Fellow Partners,
I spent the weekend with some wonderful thinkers and investors in a beautiful setting. We were pursuing scenius — the intelligence and intuition of a cultural scene.
Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work.
Kevin Kelly
Over time, a fully formed scenius can become the communal form of the concept of genius. We could never get there in a weekend, but we began the journey. And as with many things, the pursuit was the point.
We hosted dialogues on balancing structure with serendipity, navigating information abundance, and intentionally accessing the subconscious to improve thinking.
This is what I learned.
Note: This gathering was hosted under Chatham House Rules, so the material below has omitted some acknowledgements of authorship.Dialogue 1: How do you balance structure and serendipity? Where have you found structure useful, and where has it been best to leave more room for serendipity?
The motif rapidly became structure as a means to access serendipity — a version of “learn the rules so that you can break them” — but deeper. Internalize the rules to gain the intuition found on the far side of mastery.
The novice must evolve into a master. Only a master can evolve into an artist. This is Josh Waitzkin’s idea of creating structure in order to leave structure; form to leave form; numbers to leave numbers.
Mastery unlocks play. Play unlocks creativity. Creativity unlocks serendipity.
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Orson Welles
Discipline = Freedom.
Jocko Willink
The pursuit of serendipity is crucial because many of life’s most important things are stumbled upon.
That’s worth repeating: many of life’s most important things are stumbled upon.
Stumbling is important.
Think of the recurring themes in honest biographies: It was an adventure. Luck played a big role. It couldn’t have been planned.
How lovers met. How businesses succeeded. How great inventions were invented. They often share these patterns.
We know serendipity can be the most crucial part of our stories, yet we behave as though planning is the answer to uncertainty.
Adding room for serendipity is essential. Can it be done, and if so, how?
That’s a big question with insufficient answers. But we arrived at a few.
First and most obviously: there must be room for serendipity. A tightly packed schedule with no unstructured time guarantees serendipity will be missed.
Almost no prerequisite to any major invention was invented with that invention in mind.
Ken Stanley
Second, we must understand the broader structure of doing great work, best articulated as search and climb. We must search for the best work to do. Sometimes this involves a great deal of wandering or working to find the right work. Think of Einstein working in the patent office or playing his violin when stuck on a problem. But when we find the right work, we must stop searching and start climbing. Buffett starts each day with no agenda, searching. When opportunity strikes, he climbs. It’s no coincidence he also has a famously open schedule and declines most meetings.
There are supporting enablers to this structure. Velocity is often more important than mass. Small teams enable this. Surface area is often more important than depth, initially. But the ability to switch to depth is required to finish the job. Sprinting is often necessary but will stall unless paired with real rest.
If you can choose to add mass or velocity, always choose velocity.
Peter Kaufman
Small teams are magic.
Mark Leonard
Third, ask for help. Steve Jobs suggested that asking for help is an act of service, and what separates the people who do from the people who dream. Asking for help is also a form of increasing surface area. No one can help you if they don’t know about your problem.
This also creates cognitive leverage. Making many brains aware of the problem increases the brainpower applied to the work, thereby increasing the odds that the right brains will connect with the work and help move it forward.
Dialogue 2, Part 1: How do you navigate information abundance? What do you intentionally subtract or keep?
This dialogue turned a delightful and unexpected direction.
The initial discussion investigated what is worth paying attention to. The best principle: only pay attention to information that is costly and honest.
Some examples:
A track record of strong business performance is costly to produce and hard to fake. A manager’s opinion of their business is inexpensive to produce and may be dishonest or poorly calibrated.
A reputation as an honest and trustworthy person is costly to produce and hard to fake. A compliant reference is inexpensive to produce and has misaligned incentives.
A wonderful product or service is costly to produce and hard to fake. Compelling marketing is relatively inexpensive to produce and less likely to be deeply rooted in truth.
I expected a deeper dive into information selection. Instead, serendipity struck, and we chased it. Rather than pursue information subtraction we focused on information processing and the role the subconscious can play in handling information abundance.
Dialogue 2, Part 2: What is the role of the subconscious in enhancing or improving our thinking?
Intuition is our most valuable compass in the world.
Josh Waitzkin
We see our world through the semblance of language. This is a constant, often unconscious limiting factor in our ability to think well. The English language has about 10,000 words in common use. Mandarin has about 3,000. There is an enormous amount of space between words, and much understanding that lacks words.
We often experience thoughts, emotions, or epiphanies that we struggle to put to words. Sometimes this is a symptom of understanding a thing less well than we thought. Other times it is a limitation of our capabilities with language to accurately represent knowledge or wisdom.
The job of the poet is to name without narrowing.
David Whyte
Our cognitive capabilities extend far beyond conscious use of reasoning through language. Many have experienced being stuck on a hard problem, stepping away from it, and returning later with the answer. Sometimes meditation, a walk, or a nap result in our subconscious producing the answer. What is happening?
While we wish we knew more about the process, what we do know is that mental progress is being made subconsciously. This is valuable and useful.
Some chess masters stare at a chess board arranged with a chess problem prior to sleeping at night. They are intentionally loading this problem into their brains for subconscious work while they sleep.
This practice can be broadened by intentionally thinking or journaling about a problem prior to a conscious break (e.g., before sleeping, exercising, etc.)
It can be further harnessed by immediately journaling when exiting the break (e.g., first thing when waking up, post-exercise before returning to work, etc.)
Consciously planting thoughts prior to queueing our subconscious is a means of accessing our subconscious to enhance our thinking.
Planning is overrated. Planting is underrated.
Art in its many forms has historically been the primary means to access the subconscious. What is deeply felt in beautiful music or experienced in the presence of overwhelming painting or sculpture can be a conscious invitation of the subconscious.
This pairs well with the concept of openness to serendipity. Once again, Einstein working in the patent office or playing his violin when stuck on a problem.
Sometimes the best work one can do is surround themselves with beautiful art. Turning down the conscious mind, in order to “hear” the unconscious mind.
Variance
Alongside our dialogue sessions were breathwork sessions, a cacao ceremony (new to me), journaling, cold swims in the North Sea, sauna, and time spent outside in the beautiful onsite garden.
There’s more to say on those practices — perhaps in another note — but it is worth commenting that they enhanced community building, provided energy, and helped relax the conscious mind and bring awareness to the unconscious mind.
Of particular interest were the benefits of intentionally increasing variance.
Comfortable sleep was followed by a cold swim, then a hot sauna.
Calming breathwork was followed by deep conversation.
Deep conversation was followed by a relaxing walk.
Indoors were followed by outdoors.
A pattern seemed present: greater dichotomy between activities created greater energy within each activity.
200 years ago, 75% of the world’s population had to work on a farm to provide sufficient food. We spent an enormous amount of time outdoors, exposed to enormous swings in temperature (no climate control). We had to move to survive. Everyone’s fingernails were dirty.
Today, just 2% of the world’s population are farmers, and in aggregate we produce far more food than we need. The Haber-Bosch process, industrial scale and dozens of innovations have enabled many to spend most of their time indoors, rarely experiencing more than modest heat or cold, moving little and cleaning often.
200 years of progress have been an enormous, enormous blessing.
But it is worth considering that our ability to minimize personal and environmental variance can go too far.
We have become too comfortable.
Variance has benefits.
In Practice
My main learning was to play more. Foster more community. Foster more curiosity. Work until I get stuck, then go spend time with the kids. Spend more time outside. The Bezos notion to invent, and wander.
We cannot directly control serendipity, but we can choose to increase the surface area of our exposure to serendipity and make time for it.
We cannot directly control our subconscious, but we can plant ideas in it, give it space, and take its outputs seriously.
We have limited control over our physical and mental states, but we can choose to pursue the benefits of variance.
And some learning is best (only?) unlocked through community.
Individuals are overrated. Communities are underrated.
All the best,
John
Founder and Managing Partner
Quite insightful!