Engineering serendipity, fashiontainment, your inner almond and the magic of REM
March 16 2023
Dear reader,
I meant to send this Weekly Digest a few days ago, but I have felt uncharacteristically exhausted and unmotivated for days.
I keep on sighing as if I’d lost a parent or a lover, but as it happens, I received a shot of a three-month dose of a hormone-suppressing treatment just over two weeks ago, and man, these side effects are no joke. My doctor’s assistant wasn’t looking too happy about administering this injection. She didn’t like the quality of the medication (too thick) and the needle (too large), being unfamiliar with the product, which is part of a fertility protocol. I had to reassure her that everything was okay (and it was, she was very delicate indeed).
The reason for this hormone-blasting treatment is that my uterus is a bit crowded and we need to make some room there, without surgery. At the moment, I have a couple of large fibroids, so my doctor means to dry up these dough-like balls as much as possible before they pump me full of oestrogen and progesterone in a few weeks (which will make them big again). Yes, you’re probably guessing that I’m hoping to make a nice nest for a baby to settle in there later this Spring.
So I’m experiencing side effects, and they are affecting my work because it’s affecting my mood, a lot. Thank god I write and meditate daily, so I can keep track of the evolution, but it’s no picnic.
I wasn’t at all expecting to be writing about this, but then again, it’s possible that my email schedule may become erratic due to my almost literal hormonal ups and downs. So why not be upfront?
After all, I bang on about creating mindful spaces and the future of work… Since writing this newsletter is both a labour of love and part of my job, this topic is finding its place, if a little unexpectedly, in my Weekly Digest,
My life evolves not just with my hormones and the seasons (real and fashionable) but also with the evolution of my pet fur family.
Nandi, the puppy, is now a teenager with tantrums and raging hormones. Suddenly, working from home has become more annoying, just as I had delightfully reorganised my office!
But as I was reflecting with my latest guest on the podcast, Kamil Tyebally of Early Spring NYC, the benefits of having a dog do outweigh the inconveniences. Something that bears remembering when he starts barking out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, I am grateful to speak cat fluently, and thankful for my generally quieter and low-key feline flatmates. I just wish I could curl up on the sofa and go for a nap just now. Perhaps after this email!
Thanks as always for reading me, I appreciate it!
Have a good one.
Much love,
LOOKING OUT
“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” — Charlotte Brontë
FASHIONTAINMENT OR THE ART OF MAKING CLOTHES - DEBATE
Paris Fashion week has seen some things recently. First, Pharell Williams was appointed as replacement to the late Virgil Abloh at the head of Louis Vuitton Homme, and the controversy is charged: how dare they? Putting a celebrity in the place of a designer! Shocking! It’s all about communication now (read: all about money!).
Yet, while I see their point, I’d like to point out that Pharrell is a fantastic creative who knows how to pull the right people together. Just take a look at his top 30 greatest musical hits, according to the Guardian. Someone capable of producing Milkshake, Happy and Hot in Here will certainly have an interesting point of view when it comes to fashionable self-expression. Personally, I’m curious to see what he will present in June.
Meanwhile, womenswear brand Coperni tried to create another viral moment by using a robot dog on their catwalk to help their model undress, before handing her her jacket again. Oops. That will not beat the spray-on dress from last season and the robot dog is kind of scary. Or is it just me?
Far from the celebrity-heavy tones, at Balenciaga, recovering from the scandal, designer Demna (who lost his last name a while back), offered this thoughtful message to the crowd that came to his show: “Fashion to me can no longer be seen as entertainment but rather as the art of making clothes.”
Three houses, three points of view. Something for everyone, I guess.
BUSINESS ATTIRE vs TONE OF VOICE
Your tone of voice, whether oral or written, is like your dress sense: it says a lot about who you are to those you communicate with.
On this topic, Forbes contributing editor Tracy Brower explains how we can communicate at work most effectively when we think of our communication style as one would a business casual wardrobe: one in which you’re not showing up in your sweatpants, but neither are you in a three-piece suit. Read more here.
YOUTUBE TURNS ITS SIGHTS ON PODCASTERS
Just this morning, I was reading how creators and influencers are worried about the transformation of our social media consumption habits. With platforms and our behaviours both in constant flux, their work (and, to a large extent, the work of brands, publishers, and those wanting to engage with audiences online) continues to multiply because of the perceived need to be on all platforms in case something goes wrong with one of them.
To a lesser extent, the same is true for podcasters, whether that is a corporate effort or an individual one. I was interested to read how Youtube is repositioning podcasts to focus on the audio only via their Music App. The value for podcast publishers is enormous due to the search function and reach of the platform. Smart move. Read more here.
EYE-TRACKING ADS AND THE ATTENTION ECONOMY
Marketers are testing new metrics, namely attention units or AU, as they devise new ways to capture audiences, going for quantity over quality. Does that sound like news to you? We are, after all, in the attention economy nowadays.
Enter Adelaide, an eye-tracking media solution that runs probabilities and trains its own algorithm based on data from vendors, scoring environments and placements for marketers to invest their dollars somewhere consumers are likely to see the ads. Note we are no longer tracking engagement beyond ‘seeing.’ Another metric I discovered is video completion rate. I get it, I always race to close pop up videos that show up unwanted on my feed. But reading this makes me feel like this is a race to the bottom. Or maybe it’s just me? You can read more about it here.
Looking In
ENGINEERING SERENDIPITY WITH KAMIL TYEBALLY
I’ve have quite the imaginative Out of the Clouds guest to share with you today. Kamil Tyebally is the founder of Early Spring NYC, a company that works at the crossroads between events, culture, connection and marketing to create immersive brand events.
His is an unusual story, and Kamil openly shares with me how he moved around from Singapore to Myanmar to Thailand in his teens and discovered that life experience could match academic performance. Creative from a young age, Kamil pursued photojournalism, which took him to many more places around the globe. Eventually, he landed in marketing and business development, and he became fixated on the immersive experiential events company Fake Love. After some years there, Kamil founded Early Spring.
Kamil is passionate in his discussions about his work, firmly believing that creating value beyond transactions and sparking authentic moments of connection at his events is the top priority. Early Spring was launched just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — representing both a challenge and a blessing in disguise — but has always had the objective (and the tagline) of ‘engineering serendipity’.
A wide-ranging and fascinating interview with a thoughtful entrepreneur. Happy listening!
ANXIOUS STATES AND THE INNER ALMOND
I love Martha Beck. Martha, in case you don’t know, is a wonderful coach, writer, and a sociologist who trained for her PhD at Harvard. I certified as a coach with her Wayfinder Life Coaching Training last year.
First and foremost, I love her because she is one of these rare writers who knows how to break down complicated concepts into simple terms, making them so accessible, but with a good dose of her very quirky humour.
Martha shared on her podcast that she is working on a new book about anxiety, something she has been suffering from on and off for years. She recently wrote a wonderful blog post about this topic where she goes over tactics to relax the amygdala - the ancient part of the brain that runs the show when we enter panic mode. She has found a new name for it, too. She calls it the Inner Almond, or creature-self. If you’re wondering how to manage anxiety, I recommend this short read. Enjoy!
THE MAGIC OF REM SLEEP
I’m a pretty sound sleeper, but I occasionally have intense dreams, which I’ve generally thought of as a disturbance rather than a gift until I read this article! I’m late to the game, having not (YET!) read Matthew Walker’s book ‘Why we sleep’, but thankfully, I now appreciate a little more the massive importance of this yet little-understood part of our human resting experience. Worth a thorough read! Discover here.
