The Lab

Overview

A homegrown, seasonal newsletter aimed at building a habit of consistent writing and publishing. Exploring and distilling interesting content and ideas I come across, seeking to provide a novel, thought-provoking perspective. Issues are limited to 500 words and will be published weekly.

Season 1

Issue № 1: Laying the foundation

I’ve toyed a long while on the idea of writing a newsletter, examining the world around me and attempting to solidify the turbulent river of my thoughts. I was finally convinced to do so by one of Craig Mod’s essays, which also features in his newsletter Roden. Framing the creation of a newsletter as primarily seeking to build a writing and publishing habit—as opposed to a relentless push for more subscribers—was a crucial distinction that convinced me to take the first steps necessary.

The Lab will be written as a ‘timeboxed’ newsletter with a strict 500-word limit; published weekly for a duration of three months, after which point I’ll reflect on the usefulness of this so-called ‘season’ of writing and adjust course as necessary. I can’t be certain about what each issue will contain, only that each will be a distillation of what I have been thinking about over the course of that week; hopefully in a way that both interests and informs, but at minimum gives an insight into the perspective of another.

Despite a modest word limit and publishing schedule, I find myself tentative to commit to such a project; it feels much more difficult to communicate my ideas to others than it does to myself, likely because my personal journal represents what would be considered by others to be merely disconnected fragments of thought, as opposed to meaningful narratives woven together. An idealistic goal, certainly, but one I plan on pursuing in this newsletter.

A feeling which comes up in starting a project like this is that I must justify what qualifies me to write, what makes my thoughts worthy of publishing. My blog has aimed to combat this egoistic view of this idea: reading the work of another is a voluntary choice, and a writer only accrues such readership if their words provide value in some form for others. Even ignoring the aspect of an audience entirely, writing is immensely valuable for its inextricable link to thinking—improvement in writing means and improvement in thinking, which leads to writing with increased clarity. It is a self-perpetuating cycle which is to many, including myself, of paramount importance in integrating meaning within one’s life.

This newsletter will also serve as yet another reminder of my life which I may look back on in the future. Meaning, for me, is that which is remembered. Quite often in my life I have felt, in the moment, as though my thoughts were of the utmost importance only to find I had no idea what I’d spent the past day, week, or month of my life really thinking about. How could it be? Nothing was written down and this endless series of thoughts was forever lost, or at least irreparably obscured by time. So, here’s to the beginning of a series of well-intentioned yet likely haphazard posts which attempt to convey what is meaningful to me over the course of the next three months.

Issue № 2: Do it poorly

Most problems we encounter resemble those which already exist. Typical solutions to these challenges apply established frameworks in a reliable way. Complex or novel problems—those without standard methodologies—call for an alternative approach. How should one approach this complexity, when starting points are unclear? I have found a lot of success embracing a counterintuitive idea: ‘do it poorly’.

By ‘doing it poorly’, progress begins on something, even if it fails to yield a solution. This concept translates to the physical world; if you’re unsure how to get fit, go for a walk. Forget how far or how fast—these are of secondary importance when beginning. This first walk gives you a performance benchmark and key metrics to build upon in the future. An attempt, even a poor one, identifies stumbling blocks and informs next steps.

Even in subjective or open-ended work, this approach is still effective. By refining the first attempt, the author engages in a form of ‘error reduction’. This bears strong resemblance to the operation of some machine learning models which progressively remove Gaussian noise to realise a sample of interest, such as an image. Compared to the typical notion of creation—one with a focus on adding to a blank page—this technique subtracts the incorrect from an initial solution. This original work is a best guess; an honest response to a question, unburdened by issues of correctness or style. It is from this courageous first shrug that more substantive work can flow. Without it the process has not truly begun.

Undertaking ambitious efforts with the mindset that failure is not only accepted but encouraged is a surprisingly useful heuristic. The power of such incremental progress cannot be understated, particularly in long-term endeavours. Starting with a clear goal and the most basic of initial attempts, repeated cycles of change and reflection can lead to extraordinary results.

While comparable to the adage of how to ‘eat an elephant’ (one bite at a time), this method seeks to combat more than the scale of a problem. It is also about taking control of an unwieldy issue which requires novel outcomes. One which requires legitimate problem-solving under conditions of uncertainty. It combats the tendency to replace difficult, uneasy progress with the safety and certainty of planning and strategy. Without a poor start, it becomes easy to never begin at all. Though the final product may not contain any of the elements of the initial attempt, the value of such a start lies in edging towards perfection.

Issue № 3: Embrace the useless

In a world which is increasingly built around the notion of productivity—both inside and outside of our career—it’s easy to forget about the importance of pursuing knowledge for no other reason than our own intellectual curiosity. There is a tendency to view this pursuit as an unnecessary luxury, in an era where information and knowledge are viewed exclusively from a utilitarian point of view—only as a means to an end. Indeed, knowledge has become so intermingled with work it can be difficult to separate the two; information is often seen merely as a pre-requisite for the application of technical skill towards a profit- or status-driven pursuit.

Of course, we require that some of our knowledge is gained from this purely utilitarian point of view. We require good teaching and should study hard to understand the fundamentals of university courses and/or more informal apprenticeships; these serve as the platform from which we build careers and work to improve civilisation as a whole. But this is skill-based knowledge. As humans we require more than this, we require a purpose. We require perspective about the world we live in, and the meaning of our lives within this larger world. Utilitarian knowledge solves for the how, but not the why.

As the cult of relentless productivity sweeps the population up, intellectual curiosity becomes viewed increasingly as a luxury. Instead of reading complete books, people read book summaries, cliff notes, or subscribe to services such as Blinkist. Information is disassembled, optimised and fed piecemeal back to us. Instead of taking a page of handwritten notes, knowledge bases are created using Obsidian or Roam Research. Standard Operating Procedures are built around study and knowledge retention. These are noble and well-meaning attempts, I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But they are commonly seen as an all-encompassing method of information consumption that obscures the purpose of this information. Only once we stop viewing all knowledge as something to obtain can we begin to explore the world simply for the sake of it.

Knowledge pursued for it’s own sake allows for greater perspective and balance in life. It is a way to step back from the tunnel vision of more and to survey the terrain around us. Without indulging in this ‘useless’ knowledge, we inhibit our ability to devise and implement high-level visions and to see solutions to problems previously outside our narrow range of personal concern. Pursuing our own curiosity with no expectation of usefulness promotes a profound sense of peace of mind and what Betrand Russell calls a “contemplative habit of mind”—we find more significance and joy in the everyday and can more easily grasp larger parts of the world around us. This leads to a compounding effect whereby curiosity begets more curiosity, and we operate in a cycle of our own making—sitting in the joy of our own contemplation.

Issue № 4: Being a generalist

When reading about David Epstein’s book range, I was initially skeptical about the usefulness of a generalist. As far as I could tell, a specialist with a deep knowledge in one area seemed both more useful and more well-paid. In my mind, the wealth of knowledge online made this broad, shallow knowledge obsolete—a novice could rapidly search Google or read Wikipedia and get up to speed with the generalist on any given topic. While this may be true, it misunderstands a key aspect of creative work—without already having that information, I’m not able to recognise it in another form or context.

Without an understanding in a wide range of topics—albeit a shallow one—we are blind to potential opportunities for creativity. Creativity comes most frequently from combining two ideas from disparate fields, applying a technique or methodology from one line of work to an unrelated field. This explains why many startup ideas are pitches as the x for y e.g., an Uber for groceries. Of course, we can look up almost anything on the internet now, but the information itself is not the stumbling block in creativity. It is knowing what to look up. It is only when we have existing knowledge that we may perceive its usefulness in a novel application. Put another way, when solving a problem it is more critical to know the direction to research, not the knowing the research itself.

Reading and learning widely increases our ability to identify patterns and terminology. Priority must be on what is truly useful, to avoid rote memorisation for its own sake. A good starting point is fields which have broad applications across many areas of life: topics such as mathematics, physics, logic, etc.

In summary, don’t rely solely on the huge expanse of data online to solve all problems. Those who do truly creative and useful things in the world rely on knowing a little about a lot, then leveraging the expertise of others once they understand where to invest further time and energy. Being a generalist allows you to orient and position yourself for success in the long-term.