For the last year or more I’ve been saying I want to do some new projects and the most important thing to do is to start. So, let’s start. Welcome to Milo and the Calf v2.*
There are three reasons I’m beginning this project.*
First, I’ve long held that if you can’t explain something, you don’t understand it. Repeating the correct buzzwords or retweeting a thread is not understanding. Understanding is being able to digest information and restate it in a clear and concise manner. There are a few things I understand, and many I wish to, I plan to work through those things here with short essays on a wide range of topics I’m interested in. The idea is that the stakes here are a bit higher than a private journal (I hope someone is reading!), so I’ll put more time and effort into things, but not so high that I need to worry about embarrassing myself.
Second, David Epstein is right. We have over indexed on specialization and under indexed on generalized knowledge and varied experience. Deep, narrow expertise may be desirable in highly technical fields, but those fields are few and, as I will write about more, dwindling. Let the machines debug the code. The future belongs to the obsessively curious generalist who has the breadth of interests and experience to address the wicked problems society faces. I hope to provide some guideposts for those kinds of people.
Third, when I was a young man wrapped up in dreams of political revolution, I knew an older anarchist who read obscure modern fiction and poetry in his spare time.
“Why,” I asked? “How was this going to change the world?”
“A person has a right to a private life,” he responded, almost angry with me and my youthful fundamentalism, “not everything needs a reason”.
Not everything needs a reason. Life isn’t a productivity engine you need to optimize. It’s a journey with scores of discoveries, dead ends, joys and tragedies. Here I’ll share my discoveries, maybe chronicle some of my many dead ends. There will be two short essays a week on Monday and Wednesday plus a weekly round up post on Friday about what I’ve been reading, watching and listening to. There’s going to be a lot of talk about books. Some about the modern workplace. Plus parenting, urban wildlife, my journey from anarcho-punk to lawyer dad, Judaism, AI for wordcels, health, mindfulness and more.
It’s going to be a buckshot affair. I hope you like it.
V1 is archived here. Milo was the greatest wrestler in ancient Greece. He won six Olympic laurels. How? He borrowed a new born calf and carried it around Croton day after day, week after week, and month after month. As the calf grew, so did Milo’s strength, until he was the strongest wrestler in Greece and could carry the now full grown bull upon his back.
Milo as the prototypical incrementalist. Milo as the hero of positive daily habits. Milo as the patron saint of showing up. That’s why this is called Milo and the Calf.