Gifts as Propellers - Newsletter #2
Our second newsletter — a different way to look at gifts, and...
An offer for you. 🎁
I celebrated a birthday yesterday. My 34th. It was a wonderful little day with my family.
Birthdays always bring introspection with them. In an odd way, time slows to a momentary pause. I can seemingly look back at my past self and see a clear picture of the man I was a year ago. Inevitably I read journals from prior years, and instantly I'm whisked away to a different time. It's a felt memory. I love it.
This past year was different than anything I'd encountered. For a long time I wanted a journey of my own, but I was so...comfortable. Why change? On reflection, it's clear how scared I was of the uncertainty. How would I sustain? What would come next?
Fortunately, I learned something this year, and here we are.
Last time, I talked about gifts. This deserves some elaboration.
I love gifting gifts because it requires a deep understanding of a person, the situation, and their goals. It's a fun intellectual challenge to try and design a better future for someone.
This also includes gifts I give myself, which is a frequent part of my life. I push myself to achieve something — like, starting a newsletter — and I reward myself if I do it. This probably wouldn't be sustainable if the gifts didn't come with a twist. Much of the research on extrinsic reward suggests this does not work over time. Even worse, it may create dependencies!*
As someone who has given myself many bad gifts, I feel like I know the difference. Historically I would reward myself with things like video games. Maybe a TV. Clothes, surely. These gifts are not sustainable for my behavior. These are more like gifts as anchors. They keep us in place.**
Somewhere along the line, my thinking shifted entirely. The gifts I wanted (and wanted to give) were generative. They solved a problem that took me a long time to figure out. They introduced a new way of thinking. This can come in the form of a simple notebook, a piece of software, a community membership, or a number of other things I've given people over the years.
I think of these more like gifts as propellers. These are boosts to my livelihood, improvements to my lifestyle, or as I usually phrase it, upgrades to my operating system.
For a gift to propel, it has two qualities. They must 1) enable you to do something you couldn't before, 2) in an ongoing manner.
That's it! If you're buying yourself — and others — gifts that fit this criteria, you've done it.
So to reward myself for starting a newsletter, I committed to building a computer. Considering I haven't built anything electronic in..ever, why did I want to do this?
My prior workstation...struggled. Inevitably, my time would lead to frustration when I ran too many programs, and that's not a fun way to work.
I've long wanted a nook-like environment for more focused work (like this writing!). There's some neat research around room lighting and ceiling height that I want to experiment with.
I was really intrigued by the idea of designing my own machine. Everything always comes packaged for me. Some part of me wanted to fight that.
As I dive further into the world of computing, I wanted to understand more of the hardware layer. What better way to learn than building something?
That last point deserves further mention, because it speaks to a third, bonus quality of gifts as propellers. The best gifts bring about something deeper in you. Not only are they lasting, but they 3) compound over time.
Building a computer fit my criteria to a T. Not only am I going to use this machine for the coming decade, but I've strengthened my muscle of dealing with unknowns. Inevitably, they arise when building, and it forces you to solve problems. From 'where do I start?' to 'what in the hell is this?!', the process of creating something builds self-efficacy. In a world where I need to be confident that I can solve problems, building a computer is quite a nice exercise.
(And it really isn't that hard! There's a brief writeup coming that I'll link to next month, and if you want to build your own machine, just ask. It's fun.)
Giving gifts that propel you forward is the way to transform extrinsic motivation entirely.
Here's where you come in.
Why I'm telling you this is because I've found it to be a hidden skill I have. In spades!
Some form of 1) my attraction to good conversation blended with 2) my desire for everyone to have a good time and 3) my backgrounds in research, design and interviewing humans has unearthed a quirky, unique skill. And I think it's replicable. I surely want to give it a shot.
So, an offer: Give me an hour of your time to talk about your life, and in less than a month I'll buy you a gift (with your own money****).
I'm going to ask about the dreams you have for the future, your weird pet peeves, what gets you geekily excited, and a whole slew of other things. You will give me a budget not to exceed. Within the month, you get something.
If you're in Chicago, I'll meet you in person, and you can even charge me a beverage tax. It will be fun.
If you're in, reply yes in your language of choice and I'll reach out to find some time together. I guarantee at the very least we'll laugh.
The key thing I learned at 33 was realizing that it was time to play a different game. Away from feeling comfortable, towards feeling uncertain. Away from pleasing the majority, into accepting the displeasure that comes from hearing the call. Away from building the whole masterpiece now, and into giving people little things that change their life today.
Shifting that paradigm in my head means going for it - whatever it is - because I know I'll enjoy it more than anything else.
Glowing,
Bren
ps. If you have other thoughts, including what in the hell I'm doing, this is a great avenue to ask. Life is wonderful, and I would love to talk to you, surely. You can throw some time on my calendar here.
tunes-wise, i've been listening to a lot of Beirut. this one from 2011 is just a beauty. just over a half-hour, too.
last month's rec - Helado Negro - dropped a new album, too. check it out.
Footnotes (in an email?)
* Back to extrinsic motivation, for a moment. I don't believe the theory is entirely correct! If you're doing something to gain a reward, but that reward is generative, then you're pursuing a positive feedback loop. That's good! If you're doing research in this area, I would love to talk with you. Surely holes exist here, but this is a design problem that feels solvable.
** I must note - these aren't necessarily bad gifts! I just can't imagine them helping me achieve any of my underlying dreams. Also, maybe you get paid to review games stoned on Twitch, in which, you need these things.
*** In fact, this is even rubbing off on others. Donna bought me an EEG reader, so I can run experiments on my brain waves. Hilarious. Amazing.
**** The charge is so you have skin in the game, and so I can test this idea. The core of the idea is that enough of you are willing to let me repurpose your money to improve your life. It's not far from the idea of a personal shopper, but I'm not shopping at Sak's.