When you design something, a useful definition of success is precisely that—the form fits the context.
- A glove is well-designed if it fits the hand nicely.
- A relationship is healthy if it fits the personalities and needs of the people involved (and the resonance between them).
- To find a good relationship, you do not start by saying, “I want a relationship that looks like this”—that would be starting in the wrong end, by defining form. Instead you say, “I’m just going to pay attention to what happens when I hang out with various people and iterate toward something that feels alive”—you start from the context.
- An essay is good if it fits a context made up of 1) the truth, 2) the intellectual needs of the writer, and 3) the reader’s mind. The better the form fits that context—the truer, more insight-generating, and resonant it is—the better the essay.
How to develop an understanding of the context to develop form around:
- You observe the context
- You form a mental model of the context
- Then you use that guess to decide how to take your next small step in the context
- This produces new information, and you update your understanding.
- Repeat from the top.
If you cycle through this feedback loop ferociously for ten years, you will end up with a well-designed life. It will not look like you imagined it would. It will have unfolded around you, and you will struggle to wrap your head around how you ended up where you did.