Love Everything In The Way
Plus: How to Human Updates, De-Biasing Strategies, Why Books Don't Work, Indie-Travel Reflections & More!
š Oh hi there!
Today is a glorious day to be alive.
There are (many) days when this is less obvious. I feel like my life could be charted as an infinite loop of rememberingāforgettingārememberingāforgetting this sense of gratitude š
I recently asked this eloquent 12 year old girl to share her thoughts on curiosity and advice to grown-ups hoping to reclaim theirs and left the conversation feeling like just perhaps our future is in good hands after all ;)
šāāļøPlease Introduce yourself // there are now over six hundred of you fellow curious humans! Iād love to experiment with Substackās new comment thread feature to introduce some of you to each other by way of answering the question: āWhat are you currently scared / excited about in your life right now?ā
šHow to Human // After this tweet went a bit crazy (seen over 150,000 times), Iām now actively flirting with the idea of embarking on a big project to turn this into reality (more on this below).
šļøPodcasts Are Go // 16 months after recording the first episode, Season One of the Curious Humans podcast has now been submitted to iTunesā¦ so stay tuned for this.
š§Experimental Meditation // I recorded a short (10 min) experimental gratitude meditation which youāre welcome to download (with some binaural beats in the background).
šŗšøSummer Travel Plans // Tomorrow I fly to Boulder, Colorado for a couple of weeks before heading on to Portland for the annual WDS event. Do drop me a line if thereās a chance of us crossing paths.
šAppreciation // to Alice, Andy, Mike, Martin and Paul for casting a vote of confidence in my direction and generously becoming paid subscribers. I really appreciate you.
ā¤ļøA Personal Note // This coming Tuesday, would have been the 27th birthday of my partner Sophie. More than almost anything else in the world, she loved being in great outdoorsā¦ so Iām inviting you to join me in spending some time this week appreciating the wonder of nature and giving someone you love a giant hug.
Iāll leave you with a thought from the poet Mark Nepo:
"To have any chance of knowing joy, we must love everything in the way.ā
I hope that you enjoy reading this monthās edition and sending good vibes to wherever you are in the world!
Stay curious,
ā Jonny
šāāļøpsst. do you have friends who are also Curious and equally Human?
Ā Then why notĀ
forward this link
Ā (orĀ
tweet
) inviting them toĀ
join
.
š Letās Make the How to Human Manual
I recently shared thisĀ tweet... and it seemed to resonate (over 150,000 people saw it!)
The question Iām sitting with is what would the most radical and interesting take on this project look like? Spending 2020 finding and speaking with expert āhumansā in diverse fields from all corners of the globe for a podcast or book? What does idea want to become?
There are two things Iād love to ask for your help with:
Contribute your idea here for what could be a mini-chapter in the manualāthe aim is to gather hundreds of thoughtful submissions (before organising & ranking them)
Suggestions for who else I could share this with? People, organisations, communities? Who else might have interesting thoughts on this? Please reply to this email add any thoughts to this substack thread.
š² Three Mind-Expanding Ideas
š§ 1 // What We Can Do About Our Biases?
As humans our weāre still running on operating software that was initially built for when we were cavemen. So letās upgrade right? Alas no (at least until Neuralink arrives).
In the meantime, Mr. Buster Benson has spent the last three years researching and wrestling with the question of what to do with our inherent cognitive bias? This is his conclusion:
We canāt avoid our biases. The best we can do is maintain an honest dialogue with our blind spots and commit to identifying and repairing inadvertent damage caused by them as efficiently as possible.
He shares three core conundrums that our brains need to contend with (and create biases as mental shortcuts):
1. Thereās too much information (so we must filter it)
2. Thereās not enough meaning (so we use stories to make sense)
3. Thereās not enough time (so we motivate towards action).
I thoroughly recommend you dive into this post and at least start thinking about ways you might work with his suggested four steps to developing a more honest relationship with our unavoidable biases.
š 2 // Why Books Donāt Work
Have you ever had a non-fiction bookāone youād readācome up in conversation, only to discover that youād absorbed what amounts to a few sentences?
Yep, Iām guilty tooā¦ šāāļø
One of my all time favourite phrases, that originates with a Papua New Guinea tribe is
āKnowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the muscle.ā
This is at the heart of the important case Andy is making, that essentially non-fiction books ālack a functioning model of how people learnāinstead, they're (accidentally, invisibly) built around a model that's plainly falseā.
Yikes! The same is sadly true of lectures and basically all forms of passive learning. As a reader wishing to learn deeply, you cannot just inhale words. You need questions to sit with, projects to chew onā¦ maybe write a short book summary or even better try to explain to a 5 year old in simple terms.
š 3 // How Indie Travel has Changed
Rolf Potts is the adventurous author of Vagabonding, a book that ended up quite literally altering the course of my lifeāit spurred me to embark on an 11 month trip through South East Asia (aged 19), which in turn, sparked my love for travel and later led to me starting a travel magazine and then Maptia with two of my closest university friends.
Rolf begins with the intriguing question:
āIs the way we travel today really all that different than the way we traveled two decades ago?ā
My initial thoughts were that surely yes! Even 10 years ago when I travelled without a smartphone, Google Maps, Instagramā¦ it was a very different experience to the way many of us choose to travel today.
Here are Rolfās main reflections (that also re-ignited my desire to spin the globe and head off somewhere new!)
It has gotten easier: in ways that can both enhance & limit the journey
Photos have become an irrevocable part of how we travel (and thatās OK)
Itās still crazy cheap (if you go to inexpensive places)
Most places in the world have not been ādiscoveredā
I very much recommend either listening or reading Rolfās essay in full.
š¤ Et. Cetera
š¬ Advice that works
š Every act a ceremony
š Tattoos for your health
š13 enemies of curiosity
āļø Useful flight-buying tips
š Great guide to deep work
šØ Poem portrait experiments
š¤ How to grow from your pain
š¤£ Living the āfully optimisedā life
šØāš Secrets to a curiosity-driven career
š°How to write your own money rules
šØRefreshing take: not wanting a legacy
š±Think of your phone like your toothbrush
š¤Crowdsourced decision making strategies
šThe story of an adventurer becoming a dad
š„Myth-busting centuries of sloth-based slander
Thanks for reading! If youāre feeling exceptionally generous and willing to invest in my future ramblings, you can also become a paying subscriber of Curious HumansĀ
here
.