Adding to the corpus of ideas, some observations on process

October 18, 2023

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My exploration into the operator environment for an OS of the future has been guided by need and intuition, but how I’ve reacted to those forces has evolved over time. If you’ll allow some naval-gazing, I’ll share some observations and reflections on process.

My present aim is to add to the corpus of ideas. Fundamentally, I believe the ideas we’re working with today aren’t very good. There’s a very high bar; we can only work on so many things. So I have this heavy bias towards divergence in my work. Diverge and diverge again.

Rich pathways into divergence often don’t come from direct reasoning, but from exploring the terrain important ideas seem to inhabit. And it means regularly working with early, ill-defined, fragile ideas. This makes the processes of exploration and collaboration strikingly similar to those of the creative work done by artists. Discussions of process from artists offer rich inspiration for unfettered research. Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, is the latest entrant, and I highly recommend it.

A bias towards divergence can be hard to hold. People often have a natural inclination to converge new thinking and ideas as soon as they pop up; to settle them, relate them to previously settled ideas (and by doing so, declare these new ones also settled), or to make them immediately fit into one storyline that coheres all the related thinking, discarding anything that doesn’t immediately fit. There’s real power in sitting with a diverse, expanding corpus of conflicting ideas and thinking, and letting the ideas show the way forward. At one level, you can explore contrasts others miss, and have tools to draw upon in future problems that others have already discarded because they weren’t the optimal solution to prior problems or in prior contexts. But there’s something more about this approach that’s hard to put into words.

To outside observers, processes for divergence may look odd when elongated. When presenting my core work, it can cut against the grain of others’ expectations or approaches: Where they want final, tested answers, I want lots of potential pieces, including some which conflict. Where they want simpler, fewer, etc., I want more — intentionally, to get a better look at what the simpler and fewer should eventually be. I like to make and have a mess of things; this is where I can start to see the uncontrived, natural through lines to follow. The more I zoom out, the more I can see the natural patterns. I’m looking for more noise to read better signals. Progress to me can read as retrogression to others. Process to me can read as bumbling play to others.

This is why I like to send out lab notes on Saturdays: people seem to think more divergently and creatively on a Saturday morning. The kind of feedback I get in replies on a Saturday or Sunday tends to be the most interesting (the replies that show up midweek tend to be far less open-minded). I typically present some specific ideas in lab notes, and even though they appear as answers, they are more meant to generate the kinds of conversations usually generated by questions.

Some people have a particularly hard time sitting with unanswered questions. They will interpret curiosity as ignorance, and optimism as naivety. They hold their convictions strongly, and when faced with someone who holds their curiosity strongly, they will argue — and win. That doesn’t mean they’re right. It often only means they care more about answers than questions.

In my work, even “answers” are just questions; they are not meant to prescribe “the” solution, but simply to help carve out the question further. I love sitting with unanswered questions, exploring the space broadly to understand what the terrain is like, and seeing how that terrain responds when you interact with it — all without directing answers. It’s up to the future to decide on answers; I’m here to give otherwise missing options to the future.

If I’m looking for more possible answers, I’ve found that presenting two demos at a time helps with feedback. When I present zero answers, just the question, many tend to critique the question itself: whether it’s valid in the first place, whether it’s phrased correctly, and often, whether answers could even exist. If I demonstrate one possible answer, people critique all the details of that particular execution. But if I present two possible answers, people compare and contrast the two, and move to the higher-level thought, considering other ways the question could be answered. That’s what we want.¹

Another way I’ve learned that demos can accidentally elicit converging feedback when I’m looking for divergence is due to how I work with prototypes: decent polish is often the only way I can tell if an idea is janky or not. I have to clear all the jank. Demos of early thinking might be presented in nice packages, with good design, proper animations, and so forth. It doesn’t take that long, and it helps me vet an idea. But it can throw people off: it can cause people to perceive the project as closer to finished, needing critique for convergence. If I’m in the divergence stage, looking to expand the thinking, this kind of critique isn’t terribly helpful.² To me, polish is part of the process of divergence. To others, it reads as convergence, finalization; in need of final-stage critical feedback. Sticking to sketches for a longer time has been a good way to collaborate with people on the concept / idea stage, where polish doesn’t exist to distract me or them. I’ve also experimented with intentionally leaving some spots unpolished in shared demos to help communicate that the idea or concept being presented is also early and unpolished.³

Of course, sketches also help me think. I used to sketch all the time, but at some point, I became fast enough in design and development tools that I no longer pulled out the sketchbook as an instinctive response to having an idea; instead, I’d open Sketch, Xcode, et al. after thinking and note taking. Getting back into sketching has helped me develop my thinking in areas where I’d previously been stuck. It’s another surface, with its own physics, with which I can sit, focus on, and expand the present corpus of ideas. It probably seems odd for me to mention this, as it seems obvious, but I find it absurd that I’d forgotten it for years as my abilities in higher-fidelity tools became strong enough that I could work in these tools quickly enough to stay in flow. Proficiency seemed to hurt my process in this way!

Although my prototypes may look polished, and I may live in them for much of my personal computing life, their core concepts are often in flux while in search of transformational insights. Observers sometimes express frustration with these projects that haven’t been through user testing with large groups of people. Some seem to hold an implicit belief that software projects are pointless if they aren’t aimed for mass appeal and adoption.

But with the search for transformational insights, many of my software projects — most, probably — are designed to first find those insights in my own life or work. This is a high enough bar as it is (often never reached!) before even considering how to generalize the insights found within for the many. By focusing on making something where I’m the only user, I can experiment with wilder and rougher ideas, and bespoke interfaces that might not survive broader adoption long enough to really get somewhere good. Usually, when I’m building things for myself, I’m trying to figure out how to make something that addresses some burning interest or incongruence; building things just for myself is a wonderful way to diverge and diverge again. It’s a process that allows me to understand my own thoughts and instincts better, and to quickly experiment with, ideally, radically different ideas.

When answers can’t be found by direct reasoning, things get particularly interesting. One must explore in supposedly “wrong” directions, work on ideas that aren’t obvious wins (but which pique one’s curiosity), and travel down paths which at least rhyme with those others have already deemed fruitless. These are all easily criticized approaches mid-process.

In a big way, I view all work as provocations⁴. No ideas or perspectives are “wrong” or “right”; they are all little seeds for further thought. We choose to add to the corpus of ideas in the presence of others’ work, not detract from it. This is why I’ll never tear down someone’s work, even if I don’t “see” it yet. If they keep going, they might find that this perspective or provocation was wildly fruitful for them, leading them to tremendous insight. In fact, they’ll almost definitely learn something interesting, if there’s some reason (often unknown) why they’re drawn to this provocation. Even if I don’t quite follow their methods or interests, I’ll always encourage folks to keep exploring and tinkering; who am I to say their perspective has no merit? Creations are embodied perspectives. I may not see it, but that doesn’t mean what someone has shown me isn’t a critical step on their path towards discovery! And in particular, since early ideas are fragile, critiquing something negatively can be wildly destructive of many future discoveries for this person. We have no idea where someone’s path will take them.

There’s this passage in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, in which Feynman is observing his art teacher’s process, late into his career in science:

I noticed that the teacher didn’t tell people much (the only thing he told me was my picture was too small on the page). Instead, he tried to inspire us to experiment with new approaches. I thought of how we teach physics: We have so many techniques—so many mathematical methods—that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything. If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can’t say, “Your lines are too heavy,” because some artist has figured out a way of making great pictures using heavy lines. The teacher doesn’t want to push you in some particular direction. So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Early, creative work is just like art in this way.

There are two ways I can support someone instead of critiquing what I don’t get: encouraging them to double-down on their unique perspective, being more them, not less, to show what their mind is getting at⁵, and the “osmosis”: encouraging people to engender themselves more deeply to other, creative people. Regular conversations and collaborations bolster one’s abilities and courage. (The trick is finding the right people!)

I like working with perspectives. Slightly different framings have a way of showing the full three dimensional shape of an odd and novel idea.

On the other hand, working with no existing perspectives is an invaluable part of the process. If there are tracks already heading down the hill, we’re mostly going to pay attention to those, following them when we don’t see another, clear way; or always questioning the difference between our way and the tracks which happen to already exist. If the terrain is covered in fresh snow, with no existing tracks, we can find out what path we naturally want to take.

This is why I frequently recommend that people avoid searching around right at the discovery of an early idea; seeing the ways other people have thought about that idea or its terrain cuts off your ability to think on fresh snow.

Once an idea has explored its many fractal lines of thinking, seeing others’ approaches is fruitful: contrasts highlight the importance that the idea uniquely holds from my vantage point. Those contrasts are often the most important places for me to start work: they show how what’s bouncing around in my head most needs to contribute to the world’s thinking.

In unfettered research, we have to optimize for doing free work.

For this reason, I keep analytics off everywhere I can. I don’t know what writing has enjoyed more readership than others. If I did, I’d think about this every time I work on something new, trying to pattern-match it against past analytics. It would keep me from doing my work freely.

Voices can fetter our work. Someone else’s strongly-held opinion can keep us from exploring a path that we believed we should — whether or not because we believe that path will immediately be fruitful! Sometimes we need to explore an old, tried, or despised step because it’s what will unlock new thinking for a diverging or lateral path that’s sorely needed. Sometimes we need to go far down a path others have vehemently rejected. Playfully pursuing one’s curiosity is wildly underestimated as one of the forces which has moved humanity forward.

As a principle of process, I like to pursue new knowledge the same way, whether it’s new to me or to the world. We will recreate things that have already existed this way, but we will be intimately familiar with both the ideas at play, as well as the process of pursuing new knowledge and discovering important ideas. If we instead learn the process of becoming familiar with existing ideas, that’s what we will be good at. But the path to important, new ideas seems to be littered with accidental recreations, because it’s the same process of exploration that will lead to those as will lead to the new ideas.

Some view this as a form of hubris, implying that all existing knowledge should be studied in a different manner. I experienced this different manner — for two dreadful decades — in which schools taught math and science as fields of memorization, rather than ones of discovery⁶.

This process will also often contribute new perspectives on existing ideas which might help give their shape enough definition for someone to act on them in an important, new way. New frames, new perspectives, or new mental shapes on or of existing material can often be the unlock we need to get into some body of work the right way.

I was recently at a songwriter festival in Wyoming, which featured lots of delightful tunes and a handful of illuminating interviews. There’s been a song written about everything, so when a songwriter finds something they want to write a song about — be it love, loss, or an interesting situation — they’re constantly on the search for a new frame on it, a new metaphor for it, a new way to think about it, or a new way to phrase it. It was fascinating to see this tool they had in their thinking belt, which becomes the lens through which they see everything. They are constantly searching for alternative frames. It was beautiful, and fascinating. It gets you to ask new kinds of questions when facing otherwise road-worn situations or ideas.

Balancing input and quiet is necessary to keep other voices and inputs from influencing my work too much. It requires time and space. In time, I try to move in and out of connection with others’ outputs, conversations, etc. I’ve spent years living in an RV, which I’ve found to force a level of balance I otherwise lack. Living on the road gives a natural cadence and balance between solitude and engagement, as we move through sparse and populated areas.

But more than that, the regular, long drives pull my head back into the higher-level and drop the clock speed a bit. Without this windshield time, I’ll have a habit of going too deep on any present project or curiosity, losing its higher call. Leaving some present line of thinking on foreground for too long seems to corrupt it. Moving things frequently from foreground to background thinking invites the subconscious to the worktable. Better things can come out when the subconscious can do more of the work. Background thinking is where ideas are more creatively connected. Defusing the conscious mind and its charges (e.g. pressure, expectation, etc.) is surprisingly difficult, but the RV seems to have ways of getting it done for me. Even if I don’t consciously realize it, whenever I lose the forest from the trees, by the next drive day, I’ll recover it.

I found an odd connection between living in physical spaces and mental ones: outside of long stints in which we embed ourselves locally, I noticed that when we are in one place, at some point between five and ten days I become itchy to get to the next one. I’ve known this for some time, but it only recently occurred to me: I do the same thing with ideas. At some point between five and ten days, if I’m still thinking about the same idea, living in the same mental place, I get itchy. I’ve learned that, in general, I need to do the writing by day five, because I’ll soon be done living in that mental space, and my writing on the idea(s) from the prior days just won’t be as good.

In many extensive (and generous) conversations about process, Henrik Karlsson, a great friend and a great writer, has likened the approach I’ve shared in this essay of “diverge and diverge again” to that of the mathematician Grothendieck, whom Henrik has studied quite deeply and written about in his essays ⁷. He described it as attempts to “see more” — a phrase that I’ve likely since reused within this essay, as it describes the inner inclination quite helpfully. I sense this ever-present inclination to “see more,” by any means; though those means often read as in need of redirection to folks expecting answers today, this month, or even this year. It’s become apparent to me that I’m on a multi-year quest to zoom way out from our narrow perspective of the present so we can see enough to make greater sense of the terrain we’re attempting to shape or navigate.

Notes

Of course, it’s great to really dig into questions, and find better ones; it’s also helpful to dig into the details of a particular demo; but these belong in earlier and later phases of thinking, respectively. When we need more possible answers, or better answers, to questions we’re committed to exploring, I’ve found two demos helps people get into the right mental space. ↩︎
Similarly, a recent collaborator wondered if it can also cause them to think the core concept is better than it is. ↩︎
Thanks to two friends here: First, to John Underkoffler, who prompted me to develop a better practice of sketching as part of our collaborations, taking inspiration from a storyboard artist whose work he admires, Terry Gilliam. Here’s a glimpse at Gilliam’s work and perspective. Second, to Alex Warth, who clearly articulated the problem that my semi-polished demos seemed to cause when I was looking for diverging feedback. ↩︎
This is also why I keep and review old notes, even old drafts that didn’t seem to make sense; these things, even thoughts I’ve moved on from, continue to serve as interesting provocations; they are tools for thought in the best way, because they are thoughts which have already proven fruitful for me. ↩︎
The best work people have to share comes from what makes them defiantly unique, but so much of the world pushes people to dull those edges; in my experience, encouraging creative people to be even more fiercely themselves has been quite fruitful ↩︎
From a thread on the now less-accessible X:

In school, I was mostly just taught the results of others’ processes: definitions, memorizations. Rarely taught the processes themselves, which could be used to further explore the world.

Taught the equations, rather than the process by which we discovered the now-fundamentals in math or physics. Taught the symbolism, rather than the process by which an author created their life’s works. Taught one language, rather than the revelations that unlocked computing.

I was often bored to tears in school, needing to memorize what we already know. I wanted to explore and discover new things. Studying the process, rather than the results, is what I do now – it gives me both the baseline knowledge and how one might continue developing it.

[Even though this is how work in math, science, and art is done — it was never taught to me this way.] ↩︎
Here are some favorites from Henrik on Grothendieck: Being patient with problems, and Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born. ↩︎

A few lovely people to thank: John Underkoffler and Alex Warth, as mentioned above, and for conversations on these topics; Henrik Karlsson and Davey Morse as well for the many conversations; and all of you members for your support — you help make my independent, unfettered work possible.