“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets,”

Problem blindness is the first of three barriers to upstream thinking that we’ll study in this section. When we don’t see a problem, we can’t solve it.

if you wait for the bad things to happen, you can never quite put things back together the way they were before.”

Elliott later founded a sports science firm called P3, which assesses and trains elite athletes. The firm uses 3-D motion capture technology to micro-analyze athletes while they run, jump, and pivot.

What the world needs now is a quieter breed of hero, one actively fighting for a world in which rescues are no longer required. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

Good intentions guarantee nothing. What I find fascinating about upstream efforts is the way they reflect humanity at its best and worst. To go upstream is a declaration of agency: I don’t have to be at the mercy of these forces—I can control them. I can shape my world. And in that declaration are the seeds of both heroism and hubris.

Downstream efforts are narrow and fast and tangible. Upstream efforts are broader, slower, and hazier—but when they work, they really work. They can accomplish massive and long-lasting good.

But while upstream solutions are generally more desirable, they’re also more complex and ambiguous.

Swim lessons are further upstream than life preservers. And there’s always a way to push further upstream—at the cost of more complexity.