SUNDAY SCROLL: You Cannot Replace Face-To-Face
Something new to read, watch, look at, listen to and do to #bemorehuman.
I was in Manila this week, spending time with my new business partners and pitching our new venture around the sprawling city, making new connections in the best way possible - face to face. One evening, after a particularly grueling day, I was having a restorative drink alone on the rooftop bar of my hotel when one of the women we pitched waked in. She saw me alone and beckoned me to join her whilst she awaited a colleague. I too was awaiting my partners, however by the time they arrived we were two drinks in and having a marvelous time so they joined us.
Eventually her colleague arrived but, seeing what fun we were all having, he insisted we stay and even produced a brace of fine Cuban cigars to help celebrate our first week as a business. Cut to several hours later and we’re all puffing away like chimney’s having not just met but bonded over the excitement of our new venture.
This simply doesn’t happen over Zoom and though I cannot guarantee it will happen on every business trip or after every face-to-face meeting, I CAN guarantee it will never happen if you don’t turn up at all. Communication is about so much more than what we say, it’s also about the context in which we say it, a context that doesn’t exist online only #IRL. All the best, Nx
Read this…
My wife and I want to give our nine-year-old as much independence as reasonably possible. She takes the public bus home from school a couple times a week with a friend and cycles to the neighbourhood playground most evenings on her own. There she must navigate the playground politics that emerge between different cliques of kids and learn how to relate to those both younger and older than herself. We live in Singapore, which is famously safe, but like all parents we still want to be able to keep in touch with her but we don’t want to give her a smartphone for all the many reasons listed in this NYT article, based on
‘s new book ‘The Anxious Generation’; ‘Can We Get Kids Off Smartphones?’We now know, beyond any doubt, that smartphones are rewiring the brains of children and teenagers with devastating effects on their mental health. By handing our old smartphones to our kids, we are exchange their peace of mind for our own. That’s why we got our daughter a Nokia 6300 feature phone. It has WhatsApp but no Qwerty keyboard, which makes it a nightmare to text at length or use the web. It has limited apps and no front facing camera, so no selfies. Its battery lasts forever and it takes a knock. Basically, it’s completely utilitarian and therefore not interesting enough to capture her attention beyond calling and being called on it. Paired with an Apple tag we know where she is at all times and can get in contact whilst reducing, if not eliminating, the risks of smartphone ownership. That’s the hypothesis, I’ll let you know how it pans out.
Watch this…
Singaporean Director Anthony Chen is back in cinemas this month with his new movie ‘Drift’ about a woman, Jacqueline, who flees her war-torn country to a Greek Island. There she meets an unmoored tour guide and the two become close as they each find hope in the other. Anthony’s films are always about the deep need for human connection and this promises to be no different. Check out the trailer below and catch it wherever you can.
Look at this…
If you spend as much time on LinkedIn as I do you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone and his dog is a coach these days and guess what? So am I!
I took my Level 1 International Coaching Federation Certificate but, to be honest, I thought it was all a bit woo woo so, as has been the pattern of my life, I went my own way instead! Over the past few months I have been coaching a couple of creative agency leaders who have expressed their satisfaction with my method, which I have now codified into a pair of courses entitled…
#BeMoreSavvy: Commercial Skills for Creative People
#BeMoreCreative: Creative Skills for Non-Creatives
If you’d like to see the course outlines then do please take a look at https://nealmoore.substack.com/p/coaching and let me know if you’re curious.
Listen to this…
British journalist
is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a regular contributor to Private Eye and her weekly newsletter, The Bluestocking, can be found right here on Substack. She was also the host of brilliant BBC Radio 4 series/podcast ‘The New Gurus’ about the rise of cultish tech leaders who promise enlightenment through digitisation, and now she has a new series.‘Helen Lewis Has Left The Chat’ is all about the impact of the social media others can’t see i.e. WhatsApp, Slack and the plethora of other instant messaging apps. In it she exposes the internal politics of family WhatsApp groups, the bitchiness of office Slack threads and what this is doing to us and our relationships. It’s funny, gossipy and revealing and I can highly recommend it.
Do this…
Rob O’Brien is yet another great journalist and a friend of mine. Shortly before the pandemic Rob’s mum died, very suddenly, leaving him struggling with grief through lockdown whilst caring for his long-term sick wife and their kids. Rob wrote a fantastically moving piece on Medium about seeking comfort in nostalgia, something that chimed with my pandemic experience spent longing for better days. He also captured footage of him and his sister sorting through their mum’s belongings and, in so doing, ended up with enough for a documentary film not only about their grief for a loving mother, but the grief felt by millions as a deadly pandemic took other people’s mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands and wives just like Eileen, below.
Rob now needs a little help to get his film over the finish line, I’ve backed him on Kickstarter and I hope you will too. Hear it from Rob at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/meandmefilm/eulogy-a-short-documentary/ and contribute if you can.