weekly fixations | edition 05

inventors, style, happiness, scully, stains.

Author

mallory contois
June 03, 2024

Five things to fixate on this week — alone, with friends, or with strangers.

Subscribe to receive future editions here, and please forward this to a friend who enjoys stretching their brain, exploring the vague, or starting weird conversations at parties. 🙏

1. This tweet

The psychology of invention is such a fun rabbit hole - imagine the gall, bravery, creativity or stupidity of those who tried or designed things for the first time that we now take for granted.

Who persevered through enough failures to find the combination of ingredients to make bread rise? (here’s a fun article on the history of bread)

Who decided dogs (then, wolves) should live with us? (here’s one theory)

How on earth did someone figure out how to design a zipper? (read about the invention of the Hookless No. 2 here)

How often does the strange become the standard?

How many failures were there before the successes?

2. This perspective on personal style

❝

At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style.

But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way.

Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo.

Paul Graham, 2022 (Taste for Makers)

Are you trying to develop a personal style, or are you allowing your personal style to develop?

How often do you model your style after others’ vs. embracing what comes naturally? Why?

3. The happiness grid

I’ve seen many versions of happiness/fulfillment scales and measurement frameworks, but this one stood out to me as a useful new perspective and introspection tool. It focuses on your sensory and emotional experience of the world as a measure of happiness, achieved through whatever journey brings you the most peace and fulfillment.

“People familiar with positive psychology might initially be surprised when they notice that certain dimensions of happiness that they hold near and dear (such as meaning, self-actualization, communal connection, and so forth) do not appear on my grid. That however is an optical illusion. They’re absolutely included but as subsets or combinations of my basic elements.” - Young

Which columns are you furthest along in? What has enabled your advancement in these?

Of the columns where you sit at level 1 or 2, what can you do or practice to move into levels 3 or 4?

4. The Scully Effect

The Scully Effect” refers to how Dana Scully inspired a generation of women to enter STEM fields. Played by Gillian Anderson, Scully became a household name in the 1990s following the huge popularity of The X-Files.

According to a study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2018, 63% of women working in STEM who grew up while the show was airing cited Scully as a role model and said she “increased their confidence to excel in a male-dominated profession.”

5. This guide to stain removal

White wine to remove red wine?! Milk to remove ink?!

See you next week!

❤️ Mallory