Russell Davies

Semi-retiring
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Count something / write something

A kind correspondent read my post about Do Interesting and thought I might be interested in Atul Gawande's 2005 Commencement Address to the Harvard Medical School. She's right. It's fantastic.

Here's his Rule 3:

"Count something. No matter what you ultimately do in medicine— whether you go into purely clinical practice or work in research or business and never touch a patient again—a doctor should be a scientist in his or her world.

In the simplest terms, this means that we should count something. The laboratory researcher may count the number of tumor cell lines with a particular gene defect. Likewise, the clinician might count the number of patients who develop a particular complication—or even just how many are seen on time and how many were made to wait. It doesn’t really matter what you count. You don’t need a research grant. The only requirement is that what you count should be interesting to you.

When I was a resident I began counting how often one of our patients had something forgotten inside them after surgery—either a sponge or an instrument. It wasn’t very frequently: about one in 15,000 operations. But they could be badly injured. One patient had a 13 inch retractor left in him and it tore into his bowel and bladder. Another had a small sponge left in his brain, which caused an abscess and a permanent seizure disorder.

Then I counted how often such cases happened because the nurses hadn’t counted all the sponges like they were supposed to, or because the doctors ignored nurses’ warnings that something was missing. It turned out to be hardly ever. I got a little more sophisticated and compared patients who had stuff left inside them with ones who didn’t. It turned out that the mishaps predominantly occurred in patients with emergency operations or operations in which something unexpected was encountered—like a cancer when one expected appendicitis. Things began to make sense. If nurses have to track fifty sponges and a couple hundred instruments during an operation, already a tricky thing to do, it is understandably much harder under emergency circumstances, or when unexpected changes require bringing in lots more equipment. Punishing people more therefore wasn’t going to eliminate the problem. Only a technological solution would—perhaps a way of scanning for sponges and instruments in everyone.

If you count something interesting to you, I tell you: you will find something interesting."

And here's Rule 4:

"Write something. It makes no difference whether you write a paper for a medical journal, five paragraphs for a website, or a collection of poetry. Try to put your name in print at least once a year. What you write does not need to achieve perfection. It only needs to add some small observation about our world. One should not underestimate the effect of one’s contributions.

The physician and poet Lewis Thomas once pointed out, “The invention of a mechanism for the systematic publication of fragments of scientific work may well have been the key event in the history of modern science.” For by soliciting modest contributions from the many, it has produced a store of collective know-how with far greater power than any one individual could have achieved.

I think this is as true outside science as inside.

One should also not underestimate the power of the act of writing itself. I did not write until I became a doctor. But once I became a doctor, I found I needed to write. Medicine is retail. We provide our services to one person at a time, one after another. It is a grind. For all its complexity, it is more physically than intellectually taxing. But writing let me step back, engage as something more than a retailer, and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness. 

Furthermore, by putting your writing out to an audience, even a small one, you connect yourself to something larger than yourself.

The first thing I ever published was a diary in an online magazine of five days as a surgical resident. I remember that feeling of having it come out in print. One is proud but also nervous. Will people notice it? What will they think? Did I say something dumb? An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community, and also of concern to contribute something meaningful to it.

So choose your audience. Then write something."

March 08, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

Why be more interesting?

This is a section I'm working on for the book. It's not a simple answer...

Tooth and claw - the productivity answer

There were once two hikers setting up camp in the woods after a long day’s walking. They’d just finished their evening meal and were settling down in their tent, getting into their sleeping bags, when they heard the unmistakable sounds of a bear snuffling around the campsite. They froze with fear. Then they heard it getting closer, then they saw the bulge in the nylon as the bear rubbed against the outside of the tent. One of the hikers slowly reached over to their rucksack, dug out a pair of running shoes and silently started putting them on. 

“What are you doing?” whispered the other hiker “You can’t outrun a bear”

“I don’t have to outrun a bear” the first hiker replied “I just have to outrun you”

This is a reason to be interesting. It’s a competitive world out there. In a world of work, a world of raising money to start a business, or to persuade someone to buy your new idea, or to support your cause, or whatever it is, it helps if you’ve got a little edge. And being more interesting can be that edge. It won’t make you the fastest runner in the world but it’ll help.

Just because - the life is for living answer

Someone once did a study which claimed that a greater proportion of scientists who won Nobel Prizes had hobbies than those that didn't. I posted this on the Do Interesting instagram and my friend James poked at it, questioning what I was suggesting: ‘be interesting so you can be successful, so you can win?’ And, yes, that's a bit of it, we talked about that above. 

But there's more to it than that. I think it's a useful counter to all the productivity pom in the world to remember that not only is being maniacally focused on work unhealthy, but that it also doesn’t work. I like the Nobel/hobbies study because it demonstrates that hobbies don't get in the way of professional success. Many of us want to succeed professionally and feel like our hobbies should sit on pause while we do it. This is study is one indication that that's pointless.

What else is there? - the happiness answer

The Australian author Helen Garner just wrote a magnificent essay for The Guardian about happiness. She said she’d finally realised that it wasn’t a thing you got after a lifetime of striving but something that you ‘glimpse in the corner of your eye’ Something elusive, that slips away before you name it. 

And then she writes:

“So I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist. Things that remind me of other things. Tiny scenes. Words that people choose, their accidentally biblical turns of phrase. Hand-lettered signs, quotes from books, offhand remarks that make me think of dead people, or of living ones I can no longer stand the sight of. I plan to keep writing them down, praising them, arranging them like stepping stones into the dark. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere good before I shrivel up and blow away.”

And then she tells you about the things she’s noticed. It’s magical and mundane. Go read it.

Being interesting means being interested. What else is there?

February 07, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

Executive summary*

I've just written this as a first page in the Do Interesting book. (Don't worry, we've also written other pages. This isn't all there is.)

If you’re in a bookshop trying to decide whether to buy this book this is the page you want.

Interesting isn’t something you are, it’s something you do. You get more interesting by being more interested, by paying a little more attention to the world. And there are a bunch of relatively easy, ways to do that. Which we’ve divided into three sections

Noticing - you should spend a little bit of time, dailyish, paying extra attention to the world and noticing something new about it.

We’ve got 23 ways you could do that.

Collecting - you should make an extra effort, weeklyish, to collect and compile what you’ve noticed so you can find it and use it again.

We’ve got 15 ways you could do that.

Making - you should do something with what you’ve collected, monthishly. You should make something that you put back into the world. Something interesting.

We’ve got 21 ways you could do that.

We’ve also interviewed a bunch of interesting people who aren’t Steve Jobs or Picasso but just regular people like you and me who tell us how they do all this.

*if not you’re not an executive please don’t read this page

February 01, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

The opposite of interesting is not boring it's ChatGPT

A kind correspondent has pointed out that the list of 10 ways to be Interesting generated by ChatGPT and featured in yesterday's post only contained 9 items. Of course! I had not noticed.

AI is going to be the very devil to edit because it's so smooth that it's hard to read properly. We just bounce off it. I presume, because it's basing almost everything on 'what's the next most probable word?', we feel like we can tell where it's going and make unconscious assumptions about where it'll end up. 

That strange way with language used to be strange and interesting. It threw up unexpected words and beguiling ideas. Now it's just strangely, dangerously bland.

January 28, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

I am not a robot

When I first thought about doing Do Interesting I assumed it'd be easy. I've spent a long time thinking about this stuff. There's the blog post from way back when, there are the conferences, there've been occasional workshops. I own the twitter account. For a while when you typed 'how to be interesting' into google you got me. And Oliver Burkeman once said I was interesting..""Start a blog," the designer and blogger Russell Davies recommends, but as experience shows, only interesting people – Davies included – start interesting blogs."

But then I got worried. This space - as a tech consultant might say - has commodified. The internet is full of advice about how to do all this. Be more productive/creative/imaginative in that kind of influencey, guru-y, sort-of-useful, sort-of-soul-destroying way.

I love Morning Pages. It's a lovely and useful idea. When Morning Pages becomes a lifestyle app subscription model notecards thing something goes wrong. I didn't want to write that kind of book. And even if I'd wanted to, it's too late.

So I thought I should get help. If I was rewriting that original blogpost now I'd instantly add 'find people you love to work with'. The BIGGEST lie about sort-of-creative work is that you do any of it on your own. You don't. It's always a collaboration. Even if just with your eventual audience or with Past and Future Yous.

I won't tell you about the people I've found yet because I've not asked their permission. But one of them (Ben) immediately proved my point by doing a genius thing. He typed this prompt into ChatGPT:

“Write me a short blog post, 500 words, on 10 ways to be interesting.”

ChatGPT wrote this:

Being interesting is an important quality to possess. It can make conversations more engaging, help you stand out in a crowd, and even make you more attractive to others. Here are 10 ways to be more interesting:

  1. Be curious. Ask questions, seek out new experiences, and learn about a wide variety of topics. Being curious shows that you are engaged with the world around you and that you have a thirst for knowledge.
  2. Have a passion. Whether it's a hobby, a sport, or a cause that you care about, having a passion can make you more interesting. It gives you something to talk about and share with others, and it shows that you have depth and complexity as a person.
  3. Be adventurous. Try new things, go to new places, and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Being adventurous shows that you are brave and willing to take risks, which can be very interesting to others.
  4. Be creative. Think outside the box, come up with new ideas, and express yourself in unique ways. Being creative shows that you have a fertile imagination and that you are not afraid to be different.
  5. Be a good listener. Listen carefully to what others have to say, ask follow-up questions, and show that you are genuinely interested in their thoughts and experiences. Being a good listener shows that you are considerate and empathetic, which are attractive qualities.
  6. Be confident. Believe in yourself and your abilities, and don't be afraid to speak up and share your opinions. Being confident shows that you are self-assured and comfortable in your own skin, which can be very interesting to others.
  7. Be open-minded. Be willing to consider different perspectives, learn from others, and change your mind when new information becomes available. Being open-minded shows that you are intellectually curious and flexible, which can be very interesting.
  8. Be well-informed. Stay up-to-date on current events, know a little bit about a lot of different subjects, and be able to hold your own in a conversation. Being well-informed shows that you are knowledgeable and engaged with the world, which can make you more interesting.
  9. Be a good storyteller. Share interesting stories about your life, your travels, or your experiences, and tell them in a way that is engaging and entertaining. Being a good storyteller shows that you have a vivid imagination and the ability to captivate an audience, which can make you very interesting.

It's OK, right? It's not very interesting or useful but it's a pretty good summary of the internet consensus about this stuff.

(I think for the book we'll have to do a shorter version. It's hard to read when it's this long. Like a Medium post.)

What was more alarming is the tone. It's quite like I write. It's Internet Modern. Short sentences. Plain. Be this. Do that. That was chastening. That made me even more determined to get other people involved and to make the book more various, more odd and more (of course) interesting.

I think we're getting there but it's an interesting needle to thread.

I will post extracts and Work In Progress for your perusal.

  

January 27, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

New Do who this?

little big voice

I first talked at the Do Lectures in 2007 when it wasn't called Do. It was called Little Big Voice. Then I talked again in 2008 (with Matt Jones) and then I went back in 2009. But I don't remember talking. 

do lectures

Do

And in 2011 I went and did a How To Be Interesting workshop under the Do umbrella.

Do 2022

And then, last summer, I was fortunate enough to be asked to go and talk again. I think I got the vibe a bit wrong, to be honest, the 'Do community' was feeling a lot of post-pandemic fervour, I was banging on about the challenges of AI, but it was still the most fascinating few days. And, while I was there I bumped into Miranda who runs Do Books and she asked me if was interested in doing a Do book. And so I said, of course.

There was already a Do Present and I'd just written a book about PowerPoint so I had to fall back on the only other thing I'm qualified to write about. And so I'm writing Do Interesting.

We're aiming for it to be on sale in September 2023. I think. That seems very soon now.  But, if you stay tuned, over the next few weeks and months, you'll be able to follow along with a series of posts about how it's all going. It seems like a good thing to blog about writing. While I'm writing about blogging.

January 26, 2023 in DI, DoInteresting | Permalink

Orienting quotations

Much to love about this from Alan Jacobs.

To start with: the idea of "a text file with a few orienting quotations".

"I have a text file with a few orienting quotations, and one of them comes from the English novelist M. John Harrison:

The idea you have when you’re young, to reach the edge of what can be done with your abilities and find out what might happen if you went past it? You promise yourself you’ll try but then wake up fifty years later to discover that you were in fact always too sensible to push things until they fell over, in case people thought less of you. In your seventies, though, it doesn’t seem to matter any more what other people think. That’s probably the first phase of your life in which you can actually do what you want. And certainly the last.

I think about this a lot. And, not yet being in my seventies, I’d like to get a head start. But doing what takes you to “the edge of what can be done with your abilities” and saying whatever you want are two different things. Often what I want to say isn’t charitable or constructive, and the part of me that suppresses the utterance of my uglier thoughts is doing me a big favor. But the part of me that fears to push the envelope of my gifts … that part of me needs to be stifled. The problem is that there’s so much of it inside me."

 

November 21, 2022 in DI | Permalink

Zombie Christmas

I have embarked on another book project. I will tell you more when all the contracts have been signed and Ms Winfrey gives me the OK.

But one of the notions in the book is that sharing ideas in public is both useful in improving those ideas and a good way of getting ideas back. Declare that you're interested in something and people are wonderfully inclined to say 'hey, I've seen something related to that’. This is good.

It’s a bit like this. There are some people it's easy to buy gifts for. Those people have clear, defined interests. "I like owls!” And so their house is full of stuffed owls bought for them by nieces and grandchildren. Ideally of course they have more than one interest. Because there is such a thing as too many owls.

But if you don't declare an interest you risk getting nothing. Or bath salts. Or people leap on the one tiny clue you give them and pummel it to death. One Christmas our son was very keen on the TV show The Walking Dead. So he ended up with Walking Dead posters. Walking Dead apparel, mugs, everything. It became known as the Zombie Christmas and is a useful warning from history.

So I'm going to share some of the writing process on here. I’m going to declare some interests. 

There’ll be drafts of bits and pieces and perhaps some tales from the wordface. And I'm going to experiment with turning comments on for these posts. So if you want to join in please feel free. I suspect traffic is now so low that there won't be a big spam issue but we'll see. Posts will be tagged DI for reasons that will become clear when Mr Yentob signs the relevant releases.

Things that seem related to the topic of sharing ideas in public include:

Clive Thompson’s thought about the value of blogging: “Even if I was publishing it to no one, it’s just the threat of an audience”

And there’s that thing from (I think) the FT (which I can’t find now) about

But the thing I keep thinking about is from Hedda Sterne "The Surrealists tried to be agonistic, bizarre. I wasn’t like that. I didn’t think I had the kind of mind and power of thinking to change the world. I had a very great urgency to show, to share. The cat brings you in things, you know? It was that kind of thing. I discovered things and wanted to share them."

And of course there's all the writing and thinking that Matt Webb has been doing recently about Writing As Thinking/As A Generative Act. Which is related but not quite the same.

There's also something to be explored here about sharing ideas without exposing yourself. Not a thing that we worried about so much during Privileged Blogging 1.0 but which needs to be thought about now.

October 25, 2022 in DI | Permalink