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 »

A portrait of Malcolm Ocean

I'm Malcolm Ocean.

I'm developing scalable solutions to coordination between parts of people as well as between people. More about me.

Become more intentional
Check out Complice, a web-app that I built to help people achieve their personal & professional goals. Complice logo
Follow me on Twitter!