But this past Thanksgiving, I went shopping and ended up buying a coat after visiting eight stores. I had felt that previous outings wasted my time, so what changed?

I think the shift first started when I moved to New York. New Yorkers are stylish, and this contrasted with how I dressed, especially since I hadn’t changed my wardrobe since high school.

But I brushed off the feeling. Beh! This was just marketing getting into my head. Screw that, and 5th Ave, and the subliminal messaging incepting that I’d be happy if only I had this or that.

Yeah, that was surely it. I thought back to the call to arms I had in college reading Paul Graham’s blog posts about building cool things. All those kids going into finance and consulting were suckers! Look at how they do nothing substantial while I write code– that’s why they have to wear suits to work because all they’re selling is the appearance. This is how we look as software developers. It’s all about what you build, so how you dress is irrelevant. If anything, you were less of a builder if you cared about how you dressed, because clearly you weren’t spending all your time building. I was riding high and felt righteous in my jeans and hoodie.

But as I stayed in New York, I couldn’t deny that I wanted to look better. For some reason, though, I was so vehemently opposed to putting effort into this part of my life.

Maybe it wasn’t just about the clothes. Maybe I didn’t want to dress well because I associated it with the cool kids I’d seen in school. Maybe I didn’t dislike stylish clothing as much as its reminder for how I had felt out of place.

Maybe I didn’t want to dress well because I was unsure of my identity. Maybe it was easier to latch onto an identity off-the-shelf of a software kid than sit with the ambiguity of discovering who I was. On a more personal note, maybe I didn’t want to dress well because I saw how it took my mom a lot of time. Maybe I disdained dressing well because it detracted from time with my parents I had wished I’d had more of.

When I tuned into the subconscious thoughts I had about dressing well, it became clear that I had a lot of emotions I wasn’t previously aware of.

So here’s what I think about fashion now: I think it’s fun to dress up and try different styles. I like being color-coordinated– it’s visually satisfying for a reason I can’t explain. I’m happy with the effort I put in and I feel more confident in clothing that fits me over clothing that doesn’t. Do I still think the world spends an inordinate amount on advertising compared to understanding the universe? Yes– just look at the marketing budget for LVMH. But I’m not as tied to the crusade to also admit (and act on) the kernel of truth: how you dress matters.

I’m happy with where I ended up fashion-wise. And now, I want to do other things with my time.

The more interesting meta-lesson was realizing that my emotions clouded my thinking. How much of our opinions and thoughts come from associations we’re not aware of? I suppose figuring this out is the work of therapy. In retrospect, it was a sign that I had a knee-jerk aversion to dressing well, whereas I didn’t for other things.

More broadly, does emotional-awareness actually lead to better thoughts? I’d say so. If you think of the world as this really complicated thing where you’re trying to reason about what’s going on, then being aware of your emotions is like having more data to work with. It seems then that how well you think is a product of both intellectual maturity and emotional maturity.

What’s Search Mode? It’s what I’m calling knowledge workers do when they forage for information.

Most information systems distract me. If I’m doing booking a flight to Japan, and I want to see which airport is closer to my hotel, I don’t want to open my email and be bombarded with things other than my hotel booking. It takes 23 minutes to recover from a distraction.

I imagine Search Mode to be a setting that users can set on their applications. This way, users dictate how they’d like to use their apps. If you’re in the business of getting a task done, then you’d turn on Search Mode. Every app becomes a search bar. If you’re on a messaging app, you won’t see 10 other chats fighting for your attention– you simply type who you want to reach out to, and then the application brings up only that chat.

Search Mode would be deliberately dumb with autocompletes. In the above example, the app would only display matching search results only after you hit enter. I think autocompletes are useful only if P(user uses recommendation | you show recommendation) is pretty high. Otherwise, it becomes google search where when I type “home d” to search for home depot, I get “home decoration”, “home design”, “home dental clinic”. I think the cost of seeing this junk outweighs the one and a half seconds to type out 3 characters.

Of course, you’ll still need to tend to your information systems in what I’ll call Survey Mode. This is stuff like processing your inbox, responding to text messages in large group chats. [1] My complaint is that most apps are great at UIs for Survey Mode– getting a lay of the land for everything– but lacking in ways to enhance people’s focus.

We live in a world with more information than ever. It is on us to find ways to navigate this complexity so we can get things done. After all, attention is all you need.

Footnotes

[1] Inbox ten was a good read about this.

I love reading and read almost every night. However, I’ve begun to worry that I’m not reading well. Someone I know of had developed a terminal condition. Life is short; I want to spend what little book time I have reading well.

Let’s clarify: what is reading well? What is reading poorly? As with all normative questions, there is no right answer. But here’s mine: I read to get inspired. I read to grow. I read for insights because it’s delightful to learn something new. So maybe what I’m trying to say is that I like engaging with ideas, and reading is my preferred medium.

From this view, I’d be right to question what I read as I’d be right to question what I eat. Garbage in, garbage out. Except instead of growing fat, reading poorly is pernicious. It pollutes the mind with bad ideas. And what are we, if not an idea of ourselves?

But enough dilly-dallying. How do we find good content out there?

A first pass is we go off the recommendations of others. I buy all my monitors and electronics based off of Reddit’s recommendation. Why? Because these people spend their free time talking about specs and graphic cards and pixel density. They’re probably more informed consumers than me. Of course, there’s always disagreement among what these experts say. But if 8 out of 10 are saying I should get the Dell U2723QE, then I’ll get it. In this case, it’s easy to make a decision because (a) there’s some way to tell who’s an expert and (b) there’s a general consensus among experts.

It’s similar to Obama’s argument a while back about climate change: if you go to a 100 doctors and 99 of them say you have a disease, you should get checked out.

When it comes to book recommendations, however, things aren’t as clear. You don’t know if someone is a book expert as easily as in other fields. If they’re a doctor, they have a degree from training. If they’re a personal trainer, presumably they’re fit. But unless you have your own way to evaluate ideas, you don’t know if someone’s book recommendations are solid.

Which brings me to the crux of this essay: you need to develop taste for yourself. How do you do this? Well, you could read more. Read reviews. Read reviews of reviews. And these are all great. But if you’d like to read well, I’d argue that the only sure way to get there is to write well.

This stems from my belief that a great producer is an informed consumer. As an example: Not all food critics are great chefs, but all great chefs would make great food critics. Why? Because if you’re a great chef, then you know why a dish delights. If you didn’t, how else could you serve up great dishes day after day?

When you become a better producer, you can say more. You have more footholds to use. Instead of saying “this article is good” you say “this article is good because its structure is easy to follow.” Even better: “despite talking about a technical subject like gerrymandering, the author could clearly explain the mechanics because she wrote simply. Her word choice conveyed a lot of meaning while keeping the piece tight.”

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from saying this if you don’t write. But if you do, you’d pick up on things most others wouldn’t since you’re familiar with the creative process.

Then it becomes a virtuous cycle. You read well by writing well. And you write well by reading well. Of course, no one has the time to be an expert in everything; few of us will be experts in anything.

When embarking upon a new hobby, the question then becomes: is this a worthy pursuit? For me, when it comes to reading and writing, the answer is unequivocal. Yes. I feel so awesome and alive when engaged with a cool idea.