Sonk

“group discussion techniques could be employed to change a variety of similarly entrenched behaviors involving health practices and child care. For example, when rural mothers in a maternity hospital were individually advised by a nutritionist to administer cod-liver oil to their newborn infants, only about 20 percent complied within the initial test period. When the same information was introduced in the context of a six person discussion group, the rate of immediate compliance more than doubled, reaching 45 percent.”
― Lee Ross, The Person and the Situation

“Was I trying too hard to make this mean something? I asked Leah. Was that just buying into the industry's own narratives about itself? I tried to summarize the frantic, self-important work culture in Silicon Valley, how everyone was optimizing their bodies for longer lives, which would then be spent productively; how it was frowned upon to acknowledge that a tech job was a transaction rather than a noble mission or a seat on a rocket ship. In this respect, it was not unlike book publishing: talking about doing work for money felt like screaming the safe word. While perhaps not unique to tech--it may even have been endemic to a generation--the expectation was overbearing.

Why did it feel so taboo, I asked, to approach work the way most people did, as a trade of my time and labor for money? Why did we have to pretend it was all so fun?

Leah nodded, curls bobbing. "That's real," she said. "but I wonder if you're forcing things. Your job can be in service of the rest of your life." She reached out to squeeze my wrist, then leaned her head against the window. "You're allowed to enjoy your life," she said. The city streaked past, the bridge cables flickering like a delay, or a glitch.”
― Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley

“Consistent and limitless learning is the minimum requirement for being a money-making entrepreneur.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“More collectivist cultures, including especially those of East Asia, not only show less focus on the self and more on family and other in-group members, they also are less dispositionist in their world view and in fact less prone to the fundamental attribution error. They focus less on the actor and more on the social situation surrounding the actor.”
― Lee Ross, The Person and the Situation