The Future Normal Launches, Mullet-Only Salons, Body Doubling and Why Kids Hate Music Classes

It’s launch week for The Future Normal! Today I’m headed to SXSW for a full four days of events and earlier this week both Henry and I were previewing the book with audiences in multiple cities. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, here’s a FREE excerpt to give you a little taste of the book.

If you love this newsletter, you will definitely love the book. You can buy it right now on Amazon or Bookshop.org, as well as in bookstores across the US (global release will be in late April). And if you’re curious about how we’re releasing the book out into the world, one of this week’s stories is a behind the scenes look at our marketing approach and the key insight driving it.

Beyond all my excitement about the book, there were also plenty of non-obvious stories I wanted to share with you too, from some of my favorite articles from International Women’s Day yesterday to a story about why kids hate music classes. Also in stories this week, immersive gaming, mullet-only salons, the pay-to-breathe industry in polluted cities and a new remote work productivity technique of “body doubling.” Enjoy the non-obvious stories, definitely enjoy the book and please let me know if you do pick up a copy and what you think about it!

Why Kids Hate Music Lessons

I am a drummer in spite of joining my middle school band. As a percussionist, I quickly realized that my role was to count silently for what felt like approximately 6 hours and then crash the cymbals together triumphantly at the perfect moment. Any lapse in concentration or incorrect counting would result in disaster – ruining the entire song. This was nothing like the idea I had in my head about playing music. So I quit. 

Instead, I started to teach myself how to play drum set on a kit in the music room which I played after school. I went on to play in several rock bands throughout high school and college, and built a lifelong love of music … but I almost didn’t. I was reminded of this as I read a story this week all about why kids hate music lessons. The reasons are clear: an unflinching focus on memorization, no room to improvise and a soul sucking focus on doing scales or boring practice routines. It is much the same way we teach kids foreign languages … and the results are the same. Kids hate music class and give up. They finish years of language lessons and leave barely able to hold a conversation (but widely knowledgeable on verb conjugation).

There are kids of love music, language and many other things that schools teach in mind-numbing, soul-draining ways. And eventually those kids will either find a way to learn it themselves, or stop trying in the first place.

A Few Useful Things To Read On International Women’s Day …

Yesterday was International Women’s Day and my newsfeed was filled with inspiring stories celebrating women. It was hard to pick just a few. My contribution was a LinkedIn post celebrating the 34 insightful women who have published books with Ideapress in the last several years. Despite the welcome news that women are now publishing more books than men, this shift is largely driven by fiction books and women remain highly underrepresented in the world of business and non-fiction books. So we need to celebrate those who do break down the walls and publish their expertise. 

In other news, one of the common biases that shows up in AI that generates images is assigning gender to certain jobs. When most AI is asked to visualize what a CEO looks like and then asked to visualize what a secretary looks like, you can probably guess how that goes. MissJourney is a new AI tool launched at TEDx Amsterdam that ONLY generates images of women when asked to imagine a doctor, lawyer, politician, keynote speaker or any other role. The tool aims to break down the gendered stereotypes through different visuals.

Finally, for a more sobering take on the day consider reading this excellent piece about whether International Women’s Day really does deliver on the promise to help further a more equitable future for women, or if its just a symbolic gesture with little real lasting effects. 

How Immersive Gameboxes Could Become the Future of Entertainment

What if you could create a fun collaborative experience in a way that gets people out of their houses, off the Internet and into spending time together IRL. That’s the vision behind the Immersive Gamebox, a company and entertainment experience created by Tough Mudder obstacle course founder Will Dean. The idea is that these interactive box-spaces feature physical games that groups can play together and the “boxes” can be set up in all sorts of areas including shopping malls, theaters, cruise ships and gyms. 

The most futuristic part of this story, though, is how they can be staffed. The entire space can be controlled by a remotely located team. This means their ability to scale isn’t constrained by where they put the experience. Eventually, the company will franchise these “theme parks in a box” to other entrepreneurs and the vision is to have hundreds of them across the world by the end of the year. Can the Immersive Gamebox take over the world of entertainment? It will depend on the quality of the games and how memorable of an experience they can create.

The reason theaters still work is because there is a steady stream of blockbuster movies (which the theaters don’t produce themselves). They benefit from the abundance of stories coming from Hollywood. For interactive experiences like the Immersive Gamebox to succeed, they will probably need a similar engine of great experiences to fuel their growth too. 

Gambia Offers a Bold Educational Idea: Tell Kids the Truth About History

In creating a post-dictatorship society in Gambia, some educators are proposing a logical yet counterintuitive idea: “to avoid future atrocities, past ones must be remembered.” So the nation’s Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission created a 17-volume “child-friendly” report that doesn’t shy away from teaching children the truth about what happened during the 20+ year rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh.

“If we are talking about the future of Gambia, or the future of the world, children cannot be sidelined.”

In many ways this feels like the opposite of how children are increasingly treated in many other countries, such as America. Here there are growing waves of legislation forbidding teachers to talk about topics that could make children feel uncomfortable, or that might offer them a more truthful account of history that doesn’t shy away from the darker times in our shared human past.

Only by teaching the truth of the past can we help the next generation to make a better future. In Gambia, at least, this seems to be happening. More countries should follow their lead.

An Inside Look At Our Book Launch Marketing Strategy At SXSW

This weekend at SXSW, Henry and I will be officially launching our new book. I’ve done this before – with Non-Obvious in past years and last year with Jennifer for our Beyond Diversity book. This year, the strategy is going to be different, and inspired by the reality that so many of the topics we talk about in The Future Normal are driving big conversations in Austin throughout the week.

For an inside look at our marketing strategy, which could aptly be described as “trying to be everywhere at once,” check out this short post I wrote on my blog about it. For a book that was reliant on telling the stories of more than 100 instigators, it’s fitting that our launch is being powered by so many collaborations with others. If you’ll be in Austin, or even if you won’t, you can find the full list of activations here.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Can I inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers with a custom keynote presentation or workshop?  Watch my new 2023 speaking reel on YouTube >>