Los Angeles has many fantastic museums. I’ve been to several of them but had never made it to LACMA until this trip. It was a lot of fun, with an excellent collection. What surprised me most was the energetic feeling of inspiration that I hadn’t felt since I was a photographer.

That’s because I had stopped looking at the work within my own personal context. I stopped searching for common ground. No connection means no inspiration, and I believe that’s the secret to connecting with art. Most of us look at art outside our personal context. As foreign objects. We’re disconnected, and we’re poorer for it.

Most people don’t work in industries traditionally labeled as “creative”, so they either struggle to find this personal context or don’t think to look for it in the first place.

But there’s plenty to engage with, in an artist’s work: their personal struggle to establish their own voice...

A “well known” concept that I don’t give enough attention to as a practical mental model.

Life is only sustained on Earth through the sun’s opposition to entropy.

“Every idea, thought, and concept carries the seed of its opposition within it”.

Opposition does not necessitate conflict.

Life is easiest when we flow with gravity. We should resist it sparingly, and with great force.

Yet the goal is not to change gravity, but to coerce it to alter the orbit of an object.

A habit is a small, honest example. At first, you push against your nature. Then it becomes your nature.

A startup is another example. Before you find product/market fit you can feel like Atlas, holding the weight of the world on your shoulders. In constant resistance. In constant opposition. Then it clicks. The orbit is altered. And everything flows.

Learn when to flow and when to resist.

Francis Bacon strived to ensure that every brushstroke in his paintings possessed the immediacy and vitality of the first one. A collection of individual marks composing a larger whole.

I’ve recently been thinking about how physical laws (gravity, relativity, thermodynamics, etc.) impact human systems, and how we might use these as mental models in our individual endeavors.

One somewhat obvious model lies in what I call “atomic actions”. It’s an attempt to mimic - in our actions - the fact that all existence rests upon a bed of atoms. Small steps lend themselves to large outcomes. This is a common notion in building habits, but I think it can be and has been seen in many other endeavors. From businesses to communities and settlements, from intellectual inquiry to painting and writing.

What is the smallest, most infinitesimal action you take with one of your endeavors, right now?

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The Objective Lens is a device to objectively assess an idea or belief you want to internalize, or have previously internalized. It’s a framework for applying a facet of critical thinking.

There are four levels:

1. Individual Why do I believe in what I believe? Where did my beliefs come from? Was I given them? Did I accept them without questioning? Do I really believe in them? Why?

2. Peer What values, ideas and prejudices do my peers hold? How were they established? Do I believe them only through the weight of peer pressure? Or blind faith? Do I really agree with them? Why?

3. Societal Why does society embrace, support and value this set of social norms? What is their history? When were they formed? How did they achieve a critical mass of acceptance? Do they have merit? Should I follow them? Why?

4. Universal Why is the universe the way it is? Do I truly know this for a fact? Is it...