The primacy of practice
how to be less stupid
🤝 Being best friends with yourself is more relatable and attainable than the often-ethereal self-compassion or self-love.
🏃♂️ I’ve been exploring the primacy of practice this week; not just how important it is, but what it tells us about human nature. Writing these pieces has felt like laying down intellectual piping. Less narrative, more foundation-building.
👨🏼💻 On the topic of practice, today is the 71st day I’ve published something new online. You can peruse all pieces here.
🎶 We readily accept that mastery in music, sport & art comes from years of practice, but still balk at applying the same method to our inner life.
🧙 One of the most powerful responses to a shallow culture is to recognise a radical depth in yourself; the beyond within.
🙃 Good practice is stupidity prevention—an intimacy with how we screw it up, as opposed to the elevation of what’s right and true.
💡 Perception is not an inert physiological process: it is active, living and constructive. Practice alters it and so changes us.
🌱 When you want to grow a plant, you don’t crack the seed open and yank out its leaves. True practice requires an attitude of cultivation, not control.
📚 One very on-topic book I’m reading: Practice in Still Life by Adam Robbert. Adam’s Substack, The Base Camp, is well worth a read if you’re interested in rediscovering philosophy as a way of using practice to transform perception.
📄 One article I enjoyed: The Architecture of Safety by Daniel Thorson. “Real safety isn’t the absence of fear or pain or confusion. True safety is often the very condition that allows these experiences to finally surface.”
