In the Know 56: Irrationality, Lessons of History, & The Long Game

Admiring the magic of the mountains

Hi friends,

It’s been three months since my last post. Life has been intense in all respects, culminating with a much needed two-week vacation to finish off the summer.

This year I’ve been focused on building new products again, which has been a lot of fun but left little time for reflection. It seems to me that it is hard to be able to build and reflect at the same time, because they feel like they’re at different ends of the creative spectrum. In a physical context, I think of it like stress and recovery — you work hard to build something, and then reflect on what was learned along the way. I find it hard to invest a ton of time in reflecting while I’m building, because any extra mental energy I have is being invested into the building process itself.

We’re getting close to publicly releasing the second of the two products I’ve been leading, and although life is as busy and hectic as ever, I feel like I’ve been missing the creative outlet and source of connection that writing provides.

With that in mind, a big part of my motivation comes from the connection with you as the reader, so please let me know if this post/newsletter is meaningful to you. Feedback helps me find energy I didn’t know I had, and it will help me make more time for it this fall.

Be well, and thanks for reading.

Jamie

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🎧 Podcast about the important role of irrationality in the creative process, marketing, and life — Tetragrammaton by Rick Rubin, feat. Rory Sutherland

I’ve been enjoying Rick Rubin’s new podcast Tetragrammaton, and thought this was a particularly interesting episode. He interviews Rory Sutherland, a British advertising executive, author, and the UK Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, one of the world's largest and most renowned ad firms. They discuss a wide range of topics over 3.5 hours, with particular focus on how irrational and counterintuitive so many aspects of the creative process and human psychology can be. This podcast made me more curious about my own irrationality, and planted a bunch of new ideas in my head. Funny, thoughtful, and fascinating.

🎵 Fantastic documentary for music lovers — Searching for Sugarman

This movie won the the award for Best Documentary at the 2012 Oscars, but K and I only just watched it a few weeks ago after a nudge from one of my South African colleagues. It’s about an American musician from the late 60’s and early 70’s named Rodriguez, who was virtually unknown in the US but became immensely popular in South Africa, apparently selling more records than Elvis in the 70’s. The story follows the quest to find out more about this elusive artist, as very little information about him was known or available prior to the rise of the internet. It’s heartbreaking and inspirational — a story about a brilliant artist whose work was hugely influential to so many, yet he was never aware of the impact he was making at the time. It reminded me how much our success and fate is truly out of our control, at least within the timeline we think it should occur. It also made me deeply admire his outlook on life, as despite not receiving the accolades and commercial success he deserved, he seemed totally at peace with his very modest fate. We’ve been listening to his music pretty much constantly over the past few weeks, with a few favorite songs emerging to me — I Think of You, and Sandrevan Lullaby, but both of his albums are great, as is the movie soundtrack. Enjoy.

📚 Book that gave me a deeper perspective on who we are as humans — The Lessons of History, by Will & Ariel Durant

This is an insightful summary of the meta themes of human history by the authors of The Story of Civilization, an 11-volume set of books covering the complete history of Western and Eastern civilizations. It focuses on human nature across 12 chapters: geography, biology, race, character, morals, religion, economics, socialism, government, war, growth and decay, and progress. What amazed me is that no matter how quickly the world feels like it is changing around us, the most fundamental aspects of human nature seem to be stable and cyclical across our history. As a microcosm for this, the book was written in 1968 but so much of their commentary on the world as they saw it then matches up almost perfectly with our world today. I listened to this as an audiobook, which is roughly 5-6 hours, and end of each chapter included an interview with the authors exploring a few key questions on each theme. 10/10 recommend everyone reads this book to get a better perspective on who we are, where we’re from, and where we may be going.

Insightful thread about the long game of life, by @organgebook —

Closing quote —

“One of the great balancing acts in life is to be cautious and daring at the same time. Cautious enough to avoid stupid mistakes, prevent burnout, and maintain a margin of safety. Daring enough to bet on yourself, to do the things you would regret leaving undone, and to be willing to be uncomfortable in the short term so you can learn and grow in the long term.”

~James Clear

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