Josh Allred's Blog

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and she admitted she wished she understood what was happening in politics better. But every time she tries to dive in, it feels overwhelming with what is happening in the world. This person has a master’s degree in finance and is very bright. And if she can’t understand what’s going on, I explained, that’s precisely the point of politics today. The Big Beautiful Bill is close to 1,000 pages. The 2022 Ommibus Spending Bill was 4,000 pages long. No one can read this. This is just one example.

We often think of bugs as bugs. Rarely do we think of them as features. The length, the ambiguity, the complexity…these are features for someone. Not everyone. We don’t need a complex tax code, yet we do. Bills in Washington don’t need to be thousands of pages long, but they are. Budgets are the same story.

I, too, spent many years feeling that the landscape was too complicated ever to understand. Until I realized that the feeling of shame is purposely manufactured to keep the masses disengaged. This isn’t a failure on the individual, but for the system that thrives on keeping the public uninformed.

If you feel deep inside that something is wrong with the world, it’s because there are things wrong. Even if you lack the language or feel you can’t put your arms around it, understand that you have moral clarity.

The moon landing is one of the outstanding achievements in human history. Often, people forget why it is so important, though. And the reason is that when we come together and put our minds to something, we can break boundaries about what is possible. We need reminders of what humans can accomplish. So much of our media is about the awful things that we do to each other. And when something spectacular is done, we are often left unimpressed because, deep down, we’ve seen something similar on the internet for clicks before.

So much of what we do is about perspective. And we tend to put a ton of weight on other people’s perspective of us. For instance, in a job interview, it’ll come off that you have a great perspective of yourself and the world when you can talk about the great work you are doing. That doesn’t guarantee the job, of course. Because in the end, you are talking to strangers. Those who have a unique perspective on how you’ll fit in their lives. That’s vastly different than not being qualified. Chances are, if you’re in the room, it means you are at least competent enough. Really the question is, will they like me?

With a constant stream of media, we have been trained to overreact to everything in the digital sphere. What’s different in the real world is that we get a moment to calm the amygdala before we react. In fact, more discussion and more information were needed pre-social media to decide how to respond. It’s clear to me that social media feeds into loud, out-of-the-ballpark takes way more than the quiet, calculated form. Frankly, it takes time to describe how something makes us feel.

Power has a bit of a negative connotation in our day and age. Power is often associated with bullies, geopolitics, and social media. But power isn’t just the strength to dominate another being. Power is a quiet confidence in your ability to do hard things. Everywhere we walk, everywhere we turn, our culture has a way to drain it.

These power drainages come when we move our attention away from the task at hand. We lose power when we wish we are somewhere else rather than in the state attention. We lose more power when we are avoiding the hard thing that we know that needs to be done.

Inversely, we gain power when we tackle these things rather than avoid them. One thing I think we could use more of in our culture is power for workers, or power for children, or power for parents, and so on.

It’s worth thinking about: will this gain or drain my power? Will this conversation or use of my time or this thought help or hurt it?

I took a sip of a cup of coffee from McDonald’s the other day. And to my surprise, it was hot. Really hot. And I even mentioned to my wife, “This coffee is hot!” Of course, it was on the label. Too often, we skip the instructions, ignore the warning signs, and fall into heuristic traps because of what? We are in a rush. Sometimes we need to believe better what people are trying to tell us. Slow down. And be patient. Not everything is on your timetable.

Johnathan Haidt has written an essential book on the subject, highlighting the difference between kids growing up in the real world versus the digital one. And the differences of how we interact with each other, how we solve conflicts, sit with tension, and so on—it is different from previous generations. It’s an essential book for any generation to read. While Gen Z may have borne the brunt of this, I see it across every age group, stuck on their phones.

So much more important than your credentials is the work you have actually done. Having a Master’s may help you stand out, but it doesn’t replace your portfolio. Sure, we need your dentist to meet the minimum training requirements, but outside these professional spheres, what shows your abilities is your list of projects you have completed. You should be able to point to something you have done.

According to Anthony Bourdain, the fish on Mondays is leftovers from the order on Thursday in preparation for the Friday and Saturday rush. And that’s why you’ll see “Chef’s Special!” as they try to offload on Monday.

And there are lots of other tidbits in his seminal book, Kitchen Confidential.

I highly recommend the audio—something about Bourdain’s voice that is so inspiring.

Just an observation: I think we have figured out how to lower the temperature in the culture. Not by much. By degrees. And slowly.

It may not seem like it, especially if you live on social media. By no means has that cesspool of social media cooled any. But people are slowly starting to see this isn’t any way to live—in constant fear that is. I’ve seen it in parents, with liberals and conservatives. I’ve seen it with the young and the old—all walks of life.