[MT.169] automation aggravation
Hi, I’m Matt Tillotson, and this is Matt’s Mix Tape: ideas for remixing the Side B of life.
Cohort 9 is in the books (and on the Internet).
By early indicators it was the most successful Write of Passage cohort ever. The students were phenomenal, publishing 468 articles online.
And that’s not 468 listicles, clickbait pieces, or paint-by-numbers essays using pre-cooked formulas. The essays were heartfelt, insightful, and interesting.
Cohort 9 students made the Internet a better place. And that’s super cool.
Don’t let automation lure you into complacency.
My new vantage point as full-time team member felt different. I was unable to experience things from the student perspective even as I interacted with them daily.
An insider, and yet an outsider all the same.
Objectively, I know many things went well. The Mentors made the Mentor Program hum. The Editor team worked tirelessly on an endless stream of drafts. I also managed much of our student email comms. And that went well 98% of the time.
But, alas, not 100%.
Two session reminders fired off one hour early. There was a subject line mishap on a third note. That was on me. And it all happened in the final week.
For three days I felt like I murdered someone’s puppy.
(And not because anyone made me feel that way, either. I just wanted things to go right.)
One big takeaway for me from this cohort: there is no such thing as set and forget. Even in this age of burgeoning AI and automation, regimented human review is still critical.
Otherwise, leaks will spring.
In fitness: be predictable, not pedantic.
The Twitter landscape is littered with people arguing about whether you should lift weights fasted, the “right” intensity for cardio, machines vs. free weights, and many other things that make only a fractional difference.
These arguments obscure the main point about fitness.
Predictable effort, stretched over years—and having discipline in your eating and drinking—puts you ahead of 90%+ of people.
Right. You gotta keep going and going and going. Most of the rest is just noise.
Thank you for reading.
Whatever you’re working on or working through: keep showing up.
If you liked this edition, would you mind giving the heart a click? Thank you.
First of all--you didn’t murder somebody’s puppy! You did a phenomenal job as director of student experience. From the student side I can I can confirm the Cohort 9 experience was mind-blowing. There’s a reason there were 468 articles published and you’re a big part of it.
Regarding consistency in fitness, it’s importance is certainly fundamental--but not in the sense of repetitive. We’re not machines. We’re either growing or dying. True fitness involves constant tweaks, change-ups, new things to eat (including supplements), serendipity. Follow your intuition.
Totally agree...your support during WoP was invaluable!