The Open Question May 13: Should UpTrust have a sabbath? Hey y'all,

I run a social platform, yet I'm not sure we should be on every day. I use a Light Phone so I can't even get notifications!

Almost every contemplative tradition takes a day off. Chick-fil-A closes Sundays and outperforms its competitors anyway. Schools are banning phones (ht Haidt). We all know always-on isn't healthy... so why does every social network, including (currently) ours, encourage users to be one seven days a week?

So this week's open question: Should UpTrust have a sabbath?

It's real question the team has debated over the past few years, that we don't know the answer to. Some specific versions I've been chewing on:

• Should we just turn notifications off one day a week?
• Should we actually close—like Chick-fil-A?
• Should each person pick their own day?
• Is "sabbath" the wrong frame entirely, and the real move is something else? Will we polarize the non-religious?

And a harder question underneath: if we know always-on isn't healthy, and we built this thing, what's our actual responsibility?

Would love your honest thoughts in the thread. We especially want to hear from anyone who thinks this is a bad idea. Live discussion today (Wednesday) at 5pm central.

Lots of love,
Jordan Myska Allen
UpTrust CEO

Would you still scroll if you knew your stats? I read that the average person checks their phone 150 times a day!! Wild right? It would be cool if social platforms gave stats like, you have logged in 8 times today or you have spent 55 minutes total here today, or 5 hours this week. Then could have qustions like, what have you been up to here? Or, do you feel this has been time well spent? Feels daring!

Would you still scroll if you knew your stats? I read that the average person checks their phone 150 times a day!! Wild right? It would be cool if social platforms gave stats like, you have logged in 8 times today or you have spent 55 minutes total here today, or 5 hours this week. Then could have qustions like, what have you been up to here? Or, do you feel this has been time well spent? Feels daring!

Would you still scroll if you knew your stats? I read that the average person checks their phone 150 times a day!! Wild right? It would be cool if social platforms gave stats like, you have logged in 8 times today or you have spent 55 minutes total here today, or 5 hours this week. Then could have qustions like, what have you been up to here? Or, do you feel this has been time well spent? Feels daring!

Who I Follow On the Internet and Why. My internet interest fall into three categories: Politics, NFL Football, Connection/Spirituality/Consciousness. I imagine lots of people follow to first two in combo and the combo of three might be a little unusual. ;)

Politics: I follow the Bulwark which is a group of Republican insiders who have created a site with podcasts, articles, interviews with people who have broken with their former party lines over Trump’s running for President. They are smart, funny, unflinchingly honest (when Harris or Walz doesn’t perform well or do something not so good, they’re honest about it). They feel like centrists who have lost their party and I love them for it. Want them to start a new party. Largely Democratic sites are too biased…they paint everything on the donkey side with whitewash.

NFL Football…Colin Cowherd is my guy. Again…fearless about saying when a team or a player has lost the plot. He’s smart, honest, has a larger perspective and has no sacred cows. Every week he holds a session called Where Colin was Right and where Colin was Wrong. I was delighted and surprised when he recently did a podcast about politics (out of the blue) and said he’s voting for Harris and why he sees it that way. His reasoning was so down to earth, factual, logical. The amazing part is that he was revealing this to his audience which is a sea of largely right wing NFL football fans. I loved him for it. Fiercely, unabashedly himself and not afraid of losing a part of his market because of his political views (I doubt he lost many…he’s that much better at football analysis than the rest).

Consciousness wise, I like several people, Jordan being at the top. I also follow Hannah Taylor on substack. I find her interesting and sometimes surprising, though I don’t always agree.

And I read stuff from Wall Street Journal, NY Times and random posts that show up because of who I follow. In my estimate, I spend more time online than I think is good. Would be good to look into why I do this, when it isn’t optimal according to me.

Would love y'all's feedback on podcasts: here's number #1 . Part of our plan for growing is for me to go on a series of increasingly popular podcasts. I feel great about doing relateful podcasts, but feel like I still need a lot of practice for UpTrust. here's the first one:

"Solving Social Media with Jordan Myska Allen" (i don't get to pick the titles)

• Youtube: https://youtu.be/i2MSY1K9wTc
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solving-social-media-with-jordan-myska-allen/id1714481300?i=1000692941322
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6XFLyfHXj7S0OnwdweFfab 

I would love any kind of feedback. What works for you? What doesn't? Any specific phrases stick out as good/bad? What's the most boring? Most interesting? Surprising? etc

Musings: The World Is Overstilumated. I'm reflecting on my experience this summer spending 3 days in the dark. I was in Tangier, Morocco, in an apartment, and I had those garage door window shutters that would keep the entire apartment completely pitch black even in the middle of the day. I chose to spend 3 days in the darkness. Mostly sitting on the couch staring into darkness.

I wasn't aware of this experience having much impact until I started having phone calls with people from the darkness. I could hear everything in the silence. Beyond someone's voice, I could hear the Soul speaking. I'm pretty convinced we can communicate in Silence, and I love words.

I've been wondering about how overstimulated the world is. In this moment I'm watching the woman across the table from me scroll through her phone, going from Instagram to Spotify to texting to checking out concert tickets this weekend. Starting sentences and starting new ones mid sentence. I'm in love with how incongruent and disoriented we can appear as humans.

I wonder what it would be like for the world to take a day off from stimulus: food, cell phone, entertainment devices, etc. What if we had a collective pause? Sunlight, water, fresh air. Our collective nervous system could use a Parasympathetic Pause. I like this as an Emerging Probability and Planetary Potential. Feels like part of the emerging meta-model and protocol for The Wellbeing of Humanity.

tldr; we won't be meeting this week. Back the 10th. Still use whenever! UpTrust has a cool policy Blake Borgeson envisioned where the whole team takes a week off (in the summer, and again in winter between christmas and new year). This is the spirit of our mission to do things deeply aligned with well-being; a lot of people working for software companies have found that it can be hard to take time off when the rest of their team isn’t.

I’ll still take a little time to respond to some things, and encourage everyone to use it!

Of course you’re very welcome to jump on the zoom without us; it should work even without a host.

See y’all on the 10th.
love
J

tldr; we won't be meeting this week. Back the 10th. Still use whenever! UpTrust has a cool policy Blake Borgeson envisioned where the whole team takes a week off (in the summer, and again in winter between christmas and new year). This is the spirit of our mission to do things deeply aligned with well-being; a lot of people working for software companies have found that it can be hard to take time off when the rest of their team isn’t.

I’ll still take a little time to respond to some things, and encourage everyone to use it!

Of course you’re very welcome to jump on the zoom without us; it should work even without a host.

See y’all on the 10th.
love
J

tldr; we won't be meeting this week. Back the 10th. Still use whenever! UpTrust has a cool policy Blake Borgeson envisioned where the whole team takes a week off (in the summer, and again in winter between christmas and new year). This is the spirit of our mission to do things deeply aligned with well-being; a lot of people working for software companies have found that it can be hard to take time off when the rest of their team isn’t.

I’ll still take a little time to respond to some things, and encourage everyone to use it!

Of course you’re very welcome to jump on the zoom without us; it should work even without a host.

See y’all on the 10th.
love
J

The pressure to be thoughtful. It’s an interesting thing - this feeling that I need to post something thoughtful here. I’m feeling tension emerge in my abdomen. There’s a belief that there’s a right and a wrong way to engage in this community with no clarity on what is right or wrong. Noticing that and letting that be.