Developing mastery in systems thinking

[James Accolade]

A few weeks back I stumbled on systems thinking and was wondering whether or not it is something we can develop mastery in. Like can we set a goal to be able to master systems thinking and become proficient in solving systemic problems?

[Rilles]

Of course.

[Value]

Possibly, but it seems like a bit too general of a theme to be a field of mastery. IMO Rather systems thinking could be a component of, or be used as a tool for other fields of mastery.

[OctagonOctopus]

Master it by using it to create something you love

[Tuan]

i have been working on this topic for sometime too...I think its more about how well you can categorize components of the system and put a name onto it and set goals for each components...

[The_Alchemist]

Read:
1.Principles
2.Seeking Wisdom
3.50 Psychology Classics
4.Business Creativity
5.Josh Kaufman Business MBA
6.30 Second Physics
7.Instant Science
8.Big ideas (Daniel Smith)
9.50 Econ Ideas
10.50 Philosophy Ideas

That will give you an excellent foundation into the systems that govern reality

[Carl-Richard]

The "easy" way: take psychedelics, study epistemology. The hard way: develop deep knowledge about one field and general knowledge about extremely many fields.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[James Accolade]

22 hours ago, The_Alchemist said:

Read:
1.Principles
2.Seeking Wisdom
3.50 Psychology Classics
4.Business Creativity
5.Josh Kaufman Business MBA
6.30 Second Physics
7.Instant Science
8.Big ideas (Daniel Smith)
9.50 Econ Ideas
10.50 Philosophy Ideas

That will give you an excellent foundation into the systems that govern reality

Thanks! Will Read

[The_Alchemist]

1 hour ago, James Accolade said:

Thanks! Will Read

Yw, hope you enjoy (I def did!) and if you got any qs/comments/ideas lemme know, I love to chat those books as they are among my favs!

[Guest EmptyVase]

I don't know whether Systems Thinking is something to be mastered, as it is simply a recognition of our entanglement within the underlying systems we find ourselves in.

What helps to develop this kind of thinking though is viewing everything as sub-elements of a larger system at play. That larger system is not a thought, so this sentence only serves as a pointer to: reality, existence, now, consciousness (or your favorite word for this matter). But I wouldn't even want to limit the word 'reality' to the word system. Rather, systems emerge because reality makes them existent.

In practice, this means that we'd have our eyes open to the nodes, connections and the dynamic interactions within these sub-elements of reality. Scaling down or up meta-levels is crucial to view life in that way. Zooming from macro to micro or vice versa.

Take a plant in your room and go from macro to micro.

What do we have? A plant, of course. But also, there's the vase of the plant. And the dirt. Maybe you find little piecey of rock in the dirt. Let's dig deeper. There's a plant, but there are also leaves on the plant. If we take a closer look at the leaves, we can actually see intervowen patterns, sort of the 'nerves' of the plant. If we zoom in further, we eventually land at the cellular level. If we zoom even further, we reach molecules. But what are molecules, but atoms with connections?

You get the idea. Systems, within systems, within systems.

From our POV, the plant was macro and every level 'below' the plant was micro.

What if we take another POV and look at the room where the plant is in? Suddenly, the plant is the sub-element and the room is macro. From this POV, the plant as a sub-element is micro.

You can do the same game with virtually anything. Just try it out. Looking at the world in this way may develop a deeper understanding for systems and how they interrelate.

Edited December 28, 2020 by EmptyVase

[Hello from Russia]

Yes, it interconnects very closely with strategic thinking and strategy as a discipline. Think of it as mastering strategy. You probably won't need to spend 10-20k hours 24/7 mastering just that, but it is for sure worth putting in a lot of resources in learning/studying/contemplating about. Using it combined with contemplation yielsd very good results

P. S. These are actually my core/signature strengths and zone of genius (systems thinking+strategy+contemplation as a stack) and I treat them as such

[StarStruck]

Look into lateral thinking if you want out-of-the-box problem-solving. I read it a while back. Soon I will reread it.