Taste develops faster than skill.

We recognize talent in others long before we’re able to produce at their level.

Often, we hide our own talent, believing it does not and cannot measure up to our peers’, our heroes’, or the masters’.

Here’s the thing: sure, Mozart was a prodigy. But he was a prodigy who practiced, and played, and performed. That’s how he became Mozart.

And here’s the other, bigger, thing: the world has already had a Mozart. We don’t need another one.

That imperfection in your attempt to copy a master’s work? That’s what makes you a human being and an artist, not a copyist. That’s the wabi-sabi that makes your art truly yours — and that’s precisely why it’s valuable.

The purpose of developing your taste is ultimately to develop and bring your talent.

How many options do you normally give yourself?

One?

Maybe two or three on a really big decision? (Perhaps the tried and true too small, too big, and just right?)

What would it look like if you had 10 ideas, or 25, or 50?

Grab a piece of paper or a whiteboard and give it a try. No idea is too crazy, and nothing bad will happen. After all, it’s just brainstorming.

It’s not an easy place to be.

The caterpillar invests a lot of time and energy in that role: avoiding birds, spiderwebs, and soles of shoes. Yet the reward for being a successful caterpillar is to make your own tiny tomb, enter it, and emerge on wings.

You and I know that butterflies are worthwhile, because we’ve seen hundreds of them.

But imagine, for a moment, being the caterpillar going into metamorphosis.

Simple is elegant. It’s the result of good, clear thinking. It takes effort.

“I didn’t have time to write you a short letter,” Mark Twain once quipped, “so I wrote you a long one.”

Simplistic is lazy. It’s simple language before the hard work of simplifying what’s worth talking about, not after.

If the task is to explain something important, overwriting might be better than under-writing.

And the opportunity for art is to thoughtfully prune the overwritten version into a simple one.

I’m increasingly persuaded that we have no real idea — especially among the part of my generation that likes to fret about capitalism.

Like our politics and much in our culture, I think it’s little understood but roundly disliked. It simply gets lumped in as part of The System, and hence part of The Problem.

There’s an old idea that it takes several generations to build up civilizational knowledge, and several more for it to erode from within. It’s hard to confront today’s problems armed only with a summary of a summary of a summary of how things got this way.

Like little kids who don’t need to try sushi to know they don’t like it, we confront the unfamiliar without context and dislike that which we do not understand.

If capitalism needs to evolve, as so many insist it must, we had better start by getting some kind of a handle on what we’re talking about when we talk about capitalism.

Consider all the resources at hand.

How might you creatively organize them?

Host a meal.

Start a conversation.

Say thank you or praise someone with no agenda.

Go first, and invite the others along.

In his wonderful novella A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean writes that the problem with a certain truism is that it is “only statistically true.”

How many other such models do we build our lives around?

Only financially wealthy.

Only outwardly healthy.

Fast fashion.

…

Throughout this monthlong sprint of the altMBA, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays are project days.

These are late nights and long days filled with deep conversation and work with other people who are also committed to leveling up. And, as you’d expect with people like that, this commitment is another that each of us is managing in the context of many others.

Toward the end of last night’s conversation, someone wryly observed that she’s not sleeping much this month, yet she’s found plenty of energy nonetheless.

This brought nods and knowing smiles all around. All of us seem to have found a flywheel here: we’re certainly putting energy in, but the more we put in, the more energy we find in the system.

It’s a gift, to ourselves and each other. I hope we’ll all be able to sustain momentum long after this month is over, too.

Whenever you find a project that returns the energy you put into it, step into it.

Last summer, on a 3,000-mile road trip around the Northwest, my best friend and I listened to an extraordinary podcast called Bundyville, from Longreads and Oregon Public Media.

Starting from the infamous standoff at the Bundy ranch, during which outlaw “patriots” took aim at federal law enforcement agents (who ultimately withdrew without shots fired on either side), and continuing through the subsequent standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and into the Bundy compound itself, writer/reporter Leah Sottile and producer Ryan Haas trace the roots and rise of a strand of antigovernment, white nationalist, and Christian-millenarian ideology that has spread through the West.

Apparently, a second season was not originally in the cards, but a barely-reported suicide bombing by a white nationalist sent the reporting team on another circuit of the West to track down a series of increasingly worrisome threads spreading out from the Bundys’ web.

The subject matter is concerning as hell, but I’ve rarely heard a more evenhanded or ethically sound treatment of a strand of American culture that most of us insist on ignoring or caricaturing, even as it creeps inward from the fringes and becomes ever more violent.

Both seasons are worth your time. And, as Leah urges at the end, they’re worth a conversation. You don’t need to be on a road trip through the inland Northwest for this to feel relevant.

You can find both seasons (and additional writing) here. Have a look and a listen.

I’ve been giving feedback as long as anybody can remember. Famously, I offered my kindergarten teacher a pointer on how to organize her classroom on the first day of school; at pickup time, Mom was told that “Colin has a lot of ideas.”

Less humorously, my brothers’ refrain growing up was “You’re not the boss of me!” And they had a point.

However naturally criticism came as a hobby, the past few months of providing feedback professionally have challenged me to hone my craft. Here are some early learnings:

• Open mindfully. Especially in writing. With snippet views and messages that might be read hours or days after they’re sent, it’s all too easy to provoke a fear reaction by launching straight into critique. The time it takes to begin with the person’s name and a genuine, specific compliment is worth it.
• Make it specific. “Great work!” and “This stinks!” are equally unhelpful. How? Why? By what standard? “I really appreciated the clarity and flow of your language, but I couldn’t understand the image on slide four” — now you’re talking.
• Take a coaching approach. Point-by-point criticism has its place, and it’s rare. In general, it’s more likely to miss the point by overwhelming the recipient. If it matters enough to give feedback, it matters enough to take the time to focus on one or a few key concepts. Highlight those, ask an open-ended “what?” question, and really listen for the answer. When in doubt, say less.
• Timing and medium matter. There are things I can by typing that I can’t do live, and there are many other things I can do live that I can’t do by typing. Know and understand the technical and social advantages and disadvantages of your medium, and craft your message accordingly.
• Close with encouragement. Chances are excellent that you’ll never see your two-star Lyft driver again. Chances are even better that you’ll see your coworker, classmate, student, friend, or family member tomorrow. Unless the point of your “feedback” is to end the relationship, it’s worth closing in a spirit of possibility. Beating people down doesn’t bring them back. Nor does it generally make them more effective or affectionate.

Giving feedback is usually a sign that you’ve got a lot of ideas. Just remember their value might be more immediately obvious to you than to the recipient. If you want to make things better by sharing your ideas, it’s worth sharing them wisely.