We received an email from a client about a last-minute project this week and noticed a short message in the fine print of her signature: *Please note: I do not work most Fridays. This on the heels of an article about the four-day work week in the Wall Street Journal and another in Fortune about “soft Fridays.” What can we say? We’re ahead of the curve here at Three Point Four Media. We started the four-day work week in September of 2021 and it’s been a huge success. Do we still take the occasional call on Fridays? Sure. Do we send some emails? Of course! But we don’t have our internal morning meeting, we don’t have big client meetings, and we never deliver client work (we’ll just get it to you Thursday instead).
These lines from the Journal really resonated with me: “So why isn’t the sky falling, and worker productivity along with it? Growing evidence suggests it’s because taking it easier one day of the week can supercharge performance on others. Some bosses are even discovering their staff work more effectively when they’re left to sort their Fridays on their own.” That’s it right there. There is real value in trusting people to do their work and giving them a day to organize themselves.
Onto the links.
A project
We launched a new website for our longtime client Acumen America this week. We’ve worked with Acumen America for four years now. We know their voice and POV well, so it was fun exercise working on messaging and copy for their new site. (Shout out the nice folks at Slam Media Lab for the design and dev of the site.) When potential clients ask us what we can do for them, Acumen America is a good case study: copywriting, newsletters, editorial work, and all that stuff, sure. But the relationship has evolved over the years to where we’re also a sounding board and brain trust helping on pitch decks, answering general comms and strategy questions, and sharing our POV when asked. They trust us. They value our opinion and what we do. It’s a true partnership.
We’re working on their LinkedIn page, too. So give them a follow for updates and insights about the world of impact investing.
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A song
Vampire Weekend’s new record Only God Was Above Us is stuffed full of New York name dropping and ephemera. They played a very nice version of “Mary Boone,” named after the famous New York gallerist, on The Daily Show this week. This paragraph from Pitchfork’s album review sums up the current state of Vampire Weekend best:
It helps that this band is so ripe for self-mythology; it’s long been impossible to discuss Vampire Weekend without “discussing Vampire Weekend,” and all the commentary on privilege, appropriation, and identity that’s come with it. Now, they’re the ones “discussing Vampire Weekend,” but on their own terms, making songs about history and who writes it (the cruelest among us), who determines class ascension (the people who lock the door as soon as they get the keys to the penthouse), and what happens when you’ve gotten everything you thought you wanted (you’re still pretty empty).
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An article
I started cooking on open fire a few years ago because I discovered I was out of charcoal when I went to grill one evening. So I started a bonfire and pulled the wood and coals from the fire pit to the Weber. This is how I grill now—a real Francis Mallmann of the Midwest. Which is why I enjoyed this ode to “the rustic romance of a cooking fireplace” from Tyler Watamanuk in Dirt:
The cooking fireplace carries a dreamy and aspirational appeal. It feels aggressively artisanal in an era of space-age countertop appliances that promise speed and convenience. Cooking over fire is a fleeting experience meant more for pleasure than pure everyday function, akin to a teak soaking tub or a vintage Range Rover.
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A book
Just finished Dwight Garner’s memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, and Eating While Reading. It’s a really breezy and delightful book about, as its name suggests, eating and reading. The book is broken into five chapters: breakfast, lunch, grocery shopping, drinking, and dinner. Garner mixes memories of his favorite foods with literary scenes of eating and drinking.
What I really enjoyed about the book was the depth and breadth of the literary references. If I had written it, the references would have been very narrow because of my very narrow and middle-aged white guy taste, but since Garner is the longtime New York Times book critic and he reads for a living, there is a huge variety of writers represented from Toni Morrison and Jim Harrison to George Orwell and Eve Babitz.
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A run
Three Point Four Media got together for our Q2 Summit in Brooklyn this week: a 45-minute run through Red Hook. One of my favorite routes. Much business was discussed.