[Weekly Retro] Controlling dissonance
#270 - Jan.2026
Hi there!
Here's a quick idea before you head-off for the weekend:
Dissonance in music sounds harsh. Unresolved. It lacks harmony.
You might think that great music is about avoiding dissonance. About getting the pretty notes and removing the ugly ones.
Yet, masterpieces are memorable because of the tension between dissonance and consonance.
Yin and Yang. Light and shadow. Unresolved and resolved harmony.
That is what moves us!
I think this is true for every creative work. When you play it safe, you might be losing an opportunity to do something great!
Embrace the "dissonance" in you creative space:
In photography, shadows against soft light.
In writing, short sentences vs. long sentences.
In product, functional features balanced with 'WoW' features
...
Great things emerge from the contrasts. Don't be afraid of your dissonance.
ps: Great lesson from Jacob Collier:
🧪 Cool invention from the week
One pull of a string is all it takes to deploy these complex structures. Inspired by Kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, this method from MIT transforms flat surfaces into 3D objects and it's scalable to bigger forms.
👨🏻💻 Interesting links
- Why child prodigies rarely become elite performers? A recent study demonstrated that elite youth performers and elite adults were almost entirely separate groups
- In order to better understand our human nature, we must attempt to build a robot capable of robust subjective experiences
🖋️ Quote of the week
“Happiness is your natural state” – Tony de Mello
