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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #215 (Effort)

Published 18 days ago • 6 min read

Family Photo:
Effort

Over the last month, Calvin and Lawrence have participated in the weekly soccer clinic at Cal Poly.

The clinic is a free community program where the kids get to practice soccer, coached by the Cal Poly soccer players, on the same field where the Cal Poly teams play their games.

They're broken into groups by age. Calvin's group usually does dribbling and passing drills before scrimmaging. Lawrence's group usually plays redlight-greenlight before duck-duck-goose.

I was surprised by the lack of soccer in Lawrence's soccer practices. I think that's fine though.

The important part is that they run around.

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Last week, I traveled for work.

At the airport, I watched a guy record a video of himself, probably for one of those Day in the Life Instagram video reels.

He carefully attached his phone to a little tripod, positioned the shot, pressed record, then quickly ducked under a stanchion belt so he could casually stare at the planes out the window and pace back and forth while swinging his backpack over his shoulder, conveniently ignoring the camera he'd set up to capture the whole scene before ducking back to press stop and review his footage.

There was something unsettling about it. Who is he performing for? Who will be on the other side of the screen watching his edited video?

He puts so much effort into making his life appear effortless.

Am I guilty of the same thing?

I took pictures, and selfies, and videos on my trip. I played them back with Calvin, and Lawrence, and Luana when I got home. It was fun watching them together. Would it have been more fun if I'd recorded more? Should I have put more effort into capturing it all?

High quality creative work requires a lot of effort, and then hiding that effort to make the creative work easier to consume. At least that used to be the case...now you can just type a few words and AI can create you a music video. Some of them are even good. Others, maybe not so much. With the rise of AI, I think showing the effort will become a more meaningful part of creative work.

The important part is putting in the effort.

Dad Jokes:
Olympic Effort

video preview​

Source: SNL​

Highlights:
Structure and Effort

​Against Chill by Alana Massey​

To the uninitiated, having Chill and being cool are synonyms. They describe a person with a laid-back attitude, an absence of neurosis, and reasonably interesting tastes and passions. But the person with Chill is crucially missing these last ingredients because they are too far removed from anything that looks like intensity to have passions.
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Chill is different — it is agreeable because it is emotionally vacant. Chill is what Cool would look like with a lobotomy and no hobbies. And for a large subset of the population, Chill is one of the most desirable qualities in a romantic prospect.
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​
I routinely happen upon men who are perplexed when I eventually declare that I want to know where we stand. Indecision is not a noble virtue. If a man is in “Not really feeling this becoming more than what it is,” territory, I should be made aware in no uncertain terms. If a man is in “I am waiting for someone else to be my girlfriend but I’ll keep you around till I find her” territory, I ought to know that too. My feelings, and the feelings of many people I know, are more hurt by the prolonged waiting for a concrete answer while we sit quietly with our feigned Chill. It is as if I’ve broken some unwritten law when I ask what they are looking for and am dissatisfied with the answer “I don’t really like to put labels on things.” But putting labels on things are how people find the exit during a fire and make sure they’re adding vanilla extract to the cake instead of arsenic.
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So, ladies and gentleman and people who do not believe in the binary, we have reached peak Chill. Or at least I hope we have. Because Chill is the opposite of something else too: warmth. And kindness, and earnestness, and vulnerability. And we need just enough of those things to occasionally do something so remarkably unchill as fall in love.

​effort by Ava ​

People like to say that lives on social media look unattainable and perfect, but whenever I see something that’s beautifully curated all I can see is the sweat: the money expended, the surgery and fillers, the workouts, the interior designers, the carefully selected objects, the hours spent setting up and filming and taking photos. I think the effort is what’s most interesting. I like people who try very hard, and I like people who attempt to conceal their effort, but I especially like people who let all their effort show. We are all Frankenstein monsters—patchwork quilts of past experiences—trying to pass ourselves off as whole and cohesive things. Femininity in society is especially like that: how you dress, how you style your hair, how you apply makeup, how you eat, what jewelry you choose. These are learned things, earned things.
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Here’s what I know: if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try. I’m not saying that talent isn’t a meaningful differentiator, because it certainly is, but I think people generally underestimate how effort needs to be poured into talent in order to develop it. So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours. If you’re doing it wrong you can do it a thousand times and not produce any particularly interesting results. So you have to make sure you’re trying the right way.

​Emma Camp and the "Apex Predators" of Hosting by Ben Christenson​

I think of hosts as falling along two axes: structure and effort. Effort is when Camp clarifies her lemon juice or Gray texts each invitee personally. It’s the front-end time investment.
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Structure is the format of the event itself. So Sargeant might serve watermelon and popcorn (low effort) for a Dorothy Sayers reading (high structure). Camp’s 4th of July reading featured five signature cocktails (high effort) with a half hour of prepared readings from Audrey Horne et al. (high structure). On other nights, Camp serves her signature cocktails but just has 60 people over to mingle (high effort, low structure).
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Gray admits that you have to be a little cringe to add structure and activities to your party—like wearing name tags and having ice-breakers to introduce the group—but he is told time and again, “That was different, but it actually was really helpful, and I met a lot of new people.”

​Loneliness Is for Cowards by Emma Camp​

Young Americans are lonelier than ever. We’re eating alone and working alone. The percentage of teenagers regularly hanging out with friends has nosedived. Parties are falling out of fashion. The media calls it the “loneliness epidemic.”
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I’m in my 20s and I’m here to tell you: Loneliness isn’t an epidemic, it’s a choice. My generation has decided that avoiding embarrassment or rejection is more important than developing a thriving social circle. The main social obstacle facing Gen Zers isn’t social media, or “overstimulation,” it’s their own trepidation.
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I’ve made it my mission to reverse the antisocial trend. In 2025, I threw 27 house parties ranging from celebrations that strained the limits of my 900-sq.-foot Washington, D.C. rowhome to discussion-based dinner parties with a dozen friends. I hosted so much that the party invitation app Partiful sent me a trophy.
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[T]o be fair, making friends entails social risk. I probably annoyed some prospective guests by peppering them with invitations. Others might’ve found my eagerness to swap numbers off-putting. Oh well. I can’t find another 100 people to invite to my house without a little embarrassment.
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The way out of this supposed “epidemic” is for young people to show a modicum of social bravery. A life spent trying to be cool and unrejectable is inevitably going to be a small and lonely one. We can’t let fear of rejection overwhelm us.

iamJoshKnox:
EncycEELopedia!
(chEEL)

This is the first edition of my eel book. If you buy a copy, I'd love feedback on what jokes work or don't work, as well as suggestions to make it better. My dream is to one day have this book featured in every aquarium gift shop in America.

Available on Amazon Where Books are Sold:​
​EncycEELopedia​

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​iamJoshKnox​​

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Josh Knox

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