Hi there,
The Building Block community got a boost this week with 12 new subscribers. Welcome! Still haven’t subscribed? Please join the circle:
I’ve been roped into discussions about crypto since last week’s letter. There seems to be a strong interest in the topic. However, most of you still seem sceptical. After moving past $1 trillion(!) in market cap, Bitcoin’s price nosedived this week, but seems to be recovering slightly.
Anyway, let’s park the crypto discussions for a while. On to new topics this week. As always, if a subject doesn’t strike your fancy, skip to the next.
Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this week’s edition.
Appreciating art
Is learning about art a worthwhile endeavour?
I wasn’t sure. But then I thought about music.
Most of us can’t read or write music, but we can easily differentiate between genres like rock, jazz, rap and classical music. For our favourite genres, we can recognize dozens of artists. Let’s try an experiment using rock music as an example. Play in your head the sounds of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana and The Killers. I bet that you can distinctly hear the different sounds and styles of each of these artists in your mind.
What if you didn’t know any of these details, and it was all grouped under the blanket term: “music”? Imagine you couldn’t recognize Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as classical and Snoop Dog’s Aint Nuthin But A G’Thang as rap. It was all just music. This seems ridiculous, right?
Music brings so much emotion and joy to my life, and a deeper understanding drastically enriches that experience. Like jazz and rock, there are many art movements, each with a distinct style and characteristics that reflect the influences of the period from which they emerged. Let’s explore a few prominent western art movements:
The Renaissance
Derived from the Italian word Rinascimento, or “rebirth”,—the Renaissance reached a peak in Florence, Italy and was inspired by a reignited appreciation for the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was characterized by realism, attention to detail, and a precise study of human anatomy. Notable artists: Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael
Baroque
Grandeur and richness, and intense contrast between light and dark. Notable artists: Caravaggio, Rembrandt
Realism
Following the preceding dramatized art periods, realism focused on scenes from daily life. It was also influenced by the advent of photography, which pushed artists to produce detailed, life-like paintings. Notable artists: Courbet, Millet
Impressionism
A move from realism, using brush strokes and vivid colours to capture an “impression” of a moment in a way that captures movement and changes in light. Notable artists: Monet, Renoir, Pissarro
Post-Impressionism
Rather than depict landscapes based on light or realism, post-impressionists expressed their emotional state through bold colours and expressive, often symbolic images. Notable artists: van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin
Expressionism
Expressionism uses fantasy, distortion of form and strong colours to display anxieties and raw emotions rather than traditional aesthetics. Notable artist: Munch
I find each of these artworks to be utterly captivating. It feels like there is something to find in each painting, but I’m not sure what. Similar to music, art is ubiquitous and sparks joy, contemplation and emotion. Why does it not get the same attention?
As with all things, the more you know, the more enjoyable it becomes. Go get lost admiring brushstrokes. Hopefully you will discover something wonderful.
Interesting sidenote on The Scream by Edvard Munch: Researchers this week confirmed that the words, "Can only have been painted by a madman”, pencilled in the top left-hand corner of the painting was done by Munch himself (previously thought to be an act of vandalism).
Hanlon’s razor and mental models
Mental models provide a useful thought framework that gives you a better understanding of life. Here’s one I’ve found to be particularly useful:
Hanlon’s razor: ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect’.
In essence, when assessing someone else’s actions, your default should not be that the other person desired to cause harm. In most cases (not always), there is a reasonable alternative explanation. Someone didn’t reply to your email? They’ve probably been incredibly busy. Your waiter is being rude? Odds are, he is having a horrible day; don’t take it personally. This way of thinking has improved my relationships and generally given me a more positive outlook on the world.
Mental models provide the tools to improve your decision-making capabilities. Like with any toolbox, you need certain tools for certain jobs, and some jobs require more than one tool. Building a toolbox of mental models is a lifelong practice. If you want to expand your toolbox, head over to this article from Farnam Street for great examples: Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (109 Models Explained).
Writing tips
Writing is such a critical communications tool that getting better at it is a no-brainer. I feel so strongly about this point; it’s one of the main reasons I started this newsletter.
Here are the 5 most useful writing tips I’ve encountered:
Our brains follow the path of least resistance, so keep it short and simple.
Don’t disguise your verbs as verb/noun pairs. Don’t “make a decision” or “carry out an improvement”. Just “decide” or “improve”.
Create a list of banned words. These are lazy words that add little or lack colour (e.g. very, actually, really, nice). To illustrate: “He is really friendly”. No: “He is friendly”. Or from the movie Dead Poet’s Society: “Avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavour, laziness will not do.”
Use a strong verb instead of a weak verb and an adverb. Instead of writing "sales grew quickly," try "sales accelerated”.
Prune viciously. What would your sentence look like if you received $100 for every word you cut?
These tricks alone aren’t going to turn you into Ernst Hemingway, but will make you write more clearly and persuasively than most. Writing skills are a nifty extension of your talent stack, even if used only for writing better emails.
If you enjoyed this week’s letter, please share it with family and friends.
And as always, your feedback and comments are much appreciated. Have a great weekend. See you next week.