On planning, reacting, and teaching classes

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” - Nikola Tesla

A personal challenge I am overcoming: over-valuing deep thinking & planning of classes & projects and under-appreciating simple clarity. I have tied myself up into vicious gordian knots countless times by looking for the perfect Pythagorean harmony of concepts... at the expense of asking simply - what comes next?

The addiction to the search for first principles trips me up. I begin to plan a class, for example, and quickly imagine all the things I need to transmit, across all time scales and domains, all the connections I could draw, and hours later the product is a convoluted tangled mess which fails to deliver the potency expected.

But I realized, I don't need some amazing plan - I need simply to observe. From there, I can think clearly, much more so than by over-focusing into a psycho-ciliary spasm.

(And so it is, in almost every facet of living...)

There are no extraordinary plans; I'm reminded of something Ido mentioned in a past interview - that things aren't being executed according to some elaborate plan, but rather that there is a process of reaction going on. And the wisdom of that makes sense to me now at another level than it did then (it's been sitting inside my mind for years, as I've been trying to digest that single idea...). It requires maybe a comfort with the chaos, a willingness to handle the unpredictable by keeping your eyes peeled and staying on your toes, refusing to sink into the complacency of a pre-made plan. But the result is that classes now feel more like a process of research, a shared journey, rather than executing some perfect plan... and I am more alive for it.