I like this thought from Tom Peters

I'm nearing the end of Tom Peters's 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money via DailyLit.

As part of his 95th way he writes:

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100 WAYS TO SUCCEED #95:
NON-LINEARITY RULES.
NON-LINEARITY = LIFE.
IF SUCCESS [OR FAILURE] IS DETERMINED ALMOST ENTIRELY BY THE UNPREDICTABLE [LITERALLY], THEN WHAT?

"Most of our predictions are based on very linear thinking. That’s why they will most likely be wrong."
—Vinod Khosla

"The difficulties ... arise from the inherent conflict between the need to control existing operations and the need to create the kind of environment that will permit new ideas to flourish—and old ones to die a timely death. ... We believe that most corporations will find it impossible to match or outperform the market without abandoning the assumption of continuity. ... The current apocalypse—the transition from a state of continuity to state of discontinuity—has the same suddenness [as the trauma that beset civilization in 1000 A.D.]"—Richard Foster & Sarah Kaplan, "Creative Destruction" (The McKinsey Quarterly)
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One of the most important lessons we may teach our children is how to be creative and think outside the box. There can be huge improvements, orders of magnitude more productive, as we gifuratively toss the shovel and build a steam engine to dig ditches.

Traditionally education in America is very linear. It is an easy approach to teach. Teaching children to be creative is hard, but it can be done. It may be done best as we try to teach ourselves to be more creative. A good book to start with is Conceptual Blockbusting.

It takes effort to think outside the box and it isn't natural to be non-linear, but it can be very rewarding.


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