Hi friends,

At Write of Passage, we have a saying: "Free time is nuclear fusion for creativity." Elevating the quality and quantity of my writing is my top priority for the next few months, which has me clearing my schedule. I've been living at 110% turbo-mode with my schedule for as long as I can remember, and now I'm experimenting with adding white space to my calendar, hoping that the extra time will make me more generative.

On that note, I published three short articles this week. Bang, bang, bang...

1. ​Where the Liberal Arts Went Wrong: As a society, we are making a grave mistake by de-emphasizing the Liberal Arts. By over-emphasizing utility and productivity, we’re ignoring the ultimate questions of meaning and purpose. Who are we? Why are we here? What’s the point of it all?
2. ​A Divine Intuition: The secular mind sees intuition as a conversation with the self, while the religious mind sees it as a dance between the self and a holy being.
3. ​I Hate Writing (And So Will You): Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. To love something is to commit to sometimes hating it.

Today's Finds

​Collin and Samir: A YouTube duo that focuses on the creator economy and the life of creatives. They initially blew up by interviewing creators like Mr. Beast and Emma Chamberlain. For a short introduction to their work, I recommend this short video about how creator businesses work. All companies are like a pyramid, but creator-driven companies are inverted pyramids. In a traditional company, the CEO sits at the top, and the company can remain intact if you remove them. But in creator-companies, the CEO is at the bottom of the pyramid, and the whole thing crumbles if you remove them.

​Failure Demand vs. Value Demand: At too many companies, the heroes are the ones who work all-nighters to fix problems, instead of the ones who prevent problems. To avoid this approach to work, the Toyota Production System distinguishes between Failure Demand and Value Demand. Beware of Failure Demand, which is caused by sub-par output standards and leads to extra work down the road. Organizations should shift toward Value Demand, which is what customers actually want. It means spending less time fixing mistakes and more time getting things right the first time, which prevents problems. Organizations unintentionally increase Failure Demand when their departments operate in siloes, such as when one department is responsible for creating the product and another is responsible for putting out fires that emerge from poor production standards. Toyota famously reduced Failure Demand problems by preventing workers from knowingly passing quality issues down the line. It makes everyone responsible for delivering quality, and it's why anybody on the factory floor can pull the Andon cord and pause the production process.

Celebrating the West: It's become popular to hate on Western civilization. Though some of the critiques are warranted, there's a dearth of appreciation for what makes Western civilization so special. All this hate has led to a cultural decline. Architecturally, for example, almost nothing created today comes close to the palaces of Paris or the cathedrals of Rome. That's what this documentary is all about. The top YouTube comment nails it: "This is the sort of stuff the BBC came out with when they thought their principal remit was to educate rather than 'entertain.'" Start with this interview with the creators or this episode about the influence of Christianity. No matter your beliefs, biblical literacy is crucial because so much of Western civilization was born out of the Old and New Testament. Most exciting of all, this documentary was created by Mark Sidwell, a Friday Finds reader.

Saint Augustine's Confessions: One of history's most important Christian writers, who's largely responsible for modern Christian theology. Augustine's book, Confessions, outlines how exactly he converted to Christianity. One of his main arguments, which is fairly common today, is that conversion experiences aren't intellectual but faithful and embodied. To Christians, conversion experiences are the byproduct of God's free and abundant grace. To receive the gifts of God, you can't be a "halfway believer." You have to go all in. Augustine also argues against Pelagianism — the belief that good moral conduct alone is the way to heaven. According to Augustine, the gap between man and God is too large for people to earn their salvation through righteousness actions. A ticket to heaven is therefore granted to believers by God's grace and His grace alone. For an introduction to the book, I recommend this 45-minute lecture from Michael Sugure. If you're looking for a reading companion for the book, check out this Great Courses lecture series. When it comes to reading old books, I default to the Penguin Classics series.

​Pitch: Figma for group presentations. Keynote and PowerPoint work fine if you're working on a solo project, but they're a pain if you're working in a group because the file management becomes so complicated. Pitch lets multiple people work on a presentation at the same time, and it's become one of our go-to tools at Write of Passage. Being able to edit slides on the fly is a killer feature. All of our live sessions have a dedicated slide manager who can change the speaker notes or add/remove slides during the live session. It's so much more effective than Keynote, where only one person can access the updated file.