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Hello,
I must confess I’m still trying to figure out my writing process to optimize output, including not missing deadlines. For example, this week, I started two drafts, but neither seemed ready to share as they deserve more time to expand.
One is about metrics, our obsession with them, and their limitations in understanding reality and guiding our actions. Why we need metrics? What do we do with things that cannot be measured? Are metrics a map you can trust to navigate in the territory? Can we manage things we cannot measure? Unintended consequences of optimizing one variable.
The other one is about obvious ideas. My social media feeds are full of them. I’m lucky if I come across an interesting novel idea on any given day. What is an obvious idea, and what’s the value of being exposed to them? Can we make an obvious idea interesting? Should we be sharing more obvious ideas instead of new ones?
In the meantime, I’m also more and more into System Thinking and began to explore it more consciously. I have been reading The Fith Discipline (spoiler: it’s System Thinking) and found an excellent article that summarizes its key concepts.
Stay tuned.
Intro to #worth_reading
Around five years ago, I created a channel in our company Slack called #worth_reading so everyone could share interesting articles. It spread like wildfire (well, we were around 20 by that time), but today is still alive and kicking with 166 people (94%) onboard and an average of 2 posts/day with a total of 3273 links shared. 😱
Somehow I lost the habit of posting, but stats say I posted 234 links so far — not bad. But not quite the feat of Matt that posted 1249 links while he was with the company! 😱
#worth_reading
These are some articles/videos that got my attention lately:
How Wolves Change Rivers (video) - An ecosystem works like a system with interconnected parts (species) influencing each other. Change one part of the system, and you risk a massive change in the system. System thinking offers the concepts and tools to explain this kind of dynamics. Nature and ecology is just one realm where we can apply this thinking. The same can be used to understand Human Systems, where we live and interact in our everyday life.
Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking - If you want to explore more, this article is an excellent primer to System Thinking and its fundamental concepts: Interconnectedness, Synthesis, Emergence, Feedback Loops, Causality, and Systems Mapping. Most of us default to cause and effect linear thinking and overlook interdependence, feedback loops, and emergent behaviors. This leaves us blind to understand and drive change in the world around us.
The Map Is Not the Territory - Farnam Street Blog - One of the essential concepts in system thinking is distinguishing and separating concepts and seeing the whole and the parts. Although models of reality (maps) are important to think about reality (territory), they come with their own limitations: is it the right model? What information do we lose in the model? A model needs interpretation, and that can in itself is subject to errors. Find out what Warren Buffett and Nassim Taleb have to teach us about this.
Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape. - MIT Technology Review — It’s easy to agree that keeping our heads down into the present is only good in a meditation sort of way — be present, be here now, with your whole self.
But to ensure our (and Earth) survival, we must look into the future and understand the consequences of our current actions. What explains our short-termism, and how can we escape from it?
Thanks for reading,
Now, follow the links and get the real deal!
Hugo
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