Squad Gains
This is essay 1 of 7 essays for The Tech Progressive Writing Challenge. Join the conversation in the build_ Discord.
Today I took a 30-minute jog to start my day. It was slow, it wasn’t pretty, but I did it. I hardly believe it. A month ago, I didn’t see myself running, much less at 8 in the morning. I’d tried and failed to pick up a running habit before, and had never had much success with exercising to start my day.
So what happened? In short, I joined a Discord and a channel in that Discord for sharing workouts. I joined a community, then a squad in that community, and I actually changed my everyday behavior.
A few months ago, I joined a Discord for 1729, Balaji Srinivasan’s community which aims to build a network state. I wasn’t sure what my involvement would entail, but the ideas were intriguing, and the community turned out to be lively and full of interesting discussions.
The community has a grand vision, values, and a memorable motto for everyday application: “Learn, earn, burn.” And to really make next steps clear, there’s a channel where people can share their workouts and encourage each other. The goals of the community are defined from the multi-decade scale down to the everyday. There’s an inspiring vision all the way down to a call to action to put running shoes on the ground.
Online communities often have multiple levels of social groupings, from the overall community to subgroups within it with particular focuses. What’s special here is tying a grand, bold, definite optimist vision to ordinary everyday habits. I’ve joined a couple of online communities focused on self-improvement, and they haven’t kept me engaged. There’s often not enough of a meaty set of values and goals for people to align around. Self-improvement is more meaningful when it’s leading to a shared goal. At the same time, lofty visions alone can lose their luster when they remain mere dreams. The magic really happens when you combine values, a call to action, and a way for members to work together and support each other.
1729 is an example of taking a really interesting futuristic idea and then organizing people around it using the latest tools for fostering community (they even give lectures in a VR format). This is a very valuable playbook for using the tools of the Internet to effect positive change.