I know it sounds too simple to be true, but one of the best ways to foster innovation is to make it easier for people to be radically different
One of my biggest worries about the Internet is that the feedback loops are too fast.

Thinking differently requires years of independent wandering, which often looks unproductive in the short-term even when it leads to long-term breakthroughs. The Internet may inhibit this.
Internet forums like Twitter aren’t very good at responses like “you’re mostly wrong, but you’re wrong in very interesting ways that could eventually be productive, so let’s work together to improve your thinking” which is the kind of collaboration that fosters creativity.
If I have a single message to share it’s that more people should write in public.

Though we should ultimately celebrate the explosion of independent writers, many important ideas can only spread in private backchannels and small discussion groups.

It’s like a modern samizdat.
The Internet makes the world legible at the cost of secrecy.

Consider speakeasies, the locations of which were once whispered among trusted friend groups. But now that they’re searchable on Yelp. we’ve lost some of the underground culture that once fostered creativity.
This thread was inspired by @patrickc who explores these nuances with his usual grace and humility.

His story is one of intellectual solitude where he explored ideas independently for many years: “Where I grew up, it was fairly easy to be different.”

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More from @david_perell

5 Dec
Here are my all-time favorite links.

I'll start with one of my all-time favorite essays from William Deresiewicz. It argues for the importance of being alone, so you can silence the barrage of other people's thoughts and listen to your own.

theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-l…
This essay is the best argument I've seen for manual labor.

Work humbles us and puts us in our place as frail human beings. Long and repetitive days of hard work are meaningful because we become one with our tools as become the builders we're born to be.

roughtype.com/?p=8783
A superb two-part series on America's geography and how it shapes the country's politics.

America has many structural advantages, such as big oceans to the East and West and more navigable internal waterways than the rest of the world combined.

worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopol…
Read 9 tweets
4 Dec
The transition from youth to adulthood is the end of chasing the magnificent and the beginning of appreciating the mundane
Surely, the magnificent has a place in adulthood but not like it does in adolescence.

As an adult, you confront the idea that everyday moments are the stuff of life. Rituals, routine. All that jazz. Maturity marks a transition from lusting for grandeur to relishing the everyday.
People like to say that “you have to look for the magnificent in the mundane,” but it’s not as true as the cliche implies.

The joy of adulthood is that it’s intensely *interesting.* My career is a quest to maximize interestingness, and share the joy of that quest with others.
Read 4 tweets
2 Dec
The creator economy is shifting from thinking of itself as a cash-generating industry to an equity-building one, where creators can build wealth that grows once they stop working
The problem with being directly paid to share ideas online is that if you don’t publish, you don’t get paid. But creators have two valuable resources: trust and attention. They should use that influence to build companies that grow in value once their creator-career is over.
Paul Graham has a famous essay called ”Makers Schedule, Manager‘s Schedule” where he shows that different people have different ways of working. The same is true for wealth generation. Generating short-term cash and building long-term equity are different mindsets.
Read 8 tweets
1 Dec
It's time for us to move beyond minimalism.

If we want a dynamic world, we should splash our buildings with enthusiastic colors, bold patterns, and visions of a better tomorrow.

Here's my newest essay.

perell.com/blog/after-min…
Minimalism is a child of our obsession with utility and efficiency.

But in all it's dominance, we've forgotten that buildings used to be a mouthpiece for our collective ambitions. For example, the lobby of the Chrysler Building celebrates the majesty of human achievement.
On our quest to spark another Roaring 20s, we should take inspiration from the Art Deco movement of the 1920s.

It represented luxury, exuberance, and faith in technological progress. Then it glittered with chevrons, zigzags, wings, and geometric designs.
Read 7 tweets
5 Nov
Most adults can’t focus for more than 3-5 hours per day so why do we make kids sit in class for so long?
It’s been said before, but it needs to be said again: the idea that you can be productive all day is a relic of the Industrial Age.

And even if we could be productive for that long, who cares? The treadmill of productivity is a miserable way to life.

More leisure, please.
The word school comes from the Latin word: skola.

It translates to leisure. But it’s not an American sit back and watch TV leisure. It’s a laugh with friends, read great books, listen to marvelous symphonies, and contemplate life’s most important questions kind of leisure.
Read 7 tweets
2 Nov
Conventional wisdom says that more education is better.

But I think we need less.

People should be able to find their first jobs with 12-18 months of vocational training. Then, once they're financially stable, we should encourage them to continue their education.
There are two kinds of education, but we treat them like the same thing.

1) Vocational training: Schools should help students find a job quickly.

2) Becoming cultured: A high-minded approach centered around art, music, and philosophy.

Finish #1, work for a bit, then start #2.
The second kind of education should not be mandatory, even though it's more interesting.

It's an "erudite" approach that trains you for intellectual conversations by giving you a solid foundation in ancient languages, history, mathematics, astronomy, art, music, and literature.
Read 6 tweets

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