I love the process of writing. I didn’t always though. Thoughts living unspoken in my brain have often felt like it’s the best day of duck season, mallards flying every which way overhead, but I am a terrible shot. At some point in the last few years, I realized writing was the missing piece to nail down these thoughts without bugging the heck out of my wonderful wife by talking through them ad nauseum. (I do that anyways though).

Lately, I’m doing much of that process out in the open. It’s strangely exciting that these are being posted into the aether of the internet for everyone to see. It’s stranger still that these have gotten relatively good reviews. Perhaps people are protecting my feelings, but either way, thank you for reading. And feedback is welcomed. Hopefully you’ll enjoy my thoughts Lately.

A few months ago, we hired a developer with no prior WordPress experience to take care of WordPress websites full-time. I love hiring for personality and attitude over prior experience, but even this was a little farfetched.

Fast-forward and this guy has been a critical member of our team. He’s phenomenally wielding AI to get results. He got up to speed lightning-fast, is incredibly efficient, and professional. He’s doing more than expected, all because of the new AI tools in Colophon’s toolbelt.

This was completely impossible 12 months ago. This would be like hiring someone who only speaks English to teach a math course in French tomorrow. You could probably use Google Translator and get by, but it wouldn’t be any good... And this guy has been exceeding expectations!

This whole experience has got me thinking about how learning is fundamentally changing.

Before this year, the traditional approach to learning programming involved starting with the programming language itself. This meant focusing on the syntax and terminology first, before diving into the functions and logic that govern how the programming language works. Once you grasped these fundamentals, you could begin building projects by layering different functions and applying various aspects of the syntax. If you decided to learn a new programming language, while there were some similarities across languages, you essentially had to start the learning process from scratch.

That’s what I call inside-out learning. You have to learn the inner workings of a system in order to learn outwardly. The concept in my mind’s eye for this is an onion; start at the core and build layers on top of the core of knowledge you have. It applies to nearly everything I can think of (at least, pre-COVID). For a few simple examples:

First, you learn the building blocks. Only then can you build and apply. At least, that’s what used to be true.

Outside-in learning is what I’m seeing now, and this is how our new Colophoner has been learning WordPress maintenance.

Now, in a lot of applications, you only need to be able to clearly dictate your problem, and a robot, that understands everything there is to know about the “inside”, solves it for you. All you need to do is approve the “frontend” - or the result which you see. The behind-the-scenes “inside” doesn’t matter any more. You can learn by applying right off the bat, without ever learning what lies beneath the surface to make it all work.

This isn’t exactly brand new, of course. Almost no one is hyperaware of the 0s and 1s in the binary code powering the cores of our computers, or how a car works, or how the h*ll wi-fi works (still no clue on that one). Layering an easy-to-use interface over something difficult so that more and more people can use the application has been happening for a long time. But I think this is different.

The “outside surface,” to keep the onion analogy going, is larger than ever. The more surface area we accrue on the outside, the more we lose critical context and understanding of the “inside layers” - the inner workings of how things actually work.

Leveling the playing field like this isn’t always a bad thing, of course. It opens up new opportunities. But the major implication I want to point out is that this creates the illusion of knowledge.

Humans are built to learn through trial-and-error, inside-out. Our brains hate the friction, but it’s our best, most-lasting teacher. There is truly no replacement for experience. When you incorporate outside-in learning, you’re completely unaware of your blind spots - what’s underneath the outside surface. You don’t understand how things work - and, nowadays, you don’t really have to… until you do…

“Why?” has always been the pound-for-pound, letter-for-letter most powerful and complex of all questions. It is the infamous question of every inquisitive little toddler that stumps their parents.

I have been thinking about the new power of asking “Why?” in a world with the ever-increasing surface area of Outside-In learning. Asking “Why?” and really getting to the bottom of things will become even more powerful in a world that increasingly makes diving deep seem needless.

A world without friction will make most people even lazier. The Frictionless will be content with the life their outside-in learning can bring them, and avoid any friction by never going much deeper than the surface. But the curious people who ask “Why?”, the Frictionful** who aren’t afraid to really spend time and get their hands dirty to learn something, are going to be more armed than ever to explore, dive deep, and genuinely learn things. Friction gets us past the illusion of knowledge.

That’s what’s making our new hire such a great fit. It’s not just the output. It’s that he’s a curious mind who’s diving deep to understand the “Why?” behind how everything works below the surface. I hope entrepreneurs, educators, parents, and other leaders are able to recognize this behavior, encourage it, and cultivate it for years to come. It will be a challenge, but a fruitful one.

Aside: I don’t even want to think about the implications of this on educating our children. It makes me genuinely sad. This is a semi-optimistic and highly intelligent post about how higher education can react.

Second Aside: Yes, I heard it, and I realize how double entendre’d** the Friction metaphor is here, but I’m not changing it.

Third Aside: I had to get 5 Whys in. Shout out to my plant engineering background.

Not exactly the soundtrack to my week - I just want you to share in the misery of these catchy tunes getting locked into your brain for the foreseeable future

A Great Recession bop, a deep cut folksy song, and (another?) pop star man crush:

Sincerely,

Zander Barth

** It’s my newsletter, deal with it. I make the rules around here. IMNLDWI