Scholé Supplement #13

✍🏼 Too many tennis balls are never enough

When I reach for words to describe how a grokkist moves through life, there’s one image that always springs to mind – a dog chasing too many tennis balls at once.

Too many tennis balls is how a grokkist feels all the time. Nothing sets the tail wagging like an overwhelming deluge of interesting things to chase all at once!

A grokkist may act to others as if too many tennis balls is a huge inconvenience that is somehow holding them back. This is a self-defence mechanism – clearly too many tennis balls is an insane way to live by any sensible standards, so a pre-emptive pretence towards the usual (boring) rules of focus, discipline and productivity must be made.

Some grokkists do self-impose their own rules of focus, discipline and constraint on their interests (for the next 30 days, I'm only going to chase this ball as fast as I can!) but this is something they do for their own amusement – it is playful productivity.

In any case, if they complain about how much they are trying to do, try taking away some of a grokkist’s tennis balls and see what happens.

Get a grokkist among their own kind, however, and watch them explode with excitement and enthusiasm for all the projects they are pursuing simultaneously, and witness the motivation fuelled by desire simply to find out what happens and discover the ways in which everything might eventually somehow connect.

For a grokkist, this is living.

Friends, there is a reason why people love sending each other videos of dogs carrying sticks that are too big and other animals doing funny things. We envy them.

It’s like the saying goes – the reason adults are constantly asking kids what they want to be when they grow up is because they are looking for ideas.

Too many tennis balls is where a grokkist thrives.

But try putting that in a CV. Try chasing all your ideas in a school assignment. Witness the microexpression of anxiety flicker across a grokkist’s face whenever someone asks ‘so what do you do?’

A grokkist finds their own way to navigate these things over time, to the point where eventually they forget that it’s an adaptation that carries an overhead on their soul.

But no matter how serious they may seem, on the inside they are dreaming of chasing too many tennis balls.

In the last edition I announced a major quality-of-life update to Still Curious to create a new podcast hub on the Grokkist site and give each remastered episode its own feature page with a full digest summary, audio highlights and an interactive transcript.

You can now enjoy the following episodes which have been freshly remastered and repackaged since the last newsletter edition...

Turn your curiosity into action before inspiration fades - Carl Leducq | S1E4

Carl is a games producer and podcaster. We talk about how learning to make short gameplay montages of Call of Duty 4 during high school set him on a squiggly path from film to social media content creation, and eventually into the games industry.

GrokkistDanu Poyner

“Whose rule is that?” Examining the self-talk that limits our potential - Gail Reichert | S1E5

Gail develops and runs leadership programs in organisations to help people increase their self insight and become better leaders. We discuss why people can be really intellectually smart, but if they’re not aware of the emotional impact they’re having on others, then they won’t be very effective.

GrokkistDanu Poyner

Creativity, classrooms, calligraphy: “You never know what it’s going to be until it’s finished” - Peter Gilderdale | S1E6

Peter Gilderdale is a freelance writer and calligrapher and recently retired lecturer in Design History at Auckland University of Technology. We talk about the difference between education that gets people creative and excited vs turning out people who just want to tick boxes.

GrokkistDanu Poyner

I moved to the middle of nowhere and found everything I’d been missing - Kathryn Harris | S1E7

Kathryn is a hydrogeologist with a wealth of experience in the private energy sector. We talk about how she fell into hydrogeology and how she combines her love of the environment, adventure, science and emotional connection to make a difference in her community.

GrokkistDanu Poyner

“Tell someone who cares”: a shout-out to caring people who move within uncaring systems - Danu Poyner | S1E8

In this solo episode, Danu reflects on caring and uncaring teaching, how we live out what the world teaches us and why an ethical imagination is the beating heart of education.

GrokkistDanu Poyner

Shout-outs

A couple of community-based projects in sustainability, circular economy and regenerative systems design that grokkist Emily McGill is helping to organise:

• Master Recycler Vancouver — a non-profit 8 week education program for adults around waste prevention and reduction. There are similar programs across North America.
• Textile Lab for Circularity — Building Your Circular Strategy workshops. Taking the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) aka The Natural Step and applying it to the textile and apparel / fashion industry.

I don’t wanna!

me: [to myself] fuck you, i won’t do what you tell me!!

visakanv's essaysvisakan veerasamy

I'm a big planner, but I also don't like being told what to do. Often this means I refuse to follow my own plans, sometimes as soon as 5 minutes after making them. This guy gets it. "I don’t wanna follow my plans if I’m not feeling them" is a core process that many grokkists always have running. Here is an extended meditation on what that's all about.

Exactly what it says on the tin – 20 mechanical principles combined in a useless lego machine. Captivating from start to finish. 10 points also go to the YouTube commenter who says "I would like to point out this machine is not useless: its use is demonstrating 20 mechanical principles 👍"

CityWalks.live

A web platform that you can virtually travel around the world.

CityWalks.live

A couple of programmers created the CityWalks platform as a pandemic project to help people virtually explore cities from all around the world by foot, with optional ambient sounds. Surprisingly soothing. It also has a 'during covid' mode for those who miss the eerie feeling of wandering empty streets.

What we keep getting wrong about inflation

What is inflation? The answer seems obvious: when things get more expensive, that’s inflation, and it’s bad. But an alternative view is Milton Friedman’s. In a talk in 1963, the hugely influential …

Tim Harford

A short and sharp piece that asks a simple question: what if we are confused about the difference between inflation and real changes in price? And what if our confusion meant we pursued some unhelpful policies while ruling out others for the wrong reasons?

Mimestream

A native macOS email client for Gmail

Mimestream

If you're a Mac user who mainly uses Gmail, do check out Mimestream, which combines the best of both worlds with neither pain nor friction. I've been using it for months and it keeps getting better and better. Technically still in beta and free for however long that lasts.