table of Contents
02 The underlying logic of life against entropy
What is a "dissipative structure"?
1) Replace "fixed thinking" with "growth thinking"
2) Use "flow thinking" instead of "stock thinking"
The physicist Schrödinger said: "All things in nature tend to change from order to disorder, that is, entropy increases . Life needs to constantly offset the positive entropy generated in its life to maintain itself at a stable and low entropy level. Life is based on negative entropy ."
So many people are talking about entropy, saying they want to resist entropy, but what exactly is entropy?
01 What is entropy?
Entropy is a word derived from the second law of physics and thermodynamics.
When a non-living system is isolated or placed in a uniform environment, all movement will be quickly stopped due to various friction forces around it; the difference in electric potential or chemical potential will gradually disappear; the tendency to form compounds The same is true for the material; due to heat conduction, the temperature gradually becomes uniform. As a result, the entire system eventually gradually degenerated into a lifeless and lifeless mass of matter.
As a result, the "maximum entropy" that physicists has become has been reached , which is a persistent and unchanging state in which no observable events will occur anymore, and it has fallen into dead silence.
Entropy represents the degree of chaos in a system, or the degree of disorder. The more disordered the system, the greater the entropy value; the more ordered the system, the smaller the entropy value.
Therefore, negative entropy represents the vitality of the system. The higher the negative entropy, the more orderly the system. This is why Schrödinger said that "life depends on negative entropy for living" .
For example: at the beginning of each week, we will clean up the rooms, but at the weekend, we will find the rooms in a mess.
This process is the process of entropy increase
Another example: the continuous eating, drinking, breathing, and (plant) assimilation of living organisms, that is, metabolism, is a process that resists entropy increase .
Don’t underestimate this very simple-sounding law of entropy. It is ubiquitous in nature. It is the most basic and important law. The chemist Atkins once listed it as one of the “four laws that drive the universe”. One.
It is an extremely firm belief in the minds of physicists. Even the gravity formula can be rewritten, but the law of entropy increase has never been violated. Professor Zhang Shousheng believes that if human knowledge advances further, Newtonian mechanics may not be correct, quantum mechanics may not be correct, and relativity theory may not be correct, but the formula of information entropy is eternal.
If we extrapolate it to the development of the entire universe, we will find that if there is nothing outside of the universe in which we exist, that is, if no one inputs energy into this universe, the ultimate outcome of the universe is to move towards complete disorder. , Which is death.
If we infer it to enterprise management, we will find that management has only one thing to do, which is how to combat entropy increase. If it fails to effectively combat the increase in entropy, the company will die silently.
If we extrapolate it to life, we will find that if we do not fight against the increase in entropy, our vitality will gradually become lifeless and lifeless in a closed system or in a balanced state.
At that time, even if life had not yet ended, the vitality had come to an abrupt end, which confirmed the famous saying "Many people died at the age of 20, and were buried until the age of 80."
However, how do we fight against entropy increase?
02 The underlying logic of life against entropy
To combat the increase in entropy, it is necessary to introduce a very important theory—dissipative structure.
The "dissipative structure" was proposed by a scientist named Prigogine, who also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for this theory.
What is a "dissipative structure"?
The dissipative structure is a non-linear open system far from equilibrium (whether it is a physical, chemical, biological, social, or economic system). Through continuous exchange of matter and energy with the outside world, a certain parameter inside the system When the change reaches a certain threshold, through fluctuations, the system may undergo a sudden change, that is, an unbalanced phase transition, from the original chaotic and disordered state to a temporally, spatially or functionally ordered state.
The dissipative structure has two most important characteristics , one is openness; the other is non-equilibrium. When a system has a "dissipative structure", it can effectively combat entropy increase.
So, how do we build ourselves into a "dissipative structure" that can resist entropy increase based on these two characteristics?
1. Openness
The entropy of an isolated system will definitely increase with time. When the entropy reaches its maximum value, the system will reach the most disorderly equilibrium state, so the isolated system will never have a dissipative structure.
Therefore, the dissipative structure must be generated in an open system. It must have a negative entropy flow from the environment to the system, and it can offset the entropy increase of the system itself. Only in this way can the entropy of the system decrease and the degree of order increase. ( We must open our hearts and keep exporting and importing )
Wikipedia and the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica are very professional, but Wikipedia does not require a group of experts to collect and compile. It is an open system and everyone can contribute content to it. Because of this, it even has a higher degree of dissemination than the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica.
So, how do we make ourselves an open system?
1) Replace "fixed thinking" with "growth thinking"
Many people have always maintained the notion that we are born with certain fixed abilities and qualities, such as "I am not good at sports", "I have no talent for learning mathematics", etc., and therefore cannot be changed.
But is it true?
In fact, human intelligence, creativity, athletic ability and other qualities can be forged and can be changed through time and effort.
In 2006, Carol Dweck, a professor of behavioral psychology at Stanford University, published a book titled "Thinking Mode: The New Psychology of Success". In this book, Dweck summarized his 30-year research results and proposed two thinking theories: fixed thinking and growth thinking.
Fixed thinking is about believing that we are born with a fixed amount of talents and abilities. People who adopt a fixed mindset tend to avoid adjustment and failure, thereby depriving themselves of a life rich in experience and learning.
The growth mindset is a systematic thinking mode with mental plasticity as its core belief. It believes that through practice, persistence and hard work, human beings have unlimited potential for learning and growth.
People with a growth mindset can deal with challenges calmly. They are not afraid of making mistakes or embarrassment, but focus on the process of growth. They are not afraid of failure because they know that learning from failures and mistakes will eventually become success.
As the big data of scientific research tells us: if a child has a growth mindset, this advantage may close the gap between the richest and poorest families, because the growth mindset children will get better and better.
From this chart, we can also see one thing that we often overlook, that is, the two have different treatments of other people’s success: growth-thinking people will regard the success of others as their own Inspiration, and fixed-thinking people will regard the success of others as a threat to themselves, which will cause a great sense of insecurity and vulnerability. And such a sense of insecurity and vulnerability often makes him choose to block his ears and close his eyes, thus cutting off the channels and ways of self-growth, making the whole situation worse.
2) Use "flow thinking" instead of "stock thinking"
A pile of oil paint lying on the desk will not automatically turn into a wonderful oil painting. It must be because there is some kind of external energy exchange. For example, you picked up the paintbrush, opened the paint, and started painting. The paint can become an oil painting.
What does it mean?
It means that only after exchanging energy with the outside world, a person can undergo earth-shaking changes. Such a person is a person with "flow" thinking, while the opposite is "stock thinking".
What is the typical behavior of "stock" thinkers?
He is more willing to save his money and let it generate interest than to invest in himself in his studies; he is more willing to continue to do his present stable and comfortable job than to change to a more suitable and more promising job or industry; Rather than recommending the good articles and books he has seen, he is more willing to collect them quietly; rather than communicating with those excellent people, he is more willing to keep others from knowing his thoughts.
Unfortunately, in this way, the increase in entropy will increase, and the crisis will be latent. According to the "law of increasing entropy", entropy is the opposite of orderly prosperity. However, on the surface, prosperity and order are a recessive state of entropy.
Therefore, when we see the appearance of prosperity and order, we think that entropy does not exist, but in reality it is quite the opposite. Entropy is watching in secret. It's not that it doesn't exist anymore, it's just invisible.
In 1975, 24-year-old Kodak engineer Steve Sassoon invented the world’s first digital camera. When he presented this amazing result to the company’s senior management, the arrogant management could only take 100 photos of it. · The 100-pixel strange machine sneered—"No one wants to see their photos on TV." At that time, Kodak was arrogant in the film era.
More than 30 years later, when Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, the decision makers of that year would not have thought that it was the digital camera invented and hidden by their own company that sounded their death knell.
History is always surprisingly similar, and the same thing happened to Motorola and Nokia. Sticking to the "stock" and scorning the "flow" will eventually bring about the inevitable result of "the present is good and the future is bad", and this result is often not affordable for ordinary people.
In 2012, Ren Zhengfei had a very important speech called "Huawei 2012".
It sounds like he is singing bad news. In fact, he is more soberly aware that Huawei as an enterprise, like all other enterprises, always has a huge threat, which is entropy. Therefore, Ren Zhengfei believes that as long as Huawei exists for one day, it must fight against entropy.
He did the same with Huawei:
Make huge investment in Huawei's R&D. For example, when Huawei invested more than 90 billion yuan in R&D in 2017, R&D investment accounted for nearly 16% of revenue. This R&D investment intensity may be greater than the combined R&D investment of Ali and Tencent. Both are big, even more than Apple. In the past 10 years, a total of 240 billion yuan has been invested in research and development, and Huawei has also ranked first in the world for patent applications for many years.
Since 1997, Huawei has continued to introduce management experience from outside sources, including IBM, Accenture, and Boston Consulting Group. They have successively provided Huawei with changes in many aspects, enabling Huawei to make continuous progress in management innovation, organizational innovation, and process changes, laying the foundation for Huawei to become a global company.
These are all using "flow thinking" instead of "stock thinking". As a well-known domestic company, even if it does not make huge investment in scientific research, it can be proud of its existing "stock"; however, Huawei does not think so. What comes is "flow", the energy exchange required by the open system.
3) Replace "temporary learning" with "lifelong learning", and replace "no more exploration" with "lifelong exploration"
Some people are learning every day, no matter more or less. Some people learn it once in a while, and it takes seven or eight months to read a book.
The former, I call "lifelong learners", and the latter, I call "temporary learners". For the former, learning is like breathing, for the latter it is like an emergency plaster, only when you are stimulated or when you need to work.
For the "lifelong learner", he has built himself into an open system through daily learning, and can produce compound interest effects .
For the "temporary learner", he is a closed system, unable to resist the increase of entropy, and unable to produce compound interest effects. Naturally, it is not obvious in the short term, but in the long term, there is a huge difference between the two.
Many people stop exploring after they reach adulthood. They stop exploring the world and self. They just want to walk on that long clear path and lead a step-by-step life. But I don't know that according to the law of entropy increase, the shadow of entropy has already followed it, and the arrival of the "middle-age crisis" is only a matter of time .
And those "lifetime explorers"?
They are very different. They always have a strong curiosity about the world, about themselves, and about others. They want to explore the things they don't understand, and they want to solve the inexplicable mysteries. A movie, a trip, a magazine, or a conversation, they can all discover fresh information, knowledge or wisdom from it. They are like containers with open mouths, greedily absorbing everything from the outside world.
Therefore, if you want to build yourself into an "open system", you need to do at least three things:
- First, replace "fixed thinking" with "growth thinking".
- Second, replace "stock thinking" with "flow thinking".
- Third, replace “temporary learning” with “lifelong learning”, and replace “no more exploration” with “lifelong exploration”.
2. Stay away from equilibrium
Far from equilibrium is the second characteristic of the "dissipative structure".
The equilibrium state refers to the state in which the macroscopic properties of the various parts of the thermodynamic system do not change for a long time without external influence.
Prigogine, the proponent of the "dissipative structure", believes that non-equilibrium is the source of order .
So how can we stay away from equilibrium?
1) From the "comfort zone" to the "learning zone" or even the "panic zone"
The 3 areas in the picture can be expressed as the level of things you want to learn:
- The outermost circle is the "comfort zone", which represents knowledge or tasks that are not difficult for you to learn, and you can be in a very comfortable mental state.
- The middle circle is the "study zone", which represents those work, study, and thinking that are challenging for you and feel uncomfortable but not too uncomfortable.
- The outermost circle is the "panic zone", which represents too much affairs or knowledge beyond your ability, and you will feel serious psychological discomfort, which may lead to collapse and even give up studying.
In the comfort zone, you can do it well, because every day you are in a familiar environment, doing what you are doing, and communicating with familiar people. Even you are an expert in this field and treat people in this area. I feel very comfortable with things.
This is the temporary "balanced state", because you can bring everything to a relatively balanced and comfortable state without too much effort.
However, don't forget that the equilibrium state is when the entropy is maximum.
At this time, you learn very little, progress slowly, and lack challenges and mobility. This is a state of seemingly stable and comfortable, but crisis-ridden, that is, "false prosperity".
If you want to fight against the increase of entropy in life, according to the dissipative structure, you have to stay away from the equilibrium state, that is, leave the area that makes you feel very comfortable, and take the initiative to move towards the "learning zone" or even the "panic zone".
Amazon CEO Bezos did just that. He expanded Amazon's self-operated e-commerce business to AWS cloud services and FBA logistics systems. Moreover, when Amazon was doing its own e-commerce business, it boldly introduced third-party sellers to let them all open stores on Amazon to compete with their own self-operated stores. Amazon started by selling books online, but Bezos is still unwilling to develop a kindle reader to beat his own paper books with e-books.
If Amazon just stays in its seemingly very powerful self-operated e-commerce business, it will certainly be able to make good profits and reach a stable equilibrium within a period of time.
However, as time progresses, companies will definitely lack vitality, lack of innovation, and eventually die.
It is precisely because Bezos is very aware of the serious harm of "entropy" to an enterprise, so he is trying to overthrow Amazon every time he has managed to establish a good sense of balance, and constantly put money and resources into new areas; within the enterprise Create various forms of competition.
It is precisely because of this that Amazon has created a heavyweight star business, and Bezos has also become the world's richest man. This is a huge force away from equilibrium.
2) Subversive growth
Personal growth follows an S-shaped curve. At the beginning, there will be a very long flat state, and then it will suddenly lift off like a rocket, and finally remain stable at a high position.
But this is not subversive growth.
Subversive growth is not only an overflight of the S-curve, it is a number of overflights. It requires us to complete an S-curve growth, then enter the second S-curve, start over, and continue to subvert ourselves.
In 2007, IPOD accounted for more than 50% of Apple's revenue, and iTune accounted for 74% of the market. It stands to reason that this is exactly when a product is in full swing, and normal people's thinking must continue to make this product and make money with it. But Jobs is good, he wants to personally overturn this already successful product.
So he made the iPhone again. By 2012, the iPhone had accounted for 58% of Apple's revenue and 70% of its profits. This is the "subversive growth" of Jobs, he used his own iPhone to subvert his own IPOD. He used a new S-shaped curve to overturn the S-shaped curve that he had finally climbed up.
The same is true if you want to stay away from equilibrium, you need to walk on the long flat road again and again, and then jump to the peak, after finally jumping to the peak, you have to start the second S-curve, and just like this, continue to subvert yourself .
The reason why this self-subversion is difficult is that once we reach the upper platform of the S-curve, inertia will occur. At this time, it is the peak period of a certain stage of career, the peak period of a certain stage of self-development, and it is a state that looks very good. However, if you stop in this equilibrium state, you will no longer gain growth and progress, and the final outcome is a drama of entropy increase.
For me, I have done at least a few very disruptive growth after work.
From the sales department to the marketing department, and then from the marketing department to the sales department; from working in the workplace before to now working independently, each time is a subversive growth.
In every process of subversive growth, it has never been smooth sailing. Every time, I will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, as well as the loneliness and fear that follow, but the gains are very huge. I His life has also been greatly expanded.
So, let’s summarize now, two ways to stay away from equilibrium:
- First, leave the comfort zone, walk into the study zone, or even the panic zone.
- Second, disruptive growth.
This is the underlying logic of life brought to us by the law of entropy increase in physics-throughout our lives, we have to fight against entropy increase, or our vitality will die out in silence.
And the way to fight against entropy is to make yourself a
- "Growth Mind"
- "Flow Thinking"
- "life-long learning
- Lifelong Exploration"
- Away from comfort zone
- Dissipative structure capable of continuous subversive growth (constant input and output and unbalanced).