Idea Surplus Disorder

Welcome to another edition of Idea Surplus Disorder. This week begins with the case for writing by hand. Not just for the ideas that emerge, but for the thousands of small physical and spatial problems your brain solves along the way.

From there, we’ll look at why leaders own the cultures they tolerate, what the original Mac’s design specifications can teach us about writing better briefs, whether reading the news has become the new smoking, and why consensus is often a mathematical impossibility.

There’s also an AI prompt designed to lead you somewhere genuinely unexpected, a fun sandwich icebreaker, and a Thinksgiving reminder.

Plus, a mix of fun finds, inspiring quotes, and a question about all the things you measure that maybe you shouldn't.

As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!

My Favorite Find

I read hundreds of blogs and dozens of newsletters every week, and I always find more ideas than I can share. My favorite this week is an essay by science fiction author Neal Stephenson titled Writing by Hand is Good for Your Brain.

I'm going to dust off some fountain pens and follow his advice:

I’m not an expert on how the brain works, but I can say that, when writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm. All of that has to be integrated in real time with whatever is happening on a more abstract level in the brain’s processing of ideas and imagery.

More on handwriting here:

Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.

Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.

Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.

This Week's Question

This week's question is the same as last week: why aren't you participating in Thinksgiving?

A Few More Things Worth Your Time

If you’re a leader and your culture is toxic, it’s your fault:

You either set the tone, or you didn’t fix it when you took over.

Culture is a hall of mirrors. Whatever a leader consistently rewards, tolerates, ignores, or celebrates eventually stares back. 

If your team is disengaged, fearful, territorial, or cynical, don’t start with the people and diagnose them first. Look at the water they’re swimming in

Here's a fun icebreaker:

If you had a sandwich named after you, and it was a good one, what would be on it?

The design specifications for the original Mac (then code-named "Annie") offer lessons for how every project brief could be written more clearly:

• The system must not have modes or levels. The user always knows where he or she is because there is only one place to be.
• If the computer must be opened for any reason other than repair (for which our prospective user must be assumed incompetent) even at the dealer's, then it does not meet our requirements.
• Any differences between models that do not have to be documented in a user's manual are OK. Any other differences are not.

Is reading the news the new smoking?

I came to see reading the news like smoking: harmful not just to the consumer, but to anyone nearby. People used to think smoking was a fine way to start the day, a reasonable thing to do on a break, and even a healthy part of their routine just like they think about reading the news today. People used to reach for cigarettes when they felt stressed or bored; now they reach for CNN. Some people couldn’t even get out of bed without a smoke, while today some people can’t get up without checking the news first.

And when the author stopped?

I feel better. Way, way better. It feels like a war that used to be fought in my backyard is now being fought on Neptune instead. I feel relieved of my duty to keep track of the whole world, and I now realize I never had that duty in the first place. My brain got quieter and I started hearing myself think instead of hearing myself worry.

Making decisions by consensus – even among friends – never works:

There is no Venn diagram of four-plus people’s individual preferences. That overlapping sweet spot in the middle? It doesn’t exist.

Somebody is not getting their personal preference. That’s not a bug in your group. That’s just math. Which means there are only ever two real options: people get on board despite their preferences, or you eject them. There’s no third door where everyone’s wish list is quietly satisfied.

Use AI to help you find something new with this prompt:

Based on what you know about me, including the topics I ask about, what I've been reading, thinking through, or writing, figure out some patterns and interests that often appear in my work and curiosity. Then do the opposite of the obvious: recommend 5 things (articles, books, people, ideas, or fields) that sit outside my usual territory. These shouldn't be adjacent to my interests. They should be quite surprising detours that I'd be unlikely to stumble on myself unless I purposefully went hunting for surprise.

Random Things for Smart People

• Do an at-home writing retreat.
• A votable list of short riffs and nuggets of wisdom from Seth Godin.
• Seinfeld Chronicles.
• Jurassic Park Computers in Excruciating Detail.
• A virtual Criterion Closet.
• Twenty brilliant books you can read in a day.
• A digital archive of video game levels.

Words of Wisdom

Getting halfway across six oceans isn’t nearly as useful as making it all the way across one river. – Seth Godin

Armed with generative AI, a B student can produce A work while turning into a C student. – Nick Carr

People also feel important when they’re given responsibility. But responsibility without authority can destroy a person’s self-esteem. – Mary Kay Ash

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. – Henry David Thoreau

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. – Herbert A. Simon

What look like fortuitous breakthroughs often stem not from isolated strokes of luck, but from a habit of crossing conventional boundaries. – David Cleevely