Notes from My Week, No. 6

It’s very nearly finished, honest! I have two more pieces to fit, and one of them just needs a simple cut. The other one, well it’s going to be more complicated...

I’ve had a good time running. My watch has been running the show again, and over the past fortnight I think it has only given me one rest day a week. In fact as I write this I have run for seven days in a row. It seems like a lot, but the impact is very low compared to how I used to run, so it seems to be manageable. I say that – the majority of the running is truly easy; but the workouts are not at all!

Last week I got the opportunity to run tempo repeats again (and in fact for a slightly shorter duration than the previous efforts). That in itself is a nice challenge, only I picked a route that had inclines at either end of the road I was running along. Cue 90 seconds or so of pain, climbing while trying to maintain my pace.

This weekend I was rewarded with a long run of just under 90 minutes, and I nudged over 10 miles (16.1 km) when allowing for a bit of a cool-down walk home. It was quite refreshing to be able to run for an extended time again, even if it did wipe me out for a good chunk of the weekend.

As well as the running itself, I also try to fit in some strength training. Mostly just a way to prevent injury and keep an eye on my body, it’s also another way to make myself ache. Recently I bought myself some kettlebells and am working on introducing some more weight into my routine. Kettlebells are a great way to introduce more weight to things like squats, sit-ups and other core work. I haven’t done too much of the more dynamic exercises that are possible, with the exception of a punishing upper body workout. It might not be running-specific, but it’s a routine that really makes me know I’ve worked hard and I can feel it for days afterwards.

The cardigan is still going but I think it is nearly done. I have a few more rows to knit at the most, and then it will be a case of making it up and blocking. It’s been a long time coming...

I've thought about spinning, but have yet to sit down and get going. Soon hopefully.

I’ve been getting some more consistently good sleep, and I think I’m benefiting from it. I am probably not getting quite enough sleep yet, but that’s something I can work towards.

Systems Thinking is a term I have yet to easily define, but it is what links together several types of work from the last few weeks. Within that term, I feel like there is a single unified model or way of thinking that will incorporate many of my areas of interest. The key is finding what it is.

Using some of my training funds, I took a leap into starting a systems thinking course provided by UnSchool. I did participate in a similarly-named course several years ago, but for one reason or another, it didn’t benefit me as much as it perhaps should have. It was very academic and taught within the context of my industry. In many ways it was an introduction to systems engineering rather than thinking, and it suffered from many of the same problems as I find whenever I try to read the SEBok Wiki (it’s dry...)

The UnSchool of Disruptive Design does not operate in my industry and its whole image and messaging is refreshing as a result. It seems to be more focused on positive sustainable change across societies and environments. This fresh look at the concept of systems appealed to me, and I hope to be able to learn new ideas to take back to the more rigid world of engineering.

I’ve been spending time thinking about the difference between complicated things and complex things. I was quite happy using the idea that we work in a complex environment, with complex systems, but that it doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated, but having read more of one of my current books (Team of Teams), I’m not sure if I’ve got the language quite right yet. In the book, the authors describe complicated systems as having many parts but relatively simple connections. Complex systems, on the other hand, have many more interactions and exhibit nonlinear changes. When I was thinking of describing a system as complex, I think I was in broad agreement with the authors, but by saying that a complex system doesn't have to be complicated, I meant that it didn’t have to be overwhelming. We may reach the same broad conclusion by the time I get there, but it’s a very interesting read.

Also in the world of complexity, I have been (re-) listening to a podcast series by Sean Brady. Sean is a forensic engineer who started a podcast talking about failures of different engineering projects and how they happened. In his Simplifying Complexity series, he talks more about the science of complexity than the practice of managing it, but it is very useful nonetheless.

Finally on this topic for the time being, and also from Team of Teams, I was attracted to the idea of robust vs resilient systems. In the engineering world there appears to be a strong trend to build robustness: structures are over-engineered with factors of safety; regulation is powerful; more policies, processes and procedures are the answer to any emerging problems with how work is done. This robust approach produces a strong and predictable approach to a problem, so long as the problem is itself predictable and fully understood. But in a complex system, an unexpected problem can show how fragile the inflexible robust system is.

What is needed to tackle problems in complex systems is a resilient system. Such a system can even benefit from unexpected changes, much like an immune system learns to adapt to new threats. The key message I have taken so far from this reading is that, rather than trying to predict every outcome and design a solution for it, our efforts should be focused on having the ability to reconfigure what we do and how we do it, i.e. we need to be more flexible. The question, as always, is how we can do that.