"The enemy of creativity is boredom, the friend is alertness" - Brian Eno
Distracting fonts slows people down
Choose some very difficult problems to work on, then bounce between them- a "network of enterprises"
Daydreaming and multitasking strip hard problems of their context, which may be the key to solving them
Different kinds of topics unlock creativity- agile and education
When you hit a dead end, you shift your attention back to something else
Collaboration
Your close friends know everything you do- friends at the fringes are most likely to know things you don't
Closing yourselves off from the world (bonding) is useful when it's clear what to do. Integrating with the world (bridging) introduces new ideas.
You can combine multiple tight-knit teams into one organization, but those create "structural folds". Each of those adds to structural instability.
People are both loyal to in-groups and vicious to outsiders. In groups converge on single ideas (groupthink), but can bring back diversity of ideas with a single dissenter.
For problem solving, diversity trumps ability. Every person with a similar skillset you bring in adds increasingly less value
People are less lazy in their thinking when they think they might be challenged
Smaller groups tend to be more diverse, because in larger groups it's easier to clique with people who are just like you
To grow an organization, you need people who are "double insiders." They are intimate members of more than one group.
Aim for "goal harmony," rather than "team harmony"
Making people solve an important, mutual problem that couldn't be done alone builds bonds
Workplaces
Workers are most productive when they have control and autonomy of the workspace
Superficial neatness is not worth the price of deep resentment
Don't dream big dreams on behalf of other people- it shouldn't look the way the boss wants it to look.
Building 20 at MIT was such a hotbed of creativity because it enabled wild collaboration, had exposed water and circuits, and everyone felt permission to modify it as they saw fit
Don't create a tidy person's version of what a mess should be
Improvisation
Kind of blue was recorded in 7 hours, Sgt peppers was recorded in 700
Improvising is cheaper
We rarely have control, just an illusion of control
The flexibility you get with improvisation allows you to change with circumstances, rather than risk having your control taken away by an external force
When you improvise, your prefrontal cortex cedes control, and filter your thoughts less
If you handle a difficult situation like a human instead of a robot or a corporation, your critics seem like bullies
Lack of preparation is not the same as a lack of judgment
Improvisation takes practice, a willingness to yes-and, and the willingness to listen
Oratory isn't a speech, it's a duet with the audience
Winning
You can win by creating chaos and capitalizing on your ability to improvise
You don't need to play well, you just need to make your opponent play worse
"If you're planning more than 20 minutes ahead, you're wasting your time"
Change your tactics faster than your opponent can adapt
Established businesses have a hard time pivoting and adapting
A preference for speed over perfection leaves your enemies off-balance and scrambling to respond
Get yourself in a position of opportunity, improvise around obstacles, and move quickly
Trying to synchronize wastes time and brings everyone down to the slowest member.
Incentives
Governments continue to be motivated by the idea that the better they comprehendd the world, the better they will be able to control and exploit it. The problem is that when you start quantifying the world, you start changing it to be better fit how you measure it.
If what you care about isn't measured, then losing it doesn't officially count
Anything simple enough to measure is probably too simple to reflect a messy situation
You can hit the target and miss the point
The world changes faster than a bureaucracy can keep up, so performance measurement systems inherently measure yesterday's problems
Making targets complex just makes the ways in which they get gamed in more complex and unpredictable ways
It's better to be simple and accurate than complicated with the illusion of precision
A simple diagnostic is more likely to actually be used than a complicated one
Simple estimates are also less likely to overfit
You can make it impossible to game the system by making the measures more unpredictable (like an exam. This isn't different than having one complex measure- it's multiple simple measures that are hard to simultaneously game.
If the tests are deliberately vague, the punishments should be as well
A goal can't be a measure- you need to separate the role of testing the system from the role of improving the system as far as possible.
Automation
Paradox of automation- The better the automatic system, the more out of practice human operators will be.
Automatic systems accommodate incompetence by being easy to operate and correcting mistakes
They erode the need for practice
They fail in unexpected and unpredictable ways
Digital devices tune out small errors and make opportunities for Big errors
The world is messy, but automatic systems need to be tidy.
Computers lend something a degree of credibility that it may not have
Since the massive lists of people are usually confidential, it makes it difficult to scrutinize them
We have a tendency to accept the defaults that are presented to us
Many systems are designed to supplant, rather than support human decision making
Even if humans can override the computer, how will they know what to do if they don't practice?
Instead of having humans monitor machines, we should have machines monitoring humans- ask it for a second opinion, or to intervene when we're making mistakes
You can have an automated system require brief input from a human to keep them sharp
Creating chaos and confusion forces people to be more careful and engage their brains
Resilience
Antibiotics have been making our bodies "tidy," when we need to them to be messy
If you try to control a complex system, things that didn't seem to be important can turn out to be critical
Innovation in cities comes not from industry clusters, but diverse-yet-complementary industries
There is a correlation between diversified economies, complex economies, and rich economies
Zoning laws reduce diversity by keeping parts of the city from integrating with each other
Stereotypes make the world predictable, and we like that
The broken-window fallacy ignores why a building was abandoned in the first place
We find it easy to dismiss the contributions outsiders make because their presence makes us uncomfortable
Life
Benjamin Franklin's life would not have been better if he had spent more time filing papers and cleaning up his desk
We tend to focus on organization, but if we focused instead on practical action, we wouldn't need to get organized
Categories can be practical, or neat and logical, but not both at once
Simple filling system- recently used stuff on the left. Flip it over, and useful stuff is on top. A messy desk is more ordered than it appears.
If you always want to be able to find your stuff, put it wherever your instinct tells you
Neat filers have a tendency to keep everything, which makes it more difficult to find anything useful
Maintaining order takes time
Using a search for email is almost always faster than looking in folders
Having a loose plan or no plan allows you overcome unexpected obstacles and seize unexpected opportunities
If something is important, it can be done immediately. Otherwise, don't give away your future with appointments.
Algorithmic compatibility depends on being able to ask and store the right data, which is impossible in a messy world
People introduce themselves with useless biographical information because they don't want to risk saying something interesting
We get so obsessed with control, we are intimidated by talking in real-time
Real creativity, excitement, and humanity lie in the messy parts of life, not the tidy ones
In an informal game, everyone must be kept happy. If people want to stop playing, the game ends. This means compromise, empathy, and accommodating younger, weaker, and less skilled players.
Children on dangerous playgrounds adjust for the risk. Standardization is dangerous, because play becomes simplified and you don't have to think about what you're doing.
By overprotecting kids, we believe we're treating them with love, but we're limiting their scope to become fully human