articles) and Pocket also reads articles to you. For books, using text-to-speech on your phone is a free way to turn e-books into audio books, which I sometimes do on 1.5x speed, unless it is fiction 😅.
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