Each time that I dive into programming, I fall in love. The obvious results of seeing your work on a formula be implemented are amazing. Programming is concrete in that way.
Yet, each time that I set out to code, I learn something more important than the syntax and structure: coding in itself is an incredibly useful skill to know. However, what’s even more powerful than knowing how to code is knowing what code can accomplish.
Understanding how a program can work and implemented in the real world is the ultimate time-saver and entropy-attenuator. It allows you to find areas that can be automated and then go learn how to automate them. It is, of course, useful to have the syntax on hand, but it’s also not that difficult to simply look up how to do something and copy and paste the code. If it can be automated, it probably has been coded before. And although identifying ways to implement a program can be incredibly valuable, it is much more valuable to know when a program can be implemented.
This is true of most things in the technological age. Knowing esoteric facts is no longer the superpower it used to be. With information at our fingerprints, the most important skill is knowing how to manage it — and before we mange it, we must first understand the systems that drive it all.
Yesterday, I bought my first book in systems thinking. Ever since I heard August Bradley reference it in one of his notion videos, I knew I wanted to learn more. It is a paradigm of thinking that I think I have mirrored in the past but have never understood. I am interested in developing systems to automate tasks and control the entropy of the mind. Life is scattered, and although sometimes we want to profit from that dispersal (i.e., during creativity), human minds often suffer from excess entropy. We must bring order to the chaos we inhabit. We must design our lives. This, in no way, means we must throw spontaneity out the window. It does mean, however, that often the best way to achieve what we want in life is to set up a system to get us there.
Systems are often the causes and solutions to our problems. Systems can create their own problems or have problems due to external interactions (yet, even with an external interaction, the blame can be placed on the system itself). Systems also can create solutions — either by redesigning another system or by introducing an external interaction to get the system back on track. When the FED lowers interest rates to increase inflation, one system is creating a solution for another. It’s how the world operates. Yet, even with the FED’s attempts, inflation may not stabilize where they want it to. Systems are complex — they are bigger than the sum of their parts. The sooner we realize the complexity and power of systems, we will understand how to design our lives to achieve the peak of our growth and progress.
