Pattern Library

I started writing this newsletter in 2024 to create content and share learnings. One hundred issues, two years, and thousands of words later, it became so much more.

I write to notice, to think, to put acquired knowledge into practice and test ideas. It’s a movement from perception to interpretation to validation. As a result, I see more patterns, understand the philosophy and principles, and learn from meeting reality.

I write for me. I write to improve my thinking.

Each newsletter became a thinking exercise to ask myself three simple questions:

1. What do I notice?
2. What does it mean?
3. How can I test it?

Reading through previous issues, this structure emerged and evolved. The more patterns I noticed, the more patterns I started to see. Then I could slow down, think, and excavate the core philosophy and underlying principles beneath the pattern. These philosophies and principles became the bedrock of my thinking, which enabled me to test them with practices. Because everything you do before actually doing the work is a simulation, an assumption, a guess. It’s only when you meet reality that you learn, adapt, and evolve. And the only way to endure the process is through an understanding of the transferable units of knowledge: the patterns, the philosophies, the principles. Practices are merely expressions of these core truths.

Notice patterns, think in principles, and practice intentionally to notice more patterns.

Notice the story, the experience, the conversation, the movie, the bug, the walk.

Think about the pattern, what philosophy explains it, and what principles emerged.

Test the principles in practice to create leverage and compound your knowledge.

Perceive → Interpret → Validate

The pattern is what keeps happening.

The philosophy is how you think about it.

The principle is what generally holds true.

The practice is how you can express it.

Said another way:

A pattern is a recurring observation distilled into a philosophy, a principle, and practices that can be applied elsewhere.

You create a Pattern Library, a rich collection of distilled concepts to leverage.

Through the process of writing, I found 100 concepts for my own Pattern Library. I came up with the Claritorium and Equilio. I learned how to see, to think, to sense. And it all drew from small acts built on those same three simple questions:

1. What do I notice?
2. What does it mean?
3. How can I test it?

What do I notice?

If you want to notice more, you have to pay attention. But noticing alone isn’t enough. You need to take part in the experience as an active participant. Engage with the work. Don’t relinquish control to AI as a hapless bystander. Leverage the technology to do more, yes, but also with intention.

Mindfulness is a practice of awareness. You focus to move with intention. Without intention, external forces dictate your time and attention. We could both attend the same meeting, but one of us could come away with a nugget of wisdom to carry for years, while the other could come away with a simple to-do. Awareness matters.

Each newsletter started by paying attention. I noticed something that happened at work; or something the kids did; or a phrase I heard. It was the seed, but seeds of thought must be cultivated to derive meaning from them.

This is Claritorium’s Clarity Codex.

This is Equilio’s Intuition.

What does it mean?

It’s odd how thinking feels rare these days. Why think when I can send loose thoughts to a machine to spit out nice-looking artifacts? LLMs splurge walls of text with little substance, while we passively tap the enter key and move onto the next task.

Finding meaning requires thinking. It’s a call to slow down, to focus. Knowledge and wisdom are byproducts of slow thinking over long periods of time. The elusive flashes of insight are not flashes at all. They are outcomes born from deep thinking.

When exploring newsletter ideas, I talk to coworkers, my wife, and even ChatGPT. It’s important to bring early ideas into the open so you can nurture them. It’s like the soil, sunlight, and water a garden requires. But thinking and writing and discussing only get you so far. Then you have to put it to the test.

This is Claritorium’s Clarity Current.

This is Equilio’s Integration.

How can I test it?

Reality is where you learn. Every moment before reality rests on assumptions—the things you believe to be true based on your beliefs, intuition, and past experience. It’s only when you put your assumptions to the test that you validate and learn.

Find the smallest test you can run to test an assumption. If it doesn’t work, you learned something. If it does, you also learned something. Either way, you learn.

What I write about is thematically related, but addressed from a range of perspectives. Each newsletter provided space for me to learn from each iteration. That’s the point. You see patterns, distill principles, and test what you uncovered. Through the testing, you uncover new patterns to fuel new learnings.

This is Claritorium’s Clarity Climate.

This is Equilio’s Iteration.

The Pattern Library

I took every issue so far and distilled them into a collection of Pattern Cards. They follow a simple format of title, pattern, philosophy, principle, and practices. I compiled them in a Notion database, but I plan on building them into my personal website where I have all of my newsletter issues. What I really want to do is print physical cards so I can sort and arrange the ideas I’ve been sitting with for the past two years.

The Next 100

I don’t know what’s next, but I know I’ll keep writing. My reason for writing is to clarify my own thinking. I also hope you get something out of this. And I hope it’s more than an expectation of a playbook or a framework. The only framework I want to provide is one for thinking. Because learning how to find patterns, create principles, and express them through intentional practices is a much higher leverage outcome than learning yet another framework. Why learn a framework when you have the tools to build whatever framework you need, whenever you need it?

That’s the power of a Pattern Library, built from foundational thinking skills.

It’s your turn. Ask yourself:

1. What do you notice?
2. What does it mean?
3. How can you test it?