Stigmergy

Some ideas arrive wearing uniforms. Stigmergy arrives in a kurta — plain, comfortable, and ready for work.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Watch a master carpenter teach an apprentice. He does not lecture; he lets the boy hold the wrong end of the saw until the wood itself becomes the teacher.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. The idea has done its job if, the next time it happens to you, you smile before you react.