By Colby Kultgen
The Cost of Comfort, The Crime of Doing Nothing, and How to Build a Village
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Hello friends!
I'm back after a (very) brief hiatus.
This is your weekly dose of 1% Better.
The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week.
Let's get right into it.
1. A harsh truth + two useful reflection questions
The theme of this week's newsletter is TOUGH LOVE.
A few of these may seem harsh, but please don’t take anything personally.
I still love all of you (despite your faults).
Now that we’ve cleared that up...
The post above gets at an uncomfortable truth: becoming a better person requires admitting where you may be getting in your own way.
I was reminded of one of my favorite self-reflection questions from executive coach Jerry Colonna:
How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?
You say you don’t want to feel overwhelmed, but keep agreeing to things you don’t have time for.
You say you want to sleep better, but keep bringing your phone to bed.
I would highly recommend carving out some time to sit with this question or, even better, journal on it.
Another one I love, from author James Clear:
If a competent CEO got to run your life for a day, what is the first thing they would eliminate?
I’ve read this every morning for the last 4 days.
Why, you may ask?
Because this isn't just another "durrrr, doomscrolling bad" article.
No, this is the digital equivalent of being scared straight.
A piece that lays out the terrifying reality of handing over our lives to an algorithm.
This part about capitalism stood out to me in particular:
I have written and will write endlessly of the ways that our capitalist societies drive us to this tragedy; how meaningless grating 8 hour shifts spent staring at spreadsheets or explaining the concept of coupon expiration dates to angry customers leaves us exhausted and not at all inspired, and how our time spent consuming or doing nothing feels like a break from capitalism while acting as one of its most powerful tools. Alienated labor drains vitality and estranges us all from our human capacities, and we have all therefore become wage-slaving robots without thoughts or opinions or hobbies of our own, and none of us seem to be doing anything at all. Does the death of your personhood not plague your mind? Does the tragedy of the depersonalization of an entire society not worry anyone? We know that convenience technologies have become extraction tools, but we seem to fail to meaningfully realize that their extraction of our attention, which becomes the extraction of time, has extracted from us the latter part of ‘human being.’ Now we are just human, and soon we might not even be that.
It's so good, I'm going to go read it again.
I recommend you do the same.
Another article, this time about diapers! (I'm only half joking.)
This phenomenal piece by author Steve Magness digs deep into the concept of interoception.
Basically, our ability to notice and interpret signals from inside the body.
Magness uses disposable diapers as his central example.
Because they absorb wetness before a child really feels it, they can weaken the feedback loop that helps the brain connect an internal signal with what is happening.
His larger point is that modern life does this in all kinds of subtler ways.
We remove discomfort so quickly that we never learn how to read it.
Phones protect us from boredom.
GPS keeps us from ever feeling lost.
Headphones keep us from being alone with our thoughts.
Fitness trackers tell us how we feel before we’ve checked in with ourselves.
Every convenience comes with a trade-off.
When we constantly mute the signal, we may also weaken the skill it was trying to build.
4. A phrase I can't stop thinking about
Everyone wants a village, no one wants to be a villager.
This line comes from an Instagram post I loved about what building community in adult life actually requires.
A few ideas that stayed with me:
Villages are inconvenient. They’re built in the overlap of busy lives, not once everyone magically has more free time. Sometimes maintaining a friendship means showing up tired, rearranging your evening or making the plan before you feel like it.
Boundaries can become walls. Protecting your peace stops being helpful when it consistently cuts you off from the people who help you feel supported. Sometimes the thing that feels like effort in the moment is exactly what helps you feel better afterward.
Sometimes you have to ask twice. A slow reply isn’t always rejection. People get overwhelmed, forget to respond and lose track of messages. Friendships survive because someone follows up and keeps the thread alive.
We all want people who show up for us.
Building a village means becoming someone who shows up too.
5. Tweet of the week
If you know, you know.
A few more things I'm into this week:
🎧 Album I have on repeat: LOVE IS THE LAW by Love Spells
📰 Book I'm enjoying: You Can Just Do Things by Cate Hall
That's all! Have a great week!
— Colby
