Yeoman’s Work
Automation, outsourcing, and identifying and utilizing shortcuts are legitimate and—at times—marvelous means of achieving cumbersome goals.
Some tasks can be unloaded onto software, triggered by if-then tripwires, and completed with the same or better quality as a human being could achieve, but in a fraction of the time.
Other work can be hired out to employees, freelancers, or gig workers, either because the labor in question is easy to learn and, thus, easily farmed out to willing hands, or because it’s not work you’re particularly good at, and someone else would bring more skill and/or experience to the task, in exchange for money that is, to you, well-spent.
Still other work can be truncated, minimized, or bypassed utilizing clever workarounds and alternative riggings; reducing the overall load, replacing a tedious route with a palatable one, or shrinking an overwhelming task down to something more pocketable.
Some drudgeries, though, are partially valuable because of their laboriousness.
The term “yeoman’s work” or “yeoman’s service” usually refers to the difficult, unsexy, often unsung and thankless sorts of exertion that would have been common for a yeoman—a term for a 19th century, landowning but not wealthy farmer, or in some cases the reliable servant of a higher-class, professional person.
In other words: someone who does the work, by hand, by themselves, without celebration, recognition, or out-of-proportion reward.
Yeoman’s work is maintenance work, it’s base-level work, and it’s work that is often difficult to achieve via any other means.
There are few shortcuts or hacks available, and such alternatives would typically result in inferior outcomes. Thus, getting one’s hands dirty and applying ample elbow-grease is the only real option if you want to get to the other side.
We don’t tend to celebrate these sorts of efforts, but there’s a type of satisfaction found in such tasks that’s difficult to quantify, above and beyond the tangible outcomes of the labor itself.
There’s nothing wrong with hacks, hires, and algorithmic solutions, when appropriate, but I would argue that periodic engagement in yeoman-style labor is good for one’s sense of scale, necessity, and personal capacity.
The lack of social recognition and accolades for such labor—though unfortunate, as this type of work keeps society ticking along, and those who contribute the most in this way are often under-appreciated—can help us refocus on the internal rewards that are often latent in diligence, toil, and individual industry.
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Two years ago I was in Jersey City, New Jersey, as part of a speaking tour.
Projects
This week on Brain Lenses I published an essay about Contextualism and a podcast episode about Complexity Theory.
This week’s episode of Let’s Know Things is about Hydrogen Power.
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things:
Concert Roulette(watch a random classical concert of a chosen type)
Flash Crash(short fictional work about a stock market AI becoming sentient)
Origami Simulator(exactly what it sounds like, fun to play with)
Social Bubble(see what folks of different political persuasions see on Twitter)
Révolution Éteinte(some lovely photography by Thomas Jorion)
Flu Masks(photos from 1918-1919 flu pandemic)
Awkward(a short, animated film about uncomfortable moments)
For more interesting things of this kind, pop over to Curiosity Gadget.
Six years ago I was traveling around the US via overland mass transit (trains and buses, primarily), and found myself in Florida.
Outro
There’s been a near-global surge in COVID infections over the past few weeks, and though there are plenty of other things we should be paying attention to at the moment, as well, it’s worth keeping the following in mind:
It’s possible to become infected in any setting in which aerosolized coronavirus-bits are transmitted—meaning, in any setting in which we’re exhaling, speaking, laughing, coughing, sneezing, etc.
That said, transmissions seem to be much higher in situations in which such aerosols are likely to linger and remain concentrated, while situations in which they’re more likely to waft away and become diffuse are comparably better for those of us not wanting to get sick.
Thus, outdoors is generally better than indoors, indoor areas with good air circulation are generally better than those with comparably stagnant air, and masks are incredibly practical for keeping our aerosols (from breathing or speaking) from traveling long distances, or accumulating in the air around us when we’re socializing.
Some great visuals that explain this better, here.
Zeynep Tufekci is one of the best people to follow in terms of information/reporting on the coronavirus and the pandemic, in general. Ed Yong, too.
Please be as safe and careful as you’re able, given your circumstances.
There’s a lot of good news about potential next steps in the ether, right now, but we’re far from out of the woods with this thing, and a comparable lack of drum-banging about the pandemic compared to other things does not imply that it’s gone away or any safer: we’re actually at a higher risk right now than at any other time in some parts of the world (very much including the US).
That said: how’re things going for you and yours, at the moment?
What’s been on your mind, what’re you working toward, and are you looking forward to anything in particular?
I read and respond to every email I receive, and I love learning more about the folks on the other end of these missives, if you don’t mind taking a minute or two to introduce yourself :)
You can reach me by responding directly to this newsletter or via colin@exilelifestyle.com
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I’m also available via the usual social mechanisms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or a nice, big SNORT!
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work by becoming a patron of my writing or Let’s Know Things, buying one of my books, or subscribing to Brain Lenses. You can also keep it simple and buy me a coffee.