Most of life’s wisdom isn’t complicated, it’s just hard to internalize at the right moment. Working Wisdom: Field Notes for Life is a collection of interlinked, evergreen notes I’ve gathered over the past few decades. While many feel embarrassingly obvious in hindsight, they weren’t obvious in the first half of my life, and they changed my trajectory for the better.
Want to skip the preamble? Jump straight to the cornerstones >
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You could believe the man was made of pale yellow bricks. He wore khakis and a crisp, faded work shirt. The greasy entrails of a small engine were sprawled 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 burn of stick welding in the air, and him repeatedly declaring it like a law of nature, it stuck.
Strange how certain arrangements of words sear themselves into your mind. Then they wait. A day or a 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, a phrase you’ve heard and dismissed 999 times can strike the right mental lightning and finally mean something the thousandth time.
A folksy saying like “nothing changes if nothing changes” slaps you awake from a hangover. A limp cliché like “actions speak louder than words” explodes with meaning when you become a parent and realize your every move is telegraphed to a wobbly little replica. My favorite such line comes from my grandma, who used to say, “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, modest life did those words make my chest tight. Every modern sermon on discipline, endurance, and willpower arrives at her simple idea: “Just keep going.”
You can, of course, increase your odds of learning such wisdom. Namely by doing what you’re doing here: reading. 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 books, 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 patterns emerge. For example, here’s John Steinbeck on simplicity:
“…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 why clear ideas spread, are more infectious. Of how groups choke on nuance as they grow larger, and why winning politicians lean on slogans rather than complex arguments. Of how a bumper sticker can shape a first impression so strong it 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’s what this book is 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 the present. From Seneca to Stephen Covey, the Old Testament to Tony Robbins, we recycle the same knowledge.
“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like larks that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”
~Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (Book)
We are those birds, singing the same songs, convinced we’re discovering new lessons, generation after generation.
But this recycling is necessary. Most of our ideas decay. We forget. Get bored. Regress to our old ways. 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 seep into our souls. We embroider motivational pillows. We binge scraps of advice on social media to feel productive, like we solved something.
The magic of fundamental knowledge is that it grows more valuable with reexamination, especially in light of new experiences. Through new encounters, fuckups, backslides, fights, and triumphs. At some point, ideas become part of us, become wisdom.
But I’d like to save you some time. You shouldn’t digest as much self-help slop as I have.
Most self-help books are long-winded reassemblies of straightforward concepts. Bowls of oatmeal with a few shriveled berries stirred in. The same goes for podcasts, videos, articles, newsletters, and whatever new forms of media will come. There is good content, but much of it is designed to sell you stuff. A lot of green vitality powders in my experience.
So here you are.
Each Field Note within has been made to cry uncle, been mercilessly cut down, rewritten, compressed, cut further. Each note distills a broadly applicable idea, a baseline you can quickly retrieve in your life, since life reinforces wisdom better than anything on a page ever will.
Much of the knowledge herein has been hoarded and stolen in ways I wish I could better attribute. A quote is included at the end of each Field Note, a little something to help knot ideas in your mind. When a quote feels magnetic, take the hint that the source has other compelling things to say.
You’ll find quotes from authors, a chef, a bodybuilder, and characters, both real and not. Here’s one that describes my reason for compiling these notes:
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me … [so] I decided to start anew.”
~Georgia O’Keeffe (Personal Writings)
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. You should do the same.
Hunt for flaws in these pages. Cross things out. Bounce around. Scribble cleaner ideas in the margins. Make these ideas your own.
Use these ideas to choose wisely, embrace challenges, build bonds, endure loss, accept change, affect change, pursue growth, serve others, instill gratitude, take risks, break cycles, keep humor, and, as Thoreau said, “live deep and suck the marrow of life.”
