My Identity
When I had to change job I’ve asked myself a lot about my identity. What started as an inquiry into my professional world went over the boundaries and reached my personal sphere. I am writing every day to learn more about myself. I want to keep on writing to discover more about myself and leverage the many articles I wrote so far.
A brief list of questions about my identity:
- how to be a good person.
- How to live a good life.
- How to create purpose and meaning.
- How to make the best use of my time.
- What is happiness? How to understand it and live with and without it.
- How to develop an interconnected system of habits to grow as a healthy, wealthy, and systemic human being, conscious citizens of the world, human beings, members of humankind.
- Develop self-awareness, self-expression, because I want to be more intentional.
- How to stay healthy.
- How to make my life meaningful, worthwhile.
Relationships
I cannot live alone. My life has a sense because of the people around me. What shall I know better about my relationships? How can I live better with them? For them? I would like to dedicate more focused reflection to relationships.
An initial set of questions about relationships:
- How to have good relationships.
- How to take care of my family.
- How to be a good partner.
- How to be a good father.
- How to be a good son.
- How to be a good relative.
- How to be a good friend.
- How to be a good citizen of the World.
- How to spend more quality time with quality people.
Learning, Teaching, Education, Knowledge, and Culture
Learning how to learn is important because if we are not effective and efficient in learning, We waste our time. We would not have good knowledge to make better decisions. How can I learn effectively and efficiently? What do I need in the different moments of my life to make the best decisions?
On the other side of learning, there is teaching. If education is something that somebody else does to you, learning is what happens in your mind, about the knowledge you build, to do the things you want to do. They need to meet, To have the best learning, we should learn how to learn, but we can also get help from the best teachers. What’s the best way to teach? When and how do we need to teach? What are the best tools and techniques to teach in the best and most effective way?
How to transfer knowledge between generations? Books, movies, stories, art, architecture, laws. Culture is how we make learning tangible. How is it possible that every human being has to start from scratch each time?. What can we do to optimize the synthesis of knowledge, its storage, and transfer to newborn humans?
Knowledge and culture. What is the Minimum Viable understanding that every human being should have to be a good citizen of the world? What is that set of disciplines, fields, notions that everybody should know?
What do we need to know to live a good life, be sustainable, healthy, make good habits, be of service to the community, minimize suffering, and contribute to the evolution and progress of technology, culture, and science?
They are related. We need all of them to be interdependent. So, a question that I have at the intersection of many, if not all of those problems, is: how can I build the right set of habits to contribute to the solution of all of those problems at the same time?
What about growing, nurturing, and educating children? A Child is a human being that changes quickly in a short time. How can we optimize the education and the inspiration of their minds in the different levels of growth and evolution in their path to becoming adults? How can we impact and inspire children profoundly before becoming fully developed citizens of the world and evolving them into changemakers?
Health and Habit making
Why is it so difficult for us to stay healthy? Why is it so easy to build bad habits to get unfit and prone to diseases? It is still a matter of culture, education, and learning, and also practices. So how do we install healthy habits?
How to be a good thinker
Thinking is an essential quality of being a human. The brain, somebody said (who?), is the most complex object in the Universe. We are alive and conscious, we live and survive perils, we love and nurture (Hello, Anne! 😎 other living beings, we learn, observe, understand and know, we imagine, design, build and share, and many more things, thanks to the fact that we think.
You might say not everybody thinks, that’s true, and that’s my favorite problem: how do we increase the quality of our thinking? How do we improve our decision-making capability?
Connections:
Observation, imagination, fantasy, creativity, understanding, learning, education, teaching, leadership, decision making, critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, communication, collective intelligence.
How to be a good communicator
We evolved as human beings by finding the best food sources and avoiding the deadliest predators. How? By developing our communication system. In the era of networks of networks of information pervading us, communication is a key skill to thrive and prosper as a species.
How do we become effective and efficient communicators? What’s the role of design and thinking in communication? What’s the impact of good and bad communication? What’s the role of storytelling?
Connections:
imagination, fantasy, creativity, understanding, learning, education, teaching, leadership, decision making, critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, thinking, collective intelligence, sustainability
Ecosystem Health
There is no planet B. At least not until we start to colonize other planets. We must contribute to the ecosystem’s health by building a more sustainable society.
If we make the World better, we make the lives of all living beings better. Each of us can have a role in making the world better by constantly giving small positive contributions while minimizing the unintended negative consequences.
A sustainable society increases the chance to imagine and create better futures for all by leaving a positive, durable, and compounding legacy to future generations.
The problem of improving the Ecosystem’s health is common to everybody. If we aim to positively impact people and the planet, we need to gather our strengths together for the common goal of making the world better for all.
How can we do that? What’s my role in that?
Connections:
Critical thinking, collective intelligence, sustainability, systems thinking, systemic design, education, development, networked thinking, collaboration, cooperation, inclusion, justice, UN SDGs.
Design
Solving problems, designing solutions, and building them, are at the foundation of our society in every field.
The design approach should be one of the skills and competencies every human being should acquire. What is the minimum viable knowledge needed to be an effective and an efficient, and sustainable designer?
Design as a mindset, a craft, and an approach belongs to science and engineering, education and fine arts, philosophy, and any other human endeavor.
Business, entrepreneurship, and leadership became so complex that they need design to be executed effectively and efficiently.
How to be a good designer?
- How to understand, communicate, and manage complexity?
- How to minimize unintended consequences?
- How can we imagine alternative worlds? Better futures?
- How to create networks of networks of changemakers creating a positive impact on people and the planet?
- How can we leave a legacy that will make us remembered positively?
Connections:
Design thinking, critical thinking, systems thinking, systematic design, sustainability, education, training, mentoring, coaching, professional development, business design, interaction design, User Experience Design, Service Design.
Technology for Life
How to augment life?
How to raise collective intelligence?
How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.
How to live multiple lives?
Connections:
Technology, design, collective intelligence, sustainability, systemic design.
How to be creative
How to be more creative?
How to facilitate everybody’s creativity?
Connections:
Creativity, Design thinking, learning.
Art
If design solves problems, art creates them. Nurturing curiosity and finding means to express ourselves are satisfied by artistic endeavors. We look for beauty and novelty, mystery and entertainment. Art also has a beneficial aspect, as meditation, regeneration, communication, and socialization.
How can we make art a part of everybody’s life?
What’s the intersection between science, art, and play?
How is technology influencing art, and vice versa?
Are games art?
How can we enjoy the beauty of drawing and painting?
How music affects our lives?
How can writing transform us?
Connections:
Design, personal development, technology, communication
Problem Solving
How to solve problems?
How to solve all of my favorite problems?
How to create an approach to life, taking into account a systems approach?
How can I face the challenge of solving all of my favorite problems?
What are those tools, approaches, techniques enabling a holistic approach to problem-solving?
My favorite problems should cover and intersect with my interests, and they should function as magnets, attractors, poles, towards which/with which I should filter information flows.
Connections:
Critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, problem-solving