the productivity trap, unhappy teenagers & the four-day work week
CC#56 - Being Wrong about Public Opinion Changes, Paying for Houses in Cash & The Future of Ski Resorts
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🙃 The Dark Side of Being Obsessed with Productivity [🎧]
Another great episode of ‘Plain English’. As someone who has quite a high tendency to fall into the ‘productivity trap’, their analysis resonated with me a lot - includes some helpful advice for ‘being less productive’ + a good reminder that its ok to sometimes take things slow.
"Productivity is a trap. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved work-life balance. The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem—or so I hope to convince you—is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse."
That's how Oliver Burkeman, the author of 'Four Thousand Weeks,' explains our relationship to happiness and time. In this episode, he and Derek talk about his philosophy, the downside of constantly living for some future achievement, goals versus habits, and making peace with our finitude.
📱 Honestly, it’s probably the phones
Why have U.S. teenagers become less happy throughout the last years despite living standards rising? This article makes the (quite convincing case) that it could be because of mobile phones and has some interesting suggestions on how to deal with that.
But why would devices that make people more connected lead to social isolation? Isn’t that backwards? Doesn’t having access to all of their friends and acquaintances at all times via a device in their pockets mean that kids are less isolated than before? (…)
Of course, smartphones, by themselves, don’t force you to stop hanging out in person. But there are several reasons they reduce it. First, they’re a distraction — the rise of smartphones was also the rise of “phubbing”, i.e. when people go on their phones instead of paying attention to the people around them. Second, phones provide a behavioral “nudge”, like a pantry stocked with junk food — when your phone is right there in your pocket, it’s easier to just text a friend instead of going and hanging out, even if the latter would be less fulfilling. And third, in-person interaction is a network effect. If 20% of people would rather be on their phones, that reduces everyone else’s options for in-person hangouts by 20%.
📈 You're probably wrong about how things have changed
A summary of a number of studies on how people think that public opinion has changed on political issues (e.g. abortion, climate change) that reveals that most people are wrong about this and makes one reconsider one’s personal thoughts on opinion change. Spoiler: The percentage of Americans who stated that ‘they worried a great deal about climate change’ (according to Gallup) was more or less the same in 1990 as today.
We make sense of the world by telling stories about it. “We used to have racism, then we did a Civil Rights Movement; all good now.” “We used to have sexism, then we did a feminist movement; all good now.” “We used to believe in God, then we did an atheist revolution; all good/bad now, depending on your feelings about God.” These stories are often wrong. Sometimes they simply didn’t happen; sometimes they kind of happened. They’re almost always oversimplifications and caricatures, which is usually fine, but it’s less fine when we’re deciding whether people should be able to own an AR-15. (..)
When you get these stories wrong, you'll misunderstand how the world works and how to change it. If you think that we’ll wise up about climate change once we’ve lived through enough droughts and hurricanes, or that we’ll wise up about gun control once we’ve lived through enough mass shootings—well, you’re gonna be pretty disappointed once you see the data. Activists have fought for decades to convince people that abortion is acceptable; their efforts barely moved the needle at all. Apparently the only thing that actually makes people support abortion is the Supreme Court taking it away
Food for Thought.
🔥 I have to admit that I have personally very much stopped keeping track of the war in Ukraine - this article served as a sad reminder, that the amount of destruction taking place in Ukraine has been (and continues to be) huge.
🎿 Very interesting (and shocking) article on climate change adaptation strategies of ski resorts. Did you know that 95% of ski resorts globally are already now relying on artificial powder to ensure good skiing conditions or to prolong the season?
💼 I think its interesting to see that seemingly most people who had the chance to trial a four-day work week don’t want to go back (also considering the wage cut they have to accept in return) while at the same time - at least from my personal impression- people tend to tie their identity to their work more and more and workaholism is a big issue. Wondering if this is two distinct societal groups or we just don’t know what makes us happy… (My guess is probably the latter - if you are interested in more information on this, take a listen into this podcast)
Random Stuff.
🤖 Not only interesting for economists or researchers - quite a cool list of suggestions how to include ChatGPT and thelike in common work process to save you time.
🏡 Would you have guessed that in 2022 32% of houses sold in the U.S. were bought in cash (+8 percentage points compared to 2021)?! Apparently this seems to be driven by the increased share of white, wealthy and older buyers. The Washington post also plotted the ‘cash-share’ in different areas in the U.S. on a map:
☺️ Let’s be happy that we have problems.
Personal Update.
Spent quite some time working on a couple of (at least to me) exciting side projects - hopefully will be able to share some news there soon.
Seriously considering to write a review post about cafes in CPH (and their coffee, suitableness for working and - of course - bolle med ost). Let’s see if I’ll get around to doing that.
Feeling in a 25% better mood these days just because the sun has been out quite a lot lately - feels like spring might actually just be around the corner 😊