Ok, Ok, Deck the Halls Already
Ho. Ho. Ho.
Scheduling note: no new essays for the next two weeks. Taking a little break for the holidays, lots of family in town. Going to put this weird-ass year to bed and gird myself for 2025. Gulp.
2024 was a hell of a year.
Some real highs. Some terrifying lows. An awful lot of OMG, SMH, and WTF, to put it succinctly.
I’m not even going to try to recap it in any extensive way, not yet. I suspect the coming few years are going to give us some interesting perspectives on 2024. We should probably all buckle up.
But 2024 was a great year for little Ars Pandemonium, what with being born and all. In September, I published a six-month status report on the project; amusingly, that report is actually the most-read essay of the whole set1. I’ll do another check-in at the one year mark, in March.
For now, though, two days before the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year here, I do want to share a little look behind the scenes at the green shoots of content to come.
Ars Pandemonium covered a lot of ground in 2024, from self-indulgent memoir to more practical observations to, maybe, some useful analysis to…whatever this was. The topic of managing and leading creative teams is both broad and deep.
The thing about these sorts of essays, though, is that they aren’t really intended to be definitive, as it were. I’ll probably (likely!) cover some of that same ground again…and again.
At first I was worried about this, but I’ve come to believe that it’s really the nature of this kind of writing. I pick a thing up, observe it, and discuss some element of it. Depending on the thing, there are probably a lot more elements of it to observe and discuss. And there’s certainly plenty of overlap between them.
I have mentioned before that I don’t maintain a rigorous editorial calendar. I don’t feel like I’m a good enough writer to do that — I need to be able to follow the inspiration a little more flexibly. However, what I do maintain is a big set of ideas, sketches, and rough drafts that I’m working on all the time. When one of these feels ripe, I pluck it for publication.
Now, it’s important to note something about this process (yes, it’s a process, as loose as it may be): it’s a creative endeavor in and of itself. I can forget that fact sometimes — writing about creative endeavor somehow elides the nature of the writing itself in my simple mind. But the point is that it follows all of the same patterns as any other creative project.
You might think that with 30 years of experience managing these sorts of projects (with some success!) that this would be easy for me. I will tell you, dear readers, it is not. I’ve published almost 40 of these things now, and I’m still shocked at the fact that the “last 10%” seems to take 90% of the time, even though the first 90% also took 90% of the time.
It is always the way. Duh!
Anyway, I note all that simply as a caveat for the following list. These are essays that I think are getting close and will be up soon. But the process maintains some mystery!
“It’s Not Okay to Fail” — a somewhat spicy take suggesting that the whole “science of failure” thing has really run its course and is now causing as many problems as it solves.
“Loving Work Is For Suckers” — a very spicy take on the incompatibility of late-stage capitalism and “doing what we love” for a living. Written, of course, by a guy who has literally spent his career doing work he loves.
“Preemptively Escalate” — a not-at-all spicy observation of techniques that I’ve practiced and/or observed to improve “upward” communication.
“On Burnout and Exhaustion” — a look at ways to recognize and differentiate these issues, some thoughts about root causes, and some suggestions for treatments and mitigations that I’ve seen be effective.
Other promising early drafts include, “We Can’t Know What We Don’t Know,” “Am I My Evil Twin?”, “Choose Not To Offend,” “Shove a Little Art Down Their Throats,” “Your Boss Knows Something You Don’t,” and the one that maybe excites and terrifies me the most, “You’re Not Being Gaslit. Trust Me.”
And there are tons more (there are over fifty docs in the folder). It turns out I just have so many opinions to opine! Who’d have thought?2
But as this project matures, I’d also love to know if there are specific issues that you’d like to hear about, dear reader. Don’t need to be a subscriber! If you’re reading Ars Pandemonium (and I know a lot more people read than subscribe) and it ever occurs to you, hey I wonder what Boyd might make of this situation3, hit me up. Leave a comment, use Substack’s chat functionality, DM me, whatever.
Also, just as with essay topics, I would love to get book recommendations (or counter-recommendations if there are things you’d suggest I avoid). I’m always looking for new things to read!
Nobody really reads my “Bookshelf” essays,4 but I’m going to keep doing them — I know that if I was aggressively trying to maximize readership I would redirect that effort, but I enjoy doing those pieces, so for now they’ll stay.
Part of the reason I like writing them is that it makes a good forcing function for me to read. I’ve got some good stuff in the queue:
The Trouble With Passion
It’s the Manager
Think Again
Dare Greatly
Creativity, Inc. (This will be a re-read. I read it years ago and really enjoyed it — my copy was actually a gift from a great Creative Director I was working with at the time — and I’m looking forward to seeing if and how it might be different now.)
Also, I may actually write up my experience with the book The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale.
Spoiler: I do not like it. I haven’t been able to finish it, and I’ve tried twice. I was very intrigued by the premise, and wanted to learn more, but it just isn’t doing it for me. It might be an interesting exercise to think through the problems I have with it and write about them. Or maybe that’s a terrible idea for an essay. We’ll see! (It was pretty popular a couple years ago; have any of you read it?)
Don’t be shy! Hit me up.
So, that’s what’s on the horizon. At least in the little corner of Ars Pandemonium, I like how 2025 is shaping up. Have a great holiday/solstice/New Years/whatever you may celebrate, and as always, thanks for reading!
Why? Couldn’t tell you. To say I don’t understand how this all works would be…well, accurate.
Literally everyone who has ever known me, that’s who.
Look, I don't imagine anyone is really sitting around thinking that, but maybe it crosses someone’s mind?
Seriously: my piece on The Good Boss has eleven total views.