These are notes I made while reading Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows. It is a book on Systems Design, or perhaps better, understanding systems. These systems can be software, drinking water systems, political systems, or the world climate “system”

On resilience

Resilience is not the same thing as being static or constant over time. Resilient systems can be very dynamic. Short-term oscillations, or periodic outbreaks, or long cycles of succession, climax, and collapse may in fact be the normal condition, which resilience acts to restore!

System traps

Sometimes systems fail to work, Meadows refers to these as ‘traps’ and identifies a list of common traps, and how to escape from these. It is good to reference the book in case you encounter such traps.

One of the trap mentioned is success to the successful, which may kill compe…