It is spring! And though the rituals, philosophies and personal celebrations may be different as we welcome in this season, we all are experiencing change as we navigate the in and outness of this moment —
At School of Thought, spring feels like the perfect time to introduce a few changes we are rolling out. Starting this week, to aid provide time to savor the pieces, we are dividing out our portions.
On Fridays, subscribers can expect to receive the starters. These pieces include a visual, a #schoolofthought of the week, and resources that were scrolling, reading, watching, listening, or sharing with the group chat.
On Sundays, subscribers will receive our main course. This includes a big idea associated with our #schoolofthought of the week, and practical applications to make it usable.
We hope this format continues to bring joy, spark ideas, and cultivate connections.
Let us know what you think.
There is a flattening going on in the world. With a rise in project-based work, shared work and co-living spaces, in the building of co-creation communities, there is a lot of work, and school and life being done with, for, and through other people.
The systems being constructed, sometimes via ‘just in time’ collaborations that require improvisation, are, at their core, about interdependence. Different cultures have different beliefs about how important social connection and interdependence are to our lives. In the West, we like to think of ourselves as fairly immune to sway of those around us while we each pursue our personal destiny. This might just be stories we tell ourselves, however, as social connectedness is infused into our DNA.
And this makes this time of in and outness in the world cause some butterflies around coming together again in various ways. Katherine Cusumano suggests we might need retraining for social interactions and this piece on small talk by Rachel Miller reminds us of who we used to be.
A previous post in School of Thought, Daydream Achiever, shared learning on the power of daydreaming. Our brain’s default network, which is activated during downtime, allows our minds to “open to free thinking, which is the precursor to durable learning, productivity, creativity and empathy.”
This last word, empathy, is important here.
It turns out that when our brains have a free moment…they don’t entirely disconnect, they actually go social. That is, daydreaming, or just being in that space that frees our brains to think, directs us to think about OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS- thoughts, feelings and goals. This is an automatic reflex. And it’s internal, not related to your degree of extroversion or the number of clubs you belong to.
The posts this week are about the people who connect. Formally, these are those who form communities, but also informally, those who make connections in disconnection.
School of Thought of the Week
“Evolution has placed a bet that the best thing for our brain to do in any spare moment is to get ready to see the world socially.” Dr. Matthew Lieberman, a social psychologist a neuroscientist at UCLA
Connecting with other people, building community, even in the most basic ways, makes us happier—especially when we know they need your help. So community matters.
There are those who divide the world, placing people into binary categories with comments that begin with, “you are the kind of person who…”. The dominant narrative around followers and leaders does not recognize the fact that we all have various ways of being in the world. When we understand the power of community, we can see our roles as always in flux, always finding sparks, matches, flames, always iterating and playing out in various ways.
As Seth Godin shares,
“There isn’t a given set of checklist items that you have to have to be creative or to be a leader or to have charisma. Instead, we can look for what rhymes and what the patterns are.”
We bring this philosophy to community builders and gatherers.
We argue that it’s not a kind of person who serves as the amplifier, the connector, the helper or the visionary. The roles of leader, learner, follower, connector are roles with each of us- and we can look for what rhymes for us and what patterns there are to share.
Coming Sunday, we share the patterns we see with piece, The Seven Qualities of Highly Connected People.
Today, we share sources that have inspired us.
SOT Thought Pieces
🌟 Scrolling...
I Went on a Reading Diet. Here’s What I Learned | Zora
Can You Tell the Difference Between Humans and AI? Take this quiz. | VICE
Young Adults are the Hardest Hit During the Pandemic | The Harvard Gazette
The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs | First Round Review (& the ART!)
We Have to Reimagine Everything for These Times. | Zora
📚Reading…
Marissa King’s Social Chemistry shares wisdom, research and practice on connection. You can also take a self-assessment to see what your social network style is, and what strengths and challenges come from that. And for fun, here's a nerdy quiz that says a lot about how you interact with other people:
Take a look at the following words and fill in the blanks: w _ sh, sh _ _ er, and s _ _ p.
(You can find the answers in the "Feeling Dirty" section of Chapter 1 of Social Chemistry.)
🎧Listening…
This episode of Worklife with Adam Grant, on networking for people who hate networking.
This episode of Consideranew with Michael Crawford on social learning. “By hearing about the experiences of others, you mash up snippets of data, add them to your own, and fit them into your sense of who you are and what you can do — together and with others. Learning 'changes who we are by changing our ability to participate, to belong, and to experience our life and the world as meaningful'" (p. 33).
📱 Sharing with the group chat….
We are just getting to connect with our co-creators in person, some for the first time. @_mikeviimusic, our @TechnicallyPHL journalist-in-residence at Revolution School, shared…
Sharing is caring
You can recommend School of Thought to your favorite people, sign up for a subscription for yourself or someone else, or share this issue on social media.
SHARE what you learned. As we shared in this post, not only does it help improve retention, but it also leads to ACTION.
Or just let us know you are out there by ENGAGING on Twitter. Pls tag us @Rvltnproject or @shorejaneshore and use any of the hashtags #makingbigideasusable #schoolofthought #communitybuilding #thejoyofconnecting ❤️
Would you like to read more? The Big Idea and how to Make It Usable is here.