#79: Three Things that got me thinking
đąHope Jahren + đ¸Arcade Fire + đGlennon Doyle
Bonjour,
I'm going on a summer break! In my absence, youâll receive a few re-runs of Three Things, so you can (re)discover some old favourites while I spend time away from my keyboard. Also, if you missed last weekâs posts, you can:
share / find book ideas on this discussion thread
read / listen to my interview with Daniel Pink
Now, here are the Three Things that got me thinking about intrinsic motivation in the past week:
a scientistâs memoir
incentives for musicians
a rallying cry
Happy August.
1. True scientist
I want to dedicate this quote from geobiologist Hope Jahren1âs beautiful memoir Lab Girl to anyone whoâs plodding through a Ph.D. at the minute, and anyone on their support team (yay us!):
A true scientist doesnât perform prescribed experiments; she develops her own and thus generates wholly new knowledge. This transition between doing what youâre told and telling yourself what to do generally occurs midway through a dissertation. In many ways, it is the most difficult and terrifying thing that a student can do, and being unable or unwilling to do it is much of what weeds people out of Ph.D. programs2.
Also this:
People are like plants: they grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I neededâa home as defined im the most literal sense: a safe place to be.
2. True music
Did you notice that recent pop songs tend to last around 2:30? Itâs not only because we have a short attention span, or because lots of musicians suddenly decided that they loved the short form, but possibly because artists get paid more money that way. (As a daily user of music streaming platforms, I am feeding that system.)
Hereâs Arcade Fireâs Win Butler telling BBC interviewer Faisal Islam how the bandâs playing the streaming platformsâ game all wrong:
Islam: As musicians, does [the algorithm] create strange incentives?
Butler: Not [for] us. Weâre doing it so wrong. The modern trick is you put a thousand tracks on your record because thatâs more streams [and more streaming revenue]. We donât do this crap for the money, letâs put it that way. If we werenât playing music, I donât think weâd be functioning humans.
PS: If youâre after human music suggestions, you can:
watch out for my August list of motivation-adjacent songs
(subscribe to get it in your inbox, and find my playlist archive here)
check out Leo Mascaroâs rich and lovely Shuffle Sundays
subscribe to composer Fog Chaserâs atmospheric monthly newsletter
3. True wild
I finally read Glennon Doyleâs mega-best-seller Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living, a memoir in the shape of short inspirational chapters. Throughout, Doyle urges readers to challenge their social conditioning, in particular prescriptions about motherhood as martyrdom. In short, she suggests women do whatever the heck they really want: she doesnât write about self-improvement, but about finding what and who was always there.
This New Yorker profile aptly describes her style:
Doyle, who sometimes refers to herself as a âclinically depressed motivational speaker,â has a knack for distilling wisdom from seemingly incompatible sourcesâradical feminism, evangelical Christianity, twelve-step programs, Pema ChĂśdrĂśnâinto an easy-drinking blend. Everything will be better, she suggests, if you just tell the truth about yourself.
Here are two bits from the book that stood out on first reading:
We can make our own normal. We can throw out all the rules and write our own. We can build our lives from the inside out. We can stop asking what the world wants from us and instead ask ourselves what we want from our world. We can stop looking at what's in front of us long enough to discover what's inside us.
We all want purpose and connection. Tell me what breaks your heart, and Iâll point you toward both.
Before having kids, I bookmarked and returned again and again to Jahrenâs wise, warm, funny advice piece: âFive Things I Say To Career Women Who Tell Me They Might Want To Have AÂ Babyâ. It still rings true years later:
As with everything else thatâs important, only listen to people that you trust and respect, and even then make sure you decide for yourself.
Though I believe many capable, willing people also leave their Ph.D. programs because their academic environment is ruthless, not because theyâre incapable or unwilling.
Thanks for the share, Tania â the music landscape is constantly in flux, which is simultaneously interesting and exhausting!
Thank you for the shoutout, Tania! Regarding the duration of the songs, I have mixed feelings about this ongoing discussion... Itâs pretty obvious that thereâs a change in the air, but... if you go back to the Beatles era, so many of their early songs were so short, so itâs nothing new. And in an opposite side, there are a lot of young pop artists releasing albums full of 3:30-4:30 songs these days. I obviously donât have an answer, just thought Iâd mention it đ