The last issue of the year, where I talk about what's on a lot of people's minds: what they can try to do to stop their 2026 from being like their 2025. Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as "try twice as hard." Against systemic causes, even the power of spite can only get you so far.

The Big Idea is short bursts of daily practice, sketching and writing in a Systems Adventure Journal. Through these practices and related reflections, we learn about systems, and as we turn our focus to particular situations, systems become a partner in our learning journey.

Here’s a demo of one of the songs that will be on the album, as well as testimonials I have received from my song commission work! If you would like to commission a song and help fund this album project, you can learn more here :) www.kickstarter.com/projects/cop...

Safety Nerds and @ruthmalan.bsky.social, you might be interested in the paper that @kissane.myatproto.social refers to: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Love this picture from Ray Ison’s book. The people in the system bring their own personal history of thinking and understanding.

Give future you a lovely gift! (Help fund recording expenses now, get digital download later. Be part of making something lovely happen.)

"I use the word system to refer to any collection of elements that, through preferential interactions between them, generate a boundary with respect to other elements with which they can also interact in such a way that a totality results" -- Humberto Maturana

Birds: Buttecup Festival 3-356

The mossy stream: Buttercup Festival 3-358

Points to CLDs by @hibri.net, @chrissimon.au

The first one I added was @spydergrrl.bsky.social's Workshop Alchemy. The cool thing about a workshop is it's just a meeting with rules. Tanya gives great advice for implementing rules that make your meetings productive (instead of time wasters for everyone concerned) and making decisions stick.

I'm 4 days late, but Ruth's Advent(ure) in System Seeing is a brilliant exploration of systems thinking for beginners or experts, and you can catch up easily.

“Zines are back, baby” — @spavel.bsky.social

Rich Pictures are sketches of situations that include people in swirls of interactions. They’re not in any “standardized” format, and they don’t have “analytical” features like numbers on interactions…They are “earlier” than Domain Stories. But their very informality is useful in exploring the space

Day 3 #AdventOfSystemSeeing I’ll tap off on Advent(ure) of System Seeing self-boosts as we get further into it, but for now it’s still early days, and there’s a chance folk would still like to hear that there’s a Systemsy advent(ure) :) Today: Futures Wheel

Specifically: Bainbridge (Ironies of Automation) and Naur (Programming as Theory Building)

This one is fascinating…still think about a recent post about bikes and science… www.cbc.ca/news/science... > In reality, we know precious little about how the bicycle actually works, beyond the basic mechanics of "pedal turns gear that turns wheel."

My colleague and I have signed up, see you there!

We’re discussing this classic today. The #PapersInSystems community is a lovely community to have a focused conversation with — the discussions draw on so much experience, and draw in connections to other work.

For those who want a systems focused advent to wind up the year, it’s begun! Daily posts will refresh here: www.ruthmalan.com/Advent.html And will be posted to the page for the day (which will also hold notes and links to work people share here or on their own blog, etc.). #AdventOfSystemSeeing

'Drawing [isn’t] just for “artists” [..]. Think of it as a way of observing the world and learning' — Anne Quito #AdventOfSystemSeeing Day 1: Draw a Bicycle (and sketch a key mechanism) www.ruthmalan.com/Advent/2025/...

Today is the most useful (to others) day to reshare this, to reach those who might be interested in joining the systems seeing advent(ure) together. They can join any time, but starting in sync adds to the participative spirit of it.

If you are new to the #AdventOfSystemSeeing, do check out the About page: www.ruthmalan.com/Advent/About... It links to the prompt books from the past three years, so you can look at examples. And it links to some examples of work done.

Excited that my latest talk at the Complexity Lounge is now on YouTube. Titled "Humberto Maturana’s Time: Living in the Present," this talk explores Maturana's 2 modalities of time. This was a great project with new insights gained into how Maturana understood time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AHY...

December in systems: December 1

Indigenous communities began to paint these sacred, polychromatic murals almost 6,000 years ago. “But it didn’t stop there,” she said. ... "they continued to create these visual manuscripts for more than 4,000 years." news.txst.edu/research-and...

The next #PapersInSystems discussion is Monday Dec 1, 1-2pm Eastern, Josh Reynolds will lead, and the paper is "The Architecture of Complexity" by Herbert Simon. More info/sign up (free of course): ti.to/bredemeyer/a...

Looking for a technical book for a friend? Or for yourself? …Maybe even my book iOS Unit Testing by Example? Now's your chance to snag a deal at pragprog.com! Check out with discount code "save50" Do it while you can, offer ends December 1

There’s another Software Architecture Humble Bundle, this time with books from Pearson. www.humblebundle.com/books/softwa...

We've known about this for quite a while, but we haven't done enough about it: Open Source Developers Are Exhausted, Unpaid, and Ready to Walk Away

just in case nobody has done it before

I really l love it. The flute and the percussion. 🎶

If you’re thinking of participating in the #AdventOfSystemSeeing this year, you have a good reason to treat yourself to a new notebook to journal in, and maybe even some nice pens or whatever. Last year’s daily journal prompts got turned into this (pdf): www.ruthmalan.com/systems/2025...

Just read (via @ruthmalan.bsky.social elsewhere) and it too feels related cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-389-ov...

Starts in 3 weeks. Still some seats, and it’s a *lovely* group to join!

Another rereading advocate: "I'm very much a rereader. I reread all the time. Books wait for you, and they blossom in the time between readings..." - Helen Oyeyemi, New Yorker interview In general, there is so much value in rereading, especially books that impacted us profoundly in the past.

It's a launch day at @redmonk.com! My colleague @monkchips.com, along with his lovely coauthors @kimmykimkimber.bsky.social @wiredferret.bsky.social & @azimman.bsky.social have released their Progressive Delivery book into the world! Let me tell you about their book! redmonk.com/rstephens/20...

The next #PapersInSystems discussion is Monday Dec 1, 1-2pm Eastern, Josh Reynolds will lead, and the paper is "The Architecture of Complexity" by Herbert Simon. More info/sign up (free of course): ti.to/bredemeyer/a...

One of my standards. Once you have the flavoring pastes, it's easy to make this using tofu (or eggs) and whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. thekoreanvegan.com/best-doenjan...

Join us in discussing this on Monday (Nov 3)?

“wish I’d found this 10 years ago”

“this was a really good read! i especially like the chaotic layout of the book 😂” Still chuckling because … not wrong haha. About my technical decisions chapbook www.linkedin.com/posts/bjorn-...

Papers in Systems virtual meetup on Monday! bsky.app/profile/ruth...

The problem with "you can just do things" is that other people can also just do things. You can get into an arms race of just doing things, or learn how to build shared intent. One of those approaches is masculine and exciting. The other one actually works. Guess which one AI tools encourage?

It is worth mentioning from time to time: “alumni” can take the same workshop again without paying again. We all learn so much from folk coming back and playing different roles in the co-created experience, bringing reflections and new avenues to explore, etc.

Innovation is a tricky subject. The art of innovation is not well studied, at least not by name In addition, multiple disciplines have research that overlaps significantly, but the integration lags behind by decades, making shared empirical research or identifying more global patterns difficult

Next in #PapersInSystems: “User Driven Innovation: a condensed version of Eric Von Hippel's course,” curated by Bracken Mosbacker When: Mon Nov 3rd, 1–2pm Eastern Time (US/Canada) Notes with links to curated video segments: bracken.social/articles/use... Info/signup: ti.to/bredemeyer/u...

EVERYBODY GO READ THE AWS INCIDENT WRITE-UP! aws.amazon.com/message/1019...

You can't fix this by "increasing velocity" because that just makes things worse. (this is the prequel to the post above, there's a part 3 coming this week pulling together recent poastes from @ruthmalan.bsky.social @jarango.bsky.social and @eaton.fyi among other blueskies & from elsewhere)

Next in #PapersInSystems: “User Driven Innovation: a condensed version of Eric Von Hippel's course,” curated by Bracken Mosbacker When: Mon Nov 3rd, 1–2pm Eastern Time (US/Canada) Notes with links to curated video segments: bracken.social/articles/use... Info/signup: ti.to/bredemeyer/u...