MULTUM IN PARVO*
Small miracles...
…small things and small moves make a difference.
A week or so ago in an earlier post, I mentioned this article in the New York Times that made the case for artists working at a smaller scale. As Jennifer J. Lee notes about her own small paintings: “I love being able to beckon someone to look at something.”The small painting or sketch draws you in. We are forced to look more closely. The small image is sometimes awkward or challenging to interpret but that is an effective challenge. As I also mentioned previously, this type of challenge is indeed a “desirable difficulty.”
In contrast, we are often seduced more completely by the grand gesture—the immense—believing that bigger is better. Yet these larger endeavors often fail, waste resources, and reinforce the myth that scale equals success. Much energy is spent trying to scale something that might be far better left small, crafted to the highest level of refinement.
Given our world of excess and the history of grand errors, there’s real beauty—and power—in focusing on smaller moves, little hacks, and quiet improvements that can enrich our lives and make us happier. It may demand more creativity, more ingenuity, and a deliberate parsimony. But it’s worth it.
A Small-Scale Success Story: Monte, Ticino
One beautiful example is a project in Monte, Ticino, Switzerland, by the architectural firm studioser.
With a few modest interventions—a handrail to assist with steep descents, a stone bench, the sound of running water in a small village square—they improve the daily lives of the village’s residents.
This kind of design—small, sensitive, and human-centered—is often overlooked in favor of grand remodeling or rebuilding. Yet these tiny changes can have profound effects, effects that are more fulfilling and satisfying than larger urban interventions.
Personal Reflection: My Mother’s Wisdom
Most days, I cast a thought to my mother, Marie-Jose Randolph, and how she managed her life with a quiet economy after years of managing the messy lives of others.
Raised in wartime London by a Belgian mother and an Irish-Scots-English father, she inherited from my grandmother, Marie-Melanie Affleck, a worldview that was simple, sustainable, and unpretentious. It was a perspective inherited through peasant wisdom acquired in the Flanders fields that persisted through the modern chaotic complexity of two world wars.
My mother inherited this spirit and lived by the belief that we could—and should—live well with less. Though she sometimes longed for luxuries, such splurges were rare. Living simply wasn’t a trend for her; it was a code of life.
Her approach makes me think of Thoreau’s imperative: “Simplify, simplify.”
Small Experiments: Rapid Prototyping and MVPs
Simplifying schools is not easy, they tend to devolve into unnecessary complexity in order to meet the wishes of the various school constituents. In my work in schools, I was very interested in translating ideas from the world of design thinking—especially IDEO’s practice of “rapid prototyping”—into education. I wanted to try and take the simplicity of Dieter Rams and apply it to schools. We collaborated on the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit.
Rapid prototyping is about quickly and cheaply turning ideas into tangible experiments. I don’t think we do enough of this in our lives, our workplaces, or our institutions.
The process of developing a simple prototype leads us to the concept of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) (or, sometimes a minimal viable process). The idea of a simplified, well-designed and conceptualized solution has always fascinated me—not as a tech-world buzzword, but as a life principle. Restrain our natural desire for complexity and ornamentation and focus on the smallest action, idea, or object that gets the most effective result. How can we apply this idea to some of the issues we face now?
A Case Study: Artificial Intelligence
I once spoke with John Kao about creating an AI-powered avatar to help young people learn. It could take any form—Diogenes, SZA, MLK, or whomever the student desired—and converse intelligently to mentor students and manage their learning.
But as a longtime educator, I knew the danger: Teachers often fall into the trap of doing too much thinking for the learner. We plan our every move and appreciate certain completeness to our lessons.
However, when every explanation is provided, every question anticipated, the learner’s own cognitive work shrivels. Learning becomes sterile.
How could we develop an avatar that was wise and Zen in its approach to tutoring a student? An agent that would keep its facilitation to the minimum in order to magnify the learner’s results, in order to achieve that desirable difficulty that is so essential to good learning.
Today, as AI advances astonishingly fast, I’m reminded of this concern. A friend recently shared this breakthrough in AI-driven scientific discovery, calling it “the future of R&D unfolding right in front of us.” It is indeed amazing, but we are traveling along roads without understanding the assumptions that undergird our decisions regarding the journey ahead. Our destinations may actually be a surprise.
There seems to be two roads we could take:
Replace human intelligence with a non-human version.
Enhance human intelligence—augment it.
We have clearly leaned toward the former.
But what if we chose the latter?
Imagine a more economical computer-assisted intelligence that didn’t seek to replace us, but aimed to sharpen us—to make us think harder, better, deeper. It would ask more questions and declare fewer answers.
It would operate like a wise Zen master—offering minimal guidance, just enough to provoke the learner to work hard and achieve their own insights. It would not be a secondary, “artificial” intelligence, but rather a catalyst to our existing capacities.
At the dawn of the internet, there was a balance between consuming information and creating it. Today, consumption dominates: endless scrolling, passive intake, and AI will accelerate that consumption. Yet the original hope remains—that the internet and AI could foster more dialogue, more collaboration, and more innovative creation rather than merely consumption. It would take a significant shift to revive that spirit. But it’s possible.
Small, Deep, and Skilled
Returning to the original idea. I think we are at a juncture…Instead of always chasing growth and scale, why not deepen and enrich? Instead of grand ambitions, why not focus on doing a few things exceptionally well? Instead of replacing humanity, we could be supercharging it with strategic and less effort while reducing waste.
As in the Japanese concept of shokunin—the dedicated mastery of a craft—we could build a simpler, more authentic future. One where smaller excellence matters with a clearer future more than unbridled expansion with covert or vague outcomes.
I hope that can still be the case.
Keep well—and keep small…
A list of sundry small personal catalysts:
- Bruce Chatwin’s apartment by John Pawson
- David Shrigley’s drawings
- Aria to the Goldberg Variations as played by Glenn Gould in 1981
- Ludwig Wittgenstein’s door handle
- Calder’s mini mobiles* (title inspired by this article)
- Hassan Fathy and his simple idea of using vernacular architecture for new affordable developments in Egypt
- An interesting neckerchief
- Hanger loops on clothing and Shaker pegs
- Walden by Thoreau
- Hadsel by Beirut