The Hive Mind

We get to see further than our predecessors, not because we have a greater vision or greater height, but because we are lifted on their gigantic stature.

There are giants in every field. Don't let them intimidate you. Take from anywhere that resonates with you and inspires or fuels your imagination. Build upon it and improve it. Doing this will make your work authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.

When a certain disaster or calamity happens, we work towards ensuring that the same calamity can be dealt with in the better way, the next time it happens. The pain or loss that we suffer motivates us to do so.

We forget in our preparation and resource allocation to the ‘last’ disaster, that we have neglected many other things that are more likely to happen.

• Life has a tendency to surprise us, and we will be most likely smacked with something totally unforeseen and unrelated to the last disaster, that one was prepared for.
• A better strategy is to realize that it is inevitable that life will hit us unexpectedly, and to grow and learn from the same.
• Being adaptive, flexible and resilient would increase our adversity quotient, making us strengthen our inner resources, and enrich our experience.

• Experiments done on babies in the 13th century illustrated that they would die if deprived of the human connection.
• Divorce rates are higher among couples not able to engage, resonate or respond to the others' need to connect.

A Harvard Study of Adult Development followed and documented a large number of people over their entire lifetimes, and after 75 years, the researchers came to a conclusion that good relationships are a primary cause of health and happiness, significantly more than wealth, fame or working hard.

Compounding is exponential growth. We tend to see the immediate linear relationships in the situation, e.g., how one test diagnoses one person.

The compounding effect of that relationship means that increased testing can lead to an exponential decrease in disease transmission because one infected person can infect more than just one person.

In the absence of enough testing, we need to use probabilistic thinking to make decisions on what actions to take. Reasonable probability will impact your approach to physical distancing if you estimate the likelihood of transmission as being three people out of ten instead of one person out of one thousand.

When you have to make decisions with incomplete information, use inversion: Look at the problem backward. Ask yourself what you could do to make things worse, then avoid doing those things.

• A social infrastructure: society needs a supply of creative innovators who are willing and able to challenge their physical environment in order to better themselves.
• Social incentives: there need to be incentives in place to encourage innovation.
• Social attitude: a creative society has to be diverse and tolerant. People must be open to new ideas and individuals.

“Invention occurs at the level of the individual, and we should address the factors that determine individual creativity. Individuals, however, do not live in a vacuum. What makes them implement, improve and adapt new technologies, or just devise small improvements in the way they carry out their daily work depends on the institutions and the attitudes around them.”

• Allows for a more personal, customized mode of thinking and application.
• A key to doing any sort of systemic inquiry.
• Even though it does take far more mental energy to work in this mode, the results can be quite staggering.
• A new and innovative way of thinking.

Identify the Problem

What is something that I want to change in my life?

Deconstruct the Problem

What are the causes of my problems? How does it affect my life?

Solve the Problem

Start creating your new framework. You could think of multiple ways to achieve your goals easily.

• Bill Watterson is the elusive creator of the much-loved comic strip Calvin And Hobbes, which provides a glimpse of life’s funny and often bittersweet musings and philosophies through the eyes of the mischievous six-year old boy named Calvin, and his imaginary tiger friend Hobbes.
• Even though Watterson concluded the daily strip after ten years in 1995, it is still adored among fans worldwide.
• Bill Watterson has given only a handful of interviews or public appearances throughout his career.
• His 1990 Commencement Address at Kenyon College, from where he himself graduated, is a case-study of his guiding philosophy of life: The pinnacle of creativity is playfulness.

The amount of effort we are able to put when we are completely in charge and are not working for someone else is astonishing.

While a work ethic and a daily grit towards working consistently is a must, the only time one is really working hard without any stress, and enjoying it, is when the work is just for us.

It means to be able to break down a big system into its sections and putting it back together. The target is to identify the strong and weak links: how the sections work, don’t work, or could potentially work and applying this knowledge to engineer useful outcomes.

There is no engineering method, so modular systems thinking varies with contexts.

• The ability to see a structure where there’s nothing apparent.
• Adeptness at designing under constraints.
• The capacity to hold alternative ideas in your head and make considered judgments.