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2021, week 40

Good morning!

On this issue, a ladder to help you reconsider your value within the collective through the prism of ownership and a call to ‘’rewild’’ your attention.

The Ladder of Ownership — Lvl1: Judging > Lvl2: Gossiping > Lvl3: Giving feedback > Lvl4: Giving deep feedback > Lvl5: Collaborating > Lvl6: Driving > Lvl7: Owning.

1. The ownership ladder

It’s interesting to judge the quality of our collective spirit through the prism of ownership. As a leader, this can really help you understand why your team is struggling or, as a team member, why you can feel cast aside. Asking to yourself or your team to position themselves on this ladder can help you/them reconsider your/their own value within the collective. It takes responsibility and investment to have and deserve ownership. I truly believe that your job, as a team member, is more than just delivering your work, it’s also facilitating and empowering the work of your colleagues/collaborators/pairs. See online

If you want to have wilder, curiouser thoughts, you have to avoid the industrial monocropping of big-tech feeds.

2. Rewilding your attention

‘’Popularity and recency doest not equal valuable.’’ Yet, most of your mainstream social media feeds are focused on the first two. As a result, we can observe a content industrialisation where the objective is to always get more reach and engagement. The content is shaped to maximise this outcome alone, often leaving aside the quality of the writings and the originality of the ideas. Nothing entirely wrong with that, there is some good in having such feeds too. But, as a few bloggers recommend it, if you want to discover new thoughts you might have to rewild your attention. And that mean taking your distance from your social feeds and finding alternative/underground sources of information. You can achieve that in many different ways but here are 4 things I try to do on a regular basis: (1) Grow a collection of low signal blogs in my RSS reader (I really like to use NetNewsWire for that), (2) Read constructive discussions on the Less Wrong forum (I am obsessed with the quality and eclecticism of this forum), (3) Spend some time deliberately searching for terms I don’t understand well (search more, browse less). (4) Trigger Wikipedia’s random article button when I want some adventure. And you, what are your tricks? See online

Enjoy this issue and see you next week. Take care!