The key to better understanding the world is to build a latticework of mental models.
— Shane Parrish, The Great Mental Models, Vol. 1
What I'm Reading
Creativity and permission to be wrong
What we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original — if you’re not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.
Presence
In the absence of continual external reinforcement, we must be our own monitor, and quality of presence is often the best gauge. We cannot expect to touch excellence if “going through the motions” is the norm of our lives. On the other hand, if deep, fluid presence becomes second nature, then life, art, and learning take on a richness that will continually surprise and delight. Those who excel are those who maximize each moment’s creative potential—for these masters of living, presence to the day-to-day learning process is akin to that purity of focus others dream of achieving in rare climactic moments when everything is on the line.
— Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning (p. 172)
Hiut Denim
In 2002, 400 of the world’s most talented jeans makers were suddenly put out of work when their employer outsourced denim production overseas. Overnight, 10 percent of the population of Cardigan, U.K., lost their jobs, as the country’s largest jean factory moved to Morocco. Now, Cardigan natives and apparel veterans David and Clare Hieatt are looking to put Cardigan back on the map by reopening the factory, and rehiring the original team to make the world’s best jeans
The Shirky Principle
From Wikipedia:
In April 2010, Kevin Kelly cited the phrase “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”, and called it the “Shirky Principle”.