Useful Ideas for 2025

Gurwinder Bhogal published an intriguing list of 25 Useful Ideas for 2025.

A list of 25 is too many. Maybe my little brain can remember three.

On the other hand, these are all thought-provoking.

The 25th is on Sphexishness. Sphexishness is when you blindly follow a rule without checking if the rule works in the present situation. Gurwinder Bhogal has a great example. Ants follow each others’ pheromes which lead them to food and back home. But some ants may start moving in a circle, and all the other ants will follow their loop, circularly following each other until they die of exhaustion. Virtually all bureaucracies are sphexish. Our limbic systems are spexish. Luckily we have a prefrontal cortex, and if we could only learn how to use it properly we’d be better thinkers, innovators, collaborators, and even happier.

Here are three other useful ideas that corelate to mindsets and MindShifting (the other 21 are all useful and interesting, though).

Region-Beta Paradox:

Often we fail to improve our lives simply because things don't get bad enough. If your new job is hell, you’ll leave it, but if it’s just unsatisfying, you’ll likely grind it out. Thus, small problems often threaten our quality of life more than big ones.

Event Bias

One reason negativity dominates the news is that bad news tends to happen suddenly while good news tends to happen gradually so is rarely newsworthy on any particular day. But even though it may not get as much attention, good news is always happening.

Explanatory Inversion

Questions rest on unexamined assumptions, so always try flipping them. For instance, don’t just ask why there is poverty, ask why there is prosperity. This is a great brainstorming technique and dramatically changes your perspective.

How can you use these to make 2025 a great year?