Month: June 2021

[Link] Ritual4Return

via “Reasons to be Cheerful”

Rituals abound when it comes to bringing people into the criminal justice system. Yet, there aren’t formal rituals to welcome people back to society after they serve time.

“No one can tell your story except for you and no one has gone through that type of suffering except for you. We can learn from each other’s pain, writing and any type of art”

Sleeping beauty

“What are your strategies for resilience?”

That was one of several prompts for discussion between the young women of Bankstown Girls High School and their mentors at the recent ABCN Empower program that I was part of.

The answer that resonated me was “sleep”. I was reminded that my own sleep habits have changed substantially over the last year, thanks to the time saved on commuting.  I’ve slept much better than in the last decade.

While much of the discussion I’m reading about “returning to work” revolves around the pros & cons of human interaction, I’ve not (yet) come across much on the impacts on sleep, & its second-order effects.

[Link] The Spread of Improvement

Anton Howes in this excerpt from 2017 describes why innovation accelerated in Britain, what he attributes to:

the emergence and spread of an improving mentality, tracing its transmission from person to person and across the country. The mentality was not a technique, skill, or special understanding, but a frame of mind: innovators saw room for improvement where others saw none. The mentality could be received by anyone, and it could be applied to any field – anything, after all, could be better.

But what led to innovation’s acceleration was not just that the mentality spread: over the course of the eighteenth century innovators became increasingly committed to spreading the mentality further – they became innovation’s evangelists. By creating new institutions and adopting social norms conducive to openness and active sharing, innovators ensured the
continued dissemination of innovation, giving rise to modern economic growth in Britain and abroad.