Emily Nakashima
eanakashima@hachyderm.io
My greatest professional accomplishment of the year: I got my exec & manager teammates saying "point positive," a term from whitewater rafting and kayaking.
Meaning: when facing hazards, point people toward where to go/what to do, rather than drawing attention to everything to avoid.
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People just naturally start to go toward where you draw their attention, whether they want to or not. 🤷🏻
Might as well pick something good to point at.
This lesson has many applications right now.
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Rihards Olups
richlv@mastodon.social@eanakashima Ha, didn't know boating people used that as well - motorcycle people are told "do not look at the tree" (or more generally, look where you want to go, not what you want to avoid).
The Wikipedia page is disappointingly terse, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation .
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kasdeya
kasdeyaShow content
@eanakashima this is an extremely important thing to keep in mind when talking about [insert any unjust thing here]
it’s not helpful at all to say “this is fucked up”. that’s okay for venting (with a CW, of course) but it’s not going to accomplish anything other than blowing off steam
to create actual positive change you need to provide an alternative or something to do about it. because we can wallow all day in how fucked up things are, but that’s just going to emotionally exhaust everyone into fatalistic apathy. this is already happening
even people who are okay with [insert any unjust thing here] probably realize how fucked up it is. it’s just that they can’t imagine any better alternative. pointing out the flaws in [thing here] is not going to change their minds - it’s just going to make them feel attacked, which will make them even more defensive and entrenched in their beliefs
so yeah I think that this is extremely good advice: point to the way forward, not at the problems that currently exist. we are all painfully aware of what problems exist anyway. what we need are actionable goals for responding to them
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@eanakashima/116336639789100929
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