So, I've been really hung up on Systems Thinking and I've been having a little bit of a hard time explaining what i mean by that. when i give examples, it's easy for people to just say "oh, that's creative problem solving", but i know that's not quite right. for the lay-person, i would say that the default thinking is very based on internal models of how things (but especially people) act or operate. Here are a number of assumptions that i find very common in "default" thinking: - People will follow rules. - People will not do nice things unless incentivized with money. - Technology can stop working for no reason. - I would act this way in this situation, so other people will also act this way in this situation. - This thing is easy for me to understand so it will also be easy for others to understand. - I care a lot about this, so others also care a lot about this. The fundamental point here is not what the assumptions specifically are, but that they are assumptions. We can describe the "default" mode of thinking as "i am going to choose to rely on my assumptions to achieve my goals". In contrast, "systems based thinking" is all about starting at "i don't know that i have all the knowledge/experience/perspectives so i'm going to try and figure that out to find a good solution." It's a process of finding more information, trying to identify patterns, and turn those things into actions that you can take. systems thinking is usually not needed for something really simple. if you need salt, you can just get salt. you don't necessarily need to do too much investigating about it. there's a grey area also. if you need sunscreen, you might just get random sunscreen at the store, or you might choose to make a matrix of the most important sunscreen qualities (skincare vs preventing sunscreen vs skin feel vs travel convenience), do research into clinical studies about sunscreen to find out which factors in sunscreen are the most important for the attributes you care about. When you get to complex problems, however, the simple "default think" solutions won't work. Let's consider something like weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you usually can't just say "i'm going to eat less" - there's a million factors that can affect how much you eat, including - your appetite, social factors, health factors, environmental factors, your budget, your energy levels, your responsibilities, etc, etc, etc. Systems design and thinking gives us the tools to navigate these kinds of complex topics. it shows us ways to understand complex webs of interconnected factors and gives us insights on what changes we can make for maximum impact