Rest - in the form of unmotivation

I would think it's good to take a break from things for a while. The question is, how long? and the next question is, is it okay if the break is because you are unmotivated?

human technology builds humans

Once upon a time, Touch Screens (thx iPhone) became Feel Screens (sensag) which then by chance technologically combined with Hearing (thx siri) and Visual Screens (thx cameras) in a such a way so as to build the human sensory network.

The Start.

The importance of doing

Albeit 'knowing' is a very important element when "doing".  But "doing" is damn challenging.  Especially when you don't have drive to do. 

market without the flash

but enough flash to do the job.  find the balance

consulting tools - everything is mostly the same

there is so much similarity in the various tools and approaches that consultants *currently use to address issues...each approach carries it's own trade-offs and it's own unique benefits.  Over a long period of time we *think we start to learn which trade-offs and unique benefits work best, but we can not be too sure for too long.

the grass can always look greener on the other side

the key understanding here is that greener grass still has dead spots, learn to live with the dead spots, if it gets too much, try another green patch; but realize there will be dead spots

do something new/scary everyday

this is hard, if not impossible, but perhaps 1 new thing per week to start?  finished mine yesterday - presenting material I was prepared to present in front of 90+ people,

the drawbacks of slacking

downward spiral, things get worse when you aren't working

the benefits of hard work

they pay off even when you stop working

pharmaceutical's use for the future

the augmentation to our system to meet computers half way. ..will require heavy reliance on pharmaceutical technology (along with a host of others).  That's another check for ending prohibition of certain substances.

get outta the details, on the daily

don't forget about the ability to 'take yourself out of the details' and see things from a higher perspective - people do it differently than others - i was reminded by the ted-talk today by the military strategists on ted.com damn, what's his name....

balance

the art of the balance and the understanding of the trade-offs that one balance-time.space position has versus another

new organizations services through app

alright, here's the internet service 'pitch' (like an ipad app/game) it's a portal that you can search different problems that a bunch of people are brainstorming and solving - on the space, and you get paid for certain aspects, your efforts are somehow tracked and just by playing a little bit can make you a couple of $20 bucks a month).  the people accessing the app produce working 'bits' of information that are 'pitched'/selected by companies that need to be solved (these things do exist, but they aren't easy easy to access and make sting...is there a fundamental reason? is the shift among us?  The co-eveloving landscape and the times of shift.  Anyway it's based ont eh polymath project and this aspect of openess, based on the ted talk from tdxwtrlo

What woudl be the effects of 'income restriction' - 2 points, the first, after a certain earning a year you are taxed so heavily that you basically start subsidizing a certain part of the community.  so in this, you sew up the loops and their holes.  2. You then focus policy around social-beneficial tax-breaks, at international levels...which is another big root in this branch.  how has this been attempted before? or has it?

starting with the report

roughly suggesting, one should really draw a graph or chart and ask....what things am i interested in comparing? what are the questions I want to get information on.  ...can be tough to know in advance.

The leap of faith

When should you take a big risk? Two things come to
Mind. 1. When you are most comfortable and 2. when everything is crumblIng around you. The latter context for leaps of faith may seem easier, whereas making the jump when you are in the comfortable context requires balls.

Boundary Transitions

When the nature of the systems constraints change over time. They can be slow or sat an they can be auto-catalytic or they can require monumental and continuous effort

the importance of failure

for most things, failure is only a matter of time - the key is how well you manage failure.  Let's not get so focused on doing things successfully, rather let's build resilience and focus on dealing with failure better.

On Planning, On Meetings

Sit in an all day meeting and realize how much work you could have gotten done.  If you can't cancel or leave the meeting, you've got to make efficient use in it - but how?...besides intermittent iPhone e-mailing, the obvious answer is brainstorming for another project/task; prioritizing to-do list; and then the obvious 'actively day-dream'...I would refer to this as a combination between active listening and day dreaming.  Greatness ensues. But don't do too much daydreaming...

Open your eyes to error

Just like success, error has it's place. and it's damn important.  Even when you can eliminate error (and when you think you should....it may be best if you didn't).

Experimental meshing of two coherent ideas

freezing one water molecule at a time sounds ridiculous, because we know that we can just let our freezer do it!!! your freezer is able to adjust the tension in the environment...the ambience that is pervasive within the systems dynamics (see McKelvey's work on adaptive tension).... The tension values essentially are between, Order -T- Complexity -T- Chaos. 

The system is subjected to the environment because it's an ordered system. Trying to subject a complex system using an "ordered environment" works usually and relatively okay, but systemically, this approach has tragic consequences.  Perhaps submiting a complex system to a complex environment would have effects on complex systems? Is this like doing safe to fail experiments?  not sure, but i do know the old adage, you require variety to beat variety...aka you need complexity to beat complexity

The possibles, the plausibles.

I don't deal with probable too much anymore, because strategy on the probable can be done by a whole bunch of those damned gaussian particles.  But in terms of the Pareto particles, now those are what i'm talking about!

So anyways, we have the adjacent possible from kauffman, we have the imaginable possible from snowden - same word, two different meanings? how do you know?

Entropy is the amount of hidden information, where high entropy means lots of hidden information and low entropy means less hidden information.

The number of ways agents in a system can be rearranged without changing the macro view of the system is it's entropy. The more things u can rearrange the higher the entropy. The smaller the number of things you can change before affecting the macrO view of the system, the lower it's entropy.

Over time, entropy tends to increase. E.g drop of black ink in water will dissipate to form a uniform greyish color. Does this make sense?

Thanks Boltzmann.

Safe fail

Doing things is challenging and really takes years of practice - especially when failure is assumed to be 'bad' as opposed to seeing it as learning.

A question arises: what about failure in ordered systems; impose it have the same implications as it does in complex ones?

macro vs micro states and entropy

Boltzmann's macro vs micro states re: entropy - something along the lines of how many micro states can fluctuate before it affects the macro state .... if the number of micro states is high than entorpy is high (the system is highly disordered) if the number of rearrangements is small (then system is ordered, system is highly

if something is highly ordere small rearrangements are noticeable // if disordered, you can rearrange a lot before you notice.

tl;dr - facilitation #1

Alright - helped facilitate  a theme/action planning brainstorm during a strategic planning session today. did pretty good. Want to work on some of the things I forgot to employ - possibly a bit to unstructured at times. overall good though, would like to facilitate more often.

facilitation today

today I facilitated a strategic planning session - the group was supposed to discuss themes and action items from the topics we were provided.  We had about 7-8 facilitators with each facilitator having a group of 6-7 people around a table.  We had 2 brainstorming sessions and kept the same group for both times. 
 During the first session I thought I kept a good flow but I would have liked to premise the discussion a bit more.  I didn't really have a chance though - I left to get some sticky notes and they had already started when I came back!  Either way, some good themes and action items emerged.  I think I covered it well and did some good on-going reviews/summarizing as I would basically say, "alright this is what I've got down as a few themes have emerged, does this represent what you guys are thinking/saying".  I could have asked some more probing questions within each of the key points, but I was a bit too loose on that and forgot.  I would like to faciliate another session soon so I can keep these learnings in check.

The second session was too lax.  We focused on a few brainstorming options and then I decided it was going nowhere so I zoned in on one issue.  That was good, but then I got too lax again.    I let them beef over process a bit too much and didn't bring it back up to strategy enough (I did it a few times by saying, "okay let's go back to this" or "let's try to not to discuss things we can't change" ( <-- of course with this there is always the ability to challenge the assumption that you can not in fact change it...but let's start being a little more real! vs. the extreme sub-zone within complexity in the cynefin framework) - on that note: i would have liked to run a bit of a cynefin blend on our excercise today - let's do strat planning by showing the framework, getting the problems/oppoorutnities and contexutlziaing and then based on the ontology of the system determining the decision-making heuristic.

, anyways, back to the task: In retrospect: i should have been a bit more structured during the 2nd brainstorming session.  having the same group led me to think that I could let them talk more openly, but in fact, I let people talk too long on process issues...witout much payoff! 

I need to make eye-contact with my audience members; didn't do that enough. Also, wear a god damned belt next time, air head!

the ubiquity of connection

can connections amongst data sources become ubiquitous (connect your sleeping data, with your food intake data, with your nature of voice/tone data, with....work data, with school data)?  can data be automagically collected and presented to individual humans? can it? will it? how? 



Combining: living data (energy consumption, eating, sleeping, eating, other habits) with nature of conversation (tone, satisfaction, etc.), with work/employee data, with networked data, with forecasts (weather data, stock market, etc.) with government approval ratings, with .....>WITH everything!