But this isn’t the helpful answer to the question, “is this good?”
Whether it suits your taste might be irrelevant. “It doesn’t resonate with me” is not the same as “No one will like this.”
The professional understands that they need empathy to do their job. You don’t have to be a toddler to work at Fisher Price, and you don’t have to be a cancer survivor to be an oncologist.
If you can imagine that the audience that is going to be served would appreciate and talk about the thing that’s being made, then it’s in good taste for them.
It doesn’t matter much whether you’d buy it yourself.
“I’d like convenience (without a loss of quality or an increase in waste.)”
“I’m in favor of strong, certain authority (without the demagogues, unfairness and lack of resilience.)”
“I’m in favor of unbridled free markets (without the side effects, monopolies and market failures.)”
“I’d like to create important work (without getting nervous or feeling like an imposter.)”
“I’m in favor of everyone having a car (without the sprawl, pollution and injuries.)”
“I’m in favor of meetings where everyone has a voice (without endless meetings).”
Sometimes, it’s possible to reduce the bad parts. But that takes considerable focus, effort and commitment. It’s not free. You can’t expect them to go away on their own.
It might not seem like a feature to you, but the bad parts are often the flip side that allows the other part to exist.
And sometimes, the bad parts are built into the system itself. In which case, you can’t be in favor of the good parts without accepting the reality of the bad.
What if there were a pipeline into your day, a series of emails or posts or feeds that had nothing but nice things, positive feedback and encouragement coming your way?
Amazingly, you could build something like that in just a few minutes and have it forever.
If the bad news (comments, drama and controversy) is simply manipulating you into a certain state without productive effects, consider turning it off.
There’s no obligation to help someone else’s business model. No requirement that the device in your pocket change your mental state for the worse. And no upside to allowing media companies to make a profit by dumping trash on your front yard.
There’s a growing body of data that shows that the growth of smartphones has also led to a significant decrease in optimism and life satisfaction, particularly among young people. But it’s not the phone that’s the problem, it’s the way attention is manipulated by the companies that create the apps on our phones.
With the advent of the high jump, the idiom raising the bar became well understood: If you can’t jump over the bar that the current leader cleared, you don’t win.
But most of the innovations that change our culture don’t actually increase the simple linear measurements of the bar. They’re more likely to raise the average, to increase the performance of accepted mediocre output.
McDonald’s didn’t raise the bar in terms of the best food it was possible to be served in a restaurant, but they made roadside dining faster, cheaper and more reliable.
AI doesn’t raise the bar for illustration, copywriting or coding. But it certainly increases the average quality of a high school essay or the cheapest photo retouching or programming services.
Autotune can’t compete with Eva Cassidy, but it turned millions of singers into slightly more palatable recording artists.
Two traps worth avoiding:
When something seeks to raise the average, it’s tempting to criticize it for failing to raise the bar. It makes the good a little better, but it doesn’t do anything great. Sure, that’s true, but that’s not what it’s seeking to do (yet).
Failing to see that when we raise the average, it can diminish the breadth of demand for the extraordinary. Plenty of very, very good roadside restaurants were destroyed by fast food joints, because suddenly, good enough was good enough.
The endless cycle of improvement means that every innovation that raises the average creates the conditions for a new sort of excellence. Using these tools, a new standard setter can find a different way forward and create a different way to raise the bar, one that seems obvious after the fact.
The scientific rule of thumb is simple: When you make a bold claim, you need significant research to back it up.
Telling us that eating vegetables is healthy can be justified by a fairly simple high school science paper. But if you want to claim that the moon is made of celery and Elmer’s Glue, we’re going to need more than your back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Lately, we’re seeing two things begin to take the place of good research when making outrageous claims:
Lots of online celebrity.
Particularly bold and noxious claims.
Being angry or a famous podcaster (or both) doesn’t excuse you from the burden of proof.
Among the top 500 grossing Hollywood movies of all time, this movie is the most profitable in return on investment.
And among all Hollywood movies in the top 1,500 at the box office, Paranormal Activity is far and away the highest return, outperforming almost any investment the stock market has ever offered. The return on investment was over a million percent.
The lesson is simple, but ignored by most investors and entrepreneurs: The goal might not be to be the biggest. The goal might be to achieve your goals.
It’s easier than ever. Solvents, power tools, market research, AI, committee meetings, online reviews and ennui are all aligned in one direction. To fit all the way in.
Of course, once you sand off all the edges, it’s hard to get traction. Hard to find the texture or anything worth talking about.
Thanks to everyone who has read, talked about and taken action around my new book, The Song of Signficance. If you have a chance to post a review, that would be great. And you can find the podcasts here.
The first step in making things better is talking about it.
The hard part isn’t good ideas. It never has been.
The hard part is choosing.
Ask GPT for ten subtitles for your book, or sixteen ways to hold a surprise party, and you’ll be delighted at how useful they are. Ask Dreamstudio or Kittl for some logo designs, same thing.
There is creativity in discernment.
AI and templates have made it easier than ever to find pretty good ideas.
It doesn’t matter so much.
The hard parts have always been the guts to choose and the will to put in the effort to bring your choice to the people who need it.
