#15 – On resilience, staying on the bus, synchronising brain waves, and the need to belong
Hello hello,
July is coming to a close, a new adventure awaits for me (more on that next week), and this week’s issue of Strategy Bites leisurely explores the concepts of resilience, staying on a bus, the need to belong, synchronising brain waves, jurisdiction in web 3, and the creative brief. Yes, I’m aware that this is a broad spectrum – but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it.
Enjoy the clicking.
Resilience is overrated. The Northern Planner shares an inspiring view on why agencies need to get better at team work and how that is tied to our mental health and everybody’s least favourite concept of ‘resilience’. “There are still many out there who are brutal on themselves and others. Who think you need to bleed at the cutting edge. Don't let them pass on what they have learned. Help them get off their masochistic treadmill.”
Knowing, Doing, and Staying on the bus. Terrell Johnson shares his learnings from Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks”. It’s a quick but thought provoking read, particularly when it explains the analogy of “staying on the bus”. It’s ultimately a nice pledge for stop chasing productivity and lean into doing one thing worthwhile: “Whenever we’re attracted to something, we have an initial burst of excitement and energy, which always eventually wears off. That’s the crucial moment when, if we allow ourselves, we can fall away and miss out completely on what might have happened.”
‘The Bear’ and the Need for a Place to Belong. I’m a bit late to the entire craze about ‘The Bear’ – but I got hooked on its visceral immersion into challenging personal relationships. (And yes, I’m drooling over most of the food, too.) This opinion piece in the NYT places the struggle of one of the show’s main characters in the current social context of the United States (which also offers some harrowing stats about that very context.)
Brain waves synchronize when people interact. This is a long read about a fascinating phenomenon called brain synchrony, discovered in studies of bats, mice, and humans. It’s not just about the famous mirror neurons, it’s about more than that. It’s about an invisible connection between people and their brains – and how better connection makes for better relationship and information transmission, and more. And scientists are only at the beginning of understanding all of it. “Without synchrony and the deeper forms of connection that lie beyond it, we may be at greater risk for mental instability and poor physical health. With synchrony and other levels of neural interaction, humans teach and learn, forge friendships and romances, and cooperate and converse. We are driven to connect, and synchrony is one way our brains help us do it.”
MetaCourt Paves Way for Legal Schooling in Web3 🍨🎓. The idea of a some kind of judicial system that tries to make sense of the Wild West of Web 3 sounds just as ridiculous as it sounds appealing. MetaCourt is trying to do exactly that by establishing a blockchain based dispute resolution.
Before you brief a creative team, check your brief for these four things. Mark Pollard shares a short PDF with tips on interrogating your creative brief before you walk into that often dreaded briefing meeting. It’s tangible, it’s concrete, and it introduced me to the term “pineapple word”.
Thank for reading along – and see you all next time, when you maybe bring a friend or two?