Zoë > Recent Status Updates

I stayed up too late reading last night, which is always very satisfying.

"Here's the thing, Sorrengail. Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities."

"there was one class where students got really close+hung out outside of class, while the other class didn't. She wondered what the differences were.... 'I figured out that one class had an igniter, which was one person who was willing to ask everyone in the class, "Does anyone want to go to lunch after class?" And bc [of] that... 10 other people had more friends, even though they didn't really have to do anything.'"

"1 of his friends told the all-male group: 'I don't want to put effort into our friendships bc I have to put effort into my family. I have to make an effort at work, w my wife, w my inlaws. When I hang out w you guys, I want to put in zero effort.'

'I get it...when you hang out w us, you just want to do nothing. You don't want to have to care about 'did that joke upset someone?' But you don't get to turn off life.'"

"The argument that 'if you're not paying for the product, you're the product' is herein revealed as bunk.... Respect for your privacy isn't a rebate you get for every $1,000 you spend on an iPhone. Companies abuse you *if they can get away with it*."

Cause for optimism: "The difference between a user who says, 'Goddamn I hate this place, but I can't stop logging in to it,' and a user who says, 'Goddamn I hate this place, and I'm never coming back' is razor-thin."

"Project Aristotle... found that [psychological safety was] the most powerful predictor of team performance at Google. [It was surprising because] those folks are going to be pretty able to take care of themselves, right? Pretty willing to speak up! They've been told their whole life that they're really smart; they've done well in school."

Also relevant from the perspective of academia and pre-tenure evaluations!

This is a very strange book. It purports to give ideas for things we could do other than being on our phones, some of which are clearly not serious ("With the 1,400 hours a year you'd have after giving up your smartphone, you'd have sufficient time to have sex with your partner nearly 16,000 times"). But that raises the question, is any of it serious? And if not, what's the point?