We’re all amateur attention economists
Hello Uncommoners,
Here's your random dose of intrigue — a collection of content, ideas, and resources that I've recently found mind tingling. Consume, skim, or skip at your leisure. Enjoy.
QUOTED:
“We are all amateur attention economists, hoarding and bartering our moments — or watching them slip away down the cracks of a thousand YouTube clips. … Attention, thus conceived, is an inert and finite resource, like oil or gold: a tradable asset that the wise manipulator auctions off to the highest bidder, or speculates upon to lucrative effect. … If contentment and a sense of control are partial measures of success, many of us are selling ourselves far too cheap.” – David Auerbach, mentioned in Aeon, The attention economy
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INTERESTING READS:
How insane work hours became a mark of American privilege.
The case against teaching grit (not the message you’d expect to hear, but always worth understanding different perspectives. As a new parent, you quickly learn that common advice does not make it good advice and that “universal rules of thumb” are not so universally applicable.
+ A different take on common story: The myth of millennial entitlement was created to hide their parents’ mistakes
Uber and strippers have something in common. (My 2 cents: We are a nation founded on the idea of being independent for the good of whole. So why does the government make it so hard to be an independent contractor? I’ve been self employed my whole life. It’s quite ridiculous how many additional hoops you have to jump through to embrace the supposed free and industrious spirit that is “naturally” American.)
+ Exclusive Survey: The Future of Work in America
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COOL TOOLS:
Text Expander: For the love of life, PLEASE stop typing same words, phrases, and sentences again and again. If you’re not constantly looking for ways to save your minutes while working, you’re wasting countless hours of leisurely or otherwise productive goodness. TextExpander is an app I use extensively each day and it’s hard to express how it’s streamlined my efforts. In short, you type a customly created string of letters (your ‘shortcut’) and it automatically converts it to a word, sentence, paragraph, email signature (pics included), and much more. I’ve used it for about a year. Below are my analytics. That’s a lot of avoided button bashing. Can’t say enough good things about this software (Note: I am aware that MacOS and other software has similar capabilities, but not to this degree).
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FOR FUN:
How to get wasted in space. You may have noticed it’s a little hard to fill a cup — well, at least it was. But this group is setting out to make the setting of space (a lot) more comfortable.
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Hope you enjoyed this eclectic collection of brain food. Every UM newsletter is slightly unique and may include intriguing quotes, interesting reads, recommended resources, cool products, and other fun surprises.
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