The Insider - November 2024

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the November edition of the Insider. Do you know someone who would enjoy the Insider? Forward this email to them and they can subscribe here.

A note before we begin: This edition is more thematic and interconnected than past editions of the Insider. The essays examine similar ideas but from different angles, sometimes questioning the conclusion that was just drawn in a prior section. I'd love to hear about how this edition, as a curated whole, landed for you.

On simplicity

On a quiet street in Mexico City, there is a nondescript building that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is the home of Luis Barragán, Mexico’s most prominent modern architect, and it has been preserved since his death in 1988. When you first step inside, you might expect more. I found basic rooms, clean lines, geometric shapes. But then our tour guide began to point out how the simple design and minimalist interior belied a hidden intentionality and sophistication.

The design of a stairway, down to the size and shape of the steps, conveyed an effortless flow into an upstairs landing, almost pulling you upward to whatever lay around the corner. The protrusion of a stone fireplace into the living room was contrasted with nearly-invisible window panes that framed an exterior garden. The stone made its presence known while the glass disappeared, collapsing the distance between the hearth inside and the plants outside. The gaze of someone standing just here, when looking just there, might see how the sunlight casts everything in a golden hue, or how certain angles conspire together to cut the sky above into blue triangles. When you looked closely enough, you began to get the sense that the entire house was constructed around an invisible pattern, an architectural Fibonacci sequence, that expressed itself in the biggest forms and smallest details.

According to our guide, Barragán’s brilliance was in his simplicity: his ability to remove, reshape, and distill until only what was worthwhile remained. Simplicity is hard, he told us.

Simplicity is hard. Whether it is in architecture, physical products, business strategy, organizational charts, or even how we design our lives, elegant simplicity—that simplicity on the other side of all the chaos and complexity—is the mark of mastery. To the novice, the hard work to arrive at simplicity is unrecognized. But to the person who has been forced to cut, and cut, and cut again, the beauty is not just in what remains, but in the process of removing everything that could have competed with that final product, so that it could reign in its singular glory.

On being singular

Today, the well-rounded person is a rare breed. Ask any college admissions advisor, and they will tell you that if you’re seeking acceptance into one of the nation’s top academic institutions, it’s far better to be a pointy, singular applicant who is obsessive about one esoteric thing than to be a well-rounded student. Ask the most sage management gurus about how a company can achieve greatness, and they’ll tell you to focus on only what’s essential and “narrow the focus but increase the quality.”

For many of us, extreme focus is no easy task. Our attention drifts. Our priorities multiply. But it’s quite easy to accidentally become a one-dimensional person who convinces himself that the things he loves to do are the things he has always done. As Kevin Dahlstrom says, “Most of the time when people say ‘I love my work’ what they’re really saying is ‘work is all I have.’”

There is logic in narrowing the focus and increasing the quality, and history is full of examples of people who specialized their way to greatness. But the specialization we bring to our professional lives can quickly become all-consuming. The advice that says "go be the best in the world at one thing" has the potential, if we’re not careful, to flatten us.

There might be virtue in widening the focus and giving ourselves the space to explore the full spectrum of our wonder. Doing so could lead us into a new relationship with our own multitudes. It could become a pursuit that is ironically singular: the pursuit of becoming like no one else.

On writing the truth

I’ve found it takes practice to write the truth. Often, I’ll be in the middle of writing something and realize I’m off on some tangent, spinning in circles. But if I can tune into the truth, the words fly. The paragraphs are good. I learn something in the process. The writer Neil Strauss says that we should “write with uncommon honesty,” and I often ask myself before publishing: is this uncommonly honest? Is there enough truth here to pierce through all the bullshit and fluff?

There is a lot of bullshit and fluff on the internet these days, and AI has only made it worse. AI content mills are churning out content by the second, and more and more viral social media posts are AI-generated. Our challenge today is not a classic battle between human versus machine; humans have no monopoly on the truth, and I’ve found AI to be an immensely helpful editing companion in the writing process. The challenge today is for writers to write the truth and for readers to find it. In an era of infinite content, separating the truth from the fluff will become one of the most prized forms of intelligence. If we can cultivate one skill, it is to enhance our ability to tune out and tune in.

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What I am reading

Does outer space need environmentalists? Some researchers have proposed creating a planetary park system in space, while others advocate for a circular space economy. Noema Magazine.
You are now the media. How the (podcast) election is rewriting the rules of legacy media. What does it mean when everyone can choose their own reality? The Atlantic.
Should we unplug and digital detox or should we change our relationship to our devices? The risks of opting out of today’s internet. Zine.
There is a 79-year-old priest in Italy who is helping women escape the mafia. Luigi Ciotti has spent the past 20 years creating an informal network of safe houses, burner phones, and cooperative policemen to get women out. The New Yorker.
Lisa Barceló, my wife, reviewed two books that provided different perspectives on community. She explores two extremes of community and what it means for us to show up in a society. The Parenthetical.

Something personal

I’m learning Spanish in Mexico City. Every morning for two hours, I have a personal tutor who takes me around and pushes me into quotidian encounters that will test the limits of my broken Spanish. I’ve combined words into sentences that had no business being together. I’ve tried to explain future plans with past tenses. I’ve described myself as an escritorio instead of an escritor.

There is nothing quite like being a grown adult stumbling through a basic sentence in front of another grown adult. Humiliation is a profound teacher. But the moments when I’ve messed up are the ones that are seared into my mind—the learnings so visceral that I’ll never make the same mistake again. Fortunately, the people I’ve encountered are kind, and the Spanish is beginning to stick.

~~~

Banks