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title: Genius is an egosystem, scenius is an ecosystems
created: 2025-12-02T06:45:32
modified: 2025-12-02T07:17:48
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[Scenius](https://austinkleon.com/2017/05/12/scenius/) = A whole scene of people supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.

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[@carrCuesWorkingTogether2014]

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Teamwork is as much a psychological state as a way of dividing up tasks.

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[@abdaalFeelGoodProductivityHow2024]

**Synchronicity makes us want to [help others](helping-others-makes-us-feel-good.md).**

The implications are simple: if we want to harness the feel-good effects of people, <mark>try to find people with whom to work in sync - even if you aren’t actively collaborating on the same task.</mark>

In the course of writing this book, I often attended the London Writers’ Salon, which runs a free, remote co-working group called Writers’ Hour.

Every weekday, four times a day, a few hundred writers (and some non-writers) assemble on a Zoom video call.

The facilitator spends five minutes sharing a motivational message and asking participants to post in the online chat what their intention for their writing session is going to be. Then, for fifty minutes, everyone minimizes their Zoom window, and works away at their computer.

I continue to find these sync sessions incredibly helpful for staying energized. Even though we’re all working on different things, working in tandem with others has huge effects on my ability to focus, and helps me feel better too.

This subtle difference between “working in parallel” and “working together” might seem small, but it’s a tool we can use to harness the energizing effects of people:

<mark>Even if we’re on our own in undertaking a task, we can convince ourselves that we’re part of a team.</mark>

<mark>The trick is to deliberately think about the people you’re working alongside as part of your team.</mark>