Hi friends,

Greetings from Miami!

I just published an essay called Imitate, then Innovate. It outlines a framework for all creative work — from starting a company, to making music, to writing on the Internet. The piece went somewhat viral over the weekend, and you can read the reflections here.

If you want to write essays like the one above and build an online audience for yourself, today is the last day to sign up for my upcoming Write of Passage cohort.

​You can enroll here.

Here’s what I want to share this week:

1. ​How Learning Happens: The school system doesn’t take inspiration seriously enough, and it’s time to change that. For a roadmap, we should look to teachers like Richard Feynman who attracted students with joy and kept them with rigor. Read the essay or watch the ​YouTube video.
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2. The Future of Education: My Twitter thread on the future of education. Though you can read it in a clean format here, I recommend reading it directly on Twitter because the critiques are so interesting. Some are worthy. Others reveal how jaded people have become about the education system.
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3. ​What is Write of Passage: In this workshop, I further outlined my vision for the future of education by showing what I’m actually building with Write of Passage.

Coolest Things I Learned This Week

Psychology

So much knowledge is lost when we insist on science-ifying a discipline.

I’d love to take a psychology class where you study classic literature instead of scientific papers that suffer from bogus studies and the replication crisis.

At the end of the class, every student would write a short story that provides a window into human psychology without the expectation of empirically proven knowledge.

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​Shuhari​

I showed how innovation begins with imitation in my latest essay. Until publishing it, I didn’t realize that a Japanese principle called Shuhari advocates for a similar idea.

In English, it roughly means: "to keep, to fall, to break away.”

Here’s how Wikipedia defines the three-part framework:

• Shu (守) "protect," "obey"—traditional wisdom—learning fundamentals, techniques, heuristics, proverbs.
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• Ha (破) "detach," "digress"—breaking with tradition—detachment from the illusions of self.
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• Ri (離) "leave," "separate"—transcendence—there are no techniques or proverbs, all moves are natural, becoming one with spirit alone without clinging to forms; transcending the physical.

Aikido masters are taught to pass through the three stages when they train.

During the shu stage, they repeat the traditional forms to get a sense of what the best practices feel like. They don’t deviate from tradition. They only enter the ha stage once they’re comfortable with the established movements. Only then do they innovate by breaking and discarding the established forms. And finally, in the ri phase, they transcend the norms altogether and create their own technique.

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Don’t Question Authority

“Question your teachers” is one of the most common pieces of learning advice.

I think you should generally do the opposite: be rigorous about who you choose as your teacher, but once you commit to working with them, submit to their guidance.

​Arnold Schwarzenegger took a similar approach to making movies. Many actors are too quick to criticize their directors, which leads to fights on set and a conflict of visions on the screen. Fearful of that, Arnold made a rule that once you pick a director, you should surrender total control to them.

He wrote: "Many actors work that way, but not me. I will do everything I can to make sure that we check out the director beforehand. I’ll call other actors to ask, “Does he handle stress well? Is the guy a screamer?” But after you pick him, you’ve got to go with his judgment. You may have picked the wrong guy, but still you cannot fight throughout the movie.”

In the age of the Internet, when the number of teachers we can choose from is nearly unlimited, we should apply the same approach to learning.

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Scientific Papers

​This paper has a fascinating premise: What if scientific progress is slowing because there are too many papers being published? What if, out of a desire to increase the rate of scientific progress, we’ve actually made it hard for scientists to grapple with transformative ideas?

The authors argue that past a certain point, the more papers that are published in a given field, the more citations flow to already well-cited papers. This ossifies the canon and makes it difficult for new ideas to gain traction.

For more links like this, check out my master list of recommendations.

Photo of the Week

On Saturday, I visited Lyndon B. Johnson’s family ranch in the Texas Hill Country. The experience was enhanced by Robert Caro’s Path to Power, which I read a few years ago.

Caro describes the land as “The Trap.” Though the ground is covered with crunchy grass that sounds like you’re walking on Dorito chips, it's agriculturally unproductive because the topsoil is so thin. During LBJ's childhood, there were few paved roads, no plumbing, and no electricity. Walking the ranch, I tried to fathom what it must've been like to move to the hustle and bustle of Washington D.C. and what a sharp contrast it was to LBJ’s rural roots.

The ranch was core to his identity, though. While serving as president of the United States, LBJ spent roughly 25% of his time at the ranch. To make it possible, he built a 6,300-foot runway and routinely held meetings under the live oak trees that surrounded the house.

Also, per the first photo above, since I was in his hometown, it felt right to purchase the same Stetson hat he wore as President.