💎 Friday Gems (AI and your brain, Systems Thinking, Creative Misogi, Occlupanids, and more)
Systems thinking is the art of seeing the invisible connections that hold the world together. Once you start seeing them, you never go back to seeing just the parts. - Monica Storrs
Hello dear readers,
With the World Cup under way and vying for attention, it’s time to reconnect with the real football. The opening round has been exciting with many underdogs like Ivory Coast, Morocco, Iran, Columbia, and Ghana tying and even winning against the behemoths like Brazil, England, and Spain.
My dream is to see one of the underdogs win to unseat the top seeded teams. One can only hope. :)
On to the this week’s gems!
Today's Gems
Technology: ‘Think outside the bots’: How to stop AI from turning your brain to mush
The Mindful Designer: An Introductory Systems Thinking Reading
Creativity: The Creative Misogi
Tools: The most underrated tool, Occlupanids 🤔
Technology
‘Think outside the bots’: How to stop AI from turning your brain to mush
"What's happening with AI is that it's giving us, for the first time, an easy way to trade process for product," Green says.
The essay can sound better. The presentation can look sharper. The retirement party joke can land perfectly. But the mental work, the struggle, the false starts and that moment when something finally clicks is exactly what your brain needs.
"It's like you're at the gym and a robot lifts the barbell for you," he says.
"You get nothing."
Companies are pushing their employees to use AI but do they understand the negative effects it has on people?
A few of the negative effects which are not as obvious include cognitive friction where we miss critical learning opportunities when the friction is removed by using AI and digital dementia, which is the cognitive decline when we excessively rely on digital devices, and then there is the memory loss that happens because we don’t connect with the information at a deeper level.
So what can we do to mitigate the downsides with having to use AI?
Pretest yourself on the information you’re about to ask AI.
Engage with the information you get from AI. Write it down, use sticky notes to write down key information. Break down the information in logical grouping. This repetition will help you slow down to better retain the information you learn.
Sketch out your ideas or write them down on paper however rough they are before you enter the prompt for AI.
Deliberately slow down and enjoy any friction along the way so you can better connect with the information.
It’s not easy when the expectation is faster turnaround and quick results but it’s important to take care of yourself first so you don’t lose your creativity and critical thinking.
Source: BBC
The Mindful Designer
An Introductory Systems Thinking Reading List
Systems thinking is a superpower. Most of us spend our days putting out small urgencies. Systems thinking allows you to look past the “event” to see the “pattern”. It teaches you to find leverage points—the specific places where a small, well-placed change can shift the entire structure.
Life is a collection of systems interacting with each other. We are made of systems and live in systems small and large. From the systems in our body to our families, our work, our community, all the way out to the universe we are surrounded by systems.
Each day we interact and are affected by systems in both good and bad ways so it’s important to better understand the mechanics, methods, and vocabularies of systems so we can get a holistic view of how they work.
In this post Monica Storss shares an approachable list for anyone to dip their toes or dive into the world of systems thinking.
I love the connection she made with movies to better understand the systems we live in. +1 to The Wire TV series and Jurassic Park, which are great examples that show how complex and unpredictable systems are.
In short: Systems thinking is the art of seeing the invisible connections that hold the world together. Once you start seeing them, you never go back to seeing just the parts.
Source: Monica Storss
Creativity
You should plan a really hard creative project this year
There's a Japanese Shinto practice called misogi which literally translates to "water cleansing." Misogi involves ritual purification of the mind, body, and spirit through physical and mental challenges
The challenges we face define us. The bigger the challenge the more we are changed in the process because it gets us out of our comfort zone and trying new things. Failure is a part of the learning process. The more we are open to pushing our creative boundaries the bigger the reward awaits us on the other side.
Having a word for this practice, misogi is good because we can apply it to any part of our lives, creative, athletic, or anywhere in between.
Think back to the moments in your life where you can clearly see the challenges that defined the direction of your life to where you are now.
Let’s become more intentional and make our dreams come true by choosing the direction we want to move towards. Let’s practice misogi to get out of our comfort zone to design our best life.
Source: Jake’s Desk
An now you know…
Occlupanids are generally found as parasitoids on bagged pastries in supermarkets, hardware stores, and other large commercial establishments. Their fascinating and complex life cycle is unfortunately severely under-researched. What is known is that they take nourishment from the plastic sacs that surround the bagged product, not the product itself, as was previously thought. Notable exceptions to this habit are those living off rubber bands and on analog watch hands.
Source: Andrew Jangjigian’s newsletter Word Loaf
Did one of the Friday Gems resonate with you? Please consider commenting, restacking, or sharing it with a friend. This is the simplest and most generous ways to support creative work.
It only takes a moment, but it makes a real difference.❤️
That’s it for this week’s Friday Gems.
In stillness, find your next step.✊🏽
