Up first is The Case Against Simplicity by Adrian Raudaschl. It’s a thoughtful piece about why we look to simplify complex situations and what can be lost or abused when things are over-simplified. This is not about complexity for complexity’s sake, but trying to help people understand and accept the uncertainty in complexity (via Sentiers).
The work of simplification is an exercise in making information accessible. Those receiving it should be helped in making informed decisions. Simplification beyond that likely only serves the interests of the person delivering it. This is how people weaponise simplicity.
David Gurteen shares his definitions of sense-making and meaning-making and the differences between them (via Harold Jarche).
The habit of force is the latest instalment of Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter. He references a blog post from 2010 on getting stuff done without being mean to yourself. The sentiment expressed in this post reminds me of what Jocelyn Glei calls tender discipline.
A couple of articles by Annalisa Barbieri, The Guardian’s agony aunt, have repeatedly popped up in my feeds this month. They are why I’m glad I’m an overthinker and how I learned to really listen to people.
I enjoyed Lawrence Yeo’s thoughts on perfectionism and why good enough is just fine.
In this post, Ian Sanders explains the idea behind his inspiration jaunts and takes us with him as he tours Edinburgh. It reminded me how much a change of place gives a new space for both body and mind to explore (via Andrew Eberlin).
Related to the reflect and renew theme of Ian’s post, Manoush Zomorodi looks to William Bridges’ work on transitions and encourages us to spend time in the neutral zone this summer (via Kat Vellos).
Featured newsletter
My best newsletter find of the past month is Life is a Sacred Text, written by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. From what I’ve read so far it offers an open, warm hearted and intelligent reading of stories from the Torah interpreted in the context of the big issues of modern society. If you’re even remotely curious about this newsletter I’d encourage you to read the Rabbi’s Welcome which explains what it is far more eloquently than I just did.
Useful tools
This week I finally got around to deleting the majority of my historic tweets (around 10,000 dating back to February 2009). To delete the archive I used Tweet Deleter and I’ve set up Forget to auto delete any tweets older than a year from now on.
Featured image by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
