A pale brick shithouse of a man stood in his faded khakis and work shirt. The greasy entrails of a small engine were splayed across a table to his left, and an air compressor leaked a hiss to his right.
He barked a profound truth to me and his other disciples: “Keep it simple, stupid.”
The prophet was my high school shop teacher. I’d surely heard the KISS principle before. Yawned, shrugged, moved along. But with the caustic tang of stick welding thick in the air, and him declaring it like a law of nature, it finally landed.
Strange how certain arrangements of words sear themselves into your mind. Then they wait. A day or decade later, like a melody you catch yourself humming, you realize the words have been guiding your beliefs, your actions, your identity.
Whether from a teacher, a book, a song, a movie, a friend, a stranger, whoever, you never know when a phrase you’ve heard and dismissed 999 times will strike the right mental lightning and mean something the thousandth time.
A limp cliché like ‘actions speak louder than words,’ explodes with prescience when you become a parent and realize your every move is telegraphed to a wobbly little replica. A folksy maxim like ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’ slaps you awake from a hangover. My favorite such line is from my grandmother. “You just got to keep goin’.” She said it her entire life, but I barely heard it. Only when she was nearing the end of her long, humble life did those words make my chest tight. Every sermon on discipline, endurance, and willpower arrives at her simple idea: Just keep going.
You can, of course, increase your odds of finding such wisdom. Namely by doing what you’re doing here. For those of us who lack the upbringing, mentorship, emotional sensibility, or mental horsepower to find certain wisdom on our own, reading offers a chance for salvation.
Read the right stuff, and the Knowing comes fast. It’s exhilarating. Like an ambassador visiting you from a higher plane, someone out there has articulated something beyond your prior Knowing. Your world expands a millimeter, and now you get to reach a little further, live a little richer.
Keep reading and you start bumping into similar ideas. For instance:
“…there must be a reduction to complete simplicity – not because [others] are stupid but because their experience will have been different from mine.”
~John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel (Book)
That Steinbeck line is gorgeous. It tastes of honey. I think of it often. It reminds me how clear, simple ideas are more instructive, easier to share, more infectious. Of how groups struggle to process nuance, especially as they grow. Of how plainspoken leaders and politicians win more. Of how a bumper sticker can instantly shape a first impression that would take a long, thoughtful conversation to unwind.
And where does all this mental caressing of Steinbeck’s quote get me? What fragment about the virtue of simplicity am I able to keep at the ready?
“Keep it simple, stupid.”
~High school shop teacher
There is utility in simple ideas. That is what my Working Notes on Life are about.
Simple ideas endure across time, cultures, and the turbulent landscapes of our individual lives. They loom over humanity and subtly shapeshift to fit the passing contours of now. From Seneca to Stephen Covey, the Old Testament to Tony Robbins, we recycle the same knowledge.
“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”
~Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (Book)
But this recycling is necessary. Ideas have a half-life.
Most of our ideas stagnate. We forget. Get bored. Regress to old patterns. We must recirculate ideas to clarify the rheumy water of our minds. We go to church to hear the same stories over and over. We tattoo phrases on our skin hoping their meanings will leach into our souls. We embroider motivational pillows. We binge scraps of advice on social media to feel productive, like we’re solving something.
The magic of fundamental knowledge is that its value can grow with reexamination, especially in light of new experiences. We learn by repeatedly explicating simple ideas. At some point, those ideas become part of us, become wisdom.
But I’d like to save some time.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-help books. But most are long-winded reassemblies of straightforward concepts. Bowls of cornmeal with a few shriveled berries stirred in. It’s not helpful to digest as much self-help slop as I have.
So here you are.
Much of the knowledge herein has been hoarded and stolen in ways I wish I could better attribute. When possible, I’ve included quotes from the source thinkers. When a quote is magnetic, take the hint that the thinker has other compelling things to say.
You’ll find quotes from Willa Cather, the band Tool, David Foster Wallace, Al Sweringen, and other characters, both real and not. Here’s one:
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me… so I decided to start anew.”
~Georgia O’Keefe
Early in my career, a writer with a powerfully white mustache pointed to an old dictionary on his desk and told me “all the words are there, we just have to put them in the right order.” Another line that arrived right on time. I’ve been at it ever since – trying to arrange words to mean something, to guide me in important moments.
Each Working Note encapsulates a broadly applicable idea. A baseline you can quickly retrieve and act upon, again and again. They might even mean a little extra each time they resurface in your life, your life being what reinforces ideas better than anything on a page or website ever will.
