The Latticework was originally written and compiled by me, Blas Moros.
Growing up, I was too busy playing tennis to spend time on much else. But, that changed after I “retired” from college tennis and thought about what I wanted the next phase of my life to look like. I figured I would never regret reading, learning, and meeting fascinating people. Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to these pursuits, having spent thousands of hours reading, compiling, and synthesizing the highest quality ideas I could find. This started me down The Rabbit Hole and resulted in The Latticework.1The Rabbit Hole has been my passion project since I graduated from college. It now has over 600 book summaries, various essays, several teacher’s reference guides, and other valuable and worthwhile resources. It’s another excellent learning resource and you can sign up for that newsletter here.
At its core, The Latticework is seeking to give power to the people as it relates to perhaps the most important and fundamental human skill of all – the art of learning how to learn. We deserve better than what today’s traditional education system offers and the infinite choice and noise on the internet doesn’t help either. But, together, we can reform a static, siloed, hierarchical education into one that is dynamic, interconnected, and collaborative. Together, we can create a universally valuable and evergreen learning resource that is constantly evolving, iterating, and improving. Together, we can build a legacy that we are proud to be associated with and to hand off to our children and our children’s children.
The standard process of organizing knowledge by departments, and sub departments, and further breaking it up into separate courses, tends to conceal the homogeneity of knowledge, and at the same time to omit much which falls between the courses.
– Richard Hamming, Learning to Learn
I believe we can achieve all these things through The Latticework by enhancing both how we learn and by being laser focused on what we learn. The ideas and concepts covered are not simply beautiful theory that sound good on paper. They are concrete, pragmatic ideas that can widen our perspective, enriching and inspiring how we think, live, and interact with the world around us. If we can truly absorb and understand these core concepts, we will improve our marginal thinking and decision-making – and the implications of this are simply enormous, perhaps infinite. A few better decisions by each of us ripples through our lives and the world, saving each of us time, stress, and money since we’re avoiding life-sucking mistakes, and allows for greater peace of mind and time to focus on what matters to each of us. These are the true benefits of The Latticework, the true benefits of becoming an effective multidisciplinary thinker.
It will generally be admitted that the true test of all books is the influence they have upon the lives and conduct of their readers.
– Charles Helman
If I can help kickstart a resource and community that sparks people’s curiosity for learning, definitively show why becoming a multidisciplinary learner is a lifelong goal worth pursuing, and help harness the skill of learning how to learn, it would deliver tremendous purpose, meaning, and happiness to my life.2Notice, I didn’t say anything about “teaching” others. I really can’t teach anybody anything. You have to teach yourself. This is why I believe self-education is so powerful and so effective. For example, anybody who ever told me I had to learn something would see me push back. But, leave me to my own devices, and I’ll devour everything I can on a topic that interests me – I hate being taught, but I love to learn. The Latticework is simply looking to scale and remove some of the friction found in self-education – where to start, what to focus on, what’s important, what are the key resources and interconnected ideas, etc. This lifelong mission fuels me and I hope it ignites your fire too. If you can’t tell, I’m all-in and I hope you’ll join us.
If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.
– Henry David Thoreau
I, of course, “stand on the shoulders of giants” to create something like this and I’m grateful to everyone I have learned from, both directly and indirectly.
I now live near NYC with my beautiful wife and kids. So, if you’re in the area and want to meet up or simply have any questions or comments, you can reach me directly on Twitter or through our contact page.
Amor Fati Amor.
