We're taught to begin with a question. Not a bad habit as habits go. Good salespeople and good conversationalists understand that questions often earn responses, and responses often contain useful information.

Chris Voss, former FBI negotiator and current business-coach-to-the-stars teaches a technique called mirroring — essentially parroting a key word or phrase back to your conversational counterpart / adversary in order to keep them talking (and divulging information). My Masterclass free trial ran out 5 years ago, but if memory serves, Chris Voss brags about using this technique at his wife's work event.

Wife's unwitting coworker: "I thought the lobster was only okay."
Chris, master negotiator:"The lobster?"
Coworker: "Yeah, I grew up in Maine, so I'm used to good lobster."
Chris, elite empath: "Really, Maine?"
Coworker, getting excited now:"Yep, Portland, Maine! Best small town in America."
Chris, maybe actually not the nicest guy:"Best small town in America?"

You get it. Obviously mirroring short-circuits if the other person thinks to ask you a question, but Chris Voss doesn't linger on that point.

The question that they settled on, that they made us recite, in class, was:
"Do you have time... for feedback?"

Five years on from graduation (around the same time my Masterclass free trial ended), ask any classmate whether they have time, and you'll get wry smile or an eye roll (or both, if you're really lucky.)

The question is, of course, a euphemism. We're not inquiring as to their literal availability as much as their emotional availability. It's an opportunity to avoid the uncomfortable situation of telling a co-worker that their presentation to the Sales Strategy team betrayed a lack of preparation, only for said co-worker to burst into tears and leave the room, where you remain, puzzled, until a third co-worker (who's closer with the feedbackee) comes in to tell you that the second co-worker was up late last night dealing with some undisclosed roommate drama, and really, couldn't you have waited to deliver this feedback until they were ready to receive it. (And to confuse you, we are also taught deliver it in a timely fashion so the feedback is associated with the precipitating action — the same advice is in every dog-training book ever written.)

Even for the Type As, who understand that feedback is the surest way to get better and were told in their own training programs to seek it out, emotions come up (or so I hear, I'm not Type A; I'm Type B+). I managed someone once who told me on Day 1 that she was a "feedback junkie" — by Day 30, I was receiving feedback that I'd given too much.

Stripped of euphemism, the question might be, "Are you ready... for some emotional discomfort?"

Euphemisms trade meaning for palatability. They are a hedge — the communication will not be as straightforward, but it will be gentler, and maybe, more likely to be heard. A cynic would say they’re a luxury. If you grew up in a euphemistic culture, one in which, for example, the word "interesting" means "bad" or "suspect," non-euphemistic communication is jarring, rude even. If you grew up otherwise, I imagine the double-speak wears on you.

When writing, the vast majority of the feedback is auto ("self" as opposed to "mobile"). Words occur to you, you type them, and then you try to pay attention to whether they make the piece better or worse. No euphemisms. You are judged and found wanting, over and over, by someone who is not very nice, and so many other activities are so close at hand and seem increasingly and intensely interesting (the literal meaning); anything to not hear more feedback from your self, who favors dysphemisms (the opposite of euphemism!) lest you misunderstand, and anyway, that's why this volume of The Cortado is a month late.

I always think it's going to happen on the plane. Away from internet and the normal patterns of distraction and addictions. And then I end up watching American Sniper on a screen two rows up. Not over someone's shoulder but over two someones' shoulders. What is it about an 8-inch screen, 10 feet away, that makes it so irresistible? We want what we can't have? Except I could have it, much closer and with sound? A more likely description is that my attention is a moth and the screen a flame, and it flits over to be immolated again and again by the heat shimmering off buff Bradley Cooper.

I've seen American Sniper before.

Things of the Month

Over the course of a month, I encounter things. From those, I select some.

Here are they.

Book of the Month

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

I think I hold a lot of beliefs that would not stand up in an audit (no supporting documentary, arbitrary basis, etc). I’ll probably keep believing most of those things because the consequences of being wrong (if there are any at all) won’t be fed back (or even linked) to the root belief.

The Dawn Davids argue that the conventional wisdom of humans in “pre-history” — human history prior to written records — is wrong and has serious consequences for our ability to construct a human-aligned future.

It’s unsettling to be shown that certain of your bedrock beliefs aren’t on bedrock at all, but also satisfying. I recommend this book if you’re into that sort of thing.

Imagining of the Month

Song of the Month

I am musically ignorant, and therefore lack the vocabulary to put into words why I like this song, so you’ll just have to listen to it.

Quote of the Month

This one needs a bit of context. David Foster Wallace, for an article eventually called “The String Theory” in Esquire Magazine, went to the Canadian Open to shadow professional tennis player Michael Joyce, who peaked at No. 64 in the world in April of 1996.

I've had a breakthrough in understanding my procrastination and that is:

A procrastinator must always be procrastinating from something. Apology if this is a tautology (does that rhyme?), but the implications are maybe... interesting.

I can do work I'd rather not do, but only if that work serves the procrastinatory purpose — that is, only if that work is helping me put off working on something odious.

In the words of Qui-Gon Jinn, there's always a bigger fish.

I don't think the functioning procrastinators ever "solve" it or "fix" it. I think they just become clever at placing one thing in front of the other. At least this is what I'm going to tell myself from now on.

For this purpose, The Cortado is well-suited. In May, it played the valuable role of bête noire, and it kept doing that all the way into June.

As I write this, I am procrastinating going to FedEx to print a shipping label to mail a 2002 Legendary Collection Golduck Pokémon card to a gentleman in Canada (but that's another story). In fact, I've procrastinated it so much that now I'll have to do it tomorrow, which will be, for both myself and the Canadian gentleman, worse.

As I hope I’ve demonstrated, procrastinating involves risk. Talk to your therapist before starting any new procrastinatory programs.

Yours,
Ethan

P.S. To those of who you asked me where the f*** the May Cortado was, forgive me and thank you. You know who you are.