📡 I'm making me uncomfortable.

Pulse #120

Jan 17, 2021

Let’s talk ‘change.’

It’s rarely comfortable and smooth, but often necessary and useful. I think the most important thing, however, is to know when to change/pivot. I’d say that’s a super-skill.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the idea of “don’t touch/change it if it’s working.” I mean they’re working fine until they’re not. I prefer changing it myself rather than waiting for it to stop working. I think it’s too late then, but if the change/pivot isn’t successful, there’s usually room for further changes.

This doesn’t mean that I go around and change everything, hoping to get some sort of result. It’s balanced with patience and understanding of the issue. But I want to think I’m often in for change/improvement.

An example would be something that recently happened with my favourite podcast app, Breaker. It was acquired by Twitter and announced that they would shut down the app (which they ended up not doing by the way, but it was too late ‘cause I’d already moved on.) I was really comfortable and not looking for a change, but I embraced it when I saw it happening. However, for someone who listens to podcasts as much as I do, it was not comfortable.

Of course, there’s a good chance of breaking things; but I prefer that rather than being at the receiving end of it. I believe, in my case, I prefer the control over the risk of breaking things with change than the disappointment of things killing my comfort when they stop working.

I haven’t done much research on this. It’s just a mindset I’ve developed and usually attributed to my getting bored of stuff rather quickly. However, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s can also be a result of the fear and disappointment of losing the comfort I’m used to due to something being available or working just fine. I think it’s the disappointment of them not working anymore at some point that drives me to pursue change — actively, in the form of improvement.

That being said, you can’t ignore the cost of that change. Sometimes, it’s not within my means to make the changes I want or to test breaking things. But the pursuit is always there.

Another issue for me is my attraction to learning and exploring [new] ideas. And that does not happen in the comfort zone. It happens on the edges. That specific knowledge that can lead to real success is only at the fringe of comfort — the unknown. That’s where change happens. The type of change that can put “a little dent in the universe.”

With the new format and platform of my weekly newsletter (aka Pulse), I’m trying to make myself uncomfortable enough to grow. I’m hoping that Pulse's every Sunday gives me the discipline and the excitement of the new platform [Substack] and format push me to write more. More of my perspective; more creation added to the curation — more [ perspective ix ].

We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be building this in public; keeping things transparent and myself accountable.

Thank you for reading.

And now, to the Pulse stuff.

News

Ford delays some deliveries of its Mustang Mach-E [link], some Twitter employees have reportedly locked their accounts fearing reprisal from Trump supporters [link], and Signal is back after an outage that lasted more than 24 hours [link]
Apple rumours, WhatsApp’s second thoughts, and Facebook’s Inauguration Day plans [link]
Samsung’s new lineup, Windows 10X leaks, TouchBar-less MacBook Pros [link]
No Airbnb in DC, More bans for Trump, and A little more privacy on TikTok [link]
Parler’s data, metadata, and breaches, WhatsApp’s clarification, and Samsung’s next Exynos [link]
Another Muslim prayer app selling data, the live streaming boom, and a Trumpless Twitter [link]
Apple Car, Trump bans, and two weeks of battery [link]

🐸 a gift for you.

Worth Your Attention

Music industry’s attention dependency

Today’s digital world is shaped by the attention economy. Now that every minute of every waking hour is somehow addressed, the concept of free time is almost lost. Now, [almost] every moment of attention is gained at the expense of someone else’s lost attention.

In his latest blog post, Mark Mulligan talks about how “consumption is holding culture hostage” and how “clickbait, autoplay and content farms degrading both content and culture.”

It’s an excellent piece, and you can read it here.

Statistics

TikTok’s adult users: 3 interesting findings

Over half (52.6%) of TikTok adult users are aged between 18-34
Although more than two-fifths (43.9%) of unique adult visitors to TikTok had a household income of more than $100K, adults from lower-income households over-index in their usage of the app.
Hispanic Americans over-indexed in usage versus the average adult in all, but one social platform studied (LinkedIn), however, TikTok was where they over-indexed the most, with being 38% more likely than average to visit the app.

Tools & Apps

draw battle: Competitive team drawing game with a frantic final round
this was soooooo cooooool!
Tweetastic: Schedule threads on Twitter; analyse your tweets and others’
loved its design and speed
Glyphs 3.0: Build, edit and manage fonts on your Mac
free 30-day trial then €299 after; they have student discount, teacher discount and more…
Screpy 2.0: All-In-One SEO and website analysis tool
does a pretty good analysis
My Wolfpack: Meet new friends according to your interests in micro-groups [iOS | Android]

Spotted

Instagram is adding an option to hide the like count in a post (instead of its being the default setting) [link]
LinkedIn Stories now lets you add swipe-up links [link]
Instagram now shows if a feed post used a filter or effect [link]
YouTube is testing the ability to buy items from videos [link]
YouTube is pushing out a new page format to showcase content with specific hashtags [link]