Quinn McHugh 🔶⿻ (he/him)
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quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Quinn McHugh 🔶⿻ (he/him)
@quinnmchugh.bsky.social
45 followers 150 following 54 posts
⿻ Systems, data, plurality.net, collective intelligence / sensemaking, & social impact
🎵 Jazz fusion, funk, RnB, DnB
🌱 Former Community Organizer, Effective Altruism Philadelphia
🚴 Bicycled 4,230 miles across the USA
🔶 10% Pledge since 2018
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quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Hanzi Freinacht on redesigning society to optimize for "goals of the soul" instead of goals of industrial output.

#Society #InnerDevelopment #MoralProgress #Capitalism
Our current society is designed to achieve growth of industrial output and redistributing its spoils. Future society must expand upon today’s society’s way of functioning; its institutions must be geared towards achieving more psychological goals. More goals of the soul.
January 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Hanzi Freinacht on society's capacity to manage complexity through the fostering of collective intelligence:

#Complexity #SocietalProgress #SystemsChange #SocialChange #CollectiveIntelligence
January 21, 2025 at 10:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
I tend to self-sabotage by manufacturing steps I "need" to take before I can achieve big scary goal (TM). This is something I'm trying to unlearn by asking questions like "how could I achieve this in 6 months as opposed to 5 years?"

#SelfSabotage #CareerDevelopment #BeingAgile #Agency #CareerPath
The days of mapping an entire career path are over. You do not have to specify the details of your life five moves or five years out. Consider what you were doing five years ago. Did you have any idea where you would be today? The challenge now is to be present. In doing so, we stay awake to the dots that are right in front of us.
January 20, 2025 at 4:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Jenny Blake on overcoming career stagnation by clarifying your "North Star" / essential intent.

#Career #CareerDevelopment #CareerPivot #Stagnation
January 20, 2025 at 10:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Jenny Blake on being agile amidst life's challenges:

#Career #Essentialism #AntiUnhappiness
One of the keys to being agile in life is knowing how to quickly find your way back to equilibrium. It is difficult, if not impossible, to pivot from a place of anxiety or unhappiness. Your ability to proceed with the next Pivot stages will be severely hampered if you are weighed down by people, habits, an environment, or activities that drain you.
January 19, 2025 at 4:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Don't strive for happiness, strive for anti-unhappiness.
"Ultimate quantification of success? For me, it’s not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.
December 8, 2024 at 4:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
From now on, when you have a conflict with someone, ask yourself: (a) What am I perceiving? (b) What are they perceiving? (c) Is there a mismatch?
November 24, 2024 at 10:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Vivek Murphy on serving others:

#Service #Care #Attention #Compassion
If we look around us, we'll find that there are many ways in which we can serve. Serving isn't always volunteering at a soup kitchen or volunteering to build homes with Habitat for Humanity, as powerful as those methods of serving are. But service can also be calling a friend who you know may be struggling to balance work and kids and could use a pick-me-up or could just use the knowledge that somebody has looking out for them. Service can be checking on a neighbor who might be elderly and struggling. Service can be helping a colleague at work who might be having a tough day, just bringing them a coffee or stopping to say, hey, I want to know how you're doing. And then actually pausing to listen to what they have to say. In one of the greatest gifts that we can give another person is the gift of our full attention.
November 4, 2024 at 4:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Cynthia Rayner & François Bonnici on the role of institutions in achieving (or stunting) societal progress:

#Institutions #SocietalProgress #SocialImagination
these pervasive norms and beliefs calcify into values that no longer work for us, or prevent us from assuming new ways of being and behaving that will work better for our societies as they evolve and change. They create cultures of exclusion and derision, and bolster prejudices and injustices. Our institutions fail us when they entrench our beliefs and behaviors to the extent that we cannot only not change, we cannot even imagine change.
November 4, 2024 at 10:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Greg McKeowen on choosing your life's pursuits:

#Attention #Focus #Goals #Prioritization #Acceptance #Commitment
October 6, 2024 at 3:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on being lucky:

#Success #Failure #Achievemeny #SelfServingBias
October 3, 2024 at 3:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on success:

#Success #SurvivorshipBias #Luck
Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.
October 3, 2024 at 9:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Ashley Lin on being the change you wish to see in the world:

#Agency #SocialChange #Power #Motivation
Stop waiting for celebrities to use their platforms, corporations to take action, or politicians to get elected and “do the right thing.” The truth is the vast majority of what can be done to better the world does not depend on the decisions people in power make. People are power. You give power, create power, and have power to build a brighter future.
October 2, 2024 at 3:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Came across this quote the other day. I love little perspective-shifting framings like this.

#Colonialism #Framing #Perspective
Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.
September 13, 2024 at 9:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Kat Vellos on hosting v.s. hanging out

#Friendship #Relationships #Gathering #Hosting
I’ve noticed something else about this that has come with getting older. When I was younger, having people over was just “hanging out.” But somewhere during my thirties, having people over turned into “hosting.” What’s that about? This isn’t a late night talk show. Why am I “hosting” all of a sudden? It’s just a vocabulary change, but words come with their own baggage. This is one that I think deserves some scrutiny. “Hosting” and “entertaining” are words that fancy lifestyle magazines and HGTV makeover shows use to describe having people over—usually while they’re redesigning a deck or remodeling a den-kitchen combo complete with pool table, twelve-seat sectional, and wet bar. I for one feel a completely different type of energy when I use those words. Entertaining and hosting are words that fill me with a sense of pressure, anxiety, and expectations about how things “should” be.
September 12, 2024 at 9:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
As Yuval Noah Harari might say, "society is built based on a series of imagined orders"

#ImaginedOrders #Language #Progress #Society
There’s an idea in philosophy that certain things don’t exist until they get a name. Abstract things like justice, nostalgia, infinity, love, or sin. The thinking goes that these concepts do not sit out there on some ethereal plane waiting to be discovered by humans but instead snap into being when someone invents a name for them.
September 6, 2024 at 9:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
LuLu Miller on complexity: "The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the 'convenient' lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend."

#Bias #Complexity
This was what Darwin was trying so hard to get his readers to see: that there is never just one way of ranking nature’s organisms. To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature, the “whole machinery of life.” The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the “convenient” lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.
September 5, 2024 at 3:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
I've been developing "ReadGraph" - an open-source tool that allows you to explore your saved articles from Readwise Reader (a read-it-later app) through a dynamic, interactive graph based on AI-generated tags.

Please DM me your feedback and ideas!

#BuildInPublic #Readwise #DataVisualization #AI
September 4, 2024 at 4:33 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
I participated in the Philly Naked Bike Ride yesterday - I think everyone should experience it at least once (even clothed!)

One thing that always strikes me: Human bodies aren't flawed; they're just different. This event serves as a powerful reminder that "normal" is subjective.

#BodyPositivity
August 25, 2024 at 2:42 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
It's natural to think our laws are designed to discourage people from doing bad things - but if this is the case, then why are those who exploit dogs punished much more harshly than those who exploit pigs?

#Speciesism #AnimalExploitation #FactoryFarming #AnimalRights #AnimalWelfare
As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy.
August 21, 2024 at 9:23 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
My job search support animal is extra snuggly today. 😸🤗

#CatPowered #ComputerCompanions #PurrsonalAssistant #PawsitiveVibes
August 15, 2024 at 8:32 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
One common failure of executives & managers: not understanding the output of their team/organization is largely shaped by the environment they create.

It’s easy to focus on direct outputs, but the real impact lies in the 'meta work' - establishing structures that guide behavior.

#Leadership
August 15, 2024 at 3:57 PM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Quick shoutout to PowerPicker for saving me $100 on our electricity bills since May!

Offers a more consumer-friendly business model than Arbor and the option to switch to 100% renewable energy.

Check it out: powerpicker.org

#Energy #Electricity #Utilities
August 15, 2024 at 1:55 AM
quinnmchugh.bsky.social
Some great advice I received recently: make your career make sense.

To some employers, a varied work history can raise valid concerns - why would I invest in someone without a clear direction?

Careers are like trees - they need pruning to avoid growing in too many directions.

#Career
A tree-like visual indicating the large diversity of paths one can take in their career.
August 13, 2024 at 5:15 AM