Jacob Robinson's Blog, page 19

Myths of People

We’d all like to think that we treat people equally, even though it’s obvious we don’t. But there are some surprising ways in which we separate ourselves from those much bigger than us.

I actually touched on this before, but only briefly. I think this is another important topic in parasociality not too far from the one we discussed in that blog. To start us off, here’s the quote where I talk about “people mythology”:

“Celebrities of the old years were able to reduce the development of parasociality by creating the veneer of “fake”. Celebrities didn’t seem like people; they seemed like characters, objects in a distant reality. This shielding came with its own disadvantages — the development of the paparazzi is probably the most notable — but for the wide majority of us we could understand that figures like Martha Stewart and Oprah aren’t our friends. They are beings unlike us. They are separate.

The truth, of course, is that such is not the reality. Martha Stewart and Oprah are people, just like us, who live their own lives, have their own relationships, problems, et cetera, not too different from ours. But this separateness is what prevents us from seeing them as part of our lives, which they are not. It is a fake truth which institutes the real truth.”

The idea that I discuss here about Martha Stewart and Oprah is that of the myths of people. You do not talk about your friend or your mother the same way you might talk about Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber (or insert whatever other well-known figure). The latter are public figures, and that publicity creates a few differences. Firstly, you do not know them — you know of them, and of parts of them, but you do not know them. Secondly — more interestingly — when you do talk about them, you might talk about them the same as you might a work of fiction. The words “Did you see that Kim Kardashian…” come across a lot more like “Did you watch the recent episode where [that character] did…” than if you were talking about a person in your high school class, even if you might use the same verbiage. 

Of course, my use of Kim Kardashian here is not coincidental. Good old Kimmy K may be the missing link as to why these myths of people exist. Kim is of course well known primarily for her TV show, which is a reality sketch of her life. It is, in many ways, the same as that fictional TV show. In fact, when we watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians, we often do not even acknowledge that she’s real, because of the way the show is produced. 

This is the “veneer of fake” that I mention in the above quote. It can be the TLC cameras like in the case of the Kardashians — it can also be the public music of Justin Bieber, or the magazine interviews of Martha Stewart, or the books of Oprah Winfrey. Each factor we connect with a fictitious element. Each fictitious element brings us farther from seeing people in reality, and closer to seeing people in myth. 

The End of Journalism

A Post-Truth world heralded the end of journalism as we knew it. And — in the wise words of Buzzfeed — “That’s a good thing!”

Alright, while the moniker of the Post-Truth Era certainly fits where we are right now, perhaps it is a bit misleading in this context. It seems to imply that the death of traditional journalism is an inherently terrible conclusion. The last bastion of truth — the source which prevents democracy from dying in darkness — is now gone. What is there to believe?

Well… the truth is, a lot of things. Just because the big giants of news are falling doesn’t really mean anything to us on a macro-level. But on a micro-level, interesting things are bubbling up. The journalists who worked for these sites are now making their own WordPresses, Twitters, and Substacks. They’re essentially taking truth from the corporations and putting it back in the hands of the individuals. This can be dangerous, but it can also be really good. 

The trick is then figuring out which of these micro-creators is legitimate, and which are fake news. Well, let me ask you — how do you determine which news media is legitimate? Well, you see if they cite their sources, if people treat them as a reputable info dealer, if they… oh, wait. None of this is exclusive to the giant firms, is it?

This is why I say it doesn’t mean anything on a macro-level. All we’re going to need to do is find out which journalists are legit and which are not, and we’ve already done that for the most part (we recognize most of them from their articles on NYT, or the Verge, etc.). There will still be fake news, and there will still be people who believe fake news, but that already existed with news media (Breitbart, anyone?). So, the process is still the same — it’s just that everyone’s gotten a little smaller.

But by putting it in the hands of the individuals, it gives people independence — the independence to write and interview and investigate as they please, without signing off on a major body. Casey Newton is no longer tied to the Verge’s dollar, and if Casey Newton wants to report on something via his independent means, then he can do it. By decentralizing journalism, what we’ve done instead is provide a lot more of a chance for stories to be heard, which otherwise might not have been. And I think that’s well worth the risk.

Progress in the Long Term

As time moves forward, an interesting thing happens: things progress. We take for credit the fact that human life seems to be advancing in a variety of different categories, rather than stay stagnant and volatile. But this raises the question: what does the endgame look like?

Francis Fukuyama spoke of the End of History, a metaphorical endpoint in social progress where humankind has become so equitable, so peaceful, that future history no longer need be written. It is a bittersweet conclusion — the only way for humanity to become at peace with itself is for life to become so routinized that there’s no longer room for conflict. 

Of course, that’s a simplification — and Fukuyama knew it. There is plenty more to keep humanity occupied than just social issues. The next biggest hurdle to cross is the economic one, and that’s a much more complicated issue. Of course, the crux of most economic conflicts is that resources are limited, and this is a fact that fundamentally cannot change. Technically we can skirt around that issue using innovation — innovation causes resource loss to be asymptotic, meaning that as innovation increases, we use fewer and fewer resources, and by virtue people become more and more resource-rich.

There are two problems with this asymptoticity, however. The first is that, since the limit is to zero, there will be some eventual state where resource count equals zero — an important thing to keep in mind for our ultra long-term point of view. The second, more pressing matter is that innovation is unequally distributed. In other words, we’re gonna hit zero on some resources a lot faster than others, just by virtue of some innovation not happening fast enough. This is a big reason why global warming has become such a hot (no pun intended) issue. 

So conflict will always exist in some capacity. But overall, progress seems to be winning most of the rounds. While I have my own problems with the book, Enlightenment Now gives a very, very detailed and rigorous breakdown of how long-term progress is destined to win.

But there’s an interesting Catch-22 here. Long-term progress only exists because we think it doesn’t. Consider this: if there was a widespread belief that we would be okay in the long-term, then we would turn lax. No one would look to solve problems in the immediate future, because we wouldn’t be worried about it. It’s only when there is adamant, strong reason to believe that progress doesn’t exist, and that it needs to be rectified, that progress happens. So while things are optimistic, remember to stick to your guns.

Strategies for David, Versus Goliath

At some point in your life, you’ll be dealing with someone a lot more powerful than you are. Most of the time these people will likely have a neutral impact, or even help you in your life and career. But sometimes — just sometimes — they can have bad intentions. Here are some tips for dealing with that.

To start off, I’d like to give a bit of context. I’m surprised by the amount of content “in the literature” the focuses on telling stories about powerful people slaying their enemies, but not how the rest of us can prepare against that. The closest I got to was reading The Power Broker, where Caro gives at least some examples of the people who escaped Robert Moses’ wrath, though these examples are few and far between. Most of the guidance I give in this post is based on these examples, though it’s also of course in part inspired by the implicit guidance given in the David versus Goliath folk tale. Anyway, let’s move on to the meat of the subject.

Assess the person’s power

A lot of the lessons gathered from The Power Broker was the result of men realizing how little control Robert Moses really had. He was the park commissioner. Of New York. If you wanted Moses to stop screwing with you, you just moved away from New York. A person’s power might be vast, but it comes from a source — what they’re good at, where people listen to them, who their followers are. The first step is understanding all these things — only then to the cracks begin to form.

Stand up to the bully

There’s a rather funny anecdote in The Power Broker that inspires this tip. Robert Moses was primarily known for his fits of rage, and he’d go down to the New York City government offices, walk right up to the person he had issues with, and start pounding his fists and yelling. For most people, this worked. They didn’t know how to respond, and so they shied away, embarrassed and defeated.

One day, a man on Moses’ hitlist had an idea. When Robert Moses walked right up to him and started yelling, instead of shying away, he tried something else.

He yelled louder.

Robert was shocked. To an extent, the rest of the office was shocked as well. Then Robert did something strange.

He didn’t know how to respond, and he shied away, embarrassed and defeated.

A lot of powerful people — bullies in particular — have a lot of offense and very little defense. Sometimes it’s as simple as the Moses story where you simply scream louder and scare the man off. Other times it is more subtle, but the rule still applies.

Use the press

This is actually what Robert Moses used in his early years when he was still a french fry. The man might have been a park commissioner, but that did come with its advantages — parks represented nature, the Mother of All, the beautiful yet delicate force from which we all owe our existence. If a person attacks you or tries to stifle you or throw you overboard while you’re park commissioner, what do you do? You go to your nearest press agent and say that person is trying to destroy our parks. 

If you don’t remember a single one of these other tips, then at least remember this one. There is nothing else that drives up rage, fear, and emotion more than the story of a powerful individual or organization placing their thumb and squashing someone who is much more weak and innocent than they. This is the only tip on here that works universally so.

Match your strengths against their weaknesses

This is, of course, the main lesson of the actual David and Goliath story. David is able to win because his size allows him to become more agile than the Goliath, who is beefy yet slow. Everything on planet earth has a main strength and a main weakness. If you’re up against a bully, look for their weakness by assessing their power, and then figure out how to get to them that way. That will provide you your best bet. 

Understand what’s at stake

The last lesson here is to realize what really matters in all of this. The people who fell to Moses were the ones who felt that a job in the New York public system was their destiny — that it was make or break — and so they fell under his thumb. But the ones who made it out realized that it would be much easier just to leave and live life on their own terms than to deal with Moses’ wrath. Of course, this one is easier said than done, and there’s plenty of examples where simply leaving isn’t a viable option. Still, it pays to think: what’s at stake? What’s the most you can lose?

Income Generators 101

I’ve realized that, whether it be on the newsletter or the blog, I talk a lot about income generators. However, there has been no definitive place where I’ve explained what exactly income generators are — I’ve only elaborated on them here and there. To have a place I can always go back to, I’ve decided to summarize my thoughts on income generators in this blog post.

Historically, there have been two modes of starting a company: building a small business, or building a startup. The difference between the two lies in the targeted growth rate, as well as the range of market cap desired. A small business aims for about 10% Y/Y growth with a value settling at around $10 million+. A startup aims for 60%+ growth and a value of $1 billion. 

Obviously, the implicit differences here are massive. A small business can be anything — a shoe shop, for example — and just needs a person with decent product and business knowledge. Since it’s not going for anything too fancy, it doesn’t have to be too fancy. Startups, on the other hand, are the opposite: it has to be a killer, unique idea that builds up very, very fast.

The problem with these two modes is that a lot of people get left on the wayside. There’s obvious reasons why someone wouldn’t want to start a startup (not everyone wants to go that fast!), but even a small business has its downsides. You’re still expected to deal with a lot of competition, build up an employee roster, have a sizable amount of inventory, etc. etc…

At the onset of the Internet Age, however, things began to change. Markets became simultaneously centralized and decentralized — anyone could build something anywhere and sell it to the entire potential market in the span of a few weeks (or even days). On one hand, this put small businesses on the verge of extinction; you could no longer settle with “just” a shoe business, a Zappos or Amazon (now one company, it is worth noting) would just wipe you out. On the other hand, the costs of a business went down dramatically, and scaling became much easier. So, what are we left with?

The result is income generators. Income generators are single-person businesses that target an net profit range that matches to an individual’s desired salary. These income generators have historically been associated with content creators (bloggers, musicians, YouTubers) but as costs continue to go down we now see apps and stores being built up by solopreneurs with this purpose in mind.

The reason income generators now work is because, as was mentioned, the costs of developing a (software) product and distributing it have gotten to the point of near zero. Certainly you can’t create a great product or marketing on no budget, but a person who’s got enough business smarts can now carry themselves most of the way there.

There’s a lot of big benefits to income generators. The obvious main benefit is that it provides a flexible, custom way for a person to make a living. No longer is a person tied to the fate of a specific company, and a specific position. Now, they build their own product — whether they’re a writer, an artist, a shop owner, an educator, or anything else. This flexibility also creates freedom. Depending on how you choose to build your business, you can work remotely, and with however many hours you want. As long as you make your income threshold, you can live how you please.

With all this, it is important to keep in mind something: developing an income generator is not an easy task. The Internet Age made it possible to become an income generator — it did not make it easy. Many people have built income generators of their own, for the sole purpose of telling people that the income generator life is a cinch, and therefore misleading people on their journey. Just like in investing, if someone had really solved it, they wouldn’t be wasting their time selling $500 courses on it!

Still, it’s worth doing. It can take years to get an income generator going, but once it gets started the returns certainly pay for the work. What I’d recommend most people do is to build an income generator while they’re in normal employment. Just like with investing, starting young is recommended though not required. Also like investing, there is an optimal mix of stocks and bonds — or in this case, IG work and employed work — that varies based on your personal goals and risk preference. And even if you don’t have a great idea for what to do, it’s worth trying on the side just to see if you get something good going!

Top 10 Tools I Use in 2021

For those of you who don’t know, I change my workflow. A lot. Even this post used to be a newsletter exclusive before it was booted in favor of “The Canon of Jacob Robinson”. Now, I’m bringing it back to the blog — and updating it with some new additions. 

Notion

We begin with our standards. Notion, as I mentioned in the newsletter copy, I had originally used as a novelty tool. Many updates to the service later, and I’ve now built a “Life OS” of my own using the product’s insane programmability (google “notion life os” for some examples of this). It is a good all around sort of tool. What I mean by that is its lists are worse than Airtable, and its word processing is worse than Google Docs, but it’s the only place where you can have a list item that can convert itself to a word document. It is, in other words, a great aggregator — and I’m interested to see where it goes. 

Todoist

I’ve actually stopped using todo lists as extensively as I have, in favor of focusing on projects and metrics more holistically. I still have some todos, of course, and for those I use Todoist. It’s a great all-around product, and was the winner of my “Todo List Tour” back in 2019. 

Habitica

Alright — if there’s one tool you get out of this post, make it this one. Out of all of the tools on this list, I have been using Habitica the longest. For eight whole years. That’s a mighty long time. 

Habitica’s benefit is that it uses gamification as a force for good. Gamification is a conglomeration of psychological tricks used in video game services in order to develop addiction to the product, triggering the player to spend more money on the game. But what if gamification wasn’t used for spending $500 on costumes for your game character, and instead on building good habits? This is Habitica’s keystone idea. There have been many, many competitors to Habitica since it’s creation — including some on Notion — but in my opinion Habitica has always been the defacto winner.

Google Calendar

When it comes to Calendar software, only two really come close – Outlook and Google Calendar. And while I know there’s plenty of hardcore Outlook fans out there, GoogleCal’s ease-of-access and portability triumphs over Outlook in practically every case. While there might not be as advanced of tools, it does get the job done; and besides, I like to go simple when it comes to the calendar. (Since writing this section, newer calendar apps like Fantastical and Woven have been released. While I think they have a lot of good features, at this point, I have too much on GCal to be worth the switch!)

TweetDeck

As a person who, when it comes to social media marketing, pretty much exclusively uses Twitter, Tweetdeck has become an essential part of my workflow. With infinite scheduling, it becomes much more helpful than Hootsuite, and its columns I think are a lot nicer than Hootsuite’s as well. However, if you’re running multiple channels I’ve still got to say Hootsuite is the best choice. (An update to this section: I’ve also started doing Instagram marketing, for which I can recommend Later. It’s a little bit more limiting than Tweetdeck, but still better than Hootsuite’s trial version.)

Grammarly

Since initially writing this into my top 10 tools, it has quickly become essential. The fact that the Grammarly extension works with just about everything (WordPress, Substack, Twitter, GDrive…) has been a godsend. I initially wrote that Grammarly was not much better than a word processor’s correction, but over time I’ve begun to realize that it catches a lot more nuanced mistakes than the defaults in GDocs or Word. The tone feature also helps sometimes!

MEGA

GDrive used to be my favorite cloud storage service, but its lack of space and specialty began to grate on me. MEGA, on the other hand, has a nice focus on security/privacy and a very generous space offering (50 gigs free!). Not only that, but it’s available pretty much everywhere GDrive is. Needless to say, this one took over.

Google Drive

While GDrive is no longer my favorite cloud service, it’s still my favorite word, spreadsheet, and slide deck creator. A lot of it is due to the fact that its cloud saves. A lot of it is also to do the fact that I’m just more used to it, like how I balk at using Photoshop when I’m already so naturally accustomed to the setup of Paint.net.

Obsidian

Alright, someone really needs to just sit me down and have me decide on a preferred note taking app already. First it was Evernote. Then it was GDrive. Then it was Simplenote. Now it’s Obsidian, a zettelkasten software that provides good organization and linking tools while still keeping things simple. I’m aware that Simplenote recently added linking, but something about the organizational structure on the app I just wasn’t vibing with. It might come back if it adds a few of Obsidian’s features (knowing the current notetaking-product-race, probably before this blog post even launches), but for now I’m sticking with this one. 

One downside to note about Obsidian is that it’s all local, meaning that you have to cloud backup manually. Since all of Obsidian’s files are markdown, however, this is a pretty trivial process. I just schedule time once a week to build a copy of my knowledge base, zip it up, and stash it in MEGA. 

Calibre

Last but certainly not least, we have Calibre. When it comes to a service that can simply and easily catalog all of the ebooks and pdfs on my computer, Calibre wins bar none. It also has a built-in system for reading epub and mobi files, which adds another powerful tool to the pile. Overall, if you have a ton of books and papers on your computer that need some level of organization, Calibre can help a lot. (Zotero can help with smaller stuff, like research papers and leaflets!)

Bonus: Canva

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Canva on my list. Pretty much all of my graphics are made on here. While I don’t like following templates, I’ll be honest — I’m not all that great of a designer. So the templates help me at least start with something that I can then develop over time. It also helps to not have to download a bunch of pics and memorize a bunch of size defaults — Canva does that all for me.

Alright then, that’s that. My top 10 tools change rather frequently, so I might turn this into a yearly feature, if there is interest in such a thing. Anyway, if you would like to join our newsletter, the link is below. Cheers!

Taste on the Margin

For the most part, taste doesn’t really matter. The wide majority of us can agree when something is good, or when something is bad. It’s only when taste is on the margin that interesting things start to occur.

Most people agree that the best film of all time is The Godfather (in particular, Part I). It’s not that The Godfather is everyone’s favorite movie — in fact, far from it. I have met very few people who claim that The Godfather is their favorite film of all time; yet when they have to choose an objective best film ever made, it typically goes to that film.

You see similar patterns in other media. For video games, it’s The Ocarina of Time. For music, it’s Dark Side of the Moon (though Radiohead fans would like to disagree). There always seems to be an agreed upon work or group of works that tend to take all of the top spots, and roughly 80% of people agree upon their placements. It also works on the opposite end — most people agree on what the worst works are as well. 

This seems to imply that our tastes usually aggregate in the same ways. We may have some differences, but the point is that if you get 1,000 people to vote on their favorite movie, a pretty clear pattern at both tail ends appears. It’s not a completely equal distribution.

But what if we look at the places where it is an equal distribution? In that messy middle, where people have a lot harder of a time agreeing upon what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s meh?

It’s in this place where people’s tastes actually shine through. I’ll give an example in video games, because it’s the easiest medium to make this distinction. A video game is typically judged by four aspects: gameplay, story, music, and art. For a game at the top tail — such as Ocarina of Time — it excels at all four aspects. For a game at the bottom tail — Superman 64 — it fails in all four aspects.

In the middle, you have games that are weighted in different manners. For example, Devil May Cry 3 is primarily gameplay-focused, but doesn’t really have a story. On the other hand, Uncharted 2 has a riveting story, but it’s gameplay is bland and basic. Both of these games are overall pretty well received, but they aren’t in the top tail. So who likes which game?

You can probably already see where this is going. Just as works are weighted differently, tastes are weighted differently as well. A person who enjoys gameplay more than story is going to claim that Devil May Cry 3 is a better game than Uncharted 2, and vice versa. A person who likes hip hop music is going to rate albums in the middle higher if they are hip hop, than if they are country. A person who prefers light-hearted, clear-cut movies are going to rate those movies higher than others.

So this is where taste really comes into play. It also proves that there’s not really such thing as “good taste” or “bad taste”. A taste being good/bad implies that there is a correct answer to a rating of each work. Perhaps this can apply to works in the tail ends, but it can’t apply to those in the middle. Tastes are inherently subjective, because they are based on weighted preferences. Not only that, but they are preferences that usually change over time. 

Still, it’s great to understand your own taste. After going through hundreds of movies, games, albums, and books, I feel like I have a much better understanding of myself than I did previously. I can infer things about the type of person I am based on what I enjoy — things I myself did not even realize. So go ahead — explore the margin. You never know what you’ll find.

The Cost of Staying Alive in America

I’ve finally gotten to the age where I’m working full-time, and have to make the decision to move out on my own. I did my own research, deciding on where to live, what would be the greatest value, etc. And then it hit me: living is a lot more complicated than it seems.

I have a pretty good job. Because of that, I could live practically anywhere in the United States and be at least somewhat comfortable. But what I was thinking when I did my research was not about me passing the bar. It was about the bar in the first place.

I’m going to use the cost of living numbers from NerdWallet, since it is the easiest to interpret for my argument. Now, to start off, I’m going to be a bit unfair. Here is the cost of living for the most expensive city in America, San Francisco:

One bedroom apartment: approx $2,064

Food for a month: approx $95 (NerdWallet isn’t super helpful in this regard. I know buying for one person in my city is roughly $75, and NW claims prices on food are 27% higher, hence the number.)

Yearly doctor’s visit: $154

Total for a year: $26,062

Now, I want to put this number into context: this is, quite literally, the cost of living. It is the cost of our basic human needs: food, shelter, and health. No entertainment. Not even transportation costs. It is the cost of survival.

But like I said, I’m being unfair. Let me take the cost of a more average city — let’s say, Denver Colorado:

One bedroom apartment: approx $769

Food for a month: approx $73

Yearly doctor’s visit: $125

Total for a year: $10,229

Well, it’s better than the Bay. But let’s remember what this number represents: the cost of staying alive. Not only the cost of staying alive, but the cost to stay alive for a year. If your income were to go below this number — assuming no savings — you are done. Pack up your bags, and say goodbye. 

Why are things like this? Well, it’s relatively obvious: technology and urbanization increases the costs of survival. In places such as Africa or Southeast Asia, the yearly cost of survival is about as much as an American teenager’s allowance. That’s because, in these places, the traditional rules of survival apply. You can make your own shelter. You can hunt your own food. Perhaps you can say the same in America for relatively rural places like Wyoming or Alaska (sure enough, these places are even cheaper than Denver), but that’s because you aren’t paying a technology premium.

Now, I want to be clear. I’m not saying the technology premium is a bad thing. I’m not saying we should take up the words of Ted Kaczynski and break the chains of technological slavery. Rather, I’m saying just to keep this number in mind. If you are reading this, you have beat the cost of staying alive in America, or wherever else you might be. And that is not an easy feat. Don’t take it for granted. 

10 Tips on Writing

Closure is required.Each character has an arc that gets them from point A to point B. Point B is noticeably different from point A.Describe with the five senses.Write such that the words make beautiful speech. Everyone reads in an internal monologue — so sentences that are easy to speak sound clearer and flow nicely.Given point 4: grammar is, for the most part, optional. I don’t need to worry about the semantics and style of language; I just need to make sure you pause when I need you to.Making things up often seems more real than heavy research. Use this as a word of advice for fiction and a word of caution for nonfiction.Write like a human. Listicles give you points on the search engines, but there is something artificial about lists.That being said, use lists if you’re lazy.Brevity is the soul of wit.Try not to think about it too hard.

Blog Writing for Robots

There is a new theory around writing on the internet, focused on algorithms and growth marketing. But is it worthwhile, and how long will it last?

Let me start off first by saying that I’m not completely opposed to content writing. There are still elements of the craft that I still use, such as the Unsplash image that starts this post and the newsletter ad that ends it. But I do have quite a few problems with the theory in general.

Content writing is described as a cure-all. It claims to be the best method of marketing in the modern day; that utilizing SEO techniques and headline analyzers will bring your blog from 0 to 100k visits in six months! And perhaps they are right. Perhaps content writing is the best method of marketing. But there’s a big difference between marketing and writing.

I would argue that content writing is not writing. Content writing is algorithmic: it involves obtaining a question from the masses, answering that question in neat little listicle sections, making sure to include your SEO words of choice and to make it over 2,000 words to appease the Google search crawler. You might notice that not a single one of my posts (with the exception of perhaps my earliest) follow these rules. Because I am not marketing. My writing is the product, and I market elsewhere. I suppose in this case you can argue that if you content-write with the intention of marketing a separate product, there is no issue with it. The problem is when you confuse content writing with writing.

See, there is one major difference between content writing and normal writing: content writing can be automated. Hell, it already is. So anyone who wants to make a living as a content writer is quickly finding themselves wanting to find a living as an AI tweaker, or otherwise not a living at all. Like I said, this isn’t an issue if you are a marketer by trade — it is an issue if you are a writer by trade.

So, are you a marketer or a writer? Despite my bias towards writing, I’ll admit there’s no wrong answer. It’s just up for you to decide.