The sticky note that wasn’t passive-aggressive

…though it would sure look passive-aggressive to many. Here it is:

A dirty frying pan flipper, next to some pots and pans, with a note on it that reads "this was with the dirty utensils"

Now, granted, if I hadn’t seen this sticky note in context, I might have assumed it was passive-aggressive too. So the purpose of this post, essentially, is to communicate the context within which I saw that sticky note and assumed it wasn’t passive-aggressive.

This feels surprisingly hard to do, probably because much of the context and the reasoning was an embodied sense, rather than a deliberate process. But I’ll start by sharing a bit more detail of what I experienced in the second or two after I saw the note:

I read: “This was with the clean utensils.”
I imagined the dirty spatula in with the clean ones.
I mentally simulated some earlier person (the note-writer) encountering such a thing. I noted mild feelings of disgust and confusion, along with curiosity around how it came to be there. » read the rest of this entry »

Learn how to bootstrap meta-trust
If you're involved in some kind of developmental culture (community, company, whatever), check out How we get there, my short dense ebook on what allows groups to unfold towards more robust trust, rather than falling into traps of fake trust. a graphic depicting the How We Get There book
Become more intentional
Check out Intend, a web-app that I built to help people spend their time in meaningful & intentional ways and be more playfully purposeful. Intend logo
Connect with me on Twitter!