Weeknote 13

Table of contents

Daniel’s wisdom on leading people

Daniel shared this idea the week prior, but I wasn’t in a reflective mood during last week’s blog.

I threw an improv dance party last week. If you remember in my reflection about our first improv dance night, I appreciated that Daniel focused us on a dance improvisation activity, even though it was an informal hangout of just him and me. I’m often afraid to focus people because I wonder if they are unfocused because they prefer not to do the activity.

When our improv night came around, we had 2-3 additional people. I really respected that Daniel not only focused people on the dance improvisation but directed us to take conversation breaks to intellectualize what we experienced.

I was impressed that he told us to intellectualize. I think many people would be self-conscious about asking a group to do this.

I asked him about this afterward. Daniel said life is short, and he wants to do what he wants to do, so he’s going to try to get people to do it. He said it was part of practicing his power.** I loved that. I thought about it so much afterwards.

I can see how this could lead to a full life. Life is short. Why waste it defaulting to the lowest common denominator because you’re afraid someone in the room wants to do something else. Wouldn’t life be so fun if we all did what I wanted?

**I am paraphrasing.

Pole-dance-karaoke-dance-improv

Inspired by Daniel, I got my family to do pole-dance-karaoke-dance-improv with me this past weekend, and it was so fun. Sure, they got sick of it before I did, but we had some super fun moments and laughs.

Psychedelic Synagogue’s Yom Kippur Event

I ran my Yom Kippur event on Monday. Here’s the event description.

I was concerned that we only had one repeat sign-up from last year, but because we sold out quickly this year, it’s hard to say exactly why we didn’t have many repeats. Many people probably didn’t have time to buy their tickets.

Getting people to focus 😮‍💨

This year the group was large and struggled to focus, perhaps because of its size, especially during the early session.

I adjusted my expectations and changed some of our activities. I had planned to let the small groups direct themselves using my handouts. But the group needed verbal directions.

I’m used to people failing at directions in UX design, but it’s new to me to watch people struggle with directions in real time.

Even my volunteers, whose job it was to quiet the group when I was speaking, were chatting away while I was making announcements! I kept calling them out in front of everyone.

“Volunteers, can you please help people focus up here instead of distracting them!”

Feedback

I sent out surveys. I believe people enjoyed the event, but I need more feedback. I don’t want to just keep doing this event without knowing that people think it’s useful.

I worked on my ledger

After a few weeks of prioritizing Psychedelic Synagogue, I focused back on my ledger project.

I’ve dialed down my blind trust of AI coding. I’m back to holding the agents’ hands, scrutinizing their plans.

I’m going through the plans with Codex, and I’m making a bunch of high-level documentation explaining the project: flowcharts, diagrams, and easy-to-read explanations.

AI could compile the ideas, but it sucked at simplifying them. So I had to rewrite the high-level documentation with Codex. I’ve complained about AI’s inability to simplify complex topics before, and I will never stop complaining!

For whatever reason, my Codex has finally been outputting a simplified writing style. Maybe it finally understood my output styles? Or maybe it’s because I switched from Opus and Sonnet to low reasoning Luna? Or maybe OpenAI did something? Or maybe it’s just how I’m prompting it? Or my current use case?

Content I noticed this week

Joke pattern

I recognize this joke pattern a lot. The comic says something serious and a bit controversial, creating tension, then makes themselves look ridiculous or less serious.

Old people content

I’ve been getting a lot of inspiring old people content on my feed, which I love.

Bot experiment

This woman ran a bot trap where she posted a video of herself speaking gibberish that included keywords about the Lindsay Clancy trial. So many bots responded. The results made me realize I really need to care less about what people online say because they are probably bots.

But the experiment was flawed. I believe it got responses from real people who didn’t read the full post. One of the first sentences is “Lindsay Clancy is a person.” It’s a random fact that states nothing. However, it’s also a common way of prefacing that you are about to show empathy. So it may have triggered people to respond.

If that’s the case, it’s far more depressing that the responses are from real people who comment before reading than it would be if they were bots.

Interesting business ideas

Cardboard pop-out earring subscription service

I thought this was an interesting business idea. It seems easy to manufacture and ship, with an endless stream of possible designs.

DJ class with ending DJ show

I thought this was a fun “embrace your suckage” type of class where you learn to DJ in two weeks and then play an actual show. I want one where I learn to be a pop star!