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- Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap 9/13/2025)
Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap 9/13/2025)
The Courage to Sit with Not Knowing: From Musical Dead Ends to Friendship Cliffs
Matt Zeigler
September 13, 2025
Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...
This week explored a fascinating paradox: uncertainty drives growth and learning, while certainty builds trust and connection. From musical collaborations that seemed like failures to friendship psychology that explains why we lose people, these stories reveal how the most meaningful breakthroughs happen when we have the courage to sit with not knowing what comes next.
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Robert Glasper was supposed to play piano on one song for Kendrick Lamar. Instead, he caught a cab across town when he was tired, listened to nine tracks once each, and laid down parts for what became "To Pimp a Butterfly" - all in a single session. The foundation wasn't just his incredible musical ability, but years of authentic fandom and genuine friendship with Terrace Martin, built on mutual respect and shared musical obsessions.
This story perfectly illustrates how breakthrough moments aren't really about lucky breaks - they're about the compound effect of being genuinely curious about others' work, building real relationships, and showing up when called, even when it's inconvenient. Your network isn't just who you know; it's who knows your work, respects your craft, and thinks of you when something special is happening.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Glasper on the power of authentic fandom
"Be a fan first. Make friends. The rest follows."
What looks like creative dead ends often aren't dead ends at all - they're experiments that weren't quite failures but couldn't claim obvious success, gathering momentum for the right moment to break through. Bilal's shelved album "Love for Sale" seemed like a career setback in the early 2000s, but those studio sessions with Glasper and the Soulquarians created connections that would later contribute to transformative albums like "To Pimp a Butterfly."
The lesson extends beyond music: those little expeditions and apparent detours in your creative or professional life aren't wasted energy. They're where the real work gets done, building the villages and relationships that make bigger breakthroughs possible later. Villages are full of main streets, little roads, and dead ends - but the dead ends are where experiments happen away from the spotlight.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on the life found in apparent dead ends
"These aren't really dead ends. They're experiments that weren't quite failures but couldn't claim success by any obvious measure. They're change gathering momentum, waiting for the right moment to break through."
Giorgio Armani's philosophy reveals a crucial distinction that applies far beyond fashion: money can buy attention, but it can't buy the kind of respect that lasts. His approach was built on quality over flash, timeless elegance over trend-chasing, and being remembered rather than just being noticed. This mirrors the authentic relationship-building we see in creative communities - substance creates lasting impact in ways that surface-level networking never can.
The Armani lesson connects directly to how authentic creative relationships form: through genuine appreciation of craft, consistent quality, and the kind of understated excellence that earns respect rather than demanding it. Whether in fashion, music, or professional relationships, authenticity and class can't be purchased - they're earned through consistent choices that prioritize substance over spectacle.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Armani on the distinction that matters
"Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered."
The friendship cliff isn't just about losing people - it's about natural points where life challenges us to navigate a fundamental paradox. Uncertainty is required for growth and learning (our brains literally take in more information when we don't know what's coming next), but certainty is required for connection and trust. Understanding this paradox helps explain why isolation often happens during our most uncertain life transitions.
The conversation between friendship expert Anna Goldfarb and behavioral psychologist Naomi Win reveals that those cliff moments aren't just about relationship maintenance - they're about learning to sit with the discomfort of not knowing while offering the gift of clarity to others. Every time we experience uncertainty, we're physiologically designed to learn, but we also need to create certainty for the people we care about.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on the fundamental requirement for growth
"Uncertainty is the only condition where there's both growth AND learning."
Anna Goldfarb's research reveals three tactical insights that transform how we think about relationships: removing uncertainty builds trust, sustainable friendships need an "about" beyond just affection, and we talk ourselves out of connection far more than practical barriers prevent it. Her work-life-legacy framework shows how these principles apply across all types of relationships, from professional collaborations to personal friendships.
The most powerful insight is that every relationship needs to be "about" something compelling to both people - shared activities, interests, or goals that give you reasons to consistently engage. This isn't limiting; it's liberating both parties from unclear expectations. When you know what a friendship is fundamentally about, it becomes easier for everyone to show up authentically within that context.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Anna on the foundation of lasting connection
"The best thing I can do for my friend is remove uncertainty. And I tell my friends, I love being your friend for these reasons... I wanna be your friend forever, just so you know."
Naomi Win's insights about decision-making under uncertainty provide the psychological framework for understanding why authentic relationships and creative breakthroughs happen the way they do. Her key insight - that repair ability trumps compatibility in predicting relationship endurance - explains why some creative partnerships survive setbacks while others dissolve. The skill of acknowledging mistakes and addressing gaps between people creates the psychological safety necessary for meaningful collaboration.
Most importantly, her work reveals that self-trust is our only real certainty in an uncertain world. This doesn't eliminate uncertainty but gives you confidence to handle whatever responses you get. The mutual support that creates lasting creative communities and meaningful relationships is built on everyone's self-trust working like a system of bridges, betting on their ability to handle whatever comes next together.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Naomi on the foundation of courage in relationships
"We can never have certainty. So the only thing we've got left there is self trust. And having that trust, that we can handle the response... of having the self-trust to know I'm gonna be okay."
Where Else I Showed Up This Week
[note from me: after having my mind blown by the research on friendship cliffs and uncertainty psychology during the Anna-Naomi conversation - I’m deep in thinking about how sometimes the best episodes happen when I'm just curious about how two experts' ideas might connect. Also, I spent way too much time going down YouTube rabbit holes listening to unreleased Bilal tracks and remembering why the early 2000s neo-soul scene felt so important at the time. Turns out those "dead ends" are still paying dividends decades later.]
Meanwhile, over on Excess Returns, we had three fascinating conversations this week. First, Dave Nadig, Cameron Dawson and I recorded a Click Beta discussing global macro challenges and the question of institutional trust - who do you actually trust when it comes to BLS data, Fed communications, and market signals? I ended up telling more Robert Glasper stories because sometimes jazz piano and macro economics have more in common than you'd think.
Then Eric Pachman joined Justin Carbonneau and me to discuss his groundbreaking research on immigration's impact on labor markets. Eric's doing some of the most compelling work I've seen on this topic, and his data-driven approach cuts through a lot of the noise you typically hear in immigration debates.
Finally, prior Just Press Record guests Kris Abdelmessih (Moontower.ai) and Mat Cashman (OCC) came back for a joint "teach me like I'm 5" session on the options concept of Gamma. I've been intimidated by this concept for years, but their explanation finally made it click - sometimes you need the right teachers at the right moment.
And while I didn't show up myself, two other prior Just Press Record guests - Julia Duthie and Nancy Burger - had a remarkable conversation on Julia's podcast "People are Everything" about the people who shaped Nancy's life and career. Even beyond the nice shoutout I got, this is the kind of deep reflection on mentorship and influence that I find myself sharing with friends and family. It perfectly captures how our networks become part of our stories.
Oh, and one more Excess Returns conversation dropped just now with Brent Donnelly covering everything from why he'll "never be a perma bear" to using LLMs for trading headlines, his August re-acceleration thesis (and why he abandoned it), FX as Trump's potential tariff "exhaust valve," and somehow we managed to squeeze in Radiohead trivia. Out of my million Brent questions, we made it through the essential ones.
Personal Archive Prompts
What apparent "dead end" in your creative or professional life might actually be gathering momentum for something bigger?
WHO IN YOUR NETWORK needs to hear specifically why you value working with them?
What is your closest friendship really "about" beyond just liking each other, and how has that evolved?
Where are you avoiding action because you can't guarantee the outcome - what would change if you trusted yourself to handle whatever happens?
WHAT UNCERTAIN SITUATION in your life right now might be a learning opportunity rather than a problem to solve?
Think about your most productive working relationship - how did you both handle the first major disagreement?
Who have you been meaning to reach out to but haven't because of uncertainty, and what would you want them to know in one message?
As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.
(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)
ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules