When a ‘nudge’ graduates to ‘jig1,’ it integrates into a system. We are all a system (information, time, value), so is a team or an office floor. Once integrated, a jig results in generative value. It means that the original change (the act of generosity) that led to the intervention (nudge, jig) is useful ‘after we left the room.’ ; after the book is put down, the workshop ends, or you forget what you did last Tuesday.
Nudges are anecdotal, and jigs are systematic. Nudges are external to the system; nudges are a part of it after the initial stimuli. Nudges are pixels; jigs are vectors (which operate on multiple pixels, ones not seen yet).
The currency of this entire image is attention. In nudges, our attention is externally pointed (hijacked); once integrated, the attention is inward-facing towards our thinking, resulting in creativity.
This week, I invite you to consider when you’re nudged and when you last wrote a mental jig for yourself.
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Matthew B. Crawford initially wrote this duality in The World Beyond Your Head
It seems to me that some Jigs perpetuate the system but have negative value for the individual.
Systems exists to exist. Sometimes they are inadequate, but the mechanisms of the system inhibit people from leaving or finding other alternatives.