12: The Joy of Delayed Gratification, with John Morse-Brown The JOMOcast with Christina Crook

Letters are intimate and a delight to receive. Thanks to their miraculous homing instincts, pigeons have a long and honourable track record delivering letters. The ancient Greeks sent them out to broadcast the names of victorious athletes at the original Olympic Games. And Julius Caesar employed pigeon post during his conquest of Gaul. In recent centuries, of course – ever since 1660, when King Charles II established the Post Office – the poor old pigeon’s been somewhat edged out.  My guest today, thinks it’s time to reintroduce Pigeon Post. Graphic designer John Morse-Brown is the creator of Pigeon, a line of stationery designed to revive the tradition of letter writing, updated for the modern age. They combine John’s love of origami, great design, and his passion for bringing back the art of beautiful, intentional, personal written communication. John came up with the idea of Pigeon after falling out of love with social media. For all of the frenetic activity he and his friends were putting in, he felt wasn’t fostering any genuine sense of connection. There was something about it that left him feeling hollow and empty. So he took the plunge and closed his social media accounts. But then a good friend of his moved from Britain to the USA. Until then, apart from trips to the pub (which were no longer possible), they’d only really communicated on Facebook, which meant John needed a new way of keeping in touch with his friend. That made him think about letters. Compared with posting online, letter writing creates quite a few hurdles: laying hands-on writing paper, finding an envelope, an address, a stamp. Then there’s the tyranny of the empty page. How on earth do you start?   John realized he had the opportunity to reinvent the letter.  In this episode, we discuss: How John walked away from social media and revived letter writing to stay in contact with friendsHow communicating more narrowly and deeply transforms our message into something intimate and desirableHow delayed gratification enhances the experience of receiving communication, and increases its value to the giver and recipientHow communication doesn’t have to be big, impressive, or unusual to be valuable and appreciated GO DEEPER Sign up at experiencejomo.com for gentle humor, powerful insights, and actionable tools for you to live joyfully online and off.  Favorite Quotes: “It feels like it’s a product of joy.”“We may think we are more connected than ever… I think we’re actually less connected because of the medium.”“There are so many little things you could talk about that fill you with joy, that are amazing, and they’re all little, but together they form this experience that you just don’t get in any other medium.” Follow John Morse-Brown: Pigeon Store: https://pigeonposted.comPigeon Feed Blog: https://pigeonposted.com/blog/Instagram: @realpigeonposted Follow JOMO:Instagram: @experience_jomo Call to ActionIf this episode sparked some new ideas, we would love your support. Subscribe in iTunes (or wherever you listen) and write us a review. Every rating helps us attract new listeners, which helps us to keep making the show!  Support the JOMOcast by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/jomocast. If you want to be empowered to experience the joy of missing out in your daily life, become a JOMO member and engage directly with Christina at Patreon.com/experiencejomo.
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