Mike's 62 Favorite Ideas

These are my 62 favorite and most used ideas for understanding the world. This is a daily email of short explanations of the ideas. 

Think of this as a tour guide to Italy, but instead of Italy it's my thoughts. 

A few examples:

An easier question

An easier question is the idea that sometimes we answer a slightly different and easier question rather than the one at hand. For instance, is your team’s coach any good? That would depend on the metrics we use. To answer an easier question though we might think: well, do I like the coach? This makes sense. Life is complicated. There are so many moving pieces no one can evaluate them all. It is okay then to answer an easier question. But we should be honest. There’s a lot of evolutionary power in our subconscious that we may not want to immediately dismiss. ‘Liking’ as the reason may lead to a helpful conclusion, and we should acknowledge that.

&

Something is always happening

Something is always happening is the idea that within a system of sufficient size there will be interactions. Sometimes these will be the interactions we expected, sometimes not. Rather than answer an easier question we can think of all the things that might have happened and consider the success equation for what did happen. Related to SIAH is the birthday bet and networks.

None of that makes sense!

Okay, so here's the thinking. The emails all cross-reference other ideas. Part of SIAH is the idea that we answer an easier question. Those two ideas are distinct but connected. That's what this email series will be.

For sixty-two days you will get a short email about one of my favorite ideas. 

But wait, there's more!

Also included are the epub and pdf of the whole set of ideas. Each idea is bold so that when the "Restricted action section" notes "ego" and "stakeholders" the reader (YOU!) can jump around.