Practical philosophy is the primary reason why it is worthwhile to read or write books and articles about “better management of life” and explain it to managers.

First of all, avoid gurus like Tony Robbins. They are funny, and they might be even therapeutic with their ideology of positive thinking and other “Christmas stories”. It is so lovely to watch from your soft armchair in a warm room by the end of the year, when it seems that not only is the snow fresh but also the coming year is going to start as a blank slate. 

We will start with what “better” means in the context of managing life. 

Better

Better in this context means using as few resources as possible to achieve the maximum final result. Such a “better” strategy conforms to the Evolutionary Stable Strategy, ESS. 

Life

Life in this context encompasses all possible domains, ranging from everyday life to the management of social units such as companies, hospitals, or states. The tools for such management are provided by practical philosophy. Practical philosophy provides a set of mental tools that enable one to grasp reality, issues, and events in their holistic totality.

Management and KPI’s

One can manage to drive a car, execute heart surgery, or cut costs in a company or a state by using specialized tools (mental and physical) for each of these tasks. However, just as driving a car does not prove that we can manage our everyday life, the execution of surgery does not enable us to understand and manage ourselves as human beings. Consequently, to run finances for a company or a state does not mean we manage them in a strict sense of management. 

To manage a complex task, a manager must not only understand the complexity of the indicators that influence the behavior of what is managed, but also be able to manage all such indicators. Suppose indicators define a task (production, product, event, or any other Key Performance Indicator (KPI). In that case, it is only possible to change how such a task (production, product, event, etc.) evolves by forcing a change in indicators.

KISS

In such moments, the manager must decide which indicators to act upon and which to set aside, as resources needed for such manipulation are always limited. In management, he has to follow the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) principle.

But does that mean that he can also understand an organisation by applying the KISS principle? No!

In selecting indicators, the manager must prioritise them. It is self-evident that one can prioritise better (more efficiently) with a better understanding of complex interrelations behind each indicator and among all of them. The one who could understand the totality of interrelations would manage best. No single living entity has not only enough mental potential to understand everything but also enough other resources. 

So, what to do? Are we incapable of managing in principle?

Complexity and Sensemaking Activity

Of course not. For that reason, I have written the previous post. It is written as if intended for undergraduate philosophy students of logic or ontology. It is also written for the purpose of practical philosophy for the everyday manager. It provides a reassuring and simplified explanation of evolutionary biology and neuroscience discoveries about how our mental abilities evolved and operate in practice. Reassuring because the mentioned discoveries relieved managers of the need to search for explanations rationally, each time and all the time. No need. Evolution has hard-wired the vast majority of management solutions so that we do not have to understand them. 

But on the other hand, that same evolution brought us memes. Memes are mental entities that are not hard-wired, but are produced each time a mental process occurs. This faculty of constant writing and rewriting of memes allows us to decipher new aspects of reality as co-constructed by our own memetic activity. It is not only physical reality, co-constructed by our physical activity and management, but also memetic reality, created by our constant “making sense of…” 

KISS + complexity

That means that it is a severe mistake if a manager asks for simple KISS explanations of the situation. Still, it is not only desirable but also necessary to ask for KISS solutions. Explanations must be as complex as possible to allow actions to be as simple and manageable as possible.

I do not hide that this post explains why the www.andrejdrapal.com page, as an explanatory page of certain traits of reality, has the primary goal of enabling you with mental tools to understand complexity.