Very often, reading highlights, clarify and verify. In most ways, it sharpens my original approaches to my life. Not as often as you might think, once in a blue bit comes a book that flips the structure of my beliefs on its head, and tells me to "wake up", and question the original lens I view my world and operate in it. With regards to work and life, there was the book "the joy of not working". To relationships, "love, freedom, aloneness".
And now, "obliquity" ... which basically challenges the approach I approach things. But I have to say, I am rather convinced this is one of those books that could be pivotal, though it might not be clear to me how now or what form it might come in.
"Our objectives are often necessarily loosely described, and frequently have elements that are not just incompatible but also incommensurable. The consequences of our actions depend on the response of other people, and these responses spring not just from our actions but from their perceptions of our motives for undertaking them. We deal with complex systems whose structure we can understand imperfectly only. The problems we face are rarely completely specified, and the environment in which we tackle them contains irresolvable uncertainties."
"In obliquity, there are no predictable connections between intentions and outcomes. Oblique problem solvers do not evaluate all available alternatives: they make successive choices from a narrow range of options. Effective decision makers are distinguished not so much by the superior extent of their knowledge as by their recognition of its limitations. Problem solving is iterative and adaptive, rather than direct. Good decision makers are not identified by their ability to provide compelling accounts of how they reached their conclusions. The most complex systems come into being, and function, without anyone having knowledge of the whole. Good decision makers are eclectic and tend to regard consistency as a mark of stubbornness, or ideological blindness, rather than a virtue. Rationality is not defined by good process; irrationality lies in persisting with methods with actions that plainly do not work - including the methods and actions that commonly masquerade as rationality."
"The skill of problem solving frequently lies in the interpretation and reinterpretation of high-level objectives."
"When faced with a task that daunts you, a project that you find difficult, begin by doing something. Choose a small component that seems potentially relevant to the task. While it seems to make sense to plan everything before you start, mostly you can't: objectives are not clearly enough defined, the nature of the problem keeps shifting, it is too complex, and you lack sufficient information. The direct approach is simply impossible."
And possibly wrong. I guess.
And I ponder ..
