Mental Pivot #47: Pithy Wisdom
The clever aphorisms of Piet Hein, the best books on time management, and dark patterns in web and app design.
The ability to something profound in as few words as possible is a skill I lack but envy in others.
The Danish polymath, Piet Hein (1905-1996), was particularly adept at this; he was a master of brevity, observation, and insight.
Throughout his long life he wrote thousands of short aphoristic poems known as “Grooks” (“Gruk” in Danish). Most were composed in Danish, but some he wrote and published in English. A typical Grook consists of a half-dozen lines of rhymed verse accompanied by a whimsical illustration drawn by Hein.
Hein’s best Grooks are humorous, surprising, and often ironic, and they’re always attended by some underlying truth about the human experience or human nature. Like a cup of warm coffee, they’re wonderful to slowly sip while digesting their wit and wisdom.
Here are a handful of favorites:
Wisdom Is—
Wisdom is
the booby prize
given when you’ve been
unwise.
Experts
Experts have
their expert fun
ex cathedra
telling one
just how nothing
can be done.
Wide Road
To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
Problems
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.
The Road to Wisdom
The road to wisdom?—Well, it’s plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
Although Hein’s works are out of print, you can access the official Piet Hein database of over 7000 Danish and English Grooks. To access the Grook collection, email gruk@piethein.com and include the keyword(s) in the subject line (e.g., “time” or “wisdom”). An automated email response will send matching Grooks to your inbox a few minutes later (text only, no accompanying illustrations). For more information about the tool, visit the Gruk Database (or the Google Translate version of the page).
Now onto this week's recommendations…
Productivity:
The Best Books on Time Management: Oliver Burkeman, author of “Four Thousand Weeks” (a recently published book on time management) lists his five favorite books on the topic. His selections include David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and Tifanny Dufu’s “Drop the Ball.” The Browser recently posted a worthwhile interview with Burkeman on YouTube titled, “Making the Most of Life.”
How to Ask for Help: Stavros Korokithakis elucidates a thoughtful process when trying to solve a problem. Detail the problem in writing: what you’re trying to do, why you’re doing it, what you’ve tried so far, and why each attempt has failed. In some cases, this approach will help you resolve the issue without intervention. Otherwise, it provides ample context when asking others for help and lets them know you aren’t wasting their time.
Tyler Cowen on Reading Fast, Well, and Widely: Excerpts from an interview on the Tim Ferriss Show (Episode #436) in which two voracious readers, Cowen and Maria Popova, discuss their favorite books.
Articles:
Bricks and the Industrial Revolution: If you enjoy the history of innovation, you’ll find this piece by Brian Potter fascinating. He tracks the developments in British brick-making (a ubiquitous and essential building material) from a highly distributed handmade craft-centric industry to a fully modern and mechanized one. Like the humble shipping container, it’s a reminder that human innovation extends far beyond silicon chips and biopharmaceuticals.
Food Fraud and Counterfeit Cotton: The Detectives Untangling the Global Supply Chain: Here’s a job they don’t teach you about in school. Global supply chains are so complicated, interconnected, and lacking in transparency that some companies must hire third-party experts to verify the validity and provenance of their products (example: is that cotton in our bedsheets Egyptian cotton or some inferior blend?). These investigators use sophisticated chemical analyses to identify a product’s distinctive signature based on trace isotopes and other telltale elemental signals.
History’s Seductive Beliefs: Morgan Housel reminds us that historical circumstances are highly variable, but human nature can be remarkably consistent. “Markets change, but greed and fear never do.”
How to Lead a More Rational Life with Bayes’ Theorem: A primer on Bayes’ theorem, which is a way of thinking probabilistically in a given situation or set of circumstances. If you’re familiar with “mental models,” this is one of the essential ones.
The Largest Space Telescope in History Is about to Blow Our Minds: The James Webb Space Telescope is set to launch on December 18, 2021. Journalist Brian Resnick offers a layperson’s guide to what the Webb is capable of. In particular, the Webb can collect more light (owing to its larger mirror) and can see a wider spectrum of light (including infrared light).
The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas: Gagan Biyani (co-founder Maven, Udemy and Sprig) writes about the important first step of testing a business hypothesis before launching a minimum viable product (MVP). This is a great read for entrepreneurs and those interested in relentlessly testing their assumptions.
Odds & Ends:
Another 40 Concepts You Should Know: Gurwinder Bhogal’s Twitter megathread (mercifully compiled on Threadreader) catalogs the terms and ideas that you need to know to comprehend all those clever people on Twitter and sound smart at business meetings. Kidding, these interesting concepts for your general knowledge literacy, things like Chesterton’s Fence, the Tragedy of the Commons, Hedonic Treadmill, and more. This is a followup to a 2020 megathread by Bhogal that also featured 40 concepts worth knowing.
HackerNews Readings is a tool that uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) to generate book recommendations based on mentions and sentiment from conversations on the Hacker News website. While the tool still needs plenty of tuning, it’s an interesting experiment. Deriving book recommendations from the site is a popular endeavor; I’ve previously highlighted related tools like Hacker News Books.
Dark Patterns are devious tricks used by software, websites, and mobile apps to manipulate user behavior. A subscription cancellation page that doesn’t let you cancel the service or that uses such obtuse language that it’s impossible to figure out how to effect a cancellation is an example of a dark pattern. Thankfully, this site started by UX specialist Harry Brignull catalogs these ubiquitous digital indignities. Awareness is an important first step to counteracting and eliminating them.
Cross-Promotions:
Now that this list is getting larger, I’m going to get more proactive about cross-promoting my newsletter. To that end, I’m experimenting with a new section. My only current “cross-promotion” is with The Sample, I just happen to have an affinity for the other two links listed below. That said, I don’t run any paid advertisements or monetization on this list (should that policy ever change, I’ll be 100% transparent and communicate that fact). Any cross-promotion is purely for mutually beneficial audience building purposes. Furthermore, all the links listed below are ones that I already actively use, read, and/or endorse.
Reason Podcast App: A social podcasting app for iOS and Android. It’s a great way to interact with hosts, listeners, and discover new programs.
The Sample: A newsletter discovery tool. Based on your interests and feedback, The Sample sends a new newsletter recommendation to your inbox on a daily or weekly basis.
The Veggie Digest: A weekly newsletter about the latest trends in sustainable food innovation. My daughter writes it and I periodically contribute to it.
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