Max Hawkins’s life experiment is very interesting and revealing at the same time. Max let an algorithm randomize his life for two years. Imagine, you click on a button and a few minutes later an Uber is at your doorstep ready to drive you to a secret destination you know nothing about. This experiment reminds us how our choices are often driven by our preferences, the default or the safest because of our fear of being disappointed. It’s a shame, but we rarely give ourselves an occasion to do something new or unexpected (at the cost of our serendipity). That’s why we need more tools that allow true randomness in our everyday life. If Facebook, Instagram or Youtube can show us what they think we would like, why can’t we have tools that suggest us things different from what we are supposed to like?
Our mind needs breaks to get the creative juices flowing. If we are too focused on doing things, there is not enough room for the curiosity, the unforeseen and the novelty to hit us. I think we all experienced those surprising moments of discovery while our mind was wandering. David Perell describes this state as the Beer Mode in opposition to the Coffee Mode. A state where you allow yourself a pause from doing in order to wander. He also points out how hard it is for Beer Mode to find its place in a work environment where we need to deliver quickly and regularly. It’s true that Beer Mode is hard to measure and often unproductive but it’s even more true that being non-stop in Coffee Mode is killing our ability to think and find creative solutions to problems. I think that Coffee Mode can’t be productive and fulfilling if there is no place for Beer Mode at some point. And we can’t just replace Beer Mode by the time we spend outside of work, otherwise burnout will be the next step. Beer Mode is part of the work and must have its place at the office.
Practice doesn’t only make perfect, practice also makes more comfortable. Things might seem extremely difficult at the beginning, but our ability to try hard and never give up is the only way to succeed.
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1. True randomness
Max Hawkins’s life experiment is very interesting and revealing at the same time. Max let an algorithm randomize his life for two years. Imagine, you click on a button and a few minutes later an Uber is at your doorstep ready to drive you to a secret destination you know nothing about. This experiment reminds us how our choices are often driven by our preferences, the default or the safest because of our fear of being disappointed. It’s a shame, but we rarely give ourselves an occasion to do something new or unexpected (at the cost of our serendipity). That’s why we need more tools that allow true randomness in our everyday life. If Facebook, Instagram or Youtube can show us what they think we would like, why can’t we have tools that suggest us things different from what we are supposed to like?