Fernando Gros's Blog, page 5

One Year In Melbourne

My family circumnavigated the Pacific when we immigrated from Chile to Australia. Aboard a series of Cathay Pacific planes we went from Santiago to Lima, Mexico City, Vancouver, Honolulu and Nandi, before arriving in Sydney. Long-haul travel was like that in those days. Many flights. Multiple layovers. Little convenience.

Upon arriving in Australia, our pilots were not familiar with the layout of Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport. When instructed to take the first exit off the runway, they instead turned around and proceeded back down the runway, looking for a different exit.

There was a TAA flight waiting to take off on a short domestic flight, and its pilot assumed our plane would soon clear the runway. He started his take-off roll. By the time he realised we we were not about to move out of the way, he was already committed. He tried to pull up early.

His wheels clipped the tail of our plane, causing considerable damage. Of course, it could’ve been worse. We were unharmed and the TAA plane managed to turn around and land safely a few minutes later. Airport officials rushed us through customs, probably so we could get out before the press arrived. The family friends waiting for us at the airport couldn’t believe what had happened when we told them.

Last year, when I flew back to Australia after 23 years spent in various cities around the world, there was no such drama. The world was smaller and the two flights that brought me from London via Dubai were uneventful.

I was returning to the country where I’d grown up but there was no one waiting for me at the airport. I had a quiet trip to an empty apartment overlooking the Melbourne skyline, where I spend a couple of weeks alone, unpacking and getting over jet lag. Later I flew again, to see my parents in Adelaide.

Apparently I was “home” again.

The Contour Of A Year

Travel, loss, and transition defined my first year back in Australia. With my mother’s health failing I was travelling regularly to Adelaide. My daughter was in her final year of college so I was also travelling to the US. And my desire to return to the Japanese alps after the pandemic had kept me away meant trips to Japan as well.

When my mother died, less than two months after my return, I felt marooned. It was like a swimming pool suddenly being emptied while I was half way through a length.

As a consequence, I spent a lot more time in Adelaide. My plan had been to visit regularly. But instead of a few weeks I spent the equivalent of a few months of the year there.

My daughter’s story is hers to tell. But we all know young people who went through university during the pandemic and didn’t have anything close to a normal experience. I was keen to help her transition to post-college life and just spend more time with her. So that meant lots of time in the US as well.

And I had my own adjustments to make. Melbourne is a new city to me. I’d visited once, 25 years ago, but didn’t know the city or anyone who lived here. I had all the usual expat-type questions. Where do I shop for food? Get a haircut? Buy clothes? It was familiar in a way, since I know Australia, the way you know people you went to school with but haven’t seen in years, but unfamiliar in the kind of detail that makes daily life easy.

The Consequence of Love

My creative and professional desires over the past year were all about writing. Specifically, trying to pitch my next book and finding places to publish my writing beyond just on this blog. Progress has been slow but encouraging.

I had one essay published in the inaugural edition of Wilde Magazine. My submissions to other journals have all been rejected. But several of them were returned with the kind of detailed and encouraging notes that are a gift for a writer in my situation.

And while no one has accepted my book just yet, a few agents have taken a long look at it, and I’m satisfied that it is the best and most thorough book proposal I’ve ever put together.

Of course, I’m accepting of this slow progress in large part because I’ve chosen at this time to put family first. It’s not an excuse. It’s a consequence.

One of my favorite Gregory Porter songs is Consequence of Love. It’s a particular kind of love song because it focuses on self-sacrificial love. Porter sings “the gain for me is you.” The song doesn’t shy away from how challenging it can be to love someone deeply. Often it feels like a struggle and the emotions we experience as we love can be bittersweet.

“I begin to hate
Time and distance
‘Cause it makes me wait
That’s all I seem to do”

The Living Pattern

Long ago I settled on a way of life that has travel at the heart of it. I would escape northern summers to enjoy winters in Adelaide. My parents would wait at the windows of Adelaide airport to greet my family as we flew in to enjoy family meals, long bike rides, and walks along the beach.

Those visits were when I wrote previous versions of this essay as I took stock of the passing years in the places I lived, especially Delhi, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Since the start of 2022, when I began to pack up my life in London, I’ve made 56 flights and travelled the equivalent of six times around the world.

I don’t want to make that sound like a hardship because I have the opportunity to travel comfortably and the miles to enjoy some privileges when I do. Being able to pause for a shower and hand-rolled sushi at Narita airport en route from the US to Australia is something one shouldn’t take for granted.

And yet it is also several weeks’ worth of time spent on planes and in airports, as well as travelling to and from flights, and packing and unpacking. It’s time I could have spent finding a long-term home and building a new studio.

But this isn’t that season.

And it’s OK.

No amount of luxurious private airport lounges can compare to seeing familiar silhouettes waiting for you or waving goodbye.

I don’t have that any more, now my mother is gone and my father is more frail. That reminds me not to get ahead of myself by focusing on the future. To live fully in every day is to love completely in every way. This is a season to knit together the family I have left. As Porter sings “I’ll anticipate, with all my patience.”

Because every moment, every conversation, every step together, is precious. And I’ll travel as much as is needed to make it so.

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On Having Buffers

My daughter recently asked me a question about budgeting. I was a little hesitant to offer advice. Someone with as many vinyl albums or guitar effects pedals as I have probably shouldn’t pontificate about saving money anyway.

But as I gathered my thoughts and started to explain the difference between essential and discretionary spending, I recalled an old piece of advice. It suggested that your budget should be split 50:30:20.

Fifty percent goes to your core needs, like rent, bills, and food; 30% goes to your wants, like entertainment and shopping; and 20% goes to savings. When your income is low, it’s hard to save, so that 20% becomes more of a buffer, a little extra in case of unexpected expenses and emergencies.

I was a teenager when I first encountered the idea of a financial buffer. Before leaving to go to the movies, my father took my wallet and a 20 dollar bill. He folded the bill into a tiny rectangle, then tucked it into a corner of the wallet.

“Just in case,” he said. You want to carry a little extra cash, he explained, in case you lose your train ticket or have some other kind of emergency.

A few years later, I had just such an emergency. My wallet was stolen while I was playing pool. I found it soon after, in a bin, outside the pool hall. But it was empty – even the neatly folded $20 bill was gone – so I had to scrounge some change from friends to get a train ticket home.

Sometimes your buffer needs a buffer! After that, I always carried an extra bill in my jeans pocket, or tucked inside a jacket. That tiny little pocket in jeans is perfect for this.

Buffers As A Way Of Life

This idea of buffers can apply to more areas of life than managing your finances. Consider the way we approach time and planning our schedules.

The default for many people is to schedule their time in blocks that sit tightly against each other. A hour meeting at 9am followed by another that starts at 10 is an exhausting way to work. There’s no margin for things to run overtime. Or for delays in getting from one event to another. Having some sort of buffer between commitments takes a lot of stress out of the day. It gives you a chance to regroup and focus after every new commitment, to arrive on time and be ready.

In a way, a kitchen pantry is like a buffer. Yes, you store ingredients. But also, in an emergency, you can cook with pantry staples, without needing to rush out to a supermarket or order a meal delivery.

Perhaps the most important buffers are emotional ones. Knowing how much space to give yourself and others after an emotionally challenging situation. Or when to switch focus to something less taxing on your nervous system. We can’t expend all our emotional energy all the time.

Buffers Emerge From Boundaries

You only get buffers as a result of having rules. They don’t happen by accident. Buffers are spaces we choose to create.
Buffers do not come easily or naturally. To have money and not spend it, hold time and not give it away, keep food in reserve, or prioritise your emotional well-being all takes effort and discipline.

But a life with buffers is gentler. It pays to create the buffers and safeguard them.

Sometimes I put on a jacket or a pair of trousers I haven’t worn in a while and discover some cash I’d forgotten about. Occasionally, it’s even in a different currency – some pounds or US dollars from a previous trip.

That’s the thing about buffers. You never know when they will pay off. But they always do.

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Discernment

I’ve taken breaks from social media before. In fact, when social media seemed a whole lot less problematic than it does now I used to take them regularly. Then, when it became more combative, the breaks became increasingly remedial; a time to heal.

Right now the problem isn’t that I need a break from social media. I’m not exhausted or exacerbated. There’s plenty wrong with Twitter, for example, but it isn’t directly making my life miserable.

Rather, the problem is I’m just not sure why I’m using social media any more.

I hear versions of this problem from other creatives as well. It’s usually expressed as “I’m not sure why I keep doing this.”

Not long ago the “why” was pretty easy to articulate. Instagram was a great place to showcase photographic work. Twitter was a place to showcase writing, to meet people in creative fields, and to obtain reliable information about the places where you live or places you intend to visit.

Over time, Instagram became a place to brag about your lifestyle, while the slogan “Debate me, bro” seems to sum up perfectly what Twitter has become.

What Is Discernment?

The host of the On Being podcast, Krista Tippet, recently wrote about a break the podcast took and some of the changes made as a result. She called it “The Pause” and it was intended as a time of rest but also a time to strategise. In her typical style, Krista had a wonderful way of phrasing what it meant,

“Coming out of the last few years, my colleagues and I went into discernment about the service that is distinctively ours in this world that is unfolding — so full of pain, so wild with promise.”
– Krista Tippet

That word “discernment” caught my eye. It’s typically used by churches when deciding on whether to appoint a new minister, or when a minster decides to accept a job offer or leave a church.

What’s being discerned is a new direction or path of action. Discernment means pausing to re-read the map of your soul, or look for divine guidance about the way to go.

This year, while considering when and how to take a break from social media, I was thinking of calling it a sabbatical. But discernment feels closer to what I’m hoping for. In particular, to paraphrase Tippet, “what is distinctively mine to offer given everything that is changing, for good and ill, right now.”

The Summer Effect

I’ve just returned after several weeks in Washington, D.C. My daughter graduated from college and I stayed on to help her pack. The length of my stay gave me lots of time to explore a surprisingly diverse and hip city which is blessed with some of the best museums and galleries in the world.

Time and again I found myself wondering what it meant to stop and recycle my experiences for the online consumption of others. Even the best smartphone photo is no match for the experience of seeing a Rembrandt or Van Gogh in person. And my efforts at sharing the vibe of the neighbourhoods I walked through felt so shallow.

And talking to shopkeepers and museum staff seemed so much more insightful than online interactions.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the people who still follow me on social media. But something has shifted. I no longer feel like I’m travelling with a digital community alongside me.

What Will Discernment Look Like?

In recent months I’ve been trying out Twitter alternatives such as Bluesky and T2. But I can’t really explain why, beyond pointing to their existence and then waving my arms around while muttering something about Twitter’s inevitable decline.

That’s what a lack of discernment feels like. Just joining things because they exist. Participating because others are participating. Having no clear sense of what flourishing in a space looks like, or what kind of pay-offs would justify the time invested.

Discernment is about being clear on the changes you want to make and the reasons why you are making them. I’m reminded of Sarah Haider’s words about “mental hygiene” in The News Is Bad For You. Stop Reading It,

“I’ve been thinking about this and other ways to retain some semblance of mental hygiene in the modern world. We are experiencing radical changes in our environment — why are we so hesitant to make radical changes in our behavior?”
— Sarah Haider

What I want to feel, and I do mean physically feel, is what the absence of social media means in my life. What do I miss? What hole does it fill? What state of mind am I looking for when I go online or look at screens?

I’m reminded it’s not 2013 anymore. There was a time when social media created work opportunities, helped generate friendships, was a reliable path to local knowledge. But that story feels old now.

How Long Will This Season Last?

I’m curious to experience what happens when I take the questions and conversations I used to post on social media to other places. I’m increasingly drawn to closed communities for some of those needs, like The London Writers’ Salon, or course-based communities like Notion Mastery and Obsidian University. I’ve moved a lot of conversations with friends to messages.

I’m even writing letters and postcards again!

When I was considering this, my first thought was to take a break for the entire third quarter of this year (July to September). Then I considered making it one month.

But I’m not sure that setting a specific length of time matters. It will probably be at least a few weeks but not past the end of the year. This is probably one of those I’ll-know-when-I-know kind of things.

I don’t even think that being entirely absent matters, either. If I see a beautiful sunset and want to share a picture, or get something published and share the link, then why not just do it?

After all, part of what I’m questioning, what I’m trying to discern, is how much the anxieties and obsessions and rules matter any more. I want this period of discernment to be playful and experimental. After all, if it’s no longer fun, then why do it at all?

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Wisdom

As a college student, I took a course in the Psalms and Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. The professor bore a passing resemblance to Mr Burns from the Simpsons. In reality, he was kinder and more sincere. As long as you did all the course work.

Email and the web were a thing back then. But this college was still resisting technology’s advance. Every week, before this class, we would get a stack of photocopied readings topped with a green sheet of instructions.

“The green sheet will save your life,” the professor would say.

As long as you’d read the green sheet first, he was always cordial and responsive. But it wasn’t unusual for him to reply to a student’s question by silently holding up the green sheet and pointing to it.

Wisdom In Ancient Poetry

For a lot of people, the Psalms are their favourite part of the Bible. They’re accessible poetry. Most Psalms are hopeful and comforting. They’re the closest the Bible gets to Hallmark sentimentality or motivational-poster-style inspirational quotes.

But not Psalm 88. It’s bleak. Dark. Lacking hope.

The writer of the Psalm has a “soul full of troubles.” They feel judged by God, isolated, afflicted, like their life is over and their achievements already forgotten.

“Anyone under 40 can’t really understand or interpret Psalm 88.”

The professor’s words hung in the air for a while. He went on to talk about how Christians find the Psalm troubling. They try to find hope where there isn’t any. Only the cumulative effect of age and grief and disappointment can open the poem up to any meaningful interpretation.

I was too young at the time to understand what the professor was saying. But I got his point that Christians were uncomfortable with doubt, and even with the parts of their own Bible that held space for doubt, like this Psalm. And that didn’t feel wise.

Now that I’m older, I get it.

Being Oriented Towards Wisdom

You could say the professor alienated the younger students in his class – maybe all the students in his class.

His words were not inclusive or democratic.

Or perhaps what felt uncomfortable was the idea that acquiring wisdom is somehow connected with getting older.

It’s not a message young people want to hear. I didn’t want to hear it in my twenties. We didn’t have “OK Boomer” memes back then. But we were already over having Boomers “explain” the world to us.

Getting older doesn’t automatically make you wiser. We’ve all met people in their 50s or older who have no more emotional intelligence than someone many years younger. And, of course, we don’t follow the same path through life.

Because we all have different experiences of education, family, work, travel, relationships, art and culture, we can’t just use age as a benchmark for how well someone understands life or how much wisdom they’ve acquired.

We don’t acquire wisdom directly from experience anyway. Some people learn their lessons while others keep making the same mistakes. Some change and grow while others get stuck and struggle.

Action creates experience, but reflection enables wisdom.

How We Aquire Wisdom

We acquire wisdom from the inside out. You don’t start by trying to understand how the whole world works but by understanding what the world is doing to you.

That’s why the folks with an explanation for everything, a grand theory of why people do what they do, the ones who want to win every argument and turn every conversation into a TED talk, never sound wise.

The wisdom of Psalm 88 comes not from certainty, but from uncertainty. It’s the wisdom that comes from embracing doubt rather than rejecting it. From having lived through the dark night of the soul.

Maybe the professor was partly right. This doesn’t come naturally to the very young. Perhaps you don’t have to wait till the dark hairs appear to get it. But you do need life to have thrown some hard things at you to quieten down the urge to explain away the uncertainty.

It’s here we start to see the difference between wisdom and knowledge. The information we understand, the ideas we have internalised, the concepts we have domesticated enough to be able to put them to work for us, this is our knowledge.

Our wisdom is something more diffuse and subtle, the way we respond to mystery and uncertainty, the space we hold for human fragility and loss, the words we find when explanations will not suffice.

Life doesn’t always hand us a “green sheet” with clear instructions. It’s tempting to try to find one – in politics, or religion, or the company of people who are similar to us. Or resist the way the world changes and the challenges life throws at us.

The alternative is to hold space for the uncertainty, the doubt, and even the darkness. It doesn’t need to consume us. But it might hold the path to wisdom.

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The Unspoken Reason You Need Creative Community

Creative work of any kind can be hard; at times, lonely. Finding a community of fellow creatives can help you feel understood, give you encouragement and support, and create opportunities to collaborate with or learn from others. A community can help you hone your craft and overcome frustrations, rejections, failures, and disappointments.

And there’s another feature of being part of a community that shouldn’t be ignored.

A community can help you learn to talk about your work.

Finding Freedom In Creative Community

There’s always the potential for embarrassment when people ask you about your latest work, especially at the beginning of your journey. Even with years of experience, the awkwardness of writing your bio or about page doesn’t magically disappear. Neither does the feeling of needing to apologise for promoting your work in emails or on social media.

You know what you’re trying to say, show or convey. But sometimes you’re so close to the thing you’ve been trying to make, you’re unable to describe it, to explain it. You’re heavily invested in it emotionally, unable to objectively articulate your underlying purpose.

But even if you can, that doesn’t mean someone trying to consume your work – a reader, viewer, or listener – will get what you were trying to communicate. They may have a whole set of other reactions, or none at all.

You can think of it like this. Your perspective, as a creator, comes from inside the work, looking out at the world. Someone coming fresh to your work has a different perspective, one where your work is simply one thing in a universe of things.

This is where sharing your work in a creative community can help.

It gives you a chance to hear what resonates with others, what catches their attention, and the kinds of work that feel similar – and what makes your work different. Listen to people in your creative community explain their reaction to your work and you’ll get a rich palette of ideas, examples and metaphors to draw from. And people will invariably mention similar work they like from other creators. Listen, and you will find a wealth of descriptions, comparisons, and examples you can use to describe your own work.

The Right Kind Of Community

When I suggest you share your creative work, I’m not talking about sharing it on open social media platforms. That’s inevitably going to be counter-productive. Random criticism from strangers isn’t useful.

The community you need is made up of people who have “skin in the game”. People doing the same kind of work you do. Not folks who are live-action role-playing creative endeavours. Or just hanging around looking to criticise the efforts of others.

Share among equals. Talk to peers. Listen to teachers and mentors who want you to succeed.

Find this kind of community and it can fuel your ability to describe your work.

Learning To Speak To Your Audience

When people say your writing reminds them of such and such, or your photos recall a particular photographer, or your music seems to reference a certain artist, don’t flinch or get defensive. Hear this for what it is: a compliment that puts you within the canon of what they consider to be great creative expression.

You could do worse than to keep a note of this kind of feedback. Use it as a resource to find inspiration for future work. Borrow the language people use to describe your work when writing your own bios and about pages, pitches, and propositions. Enjoy using their words and descriptions as you explain your own work, knowing that you aren’t faking it or making it up but instead relying on real people’s thoughtful responses.

Most of all, relax into the knowledge that other creative folks – often the early adopters and tastemakers in society – find your efforts worthy of notice.

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Everything About Twitter Right Now

Twitter is changing. It will no longer be about news and information, community, or folks sharing every aspect of their lives.

But it will still be about what you had for lunch. How you paid for it. And how you felt about the experience.

Twitter As An Everything App

Because Twitter will likely become an everything app. Think of that as social media crossed with payments: your purchases, payment history, preferences, opinions and reviews, all encoded into your online identity. This kind of thing already exists in China. We’re soon going to see if it works everywhere else.

Think of it this way. You attend a sporting event and at half-time there’s some kind of entertainment. It’s sponsored by a fast food company. They’re giving away half-price meals if you tweet the hashtag. So you do, and you get a coupon. But it’s tied to your Twitter account. And when you use it, your Twitter identity now shows you to be someone interested in sports and fast food. And you receive ads tailored to you by other brands in sports and fast food.

Or suppose you go on holiday and the airline loses your luggage. You complain on Twitter. And you score the airline on their service. And they score you. Maybe they are also able to see what kind of customer you are, and how often you have complained about other things. And they adjust their service accordingly.

Twitter Needs a Saviour

People say Musk overpaid for Twitter. He himself admitted, in a bizarre interview with the BBC, that he bought it only because a court forced him to honour the purchase agreement he’d made. In the same interview he implied he’d be willing to sell if the right buyer came along.

But, assuming there is no buyer, how does Musk save this situation?

In the same BBC interview he said that advertisers are coming back to Twitter. However, that might not be true. And the strategy of bullying legacy verified accounts into buying subscriptions to “save their tick” failed, with less than 4.8% of the 407,000 verified accounts signing up. Twitter can’t survive on its current course.

Well, he’s long been interested in the idea of an everything app. Just like WeChat in China. He’s even legally merged Twitter into X Corp, an entity he created for just this purpose. And while he might not understand how advertising and media work, Musk does have some understanding of payments, given his role in the creation of PayPal.

The Marketing Of Online Clout

Years ago there was a platform called Klout. The idea was that your presence on social media, the number of followers and the engagement you had, could be monetized. Everyone would have a Klout score and companies would reward people who spent all day on social media with discounts and free stuff.

At the time I thought the idea was stupid. But was it just too far ahead of its time? Social media activity back then was too diffuse and ephemeral to be acted on in the way Klout wanted. And everyone was too set in the idea that the internet was just free commons where no one paid or got paid. Of course we’ve now had a decade of influencers and branded collaborations.

Kara Swisher once said, “Twitter is a great product and a terrible business.” This has always been true of its ad business. Facebook knows far more about its users’ beliefs and social class. Google knows far more about their tastes and preferences. Meanwhile Twitter managed, once upon a time, to gather the smartest and most creative people on a single platform, while knowing very little about them individually. Which meant it couldn’t give advertisers the kind of nuanced demographic information they want in order to build effective marketing campaigns.

Becoming an everything app might make Twitter more attractive to advertisers. It would also make the platform’s attempts to sell subscriptions more compelling.

Getting Out Of The Subscription Maze

Twitter has had a subscription service, Blue, for a while. They tried to market its features to power users and content creators, with little success. Meanwhile a lot of Twitter’s regular users, stuck in a decades-old perspective, scoff at the idea of “paying to tweet.”

But of course, people with skin in the game, who run brand accounts or create content or have businesses that sell online, have paid for years. Maybe not to Twitter directly. But certainly for third party services such as BlackMagic, Hootsuite, or Hypefury. But the controversy which Musk fuelled over the meaning of verification meant these kinds of users were never going to pay for a diluted version of verification.

But if a subscription-based verification advances your status in the everything app economy, then it would make sense for everyday consumers to pay. Especially if Twitter becomes something like the digital equivalent of a store loyalty card for every major brand in the world.

As someone who went to Twitter for community and collaboration, ideas and inspiration, and geniune connections and friendship, none of this appeals to me. The Twitter I loved might not be gone yet but it’s going fast. It’s being killed off by every erratic altercation, from messing with verification, enabling hate, to mislabelling public broadcasters.

Is There A Big Plan?

I don’t believe this was caused simply by a series of mistakes made by an erratic billionaire. There’s something deeper going on: an attack on the role of journalism as a critical voice against big tech’s excesses. In that same BBC interview Musk admitted he enjoyed removing the New York Times’ verified mark. He also suggested journalism was an inherently shallow activity.

This is in keeping with his increasing descent into a conspiracy theory influenced view of mainstream media. And runs parallel to a resentment-filled anti-journalism narrative that is popular in the tech world and dates back to the GamerGate controversy.

If the long-term strategy is to turn Twitter into an everything app, then the departure of all the authoritative voices that filled Twitter might not be a bad thing. After all, other spaces on the internet, like Reddit and Wikipedia, still thrive as places where people go for information without having visible authorities adding credibility to the platform.

Our Post-Knowledge Age

But I find places like Reddit and Wikipedia deeply unsatisfying. Wikipedia, for example, is fine if you want to know who won the FA Cup in 1970. But if you want to know what a major philosopher thought, it’s not as rewarding as The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Too often, Wikipedia has the same problems with generic language that we find in ChatGPT’s answers.

Sometimes it feels like we’re in the post-knowledge age. We have content for content’s sake even if it doesn’t say or mean everything. We are conditioned by the technology around us to be satisfied by the most convenient answer instead of the best one.

Maybe in that world Musk’s everything app version of Twitter, with a faceless horde of competing voices trying to crawl out of the bucket to gain treats from their favourite brands, could be a success.

Other Recent Essays on Twitter

A Post-Twitter World – with Twitter in turmoil this essay looks at how Twitter is more of a cultural engine than a technology platform and how to think about a future where Twitter is perhaps less central to the world’s creative media conversation.

The Future Of Twitter – an in-depth look at the challenges Twitter was facing, the reasons why they were considering a sale to Elon Musk, and the problems in his proposed solutions.

How to Use Twitter – an actionable and practical guide to using Twitter written specifically for people working in creative fields who want to be able to make meaningful online connections and have a safe experience with Twitter.

Ten Years On Twitter – using a ten year anniversary on the platform to reflect on the way it has changed and how my own habits have evolved in response to those cultural and technological shifts.

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Should We Teach Kids To Code?

A recent ad caught my attention. The University of Adelaide, through EDx, is offering an online code bootcamp. Twenty-four weeks with industry placement. The jolt of FOMO (fear of missing out) I got was unexpected.

I don’t code. Or, as I’ve explained in the past, I can code, but I don’t think of myself as a coder. Mostly this imposter syndrome erupts because coding is something I didn’t formally learn. I taught myself.

My high school had one computer, which spent most of its time locked in a storage cupboard on the second floor of B Block, opposite the maths teacher’s common room. I got to use it a couple of times in Grade 8, when our maths teacher ran a lunchtime computer club for one semester. I never saw it again for the remaining four years of high school.

Code And Its Place In The Classroom Today

The situation is different in most schools now. The politicians like to talk about “a computer in every classroom”. Those politicians also like to treat education as little more than training future workers. So some caution is advised.

Which is why I ask: Should we teach kids to code?

It depends what we think the purpose of education is. If it’s nothing more than preparing little minds to one day be workers, then we almost certainly shouldn’t bother teaching them how to code.

Yes, you read that right.

Why Code Matters

Whatever kids learn today will be out of date by the time they reach the workforce. More and more no-code tools emerge every year, allowing you to build things with little to no coding knowledge. And a lot of today’s coding work will be done in the future by AI, or at least, by the best specialists working with the assistance of AI.

But, but, what about computers? Doesn’t everything run on computers?

Well, sure. Email and websites are ubiquitous in business. But how many office workers can set up an email server or build a website? Using computers is a non-negotiable workplace skill. Understanding how they work isn’t.

Which brings us to the real reason kids should learn coding. Because our world runs on code.

Learning to Code Unlocks a Deeper Understanding of Our Digital World

It’s not just about computers or the internet. Your car, your laundry machine, maybe even your toaster – they all run on code. Understanding how code works is central to understanding how the world works. And perhaps more importantly, understanding how and why it doesn’t work.

Learning to code is like learning a foreign language. If you can speak two or more languages, then you grasp some important truths about people and culture. Some words can’t easily be translated.

And some ideas are understood very differently in different cultures.

When you learn another language, you don’t acquire a second vocabulary. You escape the prison of monolingualism. After that, you will always see the world differently. And understand communication more profoundly.

And here’s the thing. Even if you never use that language again, the insight remains.

Education Is An Investment In Character

Code is a way of turning ideas into action. It teaches us about cause and effect. About processes and systems.

Coding is not easy. It involves trial and error, discipline, practice, and patience. Mistakes happen all the time. Learning to find and correct them is part of the job.

These are not just qualities that make for good coders. They’re qualities that can make for resilient humans.

When we think about the subjects we choose for school curricula, it’s about more than just “skills for work,” especially in a world where the nature of work is changing so fast. What we need are subjects that build coherent ways of understanding and fixing that world. And that build character to face the challenges that the world throws at us.

Coding should not replace art, history, or languages. Understanding how societies got to be the way they are is essential for coming up with solutions for their failures. Being able to navigate the world of language and symbols is key to making sense of our own experiences and the beliefs and perspectives of others.

But coding has a place amongst us as well. Not because it trains future workers. But because coding can help teach future adults how the world works and how to fix it when it breaks.

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Can AI Blog? Testing ChatGPT

Late last year, when AI started getting lots of attention as a tool for generating text, I decided to experiment a little by asking ChatGPT to write my bio. This is what it came up with:

Fernando Gros is a creative entrepreneur, writer, and photographer based in Tokyo, Japan. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Fernando has spent over 20 years living and working across four continents.

Fernando's work spans across various industries, including technology, finance, media, and education. He is a former managing editor of The Next Web, a leading technology news website, and has contributed to publications such as Forbes, CNN, and The Guardian. In addition to his work in media, Fernando has also worked as a consultant, advising companies on content strategy, social media, and digital transformation.

Fernando is also an accomplished photographer, with a focus on street photography and portraiture. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Tokyo, London, and New York, and has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Time Out, and Lonely Planet.

Beyond his professional work, Fernando is also a published author and educator. He has written several books on photography, creativity, and personal development, including "No Missing Tools: Creativity in the Digital Age" and "The Art of Timing: Mastering the Unseen Forces of Life." He has also taught photography and digital media at universities in Japan and Singapore.

With his diverse range of experiences and talents, Fernando Gros has established himself as a thought leader in the areas of creativity, innovation, and personal growth. He continues to inspire and motivate others through his writing, photography, and educational work.

While parts of this bio are true and maybe even insightful, some of it is plainly wrong. I wasn’t born or raised in the UK, I’ve written only one book, and my while my work has hung in a gallery in Tokyo, it hasn’t been exhibited in London or New York.

Interestingly, this bio’s exaggerations fit within my aspirations. But, it’s the kind of padding someone might indulge in if they had few concerns about the truth. It’s bullshit, to borrow Harry Frankfurt’s definition of the kind of lies that bear no relationship to or curiosity about the truth. And it’s an example of the kind of “middle-aged guy trying to win an argument” energy that we see in so many ChatGPT examples.

But the experiment left me wondering if I could – ethical concerns aside – use ChatGPT to write blogposts.

What Might A ChatGPT AI-Generated Blog Be Like?

Let’s clear this up right away. I didn’t write this essay with ChatGPT. There’s no bait and switch where you get to the end of the article and I say, “Ta da! AI wrote this, ha ha.” All the computer generated copy is differently formatted so you can tell the difference between me and the machine.

To get some sense of what an AI blogger might be like, I asked it to write a paragraph explaining my ideas about creativity. ChatGPT3 couldn’t handle requests like that, but ChatGPT4 gobbles them up. This is what it replied with:

Fernando Gros believes that creativity is not a talent that some people possess and others do not, but a skill that can be developed through practice and experimentation. He emphasizes the importance of cultivating curiosity and exploring diverse interests, as well as breaking free from self-imposed limitations and fear of failure. Gros also argues that creativity is not just about producing something new, but also about discovering and expressing oneself in a meaningful way. He encourages individuals to take risks, embrace vulnerability, and seek out new experiences as a means of unlocking their creative potential. Overall, Gros promotes a holistic approach to creativity that emphasizes personal growth and self-expression rather than external validation or commercial success.

I can see my ideas in there. But they’re obscured by clichés. It sounds a bit insincere, a bit corporate, a bit generic. If only there were a way to make it sound more like me…

Can ChatGPT Replicate My Writing Style?

One way ChatGPT4 is a significant upgrade on ChatGPT is in the area of understanding writing style. I asked ChatGPT to describe my style, and it came up with this:

Fernando Gros is a writer and photographer known for his clear, concise, and engaging writing style. He is known for his ability to explain complex ideas in a straightforward and accessible way, making his writing accessible to a wide range of readers.

Gros often incorporates personal anecdotes and observations into his writing, which adds a personal touch to his work and makes it relatable to readers. He also uses descriptive language to create vivid images and sensory experiences, drawing readers into his stories.

Overall, Gros's writing style is characterized by its clarity, accessibility, and engaging storytelling.

It’s flattering that ChatGPT now knows me well enough to describe my writing style in this slightly vague way. It’s a bit of a literary horoscope; it could be true for many people who write creative non-fiction. But it’s enough to make me wonder if ChatGPT could rewrite that earlier section, on my ideas about creativity, in my writing style. This was the result:

Creativity is not some innate gift that only a select few possess. Rather, it is a skill that can be honed through repeated practice and a willingness to explore new ideas. As such, cultivating curiosity and expanding one's range of interests is essential for unlocking the full potential of our creativity. To truly embrace our creative selves, we must break free from the self-imposed limitations that hold us back and overcome our fear of failure. It's important to remember that creativity is not just about generating something novel; it's also a means of discovering and expressing ourselves in ways that resonate with our deepest selves. So, we must embrace risk-taking, vulnerability, and the unknown as we venture into uncharted territory and seek out new experiences that stretch our creativity to its limits. In short, creativity is not merely a means to an end; it's a journey of personal growth and self-expression that brings us closer to our authentic selves.

When Chatbots Get Weird

Once again, ChatGPT got the ideas right but served them up in a trite word salad. I couldn’t sign my name to something like that. So I asked ChatGPT to write a few shorter versions of the paragraph, then chose the best one to rewrite in my style. At this point, ChatGPT served up some copy on an entirely different subject!

The current era is marked by a rapid pace of technological advancements that are transforming our lives in unprecedented ways. With each passing day, we are witnessing the emergence of new technologies and innovative solutions that have the potential to change the world as we know it. It's an exciting time to be alive, but also a daunting one, as we grapple with the challenges and uncertainties that come with these changes. At the same time, it's important to remain optimistic and embrace the opportunities that these transformations bring. With the right mindset and a willingness to adapt and learn, we can harness the power of technology to create a better world for ourselves and future generations.

I agree, it is an “exciting time to be alive,” and “daunting,” and yes, I’m also uncertain what it all means. Especially since I was asking about creativity. Did ChatGPT interpret my many questions as a prompt to shift to another topic it associated with me?

Also, this paragraph is so vague, like it’s saying something, but it doesn’t say much at all. It’s the kind of thing a student might hand in when they realized an assignment was due at 11pm the night before the deadline, and they hadn’t done the required reading.

Why Does ChatGPT Brag So Much?

Since ChatGPT wanted to talk about tech, I ran the previous experiment again, asking it about my ideas concerning technology and then refining those into some copy written in my style. This answer really took me by surprise:

As an expert in the realm of technology and creativity, I have spent countless hours pondering the ways in which these two fields intersect. My belief is that technology has the power to unlock our full potential as creative beings, providing us with new tools and methods for innovation and problem-solving. However, I also recognize that there are potential pitfalls and risks associated with unchecked technological progress. Thus, it is essential that we approach technology with a sense of balance and caution, being mindful of its impact on our lives and the world around us. Ultimately, I believe that the key to success lies in using technology to enhance our lives and make the world a better place, while staying true to our fundamental values and principles. These are just a few of the ideas that have shaped my thinking on technology and its role in society, and I look forward to continuing to explore these themes in the years to come.

Here’s a tone I would never use. If I read something written this way, I’d turn the page or scroll away. It’s not that the ideas are wrong. But I wouldn’t address a reader in such a condescending tone, bragging about my expertise and parading self-confidence without clear examples and counter examples.

I’m reminded of a quote by Ernst Hemmingway about the heart of good writing often involving not saying everything you know about a subject

“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”

Generic Content Perpetuates Dominant Voices

ChatGPT4 and its earlier iterations have been trained on massive amounts of text drawn largely from websites like Reddit and Wikipedia. That means the language model sprouted from online arguments and the generic presentation of agreed facts.

This goes a long way to explaining why ChatGPT wants to veer in the kinds of linguistic directions we’ve seen. That’s its home territory: winning arguments and settling scores.

This might do well for content that needs to be reliably unremarkable. AI could, and probably will, have a huge impact on the kinds of online writing that depends on search engine optimization and giving simple answers to common questions.

But what if the goal is to challenge existing ideas rather than just uphold them? What if you are looking for novel solutions instead of well-worn ones? What if you crave unique voices rather than the familiar?

As the authors of the compelling research paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? explain, by being a kind of average of large chunks of online discourse, ChatGPT reinforces certain points of view and marginalizes others.

“In accepting large amounts of web text as ‘representative’ of ‘all’ of humanity we risk perpetuating dominant viewpoints, increasing power imbalances, and further reifying inequality.”

Part of what makes the content in the experiments above so bland is that it’s mixed up with other similar, but largely mainstream, ideas. That’s where the greeting card tone comes from. It’s all just mixed up into a kind of relevancy soup. The ideas are there, but you can’t really make them out or taste them.

Emotion is at the Heart of Great Writing

Of course, this is a risk all writers face. When I read my work, especially early drafts, I often think “that’s too generic,” or “surely you could say that better.”

“Write towards the emotion” is something I often say to myself when trying to rewrite a piece that doesn’t work well. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s one of the most reliable pieces of writing advice I’ve heard. If it’s not working, I need to be more vulnerable.

When a piece of writing doesn’t seem to say anything, it’s because it doesn’t make you feel anything. The emotional journey we go on as readers is what connects us to the writers, the characters, the ideas and the story.

Looking at these and other ChatGPT examples, it’s clear the emotional content isn’t there. When pushed, it does the opposite of writing towards the emotion. It becomes less vulnerable; it tries to win the argument.

I’m sure, given time, these models will inject more emotive language into their texts. They’ll be trained on the words of better writers rather than on those who spend their time on online forums.

But I’m not sure the challenge here is simply one of computational power or texts imported into the database.

Emotion is fundamentally a physical thing. When I find the way towards the feeling with the right words and in the clearest way I can, it doesn’t just register as a disembodied “yes” in my mind. I sit up straight in my chair. Maybe I punch the air. Or I get up and dance. I feel it in my body.

Writing Should Be Treasured

The short answer to whether I could use AI to write this blog is yes. It would make my life a lot easier – and probably increase the traffic to my site exponentially, since AI-generated writing might appeal more broadly and would almost certainly perform better in search engine results.

But, dear reader, that is not the dance we’ve agreed to share every week, is it?

For all the reasons we’ve looked at here, I just don’t feel that language models like ChatGPT are all that useful for a writer like me. They can generate text quickly but they don’t feel trustworthy. If posting here became too hard, I would rather give up than give you something as generic as the content ChatGPT creates.

Writing is hard and inefficient. That’s why we learn so much about ourselves when we try to do it. It takes tremendous vulnerability to bring the words to the page, to reveal our insides to the world. That’s why the best writing teaches us so much. It gives us these intimate, personal windows into humanity. We should treasure them every chance we get.

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A Canon Of Creativity

In his new book, The Creative Act, acclaimed music producer Rick Rubin devotes one chapter to the benefits of immersing yourself in work of great quality and spending less time on the noise that often fills our days.

Rubin believes that in order to be more creative we must approach life with a sense of curiosity, a desire to learn, a hunger for beauty, and an openness to being fascinated and surprised.

“In service of this robust instinct, consider submerging yourself in the canon of great works. Read the finest literature, watch the masterpieces of cinema, get up close to the most influential paintings, visit architectural landmarks.”
– Rick Rubin

I love that he chose the word canon. It has a fascinating history. We’ll explore why it’s fallen out of favour. But also why it’s still a good word to use, and how to develop this practice of “submerging yourself” that Rubin talks about and how it can help you become more creative.

What is a canon?

The Bible is perhaps the most famous example that comes to mind when we think of the word canon. Here, canon refers to a a collection of divinely inspired religious writings.

Not everyone agrees on what belongs in the canon, though. Followers of Judaism have a shorter list. Most Christians add a large number of works to their list, creating two sets within the canon, the Old and New Testaments. Some Christians add more works still, which get called the Apocrypha. Other Christians hold that there’s a kind of “canon within a canon”, where the four works that specifically refer to the life of Jesus are more important than the rest.

Within Christianity there are also different theories over what constitutes canonicity. Some say that all the words in every work were literally dictated by God, and that’s why they belong on the list. Others believe God inspired the writers, who then mostly wrote in the way human writers do, with occasional exaggerations and mistakes. But that inspiration is still evident and separates those works from others. Finally, some view inspiration as resting not in the writing as much as in the collecting, editing and grouping of canonical works. The decision to put something inside or outside the canon is the inspired moment.

How does this matter for us today?

Mostly it’s a cautionary tale. Making a canonical list of anything is challenging. Possibly we’re doomed to fail. However sure we are of our list, others will disagree, and that’s OK. Even once we finish our list it might seem provisional or incomplete, and that’s also OK.

What matters is making your list, setting your canon, then learning from it, living with it, and letting it change and inspire you.

A Canon Is A Growth Tool

Returning to Rick Rubin’s idea, how does crafting a canon foster more creativity?

First of all, it concentrates our attention on what Gary Rogoski calls “quality.” It tightens our sense of what makes the best work better. It helps us focus on the craft of what we’re passionate about.

“If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media.”
– Rick Rubin

Second, engaging consistently with great creative work shows us what’s possible. It gives us permission to take risks and embrace bolder ideas. It reminds us to be brave in our self-expression. Once again, Rubin makes the point:

“Nonetheless, exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward, and opens doors of possibility.”

All this talk of canons and quality might seem elitist. In some ways it is. It might mean spending a bit less time on the most recent things in popular culture or whatever happens to be trending on social media this week.

But the goal isn’t to become some kind of elitist for the sake of it. We’re not trying to win social status by doing this.

The objective is to concentrate on our own creativity, cultivate our appreciation of beauty and good craft, develop a sense for the skills and dedication that go into making great work, and expand our capacity for taking risks and standing out in the things we do.

A Further Problem with Canons

One problem with the idea of a canon of great works, whether it’s in art, books, film or music, is that those lists for a long time featured a preponderance of white men, mostly from Europe and North America.

Of course, this isn’t a new realization. We’ve been grappling with this at least as long as I’ve been alive.

The Sight and Sound list of The Greatest Films of all Time is a great example. The list is compiled every decade, and the last couple of editions have seen quite a bit of change. Look at the list today and it hits you as being spectacularly diverse. New films, old films, famous movies, obscure titles, cinema from all over the world.

But from 1962 to 2002 the list hardly changed at all.

As you can see in this excellent visual essay from the New York Times, part of what changed was the expansion of the list. By growing from 10 films to 100 it highlighted a wider range of films and filmmakers. It also gave more scope to reconsider older films as well.

As we make our own canon it’s worth considering what we might be excluding. Are our ideas of what is the best work a little outdated? Might we benefit from casting our net a little wider?

After all, the purpose of this exercise is to grow our capacity for curiosity and creative exploration.

Consume Criticism Carefully

There’s a commonplace if somewhat naive assumption that the job of a critic is to tell us whether a piece of creative work is good or bad. That’s not really the case. Expressed most simply, the job of a critic is to give us enough context to understand if and how a piece of work might be good or bad.

But the deeper work of criticism is to create canons.

A good critic is a kind of teacher who helps you become better at appreciating the kind of work they criticise. A film critic doesn’t just tell you whether or not a movie is worth seeing. They also remind of you what makes a film good. The good critic points you in the direction of their canon; the films they hold up as benchmarks of the craft of film-making. They call to mind the reason why you love films in the first place, why cinemas are our contemporary cathedrals, and why we enjoy talking about the films that touch us deeply.

Yes, it’s every bit as lofty as all that.

The Danger of Elitism

Over the years I’ve met plenty of people who take a perverse pleasure in telling you how they don’t watch television. They brag about how their refined sensitivity makes it impossible for them to consume low-quality mainstream art. TV is just rubbish, after all.

Except it isn’t, and hasn’t been for a long time.

It used to be that TV shows had tiny budgets (compared to film) and could draw a much smaller number of the most talented. That started changing in the 1990s and it hasn’t been like that for a long time. TV now has the budgets, talent, and production values to rival most films. Plus, it has longer episodes that allow for richer storytelling.

Whenever we talk about quality we run the risk of telling stories about the work that’s out there that are really more about our own desire for status and recognition.

For many people of my age, there’s a danger of falling into the same intellectual trap when in the matter of video games. We assume it’s just a junk form of entertainment. Our lack of engagement blinds us to the quality that exists in that realm, and the skills of the many creative people who work on games. So many movies and TV shows have been spun off from games, which speaks to the amazing storytelling and world-building that exists in some games.

Canons create Canons

The word “canon” came into our vocabulary from the Latin and later the French translations of the ancient greek word for “rule”. In theological circles, the word is sometimes still used in this way, to describe a rule or principle and even someone who lives according to a particular set of such rules.

I’m not suggesting we adopt this older use of the word canon.

But it’s worth reflecting on how the canon we choose, the list of great, inspired works on which we focus our attention, can shape the ideas and principles that guide our work.

A well-chosen canon of inspiring creative work will help us to derive aesthetic and technical principles and ideas that can inspire our own creative endeavours.

“The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.”
– Rick Rubin

Don’t Shoot Yourself in The Foot With Your Canon

One final word of caution. As you make your list of great work and take the time to appreciate it, don’t compare your own efforts too harshly.

Ira Glass does a great job of highlighting how we can often get in our own way. When we start out, our sense of what is good is often far better developed than our ability to do good work. We can become excessively self-critical. It can even hold us back from trying or really committing to the things we try to do.

Instead, just make your lists, in whatever digital or paper format suits you. Spend time enjoying that great body of work, spend less time on the junk that usually fills our days, and let it seep into your view of the world and the work you do.

And enjoy the process.

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Let Your Yes Be A Yes

It’s been a long, long time since I stopped quoting Bible passages. But one popped into my head last week during a conversation about setting priorities.

“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.”
– Matthew 5:37

I’m not sure our occasional inability to clearly say “yes” or “no” comes from the Devil as much as it comes from the darker recesses of our psyche, from our need for validation, our self-doubt, or other limiting self-beliefs. But it’s clear that this is an issue many people have struggled with throughout history, including those alive today. We say “yes” to too many things. We don’t always find it easy to say “no.”

The consequence is that we find ourselves juggling too many commitments, not having the time for the people or activities we really want to enjoy, or otherwise feeling overwhelmed.

In this article I want to explore what it means to make each “yes” really a “yes,” why your default answer to most requests should be “no,” and how having clean edges around the way you say “yes” or “no” can protect and enhance your mindset and well-being.

Let “Yes” Be Enough

When you say “yes,” be aware of how enthusiastic saying the word makes you feel. Too often we say “yes” because we feel obligated, because we don’t want to disappoint, because we just want to feel needed, or to avoid conflict.

This means it’s not necessarily a wholehearted “yes,” and so it opens us up to agreeing to things we don’t really want to do.

I like the way Derek Sivers puts it: don’t just say “yes,” make sure it’s “Either HELL YEAH! or no.” Unless you’re full to the brim with joy and excitement at the prospect of doing something, don’t agree to it. Don’t commit. Don’t say “yes.”

“When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.””
– Derek Sivers

Another way to get to a solid “yes” is to try and schedule the ask before committing to it. How long will it take? Do you need to add travel or preparation time? Do you really have room in your calendar for all that? Are there things you’d be happy to cancel or reschedule before you can say “yes”?

Resisting the urge to reply in the moment can also help. Taking a night to sleep on your “Hell yeah” response is worthwhile. As is making the time to look at your schedule properly. It’s worth practising your “I’ll get back to you” reply, at least at first, as you start changing how you say “yes.”

But perhaps the most powerful way to manage this is to simply change your default response.

Make “No” Your Default

Several years ago, I started noticing how the most creative and productive people I knew seemed to say “no” to almost every request for their time. Taking a peek at their email inbox, social media notifications, or LinkedIn account showed me the vast number of requests they got every day every week.

Chase Jarvis puts it well when he says saying “no” being like a skill that you need to practise. It’s not easy saying “no.” Most of us have to learn how to do it and how to be comfortable with doing so.

A “no” can be friendly, encouraging, or polite. It can suggest someone better suited to the task. Or it can educate and show a better way to make a request.

Most importantly, a good “no” clarifies. It reminds you and everyone around you what your priorities and values are. It illuminates the road, not just to better opportunities, but to better ways to request your time and attention.

The Benefits Of Saying A Clear “Yes” Or “No”

We all too easily fall for the idea that saying “no” will close us off from future opportunities. But it doesn’t really work like that. In fact, saying “yes” too often can overwhelm us with so many commitments that we might not have the time or space when a really good opportunity comes along.

A good “no,” as much as an enthusiastic and less frequent “yes,” sets boundaries.

It’s better for your health, well-being, and the quality of your relationships if you commit to the things you can do well and avoid the ones you can’t. This lets you focus on where you can be of most use to those around you.

It also helps you to avoid the inevitable regret, guilt, and even shame that comes from giving your time and effort to things you don’t value.

What About “Maybe?”

Is there a place to occasionally reply with a “maybe”? Well, maybe. It depends on the circumstances.

“Maybe” is for ideas, not requests. If someone asks you if you can do something, then you should always say “yes” or “no.” But if the request is more theoretical or speculative, then “maybe” might be appropriate.

But avoid the temptation to cave into saying “maybe” when you really want to say “no.” Maybes create ambiguity; they invite people to keep asking you to do things you eventually say “no” to or regret saying “yes” to.

It’s better to say “no” often and to say “yes” occasionally and with lots of gusto, before getting on with the business of living and creating.

“We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.”
– Derek Sivers

If you enjoyed this topic then here are a few more essays on decision making,

Why You Should WOOP
A Broken Guitar And Decision-Fatigue
How To Think About New Technology
Decision-Free Mondays
Oblique Strategies

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