Free creative labour; Thinking shallow; Empathy traps
Milk, No Sugar #289
💡Think
I was asked by a mentee yesterday about whether they should take on an out of hours design contract that they were offered. My advice was to not do what I have done during my 20s and 30s – accept every offer you get for work outside of work.
Work should be enough for us to flex our skills, and if it’s not we could and should be addressing this. Pushing ourselves to work in the evenings or weekends is a one-way ticket to a very bad back, and a loss of key relationships.
There are definitely situations when some extra work doesn’t hurt, but it’s mostly financial, so just bear your health in mind before jumping into extra projects that aren’t a requirement.
p.s. I’m currently in another world of pain after my second vaccine, so today’s issue should be particularly error-prone.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ Your creativity is (free) labour
I’m sure that you’ve 1) considered starting an Instagram or TikTok account for your great content 2) gave up on that idea after you realised how much work is involved. The fact is that in order to become a successful content creator, you need to put the hours in – not so great for you, but amazing for platforms. Imagine all that free content people are pumping into these channels without needing to be paid. When we look at it like that, it seems ridiculous, but we’re still doing it.
—
❷ To think deep or shallow?
I really enjoyed reading this, mainly because I related to it so well. I often get my best ideas when “shallow thinking” – flicking through my emails, at the supermarket, or just doing nothing (which is rare to be honest). Apparently, Plato thought that writing would cause us to forget memories, which is pretty funny, but I do recommend carrying a little notebook around with you to jot down those shallow thought ideas.
—
❸ Corporate empathy trap
This was new to me, but apparently there’s a corporate trend to shout about how empathetic businesses are. It makes sense, colleagues don’t see each other as much anymore, so making sure people are seen and heard is important. Apparently, this is a bit of a non starter though, to no surprise. Hey, even I’ve been caught in the past for trying to be myself too much at work.
—
Bonus round
Github designer Brian Lovin has recently started getting into investing, and has some early learnings for us all thinking about it
Looking back at 10 years (!) of Snapchat
I know my podcast season 1 officially finished last week, I have an 8 minute bonus episode with Charli Marie Prangley – YouTube, Spotify, Apple
🎧 Listen
Secret radio stations
Bear with me on this one, as it’s actually really cool. It’s an episode about the remaining “secret” radio stations that were originally set up during wartime to send cryptic messages across the world between nations and their soldiers.
There are tonnes of these stations still running, and they are even looping the original messages over and over. There are a few people who track down these stations, decode them, and even write books about them.
Wild stuff.
Listen to this podcast (34 minutes)
Spotify – Apple Podcasts
🙌 Share
I’d really appreciate it if you would share my tweet, or forward this to a friend.
If you’re really enjoying it, purchasing a subscription would let me know I’m producing quality.
🙏 Thanks
Have a great week,
Luis Ouriach
@disco_lu
Founding member special shoutouts:
Kevin Fernandez (@kvnfz)
Karl Barker
George Sumpster