The Network Union

In his latest post on his Network State theme, Balaji Srinavasan advocates for Network Unions. The network union is an online group, evolved to be more purposeful and powerful than current online groups. It is an evolution of Facebook groups, Discord servers, even very decentralized, fuzzy groupings like Pro-Tech Twitter. But the network union aligns around a common purpose, with a clear leader and global distribution. It provides concrete benefits beyond fun and belonging.

Benefits

It could enable collective bargaining for key goods like masks. It could organize to protect a member from an arbitrary public firing. It could provide a kind of insurance for unemployed members.

Such a union could also organize around creating things like wikis or open source software projects, or even startup funding for members.

The Bridge

The network state extrapolates further from where we are now to where decentralization trends could take us. This is a vision of a wholly new state founded by people with a common vision, which is hard to imagine at the moment. But the network union is a smaller extrapolation from seeds we can see now.

The network state idea is very ambitious and exciting, but seems out of reach. So the purpose of outlining the network union idea is to give people something closer to work toward. The network state is an ambitious ideal, while the network union is less awe-inspiring but also more attainable. It is a milestone on the way to the network state.

What’s Missing

The general prediction presented in the essay seems obviously correct, once explained. But it's a bit difficult to get excited about it with the examples that are given. The ones that sound interesting and inspiring (open source projects, startups, and collective wikis) are a bit hard to picture.

The problem with the post, in short, is a lack of really attractive examples. The best explained, most concrete benefits are protections against downside risk. But the most intriguing are the ones that point toward extreme upside (software projects and startup funding).

Let's play it out a bit. What if a network union funded a startup founder, that startup became a unicorn, the whole network got rich, then they created a city to make their vision real? Not because they had to, but because they wanted to, because it would be cool. And would just be much better than their current cities.

An obvious example of a network on its way towards startup cities and a network state is the technological progressive community. There's Technological Progressive Twitter, Discords and Slacks around tech progress.

These community buildouts get accelerated when the possibility of wealth creation is in the mix. Look at the growing tech scene in Miami. Look at Praxis Society, where they’re aiming to eventually build a city of people innovating at the frontier: Praxis Discord to Praxis houses to Praxis city.

It’s early days for all of this, but the future looks bright.

A Daily Writing Process

I’ve been writing and posting online more or less consistently for the last nine months. I’m not setting the world on fire, but I have managed to get a lot out there. I often follow a process of coming up with some ideas in the morning and writing a version of a post in the morning, then coming back and finishing and publishing it in the evening.

The morning is the time for creativity and raw output. That's when it's easiest to come up with ideas. Generate ideas, get something down. It doesn't have to be fully formed, but it should at least be something you can later work with and develop into something substantial.

The evening is when you can take a second look, polish, and publish. You’ve had a chance to think about the ideas throughout the day and let them bounce around a bit. Now you can take another shot at expressing them. And you get a fresh look at your writing, so you can spot problems and do some good editing.

This might not be the best way, but it seems somewhat non-obvious and it works reasonably well. It allows you to publish something without it being too much of a strain.

A Simple Goal Attainment Process

The Big Goal

You start with a goal. Let’s say you want to get fit. What does that mean to you? What does that look like? Maybe you’re 20 pounds overweight and have a paunch, and would like to weight, say 160 pounds and have a flat stomach. Okay, that’s a clear goal. You’ll know when you’ve achieved it.

Set a timeline. It’s hard to make any significant change in a month, but a year is more than you need to level up. Quarters of the year seem to work well. It’s enough time that you can significantly progress, but the deadline will always be close enough that you feel some urgency to progress.

Checkpoints

What are a few checkpoints on the way to that ultimate destination, some intermediate goals? Using the weight loss example, one checkpoint could be 175 pounds. Then 170, then 165, then 160. Then you’ll be there.

Diagramming can be helpful in visually laying out goals and intermediate checkpoints and brainstorming ideas to get there. I like a tool called Whimsical for quick, easy diagramming.

This Week’s Experiment

Now, what are some things you could do to progress towards the first checkpoint? You could exercise, you could eat better. What’s something specific, that you can set out to do today, and you will know when you have done it? Maybe walk around the block.

Can you see yourself doing this every day? The easier it is to do and the less time it takes, the more success you will have. If it takes under two minutes, you are very likely going to be able to do it consistently. If you can see this fitting into your daily routine, you’re set.

Now, you’ve started your journey. But you don’t know what exactly will work. So you need to always be experimenting with habits to find the right ones for you.

So don’t commit to walking around the block for a month. Commit to doing it every day this week. At the end of the week, answer two questions:

  • Is this working for me? If I keep doing this for 12 weeks, will it get me to my goal?

  • What shall I do next week? Do it just the same as I did last week? Do 10% more, 10% less? Or try a different approach altogether. Try doing a little workout instead of a little walking.

The Practice

Do this for twelve weeks.

Every day, all you have to do is repeat the current version of the habit.

Every week, all you have to do is determine if the habit is working or you need to change or replace it.

Every month, just step back a bit and see if you are on track to reach your goal.

Every quarter, look back on what you’ve done over the past 3 months and congratulate yourself on doing your best and sticking with it. And most of the time, you’ll find that you have a significant accomplishment to add to your collection. And you’ll feel ready to start the process again.

Other Resources

Setting and accomplishing goals is a very well-covered topic. My hope here was to offer something simple that might be able to help a few people. But there is a lot out there, and everybody is different. Here are some great posts on setting goals and achieving them:

How to Maintain a Daily Reflection Habit

You probably know that reflecting on your life is good for you. And that writing is a great way to do this. A common goal is to journal, to spend maybe 5–10 minutes a day reflecting on what went well and what could have gone better.

But how many people actually maintain a journaling habit, or consistently do any kind of written reflection? I would guess that it’s a small minority of people.

What keeps people from regularly doing this kind of reflection? Well, it’s effortful. You have to make time to do it, and you have to focus to do it. Those are never givens.

It probably has some kind of baggage, too. It has associations with self-help and a general touchy-feely vibe, towards which many people have (understandable) hesitations. Many people see this kind of self-help activity as inconsistent with their identities.

It’s hard to change people’s identities. Let’s put that aside here, and focus instead on how to design a written reflection habit. James Clear (author of mega best-seller Atomic Habits) lays down four laws of behavior change:

  1. Make it obvious

  2. Make it attractive

  3. Make it easy

  4. Make it satisfying

I have a recommendation for how to get started with regular reflection in an easy way, and I’ll show how it meets these guidelines. I stumbled onto an app (available on Android and iOS) called Cactus a few months ago. Actions speak louder than words, so here is my streak of using Cactus:

My Cactus Streak.png

70 days is a long time! It’s by far the longest I’ve ever maintained any kind of reflection habit. So how does this little app follow the laws of behavior change?

Make it Obvious

By default, Cactus notifies you of a daily writing prompt at a certain time every morning (I think the default is 8 AM). So you get a clear time to do the habit every day, and you can easily change it. The morning is a great time to do something creative, anyway. For most people, energy peaks in the morning.

Make it Attractive

It’s a cute app. It’s colorful and playful.

Cactus prompt first screen.png

Make it Easy

It’s not a journal or diary as might normally picture it. It’s a simple prompt, a quick note you write on your phone. It’s small: it can take less than two minutes. Just its being on the phone sets the expectation that it will be a brief, unformatted note. Not an essay. You will always have time to do this.

Make it Satisfying

Writing in Cactus is a quick win every morning. Pretty soon, you’ll start building up a streak. You’ll have a feeling of making tangible progress on something we all know we should be doing.

Worth Trying

Well, I think you can tell that I really like this little app. The free version gives you the daily prompts, while you can pay a few dollars a month to get “daily insights, core values, and more.” The free version will get you most of the benefits of the app. The core values assessment feature is nice, but isn’t quite up to par with the core functionality of the app. This isn’t the most polished app overall, but they seem to be regularly improving it.

I highly recommend regular reflection, and this tool offers a really easy way to try it out. So try it out for a week and see how it goes. I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences with this app, as I don’t know anyone else who regularly uses it. And if you have any other suggestions on getting regular reflection prompts, please share!