5 min read DPS

Daily Productive Sharing 1266 - The Hard Mode

Daily Productive Sharing 1266 - The Hard Mode
Photo by Daniil Silantev / Unsplash

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Joan Westenberg thinks “hard-mode” often serves as a status symbol:

  1. In 1985 Italo Calvino delivered a series of lectures later collected as Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The very first virtue he praised was lightness—the ability to distill, clarify, and rise above the world’s heaviness.
  2. In Calvino’s view, lightness is both an intellectual grace and an aesthetic elegance.
  3. Beneath everything lurks the impulse to make things more complicated than they need to be, just to feel smarter than we really are.
  4. Most of that complexity is unnecessary; it’s simply posturing—a signal that says, “I’m playing on hard mode.”
  5. In most fields, simplicity is a mark of professionalism. In tech, though, simplicity is often taken as proof you didn’t try hard enough.
  6. Complexity becomes a defense mechanism: when a system fails, you can claim it was just “too complex,” rather than admit to bad decisions.
  7. What’s truly frightening isn’t that simple tools might fail, but that they might succeed—revealing your elaborate designs as mere show.
  8. Modern productivity tools are judged less on usability and more on whether they signify you belong to the “right cognitive tribe.”
  9. Knowledge workers build elaborate taxonomies, templates, color codes, and metadata—less because the work demands it and more because the ritual makes them feel legitimate.
  10. The simplest tool that solves the problem is the best tool. Everything else is vanity.
  11. Many of the world’s most efficient thinkers and creators advocate simple tools: Patrick Collison uses Google Docs, Paul Graham writes in plain text, Charlie Munger relies on legal pads and a yellow highlighter.
  12. Simplicity scales because it reduces the cognitive load required to act.
  13. While others chase social capital by playing hard mode, you can choose easy mode and win real capital.
  14. The real goal isn’t to build the perfect system—it’s to solve the problem and move on.

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Joan Westenberg 觉得困难模式往往是地位的象征：

  1. 1985 年，伊塔洛·卡尔维诺发表了一系列演讲，后来结集成书《给下一个千年的六个备忘录》。他赞美的第一个美德就是“轻盈”——一种能够提炼、澄清并超越世界沉重感的能力。
  2. 在卡尔维诺笔下，轻盈是一种智性的优雅，也是一种美学的优雅。
  3. 而隐藏在一切之下的冲动是：把事情搞得比本该复杂，好让自己感觉比实际更聪明。
  4. 这些复杂往往没有必要，它们只是姿态——用来表明“我在玩困难模式”的地位信号。
  5. 在大多数领域，简单是专业的体现。而在科技领域，简单却常被视作你根本没用心。
  6. 复杂成了一种防御机制。系统出问题了，可以说是因为系统本身太复杂，而不是因为决策出了错。
  7. 真正令人害怕的不是简单的工具不起作用，而是它恰恰奏效，并让你那些复杂的设计显得只是作秀。
  8. 现代生产力工具的评价标准，不是看它们是否真的好用，而是看它们能不能象征你属于“对的认知圈层”。
  9. 知识工作者们创造各种复杂的分类体系、模板、颜色编码和元数据，不是因为工作真的需要，而是因为这种仪式感让自己感觉更正当。
  10. 能解决问题的最简单工具，就是最好的工具。其他的，都是虚荣。
  11. 一些最有效率的思想者和创造者，都提倡简单的工具。Patrick Collison 用 Google Docs，Paul Graham 用纯文本写作，Charlie Munger 用法律笔记本和黄荧光笔。
  12. 简单之所以适合规模化，是因为它减少了行动所需的认知负担。
  13. 当其他人为了社交资本拼命玩困难模式时，你可以选择用简单模式赢取真正的资本。
  14. 真正的目标不是构建一个完美的系统，而是解决问题，然后继续向前。

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Dr Selfie

Dr Selfie