Simon Sarris: a thinker, a creator, a do-er & much more

Simon Sarris is a software developer by trade, but his desire to think, build and share doesn’t end there. he tweets about many topics including: development, mysticism, building, cooking, gardening and more.

i’ve compiled Simon’s most recent 3,000 tweets in an attempt to get a better understanding of him and the things that he thinks about.

i wanted to get a better idea of the topics that Simon talks about on Twitter, so i came up with the below list of categories to tag his tweets by:

• life
• building/creating
• faith
• home & family

i first scraped 3,000 of Simon’s tweets. i then setup conditional formatting within Sheets to highlight words related to the various categories mentioned above. i moved each category into their own sheet and began sorting through tweets that i found to be the most important. 

see below screenshot of the dataset:

after sorting through tagged tweets, i then sorted through all not-tagged tweets.

i did this manually because my skillset from a dev standpoint is non-existent, but also because it was important to read the tweets myself in order to better hone in on the final categories.

each category contains snippets of tweets and/or an over-arching thought related to the tweets (in my words) within that category.

life

• plan for the future
• be optimistic about the future
• it’s important to do [things], live and flourish
• don’t avoid “doing” because it feels temporary at the time
• contemplate the value gained vs. cost sunk
• don’t over calculate
• Twitter is the easiest way to publicly think and do and through engaging on Twitter you may find your “people”[/community]
• be aware of what you stand behind. most causes are not thought out enough to advocate and certainly not enough to scream about
• tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity is a kind of skill
• the surest tell that someone knows very little is if they claim to have a solution for everything
• if there is risk & reward, you should think deeply about how to accomplish it
• spend time thinking
• pursue a better version of yourself, your community and the world
• be weary of material that is labeled for self-help and self-care
• vocalize your ideas. even the feeble ones
• people buy and think in stories
• tell better stories
• philosophy begins in wonder
• play devil’s advocate for long enough and people just see you as the devil
• taking no risks in the short term is its own risk in the long term
• cultivate levity to give others joy
• don’t over rationalize
• quit politics

building/creating

• create more things
• be around people who create things
• choose not to do or make things things that make life bad
• improve your world. lay your cobblestone path. the cobblestone path may outlive you.
• focus on craft of some sort
• making something, even something simple, and enjoy the ritual
• creating is also about removing (think photography)
• there is almost nothing more gratifying than building and improving the world around you
• less “how to” instruction and more instruction through actually doing. collecting knowledge delays applying our hands.

religion

• again, don’t over rationalize
• religion cannot “explain” the world
• religion should leave you in wonder
• become religious. fill yourself with wonder and stay open to mystery.
• have faith
• religion (like philosophy) begins in wonder

home & family

• having kids earlier may eliminate some “freedom”, but it also gives you 5 more years of life with kids and grand-kids
• “children look forward to growing the courage to make meaningful decisions, and—if we adults do our jobs well—accepting the duty and power that flows from them.”
• “i think a lot of parents don’t notice when their kids are interested in something, or overly guide them. i want to give my kids enough free-form exploration, materials, and boredom, to discover interests on their own. what i want for my children is a strong internal locus.”
• “home” is foremost the set of rituals you make for yourself and others, in order to dwell poetically in a place
• create a home you like to live in

also:

i encourage you to read this post in order to learn about Simon and Simplicity’s process for designing and creating their home

to conclude

i very much appreciate someone who publishes their thoughts for others to see. when one publishes his thoughts it puts him in a vulnerable place. one that can be judged by others. the above only captures some of Simon Sarris’s thoughts. if you want to read more, please take a look at his Twitter as it is full of thought-provoking tweets.

Simon also blogs on his personal site. i especially enjoyed reading his 2020 goals.

if you enjoyed this list, i urge you to follow Simon on Twitter.

i saw Justin Mikolay do this analysis of David Perell and Matthew Kobach and thought it was an awesome idea. i’ve decided to do a similar analysis for Simon Sarris.