The Strategy of All Things
How Systems Thinking Shaped My Life
9 weeks until "Harvesting Game" launches
When I look at something, I kind of squint hard to really see it.
Not to see its surface. Not to see what everyone else sees. But to perceive the cogs and gears operating beneath, the invisible forces hurling it into the future, the hidden connections linking it to everything else. I'm trying to understand how everything connects to me, to us, and the planet.
This way of seeing, this systems thinking, isn't just a perspective I adopt occasionally. It's fundamental to how I navigate the world. And it's the conceptual foundation upon which "Harvesting Game" is built.
I'm sharing this with you because writing this novel taught me something unexpected: I discovered not just the story I wanted to tell, but how my mind actually works. In the process of creating a fictional world where a protagonist must navigate between competing systems, a traditional maroon community, and a technologically advanced metropolis, I realized I was mapping my own approach to understanding reality.
Systems thinking became how I processed my experiences with toxic workplaces, community challenges, and the broader struggles of oppressed people trying to preserve their identity while adapting to rapid change. What seemed like disparate life experiences suddenly revealed themselves as interconnected elements of larger patterns. The frustration at work, community organizing, technology development, and creative pursuits—they were all part of the same system. That system had rules that could be understood, questioned, and potentially transformed —or in most cases, re-made.
Choosing to Be a Generalist
We live in an age of specialization. From early education onward, we're pushed to narrow our focus, to pick a lane, to become experts in increasingly specific domains. There's value in that approach, certainly. But it's not the only path.
I chose to be a generalist.
Not because I couldn't excel in a specialty, but because I was more interested in the spaces between disciplines rather than any single field itself. The bridges connecting art and science. The overlaps between psychology and economics. The shared patterns in natural and human-made systems.
I’ve been pursuing this seemingly contrarian path throughout my life, but primarily as a working adult. I was scolded, disregarded, and overlooked at different points and sometimes altogether. But choosing the direction for my growth that felt right for my intuition and where I felt best in the world, led me to become an expert in seeing the forest, diving down to the trees, getting in the dirt and waterways, then jumping back up to see the other biomes outside of the forest. All while recognizing the trees themselves and the best ways to work with arborists.
This generalist approach is often dismissed as "jack of all trades, master of none," but that criticism misses the point entirely —and I’m neither a jack nor a master. The generalist isn't trying to become an expert in isolated domains—they're trying to grasp the nuances and connections between them.
And those connections reveal patterns that specialists, with their necessarily narrower focus, might never see.
Seeing the World in Systems
A system is simply a set of things—people, animals, plants, institutions, ideas—working together as parts of a complex whole. But that simple definition belies the profound complexity of how systems actually operate.
Systems have emergent properties that can't be predicted by studying their components in isolation. They contain feedback loops that can amplify small changes into massive effects. They demonstrate resilience in some areas and fragility in others, often in counterintuitive ways.
When you start seeing the world in systems, a switch flips. A traffic jam isn't just a frustrating delay; it's an emergent property of individual decisions interacting with the design of infrastructure. A family argument isn't just an emotional exchange; it's a complex interplay of histories, triggers, and relationship dynamics. A social movement isn't just a protest; it's the visible manifestation of shifting cultural values and power structures.
And a book? A book isn't just words on pages. It's a system designed to transfer ideas from one mind to another across time and space.
Using It at Work
Systems thinking revolutionized my professional life long before it shaped my writing.
In meetings where others saw isolated problems, I saw interconnected challenges and opportunities. I tracked issues down to their core. While colleagues focused on immediate solutions, I naturally mapped downstream consequences and potential unintended effects.
This sometimes made me the annoying person in the room, asking "But what happens next?" or "Have we considered how this affects that?" However, more often, it allowed me to propose more holistic approaches that addressed the root causes rather than just the symptoms.
My career advanced not because I became the best at any single skill, but because I became valuable at identifying connections others missed and anticipating ripple effects others hadn't considered.
Using It in My Art
When I finally turned my attention to writing seriously, systems thinking didn't just influence my process; it became my process.
"Harvesting Game" didn't begin with a single character or plot point. It began with a system: a world with specific rules, forces, and dynamics. Characters emerged not as isolated individuals but as products of and participants in that system. Plot developments arose not from arbitrary decisions but from the natural consequences of system interactions.
This approach created a narrative that feels organic rather than contrived. When readers say, "I didn't see that coming, but it makes perfect sense in retrospect," they're responding to the system-driven nature of the storytelling.
But more than that, the process of building this fictional system helped me understand the real systems I was navigating. The protagonist's struggle to balance ancestral wisdom with technological innovation mirrors my own journey as someone working across multiple domains. Their challenge of finding liberation without abandoning community reflects tensions I've experienced in my own professional and creative development.
The book explores how individuals navigate, resist, and sometimes transform the systems they inhabit. It examines how small actions can trigger cascading effects. It raises the question of whether we shape our systems or our systems shape us, suggesting the answer is "both, simultaneously."
Through creating this story, I realized that systems thinking wasn't just how I approached problems, it was how I made sense of my entire lived experience.
Using it for everyday life.
In parenting, it helps me see beyond immediate behavior to the environmental factors, emotional needs, and developmental stages influencing my children. Rather than just addressing the tantrum or celebration of the moment, I'm constantly aware of the system in which those moments occur.
In partnership, it reminds me that relationships aren't transactions with neat input-output equations. They're complex, adaptive systems that require attention to feedback loops, emerging patterns, and the surprising ways small gestures can amplify into profound connection or disconnect.
Even in the mundane logistics of running a household, systems thinking reveals the hidden choreography of resources, time, energy, and attention that keeps everything functioning.
How I Hope to Use It
"Harvesting Game" is just the beginning of my exploration of systems through storytelling. I'm fascinated by how this approach might illuminate other domains:
Sports, where the dynamics of teams create results far different from the sum of individual talents
Cities, where infrastructure, culture, economics, and human behavior intertwine in both planned and unplanned ways
Public consciousness, where ideas spread, evolve, and transform through complex social networks
These explorations won't just appear in future books. They're part of how I hope to contribute to our collective understanding of the world, and perhaps, in some small way, to how we might design better systems for ourselves and future generations.
The Pattern in the Noise
Systems thinking isn't always comfortable. It reveals complexities that defy simple solutions. It uncovers connections that distribute responsibility in ways that challenge our desire for clear villains and heroes. It illustrates how good intentions can lead to harmful outcomes when system dynamics aren't understood.
But it also offers hope. When we see the world as interconnected systems rather than isolated problems, new possibilities emerge. Small, well-placed interventions can have a profoundly positive impact. Seemingly intractable challenges reveal leverage points we hadn't noticed before.
"Harvesting Game" explores these tensions between complexity and hope, between deterministic systems and individual agency. It doesn't offer easy answers, but it does suggest that by understanding the systems we inhabit, we gain new power to influence them.
And perhaps that's the most important insight systems thinking has given me: we are never merely passengers in the systems around us. We are participants, with the capacity to learn, adapt, and, when necessary, transform them entirely.
Next week, I'll show you systems thinking in action. We'll take everything I've shared about seeing connections and leverage points and apply it to something many of us use daily: public transit.
But we won't just critique what's broken. Instead, I'll walk you through how the same approach that shaped "Harvesting Game" can reimagine transit as a liberation network, transforming it from a service that moves people between predetermined points into a community catalyst that distributes resources, builds relationships, and creates pathways to freedom.
You'll see how small shifts in perspective can reveal entirely new possibilities, and how the "liberation powers" embedded in my novel might work in our real world. It's systems thinking applied to one concrete challenge, showing how this way of seeing can generate practical solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms.
If you're curious to learn more about the book, the "A Window to Liberation" universe, or my other work bridging systems thinking with creative practice, visit heyitsmaxime.com, where you'll find additional resources, a game I’m working on based on this book, deeper dives into the themes we're exploring here, and ways to support Harvesting Game.
"Harvesting Game" launches July 29th, 2025. Pre-order HERE.