Reflections 30th March
on the barnacles that slow us down.
On Barnacles
A small moment of insight last week has stayed with me. I was in the usual routine of buying yet another book, and then paused and asked myself:
“Why are you buying this? Do you really need it, or are you avoiding figuring it out yourself?”
Books are a form of technology, and in some ways, they’re an early version of the Internet. It’s easy to think that the answers we need are already written down somewhere, that someone else has worked it all out and that their version is safer than our own attempt.
But the truth is, books—like most technology—can turn into clutter. They stick to us like barnacles on a ship.
Instead of helping us move through work smoothly, we can find they start to slow us down. Our thinking gets sluggish; we read more books searching for answers instead of doing the work ourselves. Using ever more energy trying to push forward, weighed down by everything we’ve added.
As a ship’s hull attracts barnacles, so all processes attract complications and additions which add little value.
Edward de Bono in Simplicity,
Some complications are useful at first, but if we forget about them, they become invisible and outdated. We then add more tools, apps, and books to deal with the problems they’ve caused, resulting in a mess of our own making.
And when the going gets choppy, we realise too late that we’re sailing in something that’s not ready for the storm.
So I’ve started cleaning. I’m getting rid of the barnacles. There is no advice here—just my story in case it helps you spot your own.
The Nature of Barnacles
In nature, barnacles need hard surfaces, calm waters, and a steady flow of food. Once they find a good spot, they glue themselves in place and build a strong shell. Then they sit there, feeding, growing, multiplying.
They’re hard to remove. They cause drag. They waste energy. They wear things down. I see something similar in management in a lot of workplaces.
Getting rid of them takes effort. Stopping them means being disciplined—checking often, cleaning regularly.
Books as Barnacles
I love books. For me, they’re like a landscape. Each one adds something. They connect like roots underground. I even have a “mother bookshelf” at home—books on philosophy, physics, and more. They are my guides and companions. They give me direction when I’m stuck.
These books are not barnacles. They are a power source.
Susan Simard, in Finding the Mother Tree, says forests are communities. Trees send each other nutrients and information through hidden fungal networks. Some older trees—the “mother trees”—help the younger ones grow. That’s how I see the relationship between my bookshelf and ideas. Somewhere fertile for ideas to grow.
But this is only about 5% of my reading.
Then there’s my Kindle. It holds the books that catch my interest but don’t have enough substance to warrant a place on the shelf. These are the real barnacles, and because they don’t take up space, I don’t notice them building up. But they still create drag. They slow me down. They make it harder to find the good stuff.
So I’m cleaning house (or rather, Kindle). Even digital shelves need sorting. They reflect who we are, and, like people, we need to be able to trust them when the weather turns.
Apps as Barnacles
Apps are insidious. There are millions of them out there. Hundreds to help us save time, manage money, collaborate, communicate, or any one of the routine tasks we face. Before we know it, they build up fast. We try them because they seem useful for a while, or someone we know or work with uses them, or our utilities company or any one of hundreds of service providers says it will help.
Soon, I found myself swimming in apps, all much the same, from companies who are much the same. Getting rid of them has been a pleasure. I’ve been ruthless and now have fewer than twenty. No overlaps.
Social Media as Barnacles
This one was the hardest.
I tried managing my social media. But it was like bindweed—growing back no matter what I did. It pulled at my attention and gave very little back.
So I cut it all away. LinkedIn was the last to go.
Now, I can focus on the people who really matter. The ones I value. And I’m slowly recovering from the effect of the nonsense I used to scroll through.
Most of us have 500 to 1,000 connections online. But Robin Dunbar tells us that 150 is the upper limit of who we can really keep track of. We do our best work with about 50.
Choose those 50 well. It makes a big difference. It has for me.
Best Practice as Barnacle
This one came up in conversation recently.
When times are uncertain, best practice feels like the safe option. If something goes wrong, you followed the smart play. You have precedent on your side. You didn’t take risks.
Over time, this gets baked in. Even when results get worse, people keep pushing best practice. It’s familiar. It’s safe. It needs no courage.
But best practice can become a barrier. In times like these, where trust is low and speed matters, it often holds us back.
“Easy” as Barnacles.
For me, the most significant source of barnacles are people, products and services that promise to make my life easier. It can be so seductive when I’m busy, but I have to ensure I maintain the discipline to separate the offers that make routine things easy, and the important things that define our craft.
Outsourcing elements of what we do that are part of our identity eats away at the authenticity of our identity. The easy push of the “AI” button when we’re writing, or coding, or responding to messages gradually hollows us out until we become some sort of digital version of “Ring Wraiths” in Lord of the Rings.
I found this video in a fantastic post on the craftsmanship substack on fountain pens, another of my favourite topics.
The takeaway?: Making life easy doesn’t make for craft.
We all have our barnacles. I’d be interested to know what you find yours are.
Cleaning Barnacles with Simplicity
Whatever the barnacles that slow us down, simplicity has much to offer.
“Easy” is an ideal “hard surface” for the barnacles of our life to cling to, particularly when we’re busy. The question it begs is whether what we’re busy doing is more important than spending time being ourselves and learning who we might become. It's a balance - being and doing - and we live in a world of work that is happy to exhaust our being to have us spend time “performing”.
I have been rereading and using one of my “Bookshelf” books - Edward de Bono’s Simplicity. In it, he lists ten rules - here are my five favourites:
You need to put a very high value on simplicity.
You need to understand the matter very well.
You need to challenge and discard existing elements.
You need to be prepared to start over again.
You need to know for whose sake the simplicity is being designed.
It’s hard work, and it will take another month to finish. I’ll post separately on how this simplification will change what I do and the lessons I’m learning.
It feels important. New opportunities emerge as our politics and business worlds evolve, and we need to be unencumbered enough to notice and develop them.
One of the changes I am making is to run more regular Zoom session for Outside the Walls and New Artisans. From Weds 2nd April, I will host them weekly for those on the Outside the Walls Mighty Network. If you’re not on it, and would like to be, just let me know.
Three reasons why I buy a book.
1. I’m curious about the topic.
2.Introduction to a field of knowledge that provides background for conversation with people who operate in that field.
3. Provides access to original source material. The reason this matters is that every opinion is made in the context of how that person learned and then processed that knowledge for their specific use. I’m not saying they are wrong, just naturally bias as we all are.
For example, a business commentator, like many of us are, use statements from non-business fields to illustrate metaphorically that which the original author uses in a very different way. I use original source material to see a wider context of the author’s writing.