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Latent Memory
Refers to knowledge stored but not actively used.
Exists in archives, databases, or written records.
It is inactive until accessed or brought into practice. -
Living Memory
Knowledge that is actively transmitted and practised.
Maintained through oral traditions, rituals, and cultural engagement.
Keeps information dynamic and relevant in everyday life. -
Taxonomic Memory
Organises knowledge into structured, hierarchical categories.
Examples: Encyclopaedias, scientific classifications.
Emphasises order and standardisation for clarity and retrieval. -
Associational Memory
Links ideas through relationships, stories, or spatial metaphors.
Examples: Songlines, memory boards, or thematic connections.
Encourages flexible navigation and creative associations. - Peak by Anders Ericsson (the science of deliberate practice).
- Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (on creative courage). I wanted to dislike this but actually I loved it.
- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (the original text on shoshin).
- A Life in Zen (an article about Shunryu Suzuki).
- Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters (my own exploration of this framework
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Jaguars in Mexico up by 30%? Yes! According to Reuters.
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China’s carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months? Yes! According to Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, as reported in carbonbrief.org.
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In May alone China installed 230 million solar panels, or nearly 100 per second? Yes! According to Foreign Policy.
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Species extintion rates have declined over the last century? Yes! According to “Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals” by Kristen E. Saban and John J. Wiens, 15 October 2025, Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1717.
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Deaths from air pollution have dropped by 21% in a decade? Per 100,000 population, yes! According to IHME, Global Burden of Disease and reported by ourworldindata.org.
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Want to find your own reliable good news? Start with established sources like Our World in Data, which visualizes peer-reviewed research, or follow science journalists at major outlets who link to primary sources. When you see a claim, check if it cites specific studies or data with DOI links. And try reading the original sources for yourself. Academic research can be hard to read but it gets easier with practice. I like The Conversation for readable research summaries.
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Choose one issue that resonates with you—whether it’s public health, wildlife conservation, clean energy, air quality or something else — and find one organization working on it. Sign up for their newsletter, make a small donation, or volunteer an hour. Go in person to a local event. You don’t need to doom-scroll the bad news in 2026; instead you can add your small effort to the millions already making the good news happen.
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On the Internet no one knows you’re a stick figure. ↩︎
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All the news the media missed in 2025 fixthenews.com (via Miraz Jordan.)
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“The right kind of optimism is disciplined. It begins with the premise that action changes outcomes, then organizes institutions, incentives, and narratives to make that premise true.” mongabay.com.
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The Sydney I know isn’t like what they’re showing on the news writingslowly.com.
- Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese)
- Greek
- Arabic
- Spanish
- Nepali
- Macedonian
- Indonesian
- Portuguese
- Bengali
- Italian
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It’s naive to trust Reddit’s figures, but that’s what they say, and you can’t do your own analytics. Well, I can’t anyway. ↩︎
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I’m borrowing a taxonomy of social media that includes big rooms, small rooms and many rooms. ↩︎
- Fitts & Posner’s Three-Stage Model of learning describes a clear progression beginning with the Cognitive stage, where learners consciously think through each movement whilst developing basic understanding. This advances to the Associative stage, characterised by refinement and error reduction as movements become more fluid. Finally, learners reach the Autonomous stage, where skills become largely unconscious.
- Adams’s Two-Stage Model offers a simpler linear progression from the Verbal-Motor stage to the Motor stage, where performance becomes increasingly automatic.
- Perhaps most influential is Scaffolding and Fading, an approach rooted in Lev Vygotsky’s theory of the ‘zone of proximal development’. This approach deliberately simplifies complex skills into manageable components, and the teacher provides extensive support initially before gradually removing assistance.
- Adams, J. A. (1971). A closed-loop theory of motor learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, 3(2), 111-150.
- Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance. Brooks/Cole.
- Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358-389). Jossey-Bass.
- Hoffman, S. (2009). Introduction to kinesiology: Studying physical activity (3rd ed.). Human Kinetics.
- Kato, T. (2012). The traditional Japanese learning model: Shu-Ha-Ri. In M. Nakamura & T. Yamamoto (Eds.), Cultural approaches to skill acquisition (pp. 67-89). Tokyo Academic Press.
- Magill, R. A., & Anderson, D. I. (2017). Motor learning and control: Concepts and applications (11th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
- Schmidt, R. A., & Lee, T. D. (2019). Motor learning and performance: From principles to application (6th ed.). Human Kinetics.
- Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
- Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17 (2), 89-100.
Why your note-making tools don’t quite work the way you want them to - and what to do about it
Every so often I stumble upon a really clear articulation of a concept that makes sense of something I’ve been feeling but didn’t previously have a word for. I knew there was something there but I didn’t have the language to express it.
One of the most interesting articles I’ve come across recently is Artificial memory and orienting infinity by Kei Kreutler.
In this particular case the concept illuminated is the subtle, niggling tension between what I want to use my digital writing tools for and what they actually do. My writing tools, and possibly yours too, nearly do what I want, but not quite. What’s that about? Well, on reading this article, the tension became a whole lot clearer.
Kei’s article attempts to makes sense of memory in pair of dimensional scales: latent-living and taxonomic-associational.
These four modes describe the different ways societies and individuals store, organise, and activate knowledge, ranging from static archives to dynamic cultural practices and from rigid hierarchies to fluid networks.
A summary of the framework described in Kei Kreutler’s article.
I’ve found this framework really illuminating. In particular the taxonomy highlights for me the point that our tools and methods lead to different outcomes. We shouldn’t expect latent, taxonomic memory devices (archives and catalogues) to perform the same functions and achieve the same outcomes as living, associational memory devices (lore-in-action).
It’s well worth reading the whole article. This four-fold framework clarifies the tension I often feel between my note-making intentions and my note-making tools. Whereas the standard tools tend towards latent, taxonomic memory, I’m far more interested in living, associational memory. And until now I didn’t quite have the right words to express this.
Well, this theory is all very well but how does it play out in the real world? Here’s a very practical example of what living, associational memory might look like in practice. The philosopher David O’Hara uses his bookshelves as a teaching device. As he discusses philosophy with his students he pulls the relevant books from his shelves, to create a pile of a dozen or more texts that he calls a ‘shelfie’.
Stored in the bookcase these books are latent memory, but this memory is activated by the discussion; it comes alive. Left on the shelves the books are ordered in some form of standard order (by subject or alphabetically, or whatever), but as they get pulled off the shelves to illustrate the discussion they become ordered by association. Then the hour is up and the little pile is re-shelved.
Every so often, my partner insists on reorganising our bookshelves in our living room. Apparently we have too many books, which is obviously not possible. Anyway this shuffling of the stacks drives me unreasonably crazy, makes me feel like I’ve undergone a lobotomy - and now, finally, I understand why: my extended mind has been messed up. My living, associational memory is undone, I’m being assailed by entropy.
So what’s the practical relevance of all this? Open up your note-making tool, whether that’s Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, a text editor, a collection of notecards, or a physical notebook, and ask yourself: is this designed for latent/taxonomic memory or living/associational memory?
I bet no one’s ever suggested that to you before, so how can you tell? You can look at how it wants you to organise things. Does it push you toward folders and tags, and hierarchies? Does it emphasise search and retrieval? That’s taxonomic thinking. Or does it encourage links, and serendipitous discovery, and bringing ideas into conversation with each other? That’s associational.
Then look at what it encourages you to do with your notes. Is it easy to transmit your precious knowledge (I’m guessing it’s precious), to share it, to get it out of your note-system to interact with the world? That’s heading in the direction of living memory. Or does it encourage you to store your knowledge away, to archive it rather than pass it round or create something with it. That’s oriented towards latent memory.
None of these dimensions are wrong in themselves, but knowing which type of memory your tool is optimised for helps explain that nagging tension I was feeling. You might be trying to use a filing cabinet like a conversation partner, or vice versa.
The question isn’t “which tool is best?” but “does this tool match what I’m actually trying to do?”
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Some further reading:
Notemaking helps you remember - and helps you forget
In this post I explore the dual nature of memory and forgetting through note-making and discuss how my notes become “conversation partners” with my future self - because I’ve forgotten what my past self thought. But I also consider that selective forgetting may have some advantages.
Don’t throw away your old notes
Though I didn’t know it at the time, this post is directly relevant to living vs. latent memory, because it’s about the Zettelkasten as a “conversation partner between my old self and my current self” and it considers how to create the right conditions for serendipity and associational connections.
My favourite tool is this notebook I made
This is about how I modified TiddlyWiki to suit me better. I wanted a rhizomatic tool for writing, and since I couldn’t find one I really liked, I adapted one for my own purposes. You might not need to invent your own tools, I said, but each of us gathers uniquely the unique contents of our own toolbox. And yes, when I grow up I want to be an aphorist.
How to write a better note without melting your brain
This is a practical guide to writing a note that might actually reach its potential. I also discuss Tim Ingold’s contrast between “textilic” (weaving) vs. “architectonic” (architecture) modes of creation, which I’m pretty sure is relevant to associational vs. taxonomic thinking.
What to do when you’ve made some notes: Write something
This post is all about the latent/living dimension, because here I’m suggesting that the point of making notes is to make something else with them, probably for others to read. Yes, it turns out I am quite opinionated about what I want to achieve with my tools. And if you click this link you’ll see a picture of me hard at work in my study overlooking the Sydney Opera House. That has to be worthwhile.
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I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
And if you found this article interesting you might like to sign up to the Writing Slowly weekly email digest. You’ll receive all the week’s posts in that handy email format you know and love.
The Spiral of Mastery: Why the Greatest Experts Are Serial Beginners
The greatest experts aren’t afraid of starting again
Apparently, my tennis is rusty
Here in Australia the Christmas holidays take place in mid-summer, and my family spent a few days at a house with a tennis court. It was an amazing opportunity, for which we were hardly prepared. I hadn’t played in years. One family member had barely held a racquet before. But we all shared the same problem: our serves were terrible. The ball hit the net, or it veered wildly off court. The serve seemed like some monolithic, unreachable skill you either had or you didn’t.
The view from the court — that was amazing, but the tennis, to say the least, wasn’t flowing.
That was until someone suggested we break it down: grip, swing, ball toss, contact. We stopped trying to play and started drilling. Within a short while, the court was alive with movement and we were laughing instead of frowning with effort. Our natural talent hadn’t changed; it was just that our willingness to break the seemingly impossible into achievable parts made it somehow seem doable. And after a short while, it actually was doable. We were delivering serves that made it over the net, that you could also imagine returning.
This experience was a reminder that expertise is hardly ever about making a single massive effort to achieve something that seems impossible. You don’t get good at tennis all at once. Playing the game well is really a whole portfolio of tiny pieces of expertise you have to master one by one and piece together smoothly before you can reach actual proficiency. And even when you get there, that’s not the end. There’s always something, some element of your play, you can improve. Is mastery a destination to reach and then enjoy forever? No. It’s more like a spiral that requires us to return to the beginning again and again of a long series of micro-skills.
Experts Get Stuck Because They Stop Looking
But you can reach a point where it’s hard to see how to improve, or if it’s even worth it. For creative practitioners, there may come a moment when the work loses its spark. You’re competent, maybe even accomplished, but something vital has drained away and it feels like you’ve reached the plateau of your expertise. You can’t see what to improve because you’ve stopped looking. So you repeat what works because it works. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, your joy is slowly curdling into staleness.
There’s a cultural dimension to this trap. Experts aren’t supposed to feel like beginners. So we stay on this plateau, defending our position rather than climbing higher. The writer Ernest Hemingway understood this. Despite his Nobel Prize and decades of acclaim, he insisted: “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” He wrote to a friend of his that “dopes would say you’ve mastered it”, but he continually felt like an apprentice.
How Do You Actually Get Better?
In their book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool show that expertise is built through deliberate practice: the systematic isolation and refinement of specific sub-skills.
Take that tennis serve we all struggled with on holiday. Total proficiency is really just a messy stack of mastered micro-movements. You have the grip and the swing mechanics, but also the ball toss, the contact point, and the tactical intent. A player gains expertise not by playing endless matches but by drilling these elements until they’re second-nature. For writers, the equivalent sub-skills are less obvious but they still exist. It might come down to the rhythm of dialogue or the way a transition sentence functions, or to opening hooks, sensory detail, and the painful art of compression. Drilling these exercises might feel artificial because to an extent it is. But the artificiality is exactly what creates the conditions for focused improvement.
I found the map of learning: Shu Ha Ri
The traditional Japanese framework, Shu Ha Ri, maps this growth as a recurring cycle, a sort of beautiful, never-ending loop that keeps things interesting no matter how far advanced you become. In the Shu phase, you just dive into the work. It’s this foundational, deeply immersive period of copying a master’s handwriting or holding a racquet in that specific, stiff posture that eventually starts to feel like it’s natural (please don’t challenge me on this — as I say, I still can’t actually play tennis). Early on you’re essentially acting as a mirror, reflecting something great until it sticks.
Eventually, you move into Ha, the breakout phase. This is where the tinkering starts. It’s the time when you really start to play. You begin questioning the rules and adjusting your grip, or just messing around with sentence rhythm to see where the tradition ends and your own unique voice begins to shine through.
Then there’s Ri. In this Zen-like space, the rules have been digested so deeply they just… click. The skill happens through you rather than by you, which is a pretty incredible feeling when you finally hit that flow. I certainly haven’t reached this level with tennis, but I have had such moments while playing squash. It’s not so much that you’re playing the game as that the game is now playing you. But the best part is when the top of that mountain reveals a much bigger, sun-drenched one hiding right behind it. You’re invited back into Shu. The master becomes a student again, starting over with a fresh sense of humility and a genuine, open-eyed curiosity for what’s next. The danger is that as an accomplished expert it all gets so serious that you might forget you can go back to the start, you can still play, you can have fun.
You can pivot from expert back to beginner
If you look, you can sometimes see this same recursive loop even at the top of the pop charts. Here’s a well-known example: Taylor Swift during the pandemic. She’d spent a decade building her massive, glitter-cannon “pop industrial complex.” Then, suddenly, she retreats. She ends up in a flannel shirt, recording folklore in a bedroom, where she’s obsessing again over the fragile mechanics of acoustic storytelling like she’s still a teenager. She had to junk the “superstar” persona if she was going to rediscover the songwriter underneath.
But it isn’t always about these polished pivots from glossy stars. There’s also Dick Fosbury at the 1968 Olympics. Before he showed up in Mexico City every “expert” high jumper on the planet was using the barrel-roll technique. This was basically a face-down belly-roll over the bar that everyone agreed was the limit of human potential. They’d already reached the end of what a scissor jump could achieve and now the barrel-roll was pretty much the rule.
Then Fosbury turns up and decides to jump over the bar head-first and backward instead.
It looked absurd. Here was this gangly young engineering student with mismatched running shoes, who looked like a camel on two legs, as the papers said at the time.
During his Shu phase of figuring it out, he was probably hitting the bar with his neck, landing on his head, and looking like a total amateur while everyone else was doing the proper barrel-roll technique. He had to be willing to look like a flop on the world stage just to prove that the experts' way of jumping was actually just a false ceiling that he could break through. If you watch the old footage, you can see way he has to psych himself up, then the hesitation in his run-up. There’s an electric, shaky moment where he has to choose to trust this new, unproven movement over the mastery he was supposed to have.
Backwards and head-first? It turned out not to be a flop at all. Instead he’d perfected the world-beating Fosbury Flop which almost everyone has used or adapted ever since. But this wasn’t magic. The reality is they’d only recently introduced deep foam mats for a safe landing. You can see this progression in a youtube video called Men’s high jump through the years! Fosbury saw this as an opportunity to become a beginner again, to try something new, and he took it, and it worked.
High jumper Dick Fosbury clearing the bar during 1968 Olympic trials at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Then, going back to pop, there’s the singer PJ Harvey. By 2007, she could play a rock guitar better than almost anyone alive. So, naturally, she decided to stop. She sat down at a piano, an instrument she barely understood, and forced herself to write the album White Chalk. If you listen to that record, you can hear the ghost of the beginner in it; there’s a kind of haunting, shaky tension, perhaps because her fingers don’t quite know where to go.
In an interview she said, “the great thing about learning a new instrument from scratch is that it […] liberates your imagination.” But I suspect she became a novice on purpose because she knew the “expert” version of herself was running out of things to say. And that’s not all. During the White Chalk tour she started performing on autoharp, another instrument she hadn’t perviously been known for.
You can see both instruments on this Youtube video from the time. PJ Harvey - KCRW 2007
PJ Harvey performing live at the Royal Festival Hall in London, United Kingdom on September 27, 2007. Ella Mullins, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Beginner’s Mind
Shunryu Suzuki, the Japanese monk who brought Zen to Northern California, noted that “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” It’s an interesting way of looking at the world.
Execution requires certainty, the ‘few possibilities’ of the expert. But learning thrives on an open-ended sense of wonder, the ‘many possibilities’ of the beginner. Shoshin (Beginner’s Mind) is really just an intentional suspension of ego. It means looking at a weak sub-skill with total openness, gently setting aside that heavy, defensive armour of past achievement we all carry around. In the real world, this looks like a novelist with multiple published books happily sweating over a basic copywork drill. It’s an established painter returning to the simple magic of primary color-mixing, or a senior developer diving into a new language with the same enthusiasm they felt as a total novice. It’s Taylor Swift going back to basics; it’s Polly Harvey learning a new instrument live on stage; it’s Dick Fosbury attempting entirely the wrong kind of jump.
“When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless… The most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner’s mind. … This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner” - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind: Prologue.
This openness is how you get the spark back. The plateau can sometimes dim the spark that made you pursue this path in the first place, but you can always find it again. To counter that staleness, you just move back into the learning zone. You embrace the risk of failing, a risk which is really just a part of the adventure, and you adopt that open, beginner’s gaze.
Where Do You Start?
Our tennis serves were still inconsistent after that Christmas holiday experiment. Our footwork was a joke. Actually I don’t think we even had anything you could properly call footwork. But still, the court felt alive. Breaking the skill down into its basic components was the thing that killed the frustration and let the joy back in.
If you’re not sure where to start with improving your writing, try this: Look at your last five finished pieces. What do they all avoid? What scenes do you consistently skip or rush through? That avoidance is a signal that this area can use some work. It might be action scenes or emotional confrontation. That’s your sub-skill.
Right now, pick one sub-skill you’ve been avoiding. Not your whole practice. One component. Dialogue attribution. The first sentence of a scene. If you’re an artist, maybe it’s colour mixing. Then set a timer for 15 minutes and drill only that. Don’t worry about the “big picture.”
Just wade, waist-deep into the spiral of continuous learning and let the flow take you.
Further Reading:
The posts of 2025
I’m much better at writing new stuff than consolidating the old, but it’s time to review what’s been posted here during 2025. Short posts excluded, it’s quite a lot, considering I’m Writing Slowly.
People
Roland Barthes on the purpose of writing notes
The Dance of Joyful Knowledge: Inside Georges Didi-Huberman’s Monumental Note Archive
Lord Acton took too many notes, but that doesn’t mean you have to
Leibniz created a haystack of notes that wouldn’t fit in his Zettelschrank
What Tim Berners-Lee Has to Teach About Effective Notes
Daniel Wisser’s notecards as art and archive
A search for meaning in the palace of lost memories: Thoughts on Piranesi, a novel by Susanna Clarke
What I Learned from Bob Doto about Making Effective Notes and Writing a Book
I’m unqualified to diagnose the following writers with ADHD but I’ll do it anyway
Mastering Any Skill, the Japanese Way. A review of Analysis of Shu Ha Ri in Karate-Do: When a Martial Art Becomes a Fine Art by Hermann Bayer, Ph.D.
Writing and Making notes
Maybe you can create coherent writing from a pile of notes after all
Semantic line breaks are a feature of Markdown, not a bug
Create a note system that indexes itself
Publishing Slowly. An article about my first book launch of the year.
My writing process oscillates between notes and drafts
Roland Barthes on the purpose of writing notes
The Dance of Joyful Knowledge: Inside Georges Didi-Huberman’s Monumental Note Archive
Lord Acton took too many notes, but that doesn’t mean you have to
Tame the chaos with just foour folders for all your notes
Five solutions to link rot in my personal note collection
Why not publish all your notes online?
From tiny drops of writing, great rivers will flow
I found a way to create order from my jumbled ideas
Leibniz created a haystack of notes that wouldn’t fit in his Zettelschrank
What Tim Berners-Lee Has to Teach About Effective Notes
Daniel Wisser’s notecards as art and archive
What I’ve learned from non-linear narratives
A search for meaning in the palace of lost memories: Thoughts on Piranesi, a novel by Susanna Clarke
What I Learned from Bob Doto about Making Effective Notes and Writing a Book
What to do when you’ve made some notes: Start writing
Don’t throw away your old notes
Don’t let your note-making system infect you with Archive Fever
I’m unqualified to diagnose the following writers with ADHD but I’ll do it anyway
I designed a book in three and a half hours
If there’s more than one way of seeing, there’s more than one way of organising
Watch in awe as a fleeting thought becomes a lasting note
Plenty of ways to write online
Open, free and poetic. The Web is 34 years old!
Is there a Zettelkasten method?
Use case for the Zettelkasten. Why use a Zettelkasten? Why indeed?
Back to the Information City? How knowledge visualisation shapes the journey
Keeping a diary is a way of living
Publishing means no more hiding. Publishing my book, I had the strange feeling of having crossed an invisible but very powerful threshold.
Why niche blogs and Small Rooms still win - even in the age of technofeudalism
Imitating the greats? Imitation can be a very effective form of learning, but it’s worth considering who to imitate, and how.
Trying to write slowly in 2025
The Unity of Pen and Sword: Understanding Bunbu Ichi
Learning
The future of the humanities is wide open
Influence is everything: novelty its flimsy dress. What happens when once fashionable ideas get left behind?
I designed a book in three and a half hours
Mastering Any Skill, the Japanese Way. A review of Analysis of Shu Ha Ri in Karate-Do: When a Martial Art Becomes a Fine Art by Hermann Bayer, Ph.D.
Back to the Information City? How knowledge visualisation shapes the journey
Imitating the greats? Imitation can be a very effective form of learning, but it’s worth considering who to imitate, and how.
What does it mean to transcend the rules?
Keeping a diary is a way of living
Japanese Shu Ha Ri: Is it Better Than Western Learning Methods?
There’s a fundamental flaw in how we learn about expertise
Shu Ha Ri and the philosophy of interior design
The Unity of Pen and Sword: Understanding Bunbu Ichi
AI
It’s a great time to be writing the future
To understand the future of AI, look to the past
Leibniz created a haystack of notes that wouldn’t fit in his Zettelschrank
Hot takes on our future with AI
Provocative words about learning, teaching, AI, and the timely value of history
There’s a fundamental flaw in how we learn about expertise
Other
The Sydney I know isn’t like what they’re showing on the news
Japanese paper films. Yes, in the 1930s the Japanese made a whole bunch of short movies using rolls of paper instead of celluloid.
— Check out my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters. And you can also subscribe to the weekly Writing Slowly email newsletter.
Fact checking the good news
I expect 2026 to be a better year than 2025, not through some kind of magic but because millions of people like you and me are working hard to make it so. Since I posted a link to a round-up of the under-reported good news from 2025 someone said ‘some of this was definitely written with ai, so might be worth fact checking 😂’.
I was a bit disappointed, since I wanted the good news to be true, and since I have to admit this could easily make me susceptible to getting taken in by unreliable slop. Well, life’s too short to check all the facts, even if someone is wrong on the Internet (obligatory xkcd link), and that famous cartoon of the guy trying to fix it is actually an accurate drawing of me1. But I thought I should at least do a quick audit. And what did this reveal?
OK, that’s enough for now. These all check out and if you want to check more, try this: Pick one piece of good news that matters to you and spend 5 minutes or less verifying it with a primary source.
Look, you obviously don’t need me to tell you it’s not all good news. In South America the jaguars are still struggling etc. etc. But that’s not what the original article is claiming. The point is, people can and do act together to change things for the good and it actually works, even if the media mainly just reports endless disasters and crises.
This is not naive optimism, it’s a way of imagining a difficult future and working hard to make it reality. Resorting to inaction through despair would be a big media-induced mistake.
Oh, by the way, 26 years ago there was war in Kosovo. Now it’s the third safest country in the world (YouTube). As I said this kind of under-reported news isn’t magic; it’s people working together tirelessly to make change real.
“Come my friends,” said the poet Tennyson ages ago, “‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world”.
That’s how I’m beginning 2026 and I invite you to join me.
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now in paperback and ebook.
The right kind of optimism in 2026
Happy New Year! May the next 12 months bring you peace and joy and blessing.
Here are a handful of hopeful articles to get your 2026 started on a positive note. I especially recommend the first one which I found deeply inspiring.
The Unity of Pen and Sword: Understanding Bunbu Ichi
My recent book is subtitled “The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters”. But why artists and fighters, and why mention them together?
In medieval Japan, warriors weren’t really expected to choose between intellectual pursuits and martial prowess. Instead they were required to master both. This philosophy is captured in the concept of bunbu ichi (文武一), which literally means “the civil and the martial are one.”
The principle emerged from bunbu nidō (文武二道), the “two paths of writing and warring.” This phrase emphasized that true excellence required competence in both literary arts and combat. Like much in Japanese culture it originated in China, but the Japanese made it thoroughly their own. By the early Muromachi period (1336-1573), it had evolved into a foundational concept in Japanese political thought, as scholar Pier Carlo Tommasi notes in his 2018 research.
The warrior-ruler who embodied both scholarly learning and military skill became the cultural ideal. According to historian G. Cameron Hurst, by the mid-fourteenth century, bunbu ryōdō (文武両道) thinking was firmly established in Japan, with this dual-talented warrior as the model leader.
Scholars like Oleg Benesch and Thomas Conlan have explored how this paradigm shaped Japanese identity and warrior culture. Their research reveals that the civil-martial unity wasn’t static but evolved alongside Japan’s political landscape, particularly during the medieval period when warrior classes consolidated power.
This wasn’t particularly about producing well-rounded individuals though. The integration of literary and martial disciplines was part of a sophisticated understanding of governance and power. Warriors who could compose poetry, practice calligraphy, and engage with classical texts were seen as more legitimate rulers than those who relied solely on force.
“from the time of the sages of the past, they have followed the path of bun to the left and bu to the right, for bun without bu is such that authority withers, while bu without bun means that the people are in fear, and remain distant. Instead, bun and bu belong together so as to allow for virtue to spread.” - Fujiwara Shigenori, 1254 (quoted in Conlan, 2011:88).
Besides, as the Warring States period (1467-1603) ended and Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868), the role of the warrior classes transformed dramatically, from fighting large-scale military campaigns to serving primarily as administrators of the unified state. This shift made the bunbu ideal a practical necessity. To fulfill their new roles in peacetime society, warriors now needed literacy, administrative skills, and cultural refinement as much as they needed martial prowess.
I wrote my book Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters with this concept in mind. The juxtaposition of fighters and artists may sound strange to Western readers, but it’s fairly well understood in Japan, and it’s a duality echoed in Ruth Benedict’s classic anthropological study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
The legacy of bunbu ichi continues to influence Japanese culture today. It serves as a reminder that strength without wisdom is incomplete, just as scholarship without the courage to act remains unfulfilled. True mastery, according to this ancient wisdom, requires a delicate balance.
My book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, is available now. Please check it out.
References
Benesch, Oleg. Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Benesch, Oleg. “National Consciousness and the Evolution of the Civil/Military Binary in East Asia.” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 129–71.
Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.
Conlan, Thomas. “The Two Paths of Writing and Warring in Medieval Japan.” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 85–127.
Hurst, G. Cameron. “The Warrior as Ideal for a New Age.” In The Origins of Japan’s Medieval World, edited by Jeffrey Mass, 209–233. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Tommasi, Pier Carlo. “The Bunbu Paradigm Reconsidered: Warrior Literacy and Symbolic Violence in Late Medieval Japan.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies 19 (January 2020). doi.org/10.26812/…
The Sydney I know isn’t like what they’re showing on the news
Tragically my home city has been in the international news for all the wrong reasons and we’re all feeling traumatised and shocked and heartbroken.
What about you?
You only know what you see in the media, like the photo below. So beyond the Harbour and the Opera House, perhaps you don’t know what Sydney is actually like.
I thought I’d show you a snapshot of what it’s really like where I live, on Bidjigal land, the unceded territory of the Eora Nation.
The terrible attack at Bondi Beach has affected everyone personally and highlighted how we’re all interconnected. For example, one of the victims of the shooting played soccer for our local team. He was French and had lived in Sydney for three years. The team he played for was founded in the 1960s by Macedonian Australians.
A Jewish French Australian resident who played football for a Sydney team with a Macedonian heritage. This is a microcosm of the plural nature of this city. Everyone is something and something else too.
We belong to Australia and also have deep connections to the wider world.
In fact fewer than 20% of residents here in our local area have two parents who were born in Australia. And we’re stronger because of our tremendous diversity. Despite the actions of a tiny minority, Sydney is a fantastically successful multicultural city where we enjoy and celebrate the fact that our neighbours are truly diverse. In my suburb, just South of the centre, I live happily beside people who come from 179 different countries and speak many, many different languages. More than half of us speak a language other than English:
And that’s just the top ten.
Let me take you for a short walk around the neighbourhood. Our immediate neighbours come from China, Japan, Argentina, Lebanon and Australia. Across the road from our place, but behind the houses is our local primary school, which on Saturdays holds language classes for the local Macedonian community. A few doors down from our front gate, our nearest place of worship is a Chinese Christian church that holds services in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.
It’s just across from our nearest cafe, popular with the local Muslim community and also so insta-famous for its extravagant desserts that people come from all over the world just to try them. It’s next door but one to an Islamic education centre, for after-school religious instruction. And just down the end of the street is one of Sydney’s best baclava patisseries, run by Lebanese Christians. Turn right and you’ll reach a Shi’ite mosque that’s right next door to a Greek Orthodox church. To get there you pass the Greek Orthodox bookshop and two Nepalese restaurants. On the other side of the road is another Chinese-speaking Church which is across the railway tracks from the local Macedonian Orthodox church. This is just down a short lane from our local Catholic parish church which regularly holds masses in Italian, Urdu and Filipino as well as English. On a nearby corner is an Islamic masjid surrounded by several fine Bangladeshi, Filipino and Thai restaurants.
Meanwhile, on our main pedestrian shopping street I regularly get to choose whether to buy my groceries from an excellent Nepalese store or from a Lebanese or Chinese store, also excellent. I love having this choice. Then there’s a Vietnamese bakery, the kind that’s distinctively Australian. And a couple of places to buy fresh Macedonian burek - a more localised speciality, since you can’t get this everywhere in Sydney. There’s also a small Cantonese diner that I swear smells exactly like my memories of Hong Kong. And in this place with its tall shady plane trees, festivals are celebrated - Muslim, Christian and Hindu - and also completely secular, with jazz and other popular music. The lighting and seating has recently been improved and in the evenings people from many different cultures sit here side by side and in small groups, just to watch the world go by and enjoy the cool night air.
By the way, this is nothing special. Our suburb isn’t even particularly known for being multi-cultural. It’s just a typical part of Sydney.
Travel a little South or North and it’s more noticeably Chinese, further West and it’s more obviously Lebanese. But every community in Sydney has an incredible mixture of people from an improbably wide range of places.
That means it’s not all sweetness and light. We’re all different and we all hold different opinions. Our council held a fractious meeting about whether to impose sanctions against Israel due to its actions in Gaza. On both sides the debate was heated and painful emotions were expressed. Yet somehow tempers remained intact and the forthright exchange was civil and reasoned throughout. It was an amazing if uncomfortable demonstration of respect for democracy in action.
I’m trying to say that the attack at Bondi Beach doesn’t represent what Sydney is like in any sense. The Sydney I know is safe and welcoming to people of all faiths and origins.
According to Forbes the gun homicide rate in Australia is 62 times lower than in the United States.
We live in multicultural communities that are generally happy and relaxed. Our differences make us interesting and they make Sydney vibrant, as well as just beautiful. Inevitably there is friction when people from all around the world find themselves living on the same street and even in the same apartment block, and when their countries of origin or heritage are in conflict with one another. But we are forbearing with one another because we’re determined to make it work.
Yes, more than ever, it’s clear we have to work at this. The actions of a couple of extremists won’t stop us from caring about our neighbours and our neighbourhoods. The truth is the very opposite. People who try to divide us with hate won’t win.
I have no doubt that the events at Bondi will make us even more determined, because whichever way you look at it, and no matter who tries to deny it with lies and distortions, diversity is now and always will be the only reality.
—-
See also: The dream is diversity.
Meanwhile, please feel free to copy and distribute my manifesto:
Shu Ha Ri and the philosophy of interior design
The late interior designer Professor Shigeru Uchida discusses the importance of Shu Ha Ri for design:
💬 “The current education system lacks “Shu.” There’s a total absence of the attitude to observe, study, and learn from others. The term “breaking the mold” is common, but without having learned anything from others, one cannot depart from or break away from anything.”
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now in paperback and ebook.
Trying to write slowly in 2025
Before I really got going with the Zettelkasten approach to making notes (and with micro.blog) I was publishing only a handful of posts here each year.
But then my productivity exploded.
In 2023 I published 202 posts here, and this post equals that count for 2025, even though the year isn’t done yet.
In 2025 I also edited a collection of essays and published my own book.
So I’m quite happy with the year’s output. And thank you for reading along with me, I really appreciate it.
But don’t worry, in 2026 I’ll still be trying to write slowly.
This little book would make a great present for the artist, fighter, learner, teacher, or straight-up Japan-lover in your life. Just saying.
Imitating the greats?
Imitation can be a very effective form of learning, but it’s worth considering who to imitate, and how.
Writers often seek to imitate the greats, but it interesting how far the star of some supposedly timeless writers can fade. Here’s William Zinsser, the well-read author of ‘Writing to learn’, on how he did it.
“Writing is learned by imitation. I learned to write mainly by reading writers who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and by trying to figure out how they did it. S. J. Perelman told me that when he was starting out he could have been arrested for imitating Ring Lardner. Woody Allen could have been arrested for imitating S. J. Perelman. And who hasn’t tried to imitate Woody Allen? Students often feel guilty about modeling their writing on someone else’s writing. They think it’s unethical—which is commendable. Or they’re afraid they’ll lose their own identity. The point, however, is that we eventually move beyond our models; we take what we need and then we shed those skins and become who we are supposed to become.”
So who are these people I’ve never heard of, I wondered, who could all have been arrested for imitating one another? I mean, they couldn’t, could they? It’s not actually illegal, is it? Or did Zinsser mean plagiarism?
It turns out that Ring Lardner was an American sports journalist and satirist whose work was greatly admired by many of the major authors who were his contemporaries. In his high school newspaper Ernest Hemingway used the pen name, ‘Ring Lardner Jr’. Lardner became a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald and he inspired the writing of John O’Hara (another great writer whose name is seldom heard these days). In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger gave Lardner a backhanded compliment by having his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, name Lardner as his second favourite author. So for Hemingway at least the juvenile imitation seems to have extended to impersonation.
Clearly I need to read some Ring Lardner.
S.J.Perelman was a humourist, writing especially for the New Yorker. He was admired by T.S. Eliot, Somerset Maugham, Garrison Keillor, Frank Muir, and Woody Allen. Another writer I’ve never heard of, who seems to have been inspirational. But then…
“Who hasn’t tried to imitate Woody Allen?” Is a question I’ll leave hanging in the wind.
Author and academic Adam Roberts has an interesting post about Jonathan Buckley’s novel, One Boat (2025), which appears to use Laurence Durrell’s adjectives as a model for how one of his own characters might over-write their diary. Durrell is an author whose star has certainly faded, even though he was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. And his style is certainly not admired these days. As Roberts says,
“giving his narrator these Durrellisms: the point of this adjectival affectation, or addiction, is to characterize her as someone groping, somewhat desperately, for expression, or the impossibility thereof”
Well, whether this is a deliberate imitation in order to show a diarist whose purple prose, like Durrell’s gallops away from them, or whether, as Adam’s seems to suspect, it isn’t, whether Buckley was doing something very clever and ‘meta’ with his character’s imitation, or whether he was just getting away with it, all the same, the novel was long listed for the Booker Prize.
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
Japanese paper films
Japanese paper films! What?
Yes, in the 1930s the Japanese made a whole bunch of short movies using rolls of paper instead of celluloid.
With the aid of a bright light and some clever mirrors this actually worked. But the technology never really took off and these paper movie reels, originally made for showing at home, were basically forgotten. Worse, the paper was fragile and highly susceptible to disintegration.
Game over for paper films?
Not quite.
Researchers eventually realised what a treasure trove this is, if only it could be rescued. They worked out a way of restoring, or rather preserving, and digitising the remaining movies and now, amazingly, it’s possible to view them in all their preserved (not restored) quirkiness.
I was lucky enough to be able to experience these paper films in a presentation to a packed house at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There was live music too, which was exquisite, and really complemented the films that didn’t have an original ‘78 record soundtrack, which was the majority.
The presenter was Professor Eric Faden, who has devoted an impressive amount of time and effort to ensure these unique cultural artifacts weren’t lost to decay. They’re now a showpiece of the 2025 Japanese Film Festival and a valuable element of Japanese and international film history.
Now, through the magic of the Internet, you can see many of the recovered paper films for yourself, on the project’s Bluesky account.
And here’s a news story from Japanese TV (English language).
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
Remembering Tea Master Sen Genshitsu (1923-2025), who spread peace through sipping.
His philosophy is quoted on page 53 of my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning: writingslowly.com/shuhari-b…
#SenGenshitsu #Chado #Peace #ShuHaRi #UNESCO
Why niche blogs and Small Rooms still win - even in the age of technofeudalism
Views? I’ve had a few
Blogging is about creative expression, but as Tom Critchlow observes, it’s also about finding the others. I love blogging, and I have a personal blog that I love writing on. I guess you already know that, right? But I have to admit it, the Internet doesn’t treat blogs particularly well. The issue is that there’s no discovery flywheel for a blog. Google search is unlikely to make you visible, so you have to do all the work yourself of promoting it to potential readers. And as everyone knows, attention is a scarce resource these days. In contrast, social media thrives on showing people what you’ve made and algorithmically fine-tuning this to reach as many of the right people as possible.
I don’t love social media. In fact I do my best to avoid it. But I don’t mind forum sites so much, where the moderation keeps things at least a little civil.
Well, happily, my blog does have readers, a few at least.
To monitor reading figures, I use a very basic analytics service which respects users' privacy.
I could see from the dashboard that by June 2024 my site was getting about 1,200 views in a month. That’s amazing - thank you, to all of you, especially the keen ones right at the front taking notes! You’ll do well in the test later.
.
This is what a thousand people look like, though they’re not always as keen as this lot.
By July 2025 the count had risen to 6,000 views a month, where it now hovers. This may seem like a small number compared with how many times Beyonce’s been listened to, but it also compares very well with the number of people I can shout to across a crowded bar.
Now the most viewed individual post in June 2024 gained 216 views. It’s a more select crowd, but a crowd all the same! (Thanks for cheering, by the way).
A crowd of 250 people is still a crowd.
And a year later it was still gaining 64 views per month. Here’s the thing though. The same post with 216 views on my website reached considerably more readers on Reddit. It had 3,200 views there, which is about fifteen times more eyeballs! And a year later it had doubled that count.
And one of my more popular posts on Reddit has had 14,000 views, which, amazingly, is more views than this tennis match had!1
This tennis match had 10,000 viewers - almost as many as my crappy post on Reddit
But that’s not the very most popular post of mine on Reddit. That would be this more recent one, with 71,000 views, a lot like this exciting football match:
These audience size images, by the way, come from Visualizing crowd sizes.
It’s ironic that my most viewed piece of writing is a single sentence long and it contains a very obvious spelling mistake.
Now to me this looks like a very big stadium. Top sports teams and pop stars would be happy with those numbers. But if you’ve posted stuff on the big platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Xitter (I’m told the X is pronounced ‘Sh’), you’re probably already laughing at these ‘tiny’ numbers. By jumping off your roof into a paddling pool with a goat in it you’ve probably enjoyed millions of views. You’ve probably gone totally viral. You’re probably a certified influencer too. But the thing is…
I don’t want to be a serf on someone else’s plantation
I can’t stand technofeudalism, in which a few billionaires own the platforms and we’re just sharecroppers in their extractive systems. Unhappily, as economist Yanis Varoufakis observes in his book, Technofeudalism, it’s the state of the world these days.
I’m never going to jump off my roof into this paddling pool, not even for views. Not even for likes.
I want a different world (I know, right?), in which data portability and interoperability are the norm, so that if I want to switch platforms I can take my ‘connections’ with me. As Professor Sinan Aral, author of Hype Machine, has imagined, “consumers would own their identities and could freely switch from one network to another.” This wouldn’t just be good for me, it would be good for the whole ecosystem, since it would give the neo-feudal platform overlords an incentive to provide a better service than that of their competitors. The Three-legged Stool is just one vision of how this could work in practice.
Meanwhile, I support services that already support interoperability. My blog is hosted by Micro.blog, which encourages me to syndicate it to other places, including Mastodon and BlueSky, which also support (some) interoperability. I’m anticipating the arrival of the Pluriverse by building it, one blog post at a time.
On the other hand, there’s a certain logic to performing where the audience is. When I was a kid I used to practice my music in public by busking. And I always busked where the crowds were, not down an empty back alley where no one was listening. My parents disapproved, until I told them how much I was earning.
If you believe your work is worth reading, then you probably also believe it’s worth getting it read by more than one person.
It’s a bit of a contradiction. Even progressive organisations like New Public, which exist ‘to reimagine social media’ nevertheless use extractive venture-capital platforms like Substack, which allegedly profits from hosting Nazis. This seems a far cry from New Public’s mission of ‘building digital public spaces that connect people, embrace pluralism, and build community’.
So these large systems that promise to promote your kind, helpful informative posts, also promote hate-speech and genocide.
But what’s the alternative? Shout into the void?
Actually, Molly White, with more than 20,000 subscribers, wasn’t happy with Substack, and she decided she didn’t want any platform dependence at all, so she rolled her own, and gave detailed instructions for anyone who might want to do the same.
Unfortunately, this isn’t simple. It’s not terribly difficult, but the bar is just high enough that it’s obvious that most people won’t bother. I mean, everyone has principles, don’t they, until the moment they see the phrase, “MySQL wasn’t configured properly”?
I’m not going to help out the haters, but I wouldn’t mind getting a few views, but also I’m not a tech wizard.
It’s a dilemma.
So where online are the people who might find my writing worthwhile? I might have some good reasons to prefer my blog over social media, but that doesn’t mean my audience does. Let’s say I’m writing a post about getting more readers. If I want to help people with this post, I need to think a bit about who it’s for and where these people usually go to get their information.
On reflection, it seems the obscure niche subjects I like writing about are well-suited to online ‘small rooms’ like subreddits, forums and discord groups, rather than ‘big rooms’ like Facebook and TikTok, where ‘context collapse’ is the norm.2
That’s because I’m not posting memes and ‘hot takes’. No goats were surprised by amateur divers in the making of this article. I’m trying to provide thoughtful, eccentric observations for thoughtful (not at all eccentric) readers, so context is everything. This means my interim solution is to post first on my blog, then syndicate where I can, then cross post to small rooms, manually when necessary. It’s a work in progress, but I do seem to be making a little progress.
My book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters is available right now and it’s selling fine, even though it’s a niche subject and I’m a marketing team of one.
A second reason I’m keen on my own website is that it’s a way of keeping a record of the canonical version of my online writing. The big platforms can just disappear overnight, taking everything with them as they go. Disappearance is also part of business as usual for social media. For example, Pew Research found that in 2023, 1-in-5 (20%) English language tweets had become inaccessible just three months after posting on Twitter (now X). I’d prefer to have some control over the longevity of my work. That’s why syndication is a good plan. Unfortunately, many of the big platforms don’t support it at all. The only way to syndicate is by hand, by copying and pasting. It’s feasible (I do this occasionally with Reddit), but not very efficient.
This matters because the way we organise our online lives bleeds into the way we organise the rest of our social interactions. If it’s just assumed without question that the online space is a fiefdom, then democracy everywhere is undermined.
For wise words on this subject, read Governable Spaces, by Nathan Schneider.
OK, so I know what I’m doing here (at least in one sense of that phrase), but what about what you should do? One piece of advice I do have is to notice how many people actually are reading, listening to or watching your stuff. Really notice. It might be a room-full, or a stadium-full. Every one of your readers, listeners or viewers has spent precious time and effort to engage with your thoughts, and whether or not it pays your bills, that’s amazing and worth pausing a moment to appreciate.
So here’s the point where we pause for a moment to appreciate the wonder that anyone at all is noticing our stuff.
Wow.
But unfortunately that’s all the advice I can give right now. Yes, I’d like to think niche blogs and Small Rooms still win, but that surely depends on how you define ‘winning’. I’m probably doing it all wrong. AI is rapidly transforming the whole landscape of discoverability. Organic search is less and less viable when AI summaries are everywhere. Perhaps, as some are prophesying, the humble hyperlink is dead.
So rather than tell you how to reach your readers (as if!), I have a question for you: how do you reach your readers already, right now, and how do you expect to in a near future dominated by lots of AI hype and quite a bit of AI reality?
What’s changing for you? Are you pumping up the paddling pool right now in preparation for a pivot to YouTube and massive fame? Would you still write if you had a single reader? And do you appreciate the readers you do have?
Oh, it turns out I have quite a few questions.
For still more questions and precious few answers, subscribe to the weekly Writing Slowly email digest.
There's a fundamental flaw in how we learn about expertise
Learn Spanish in eight days? Learn to ski in a weekend? Finish a novel in a month? Design a book in three and a half hours? (OK, that last one was me - long story).
Everyone’s looking for shortcuts, but the way we approach learning fundamentally shapes how deeply we can master a skill.
In the West, we’ve mostly embraced a linear progression; we’re all supposed to move methodically from theoretical understanding to practical application. First you learn in school and college, and only later do they let you loose in the real world. This approach has served us well in academic institutions and technical training programs.
But there exists an alternative philosophy that challenges this conventional wisdom: I’m referring to the Japanese concept of Shu Ha Ri.
Western learning models are characteristically linear; they often begin with cognitive frameworks before advancing to hands-on practice. Students typically start with rules, theories, and simplified components before attempting the full complexity of their chosen discipline.
In contrast, Shu Ha Ri represents a cyclical process that moves through three distinct phases: Shu (imitation), Ha (frustration), and Ri (detachment or transcendence). Rather than moving from simple to complex, this ancient framework begins with complete immersion in the master’s way.
I propose instead that while Western models serve their purpose in structured, academic environments, the Shu Ha Ri approach offers a superior framework for achieving true mastery.
This is particularly true in practical skills that demand intuitive understanding rather than merely intellectual comprehension. What’s more, Shu Ha Ri is a reminder that expertise isn’t truly linear anyway. The real experts continue to learn, and they’re always willing to accept they are still ‘beginners’ in a constantly changing world.
For any complex skill, the more you know the more you realise you don’t know.
A linear approach to learning makes sense but it’s not the only approach
It’s true that Western educatonal psychology has produced several influential models that support linear skill acquisition.
These models, and others like them, share a common thread: they assume that effective learning requires moving from simple, understood components toward complex, integrated performance.
Clearly there’s a lot of truth to this view.
But it’s not the only way of looking at things.
Shu Ha Ri is superior for mastery
These Western models excel at creating competent practitioners, but they may inadvertently limit the development of true mastery.
By prioritising theoretical understanding and simplified components, these approaches can create barriers to the deep, intuitive knowledge that characterises genuine expertise.
So what should we be doing instead?
1. Embrace the “Whole” over the “Simplified”
Western scaffolding deliberately fragments skills into digestible pieces. A violin student might spend a long time on bow hold or scales before attempting a simple melody, or a chef might practice knife cuts in isolation before approaching actual recipes. Culinary schools may dedicate days, or even weeks, solely to practicing various knife cuts (brunoise, julienne, etc.) to achieve consistency and speed before they are used in actual recipes.
This reductionist approach, though logical enough, can hinder or even prevent learners from experiencing the skill’s true essence.
The Shu Ha Ri model takes a radically different approach.
In the Shu stage, students engage immediately with the complete, unsimplified form. A student of the Japanese tea ceremony doesn’t begin with simplified movements or theoretical principles; they observe and attempt to replicate the real ritual from their very first lesson. The ritual is scaled: the student will start with the most basic, fundamental, and shortest temae (like hira-denae or a simplified usucha preparation). The master will hold back more complex tools and procedures, and will reserve advanced philosophical lessons for later in the training. While the ‘complete ritual’ is the simplest version the master has to offer, nevertheless the experience is holistic from day one, even if the content is strategically simplified.
This immersion in the “whole” allows learners to absorb subtle relationships between components that might be lost in a fragmented approach.
2. Prefer Imitation to Cognition
Western educational models often place considerable emphasis on cognitive understanding before physical practice.
Shu Ha Ri fundamentally inverts this priority. The Shu stage prioritises imitation and embodied practice while deliberately minimising cognitive load.
Students are encouraged to copy their master’s movements, timing, and approach without initially concerning themselves with underlying principles. This allows for “embodied cognition” to develop naturally through physical practice rather than intellectual analysis.
This difference becomes particularly apparent in disciplines that require split-second decision-making or subtle physical adjustments, as in martial arts.
But it also applies in contemplative skills such as shodo (calligraphy), ikebana (flower arranging) or, as mentioned already, the Tea Ceremony.
An artist learning through traditional Western methods might spend considerable time studying color theory and linear perspective before picking up a brush. The Shu Ha Ri approach would complement this with extensive observation and assisted practice, to allow the trainee to develop a practical understanding of line weight, shadow behavior, and subtle material texture that cannot be fully captured in textbooks.
3. Recognise Cyclical Refinement, not Finite Progression
Western models typically imply completion.
Eventually you graduate, which supposedly means you’ve reached a final “autonomous” stage where learning essentially concludes. Off you go!
The Shu Ha Ri model presents a fundamentally different philosophy. Rather than linear progression toward completion, it describes a cyclical journey of continuous refinement.
After achieving mastery, practitioners commonly return to foundational practices (Shu) with deeper understanding, uncovering subtleties previously invisible to them.
A master calligrapher might return to basic brush strokes after decades of practice, finding new depths in movements they’ve performed thousands of times.
This cyclical nature suggests that true mastery isn’t really a destination but rather an ongoing process of deepening understanding.
Sorry: it takes more than a weekend
Western learning models possess considerable strengths, particularly in academic settings where clear progression markers are essential.
They prove invaluable for complex technical skills where safety and precision demand systematic understanding. Medical training, engineering education, and scientific research obviously all benefit from structured, theoretical foundations.
That said, when our goal extends beyond competency to genuine mastery, particularly in practical skills that require intuitive understanding or creative expression, the Shu Ha Ri model, I believe, offers a more complete framework.
The traditional Japanese approach recognises that true mastery involves more than accumulated knowledge or perfected technique. It encompasses a quality of understanding that emerges through sustained practice, through cyclical refinement, and through a deep immersion in complete forms rather than in fragmented components.
True, linear models can efficiently create capable practitioners. But the cyclical, holistic, and imitation-based philosophy of Shu Ha Ri nurtures the lifelong pursuit of true mastery.
We’re obsessed these days with speed and with rapid skill acquisition: Speak Spanish in a weekend! Learn to ski in ten days! Finish your novel in just eight!
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, the ancient wisdom of Shu Ha Ri reminds us that the deepest forms of human expertise can’t be rushed or simplified. Instead, they must be lived, embodied, and continually refined, through patient, cyclical practice.
In a future article I’ll offer some practical takeaways for your own learning journey. Meanwhile, you might like to check out my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, which is available right now.
References
Image credit: Photo by Nathalie SPEHNER on Unsplash
AI is not helping the learning process
💬 “When teachers rely on commonly used artificial intelligence chatbots to devise lesson plans, it does not result in more engaging, immersive or effective learning experiences compared with existing techniques”
See also:
Civic Education in the Age of AI: Should We Trust AI-Generated Lesson Plans? | CITE Journal
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
What’s your most valuable note?
@eleanorkonik@pkm.social asked:
“Any examples where a tiny note became unexpectedly valuable?”
Here’s my reply.
In 2018 I wrote a note describing how I’d like to visit Japan and learn more about the concept of Shu Ha Ri.
Better late than never I did visit Japan, and I ended up writing the book on Shu Ha Ri.
There was a lot of value in that one short note.
Create your own mental models
When he was still in high school my cousin took to pulling old cars apart, completely, then putting them back together. This was a real learning experience, and the beginning of an entire career working with motor vehicles. François Chollet, author of Deep Learning with Python, said:
💬 To really understand a concept, you have to “invent” it yourself in some capacity. Understanding doesn’t come from passive content consumption. It is always self-built. It is an active, high-agency, self-directed process of creating and debugging your own mental models. - as quoted by Simon Willison.
This is what I’m doing with my collection of working notes, my Zettelkasten. I disassemble ideas and concepts, de-contextualise them, and reassemble them into new arrangements under quite different circumstances. From fragments you can build a greater whole.
Sometimes ‘invention’ is mashing together two or more existing ideas in new and unexpected ways. But sometimes it’s simply rebuilding an existing idea from the ground up, to create something previously unimaginable.
I wrote my book about the Japanese concept of learning, Shu Ha Ri, because in the fifteen years since I first encountered this concept, no one else had written a clear introduction. It’s quite literally the book I wanted to read for myself. Well, I certainly didn’t invent the idea, but in writing the definitive introduction I’ve certainly taken it apart, examined it from every angle, worked out how to explain it to others, and put it back together.
On Friday I received a nice text from a martial arts instructor, who’d been handed the book by someone else:
💬 I absolutely loved it. First time in a long time I immediately reread a book.
And so I hope you’ll enjoy giving the book a test drive too.
Photo by Geoff Charles, 1962. National Library of Wales. Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales on Unsplash
Check out my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters. And you can also subscribe to the weekly Writing Slowly email newsletter.
Provocative words about learning, teaching, AI, and the timely value of history
Do you like links? Here’s what I’ve come across on the Web lately: provocative words about learning, teaching, AI, and the timely value of history.
💬 “What A.I. can’t do is feel the shape of silence after someone says something so honest we forget we’re here to learn. What it can’t do is pause mid-sentence because it remembered the smell of its father’s old chair. What it can’t do is sit in a room full of people who are trying—and failing—to make sense of something that maybe can’t be made sense of. That’s the job of teaching.” — Sean Cho A. on teaching college during the rise of AI The Rumpus.
💬 “When human inquiry and creativity are offloaded to anthropomorphic AI bots, there is a risk of devaluing critical thinking while promoting cognitive offloading. If we turn the intellectual development of the next generation over to opaque, probabilistic engines trained on a slurry of scraped content, with little transparency and even less accountability, we are not enhancing education; we are commodifying it, corporatizing it, and replacing pedagogy with productivity.” — Courtney C. Radsch, We should all be Luddites • Brookings.
💬 “While the school says its students test in the top 1% on standardized assessments, AI models have been met with skepticism by educators who say they’re unproven.” — The $40,000 a year school where AI shapes every lesson, without teachers. CBS News. Wikipedia: Alpha School. I’ll revisit this in a few years to see just how hard it crashed (or not).
💬 “As our lives become more enmeshed with technological devices, services, and processes, I think that awareness is something which we the technology-wielding should strive for if we want to build a properly humane and empathic world.” — Matthew Lyon, The Fourth Quadrant of Knowledge • lyonheart.
💬 “Knowledge of history and awareness of history can allow us to see patterns, make connections, and identify incipient problems. It can give us a language and a set of references which allows us to step back, broaden our view, and see things and sometimes warn ourselves and others when necessary.” — Timothy Snyder on Stalin and Stephen Miller.
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.. And for all the crunchy, fresh Writing Slowly goodness you can sign up to the weekly digest. It’s exactly like a bunch of radishes, but made out of email.
Publishing means no more hiding
Revelation must be terrible, knowing you can never hide your voice again. – David Whyte
Publishing my book, I had the strange feeling of having crossed an invisible but very powerful threshold.
It was while signing copies at a small and very supportive gathering, that it dawned on me that the thoughts that used to be just in my head are now public and exposed to the world – and since I’ve lodged this work in every State Library in Australia, they’ll never again be totally private.
I had thought I just wanted to publish my words, to release my book into the wild, as it were, to allow it to find its readers.
So it never occurred that I might have been benefiting in some way from the obscurity of the drafting process.
Not that I want to hide my voice – far from it.
Nor that I’m expecting a million readers. Again, far from it.
But the knowledge that I now have one unique reader – you – with whom my words will perhaps connect whether I bid them or not, well that changes things somehow.
And it’s certainly a revelation to realise there’s no going back.
My book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, is out now. Please check it out.
Curious about Hypercuriosity
One reason I make notes and write is that I’m curious about everything.
I’ve written previously about how to be interested in everything. And I’ve also written about busybodies, hunters and dancers - three different styles of curiosity.
It was the ‘dancer’ style of curiosity that resonated most with me:
“This type of curiosity is described as a dance in which disparate concepts, typically conceived of as unrelated, are briefly linked in unique ways as the curious individual leaps and bounds across traditionally siloed areas of knowledge. Such brief linking fosters the generation or creation of new experiences, ideas, and thoughts.”
So I was interested to see that Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments and founder of Ness Labs, Has been exploring what she calls ‘hypercuriosity’, which may be associated with ADHD.
Well, I guess I’m the living proof. I set out this evening to write about my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning for Artists and Fighters but I ended up writing about something completely different instead: hypercuriosity.
Come to think of it, that’s how the book got written in the first place, by pursuing my curiosity. And come to think of it, that’s how I do practically everything.
In writing the book I was particularly attracted by the value placed on the Japanese concept of shoshin (初心), ‘beginner’s mind’ - a quality often downplayed in Western contexts, where experts are supposed to already know everything.
I’m more interested in not knowing - and then going to great lengths to find out.
Links:
Brar, G. (2024, November 14). The hypercuriosity theory of ADHD: An interview with Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Evolution and Psychiatry (Substack).
Gupta, S. (2025, September 16). People with ADHD may have an underappreciated advantage: Hypercuriosity. Science News.
Le Cunff, A. (2024). Distractability and impulsivity in ADHD as an evolutionary mismatch of high trait curiosity. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 10, 282.
Le Cunff, A. (2025, July 15). When curiosity doesn’t fit the world we’ve built: How do we design a world that supports hypercurious minds? Ness Labs.
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