Group anxiety

I’m not a podcast kind of guy and definitely not about pop-psychology. But this one’s good and worth a listen: How to Resist Group Anxiety and Become a Differentiated Self.

The key idea is that anxiety is both a group and personal thing, very much contagious, and that there are behaviors you can adopt to lower how much group interactions negativaly affect you (or how much you negatively affect the group).

Not covered, but an idea I’d like to see more fleshed out is the concept of contagion in psychology. There’s a very fine line between awareness and contagion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if groups that encourage oversharing of personal problems end up with worse outcomes overall than more reserved and focused groups.

Also not mentioned, but I’ve always wanted a setting to turn off DMs on Slack. Nearly every single private message I’ve received (or sent, alas) has been either relevant for a project, thus belonging in a group chat for better findability, or is gossip. Turning off DMs solves both of those instantly. There’s a tiny number of admin type messages, but those are also often a symptom of laziness or poor planning.

This comes back to some Cal Newport ideas that slowing down communication actually increases productivity.