Jay Matthews

On Darwin's influence of Psychoanalysis

Core argument: This paper argues that the formal structures of many organizations in postindustrial society (Bell 1973) dramatically reflect the myths of their institutional environments instead of the demands of their work activities. Societal / institutional complexity has added to the core activities needed to perform a productive act of labour.... See more

9 elements of flow: 1. There are clear goals every step of the way 2. There is immediate feedback to one's actions 3. There is a balance between challenges and skills 4. Action and awareness are merged 5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness 6. There is no worry of failure 7. Self-consciousness disappears 8. The sense of time becomes... See more

The aim is to test the hypothesis and fail early, because it’s significantly cheaper and more efficient to make potential errors and test in prototyping than in a live solution.

What I’ve seen, over the last 12 years of doing this work, is people discovering that by telling their story and sharing their narrative, no matter how hard it may be, they are helping other people, and in helping other people, they’re healing themselves. And that seems like a physical law of our universe, almost.

"Long ago, before the Great Clock, time was measured by changes in heavenly bodies: the slow sweep of stars across the night sky, the arc of the sun and variation in light, the waxing and waning of the moon, tides, seasons. Time was measured also by heartbeats, the rhythms of drowsiness and sleep, the recurrence of hunger, the menstrual cycles of... See more

Where the production organisation has strong output controls and depends on managing relational networks, the institutionalised organisation has ambiguous outputs and depends on confidence and stability it achieve by following the rules of its environment—conforming both to the opinions of external constituents as well as the demands on internal... See more