#84 Accessibility, content, and jousting

This ‘bedroom mix’ is only 43 minutes long so I’m giving myself exactly this long to see if I can write this week’s issue.

I just saw someone reminisce about Limewire 🍋 (it either takes you back or it wasn’t a thing in your time, whether your time was way before or after), and it reminded me of one of my downloads there — Breathe by Blu Cantrell (what a banger then and still now).

So, a few song rabbitholes later, I ended up looking for The Weeknd, and landed on this mix that’s now fuelling this brief writing session — and it might just be the vibe you need today, too.

But the real vibe is joining a local medieval fighters guild just out of curiosity and a ‘why not,’ which is exactly what Andrew Webb did. Head of Content by day, and a beginner jouster on the weekend.

As is the way, I didn’t know Andrew but his post on my LinkedIn feed caught my eye and I had to investigate.

Andrew works for a startup that focuses on improving accessibility for online shopping. “Roughly 1 in 4 people globally have a disability, and 1 in 5 are neurodivergent, and yet most online shopping experiences don’t serve these customers well,” Andrew shares.

As is the way with startups, Andrew and his colleagues wear a ton of hats — speed is key.

Work aside, Andrew is also a fellow Dungeons & Dragons player, and the algorithm kept serving him ads. And love it or loathe it, but sometimes the algorithmic gods will bless you with something that’s actually relevant, useful, and lands on your feed just at the right time. For Andrew, that was medieval fighting tournaments (hmm, I might need to work on my algorithm):

“[..] There was one for ‘Bohurt’, which comes from Old French béhourd: “joust” or “tournament”. I clicked the link and there was a ‘find near you’ option, and I thought these would all be in Europe or the US, but then I was amazed to find one in Cambridge. I emailed Jack, our captain, and did a trial session, and joined the group. It’s great.”

You can check it out yourself here. Maybe it inspires you to pick up that random hobby this year? For Andrew, the appeal is in that it has nothing to do with content strategy. Well, it’s kinda problem-solving but you’re completely focused on the physical aspect while put under pressure to react in the moment.

“You’re constantly reading signals, testing assumptions, adjusting distance, choosing when to commit and when to disengage, and conserving energy. And then that plan goes out the window when your opponent counters.

If anything, it’s more like physical chess.

I have a desk job, and thankfully we live in an age where most people don’t experience physical violence, but doing this sport, and it is a sport, reminds you that desk jobs are a relatively new invention for humans. For most of history, it was very different.”

In addition to the medieval experience, Andrew also runs creative LEGO workshops to help teams work together better.

With a motto of “‘Make an afternoon of happy mistakes with me, so your MVP doesn’t suck in six months’ time,” Andrew gets companies and teams to be more creative in how they approach whatever’s blocking them:

“They’re different tools for different kinds of thinking. Duelling is physical, but unlike the gym it’s also about friendship and getting hit and being physical. LEGO, on the other hand, is more creative. There are 24 discrete skills happening in your brain when using LEGO.”

You’d think a hobby like a medieval fight club might be intimidating for the first-timers, and not quite as easy to dive into as something like doodling or candle making.

But Andrew went fully in and share’s a great piece of wisdom: you can do something new and it’s okay to be rubbish at it.

You don’t have to nail it the first time, you don’t need to prove anything. Maybe only to yourself — to overcome that fear and just do it.

“We all start out rubbish. Being bad at something reminds you how learning actually feels: confusion, frustration, tiny wins that feel enormous.

And you can take a beginner’s mindset into your professional work, and look at the world anew and really learn things. We should always be learning, even when we’re good at something.”

So, go do something that has nothing to do with your job title. I’ve seen this a lot, and I’ve done the exact same thing, but nothing changes if you don’t change anything — if you want to break that routine, you have to break it.

“Make something; do something. It could be fighting, pickleball, knitting, or fishing. Anything that isn’t a desk and a screen, and something where your LinkedIn profile is useless and your mind, body, or hands have to do the thinking.

Physical hobbies recalibrate your sense of touch and of progress and failure, there is no ‘undo'. They make you more patient, more grounded, and, I think, better at your work. We could all benefit from being makers again, even just as a hobby.”

Sooo, what are you going to make or do this week, this month, this year? You know, my DMs are always open if you want to share more about your hobbies or experiments.

That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨