Leverage is achieving results significantly greater than the force you put in. Isn’t this what we all want in life?

In biology, convergence refers to the process wherein organisms evolve analogous traits that were not present in their last common ancestor. In other words, species that are not closely related to each other will find the same solutions to the same problems in their quest to survive.

The Law of the Minimum states that the yield of a crop will always be dictated by the essential nutrient that is available at the lowest level. No matter how abundant the other essential nutrients are, being deficient in one will always limit the crop’s growth. If the level of that nutrient is increased, another will become the limiting factor.

Starting something is hard, but so is stopping something. In physics, inertia refers to the resistance a physical object has to a change in its state of motion. Things at rest don’t start moving on their own, and planets continue to circle the sun without a means of propulsion. The phenomenon of inertia is the subject of Isaac Newton’s first law of

a mental model is simply a representation of how something works.

Our behavior changes based on both actual reward and punishment and our perceptions of it.

In the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari explains and examines how humans cooperate in extensive systems of shared belief.

propulsion is a force that drives an object forward.

There is a nuance here: that for humans survival is not merely a binary like dead/alive. We don’t want to just continue breathing, but to have a life that we perceive as having meaning, value, or at least a point.