Tony Lashley, Founder

Tony Lashley is a New York based creative thinker and the founder behind Marine Snow, a curated music streaming platform and community for music connoisseurs.

APOSSIBLE™ is a non-profit bringing psychologists, technologists, artists and creatives together to explore how technology can better support creativity and human fulfillment. In this ongoing interview series we’re discovering what people value, what makes their lives fulfilling, and what kinds of relationships to technology they already cherish.

1. What is a ritual, practice, or routine in your life that is important for your psychological wellbeing and/or fulfillment? Why?

I exercise (15 min) and meditate (15 min) every day. It's my version of drinking a coffee or tea. Doing so allows me to feel like I have maximum agency and that I can handle whatever the day has in store. It also is a light reminder of the benefits of compounding improvement — 1.001^365 or something like that.

2. What is a human-made creation that brings out the best in you? Why?

There are few joys greater than reading a book to me, as simple or cliché as it may be.

A book of fiction, nonfiction, poetry or prose — it doesn't matter.

The act of reading to me is about stepping away from dopamine-flooding screens, immersing myself in someone else's ideas or world, having the language to express my ideas with greater sharpness, and being the version of myself I'd most like to be.

Almost all of my ideas come from cross-pollinations and pattern-recognitions between disciplines. Reading books allows me the rare combination of stillness and blossoming.

3. When do you cherish the slow or hard way of doing something? Why?

I cherish the slow or hard way of doing something when attempting to build something that has long-term value.

I think our time horizons for measuring success and value have become shorter and shorter over time in a way that makes many of the objects we interact with quite disposable.

Though interacting with those objects feels good for a split second, the feeling immediately after is one of artifice and a bad taste in your mouth, no different from eating a candy loaded with artificial sweeteners and dyes.

I'm interested in planting strawberries — things that are sweet but also healthy and that feel good after consumption — and I think the only way to do that is by taking a long view of what success looks like and for achieving success. Often times that means shunning free-market values like money and fame in the immediate term, which can be hard when everyone else's barometer is one of immediate success.

4. What is something you appreciate or long for from the past? Why?

As a child of the early aughts, I'm nostalgic for blog and forum culture being dominant form of socialization on the Internet, and an Internet prior to algorithmic social media. I grew up in digital spaces where people could nerd out over common interests outside of the incentives for polarization and where text culture reigned supreme.

In the present day, social media has replaced by and been conflated with the Internet in a way I'm not sure is good in the long-term.