Welcome to Perspicacity, a newsletter from Kudare about insights & how they're derived. If you haven’t subscribed, please do!
Perspicacity noun /pur-spi-kas-i-tee/
🔮 the quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness.
Hi welcome hello,
Writing this between interviewing with parents of young kids, exploring the role of Whatsapp in cricket fandom, and updating my github profile.
I’m available to take on new projects as of September. Email me at kurt@kudare.co or text me if you’ve got the digits.
– Kurt
Simplicity requires selection. Wise selection.. now that’s proof of real effort, real thought and care, because it’s not free (and never will be?).
Ask me an interview question about something I know well (or don’t know at all, honestly) and watch me answer it for a good 6 minutes when there was really a 90-second answer in there somewhere that would have been enough.
You too? It’s just us making sure they know we know things. Ya know?
Because LENGTH IS PROOF OF EFFORT… right? RIGHT??
Well, maybe it used to be. For most of time putting words on a page, putting charts on a slide (properly labeled, plz thx), making a bigger pyramid (too far back?) — it all cost time, and time is scarce. An eighty page deck meant someone spent two seemingly endless weeks on it.
Well, newsflash, words don’t cost sh*t now. Your 9 year old nephew can whip up 80 slides before snack time. Length is no longer proof of effort, of care, or of a discerning fully-grown human having actually thought about your business.
Although, real talk, I can’t pin this one fully on the robots. I mean I was dishing out entirely too long reports way before our buddy Claude came along. The unnecessarily verbose methodology section, the appendix no one looks at, tables on table on tables.. it was all length as a performance of effort, but it also still took real effort. Altman and Dario may not have invented this tendency, but they definitely took away our last excuse to not do it by making it sooooo dang easy.
Thanks guys! Because more = better ALWAYS, so go ahead and add another questionable chart, spew jargon in circles for a paragraph or two, add five more levels of complexity to your “workflow” that might not have been necessary in the first place. May as well pad it if the padding’s basically free.
Here’s the problem with padding though: it’s definitely (👈 unsubstantiated) teaching people to skim. Everyone’s getting used to there being more words than necessary, so they start skimming. And, you know what, they’ll inevitably skim right on past the good stuff buried in the chaff.
So what do we do?
SIMPLICITY. (i know i know, how novel)
Simple does not necessarily have to mean short. Sometimes the 80-slide decks are necessary (well, maybe not 80). Some of the clearest and simplest things I’ve read are long, and plenty of my own rewrites can end up coming out longer than they were to begin with. What we’re trying to simplify out is the stuff that’s not pulling its weight.
Simplicity requires selection. Wise selection.. now that’s proof of real effort, real thought and care, because it’s not free (and never will be?).
What’s that thing? “if i had more time i’d have written a shorter report”?
Which sounds lovely right up until you have to do it. It’s hard, but that’s why you pay me, right?
Some of the people I’ve admired most professionally have confidence and poise and communicate simply; they’re selective with their contribution. They say what needs to be said and then stop. They aren’t ashamed to say “i don’t know.” They can let a silence sit there. Simplicity through selection. It’s impressive.
It’s also some of the only proof of effort left that can’t be faked.
If you have a friend or colleague who would find this interesting, please be a pal and share.
– Kurt