13Chapter 13: Three Ways to Meet a Problem

Working notes, not prose. This page is a research packet for drafting the chapter: the brief, source material, questions, examples, reader perspectives, and the earlier draft.

Brief

• Must: Introduce Learning, Creating and Becoming (MMM) through one dinner, framed as overlapping tools rather than a ladder or a law, and note what they leave out.
• Serves: It gives the book its practical instrument for how a representation-making creature responds to a world.

Quote options

1. “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” — David Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (1984), p. 38. [verified: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html] Why: Defines the Learning mode, and “created” already blurs it into Creating, which supports “overlapping, not a ladder.”

2. “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” — Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (1969), ch. “The Science of Design.” [verified: https://academics.design.ncsu.edu/student-publication/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Simon_H_ScienceofArtificial.pdf (Simon’s reprint in Design Issues 4, 1988)] Why: Makes Creating ordinary. Fixing the dairy-free dish counts as design.

3. “for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907), ch. 1, trans. Arthur Mitchell (1911). [verified: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26163/pg26163.txt] Why: A way into Becoming as ongoing self-making rather than a finished state.

4. “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.” — George E. P. Box & Norman R. Draper, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 424. [verified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong] Why: Presents MMM as a useful model, not a law, and points to what it leaves out.

5. “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” — Abraham H. Maslow, The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966), pp. 15–16. [verified: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/08/hammer-nail/] Why: Argues for having three modes rather than one. Not every dinner problem is a soup to measure.

Research

Core argument

1. Start from where Chapters 11–12 leave the reader. We now have a map of knowledge (11) and its sharpest, most limited tool (12). But a representation-making creature doesn’t only know. It meets situations that push back. The question shifts from “what can we know?” to “what do we do when the world doesn’t match the plan?” This is where Act III’s process view starts in earnest.
2. Open on the dinner and keep it to one evening. Three things go wrong or open up at once: the soup is too salty, one guest can’t eat dairy, and an unplanned conversation starts. Each asks for a different kind of attention. The earlier draft already does this well, so keep the scene, keep it short, and let the reader feel three pulls at the same time before any names show up.
3. Name the three modes by the question each one answers:
   • Learning (Measure, Model, Manipulate): “What is going on here, and how would I find out?” Its success test is whether the account holds up.
   • Creating (Map, Move, Make): “What can I make that meets this constraint?” Its test is whether the thing works for the guest.
   • Becoming (Marvel, Meander, Manifest): “What is arriving that I can’t order up, and how do I make room for it?” Its test is hard to name, and that difficulty is the point. Dewey’s traveler is a good hinge here: the same fork in the road becomes a different problem depending on whether you want the city or the most beautiful path (see Source material).
4. Show that the three are old, not new. Aristotle separated knowing what can’t be otherwise (theoria/epistēmē), making (poiēsis, whose end lies outside the act) and doing (praxis, where acting well is its own end). Arendt later split the active life into labor, work and action. MMM is a practical cousin of these triads, not a discovery. Admitting that early buys credibility.
5. Overlap, not a ladder. Tasting the soup is measurement and craft at once. Rittel & Webber’s point that understanding a wicked problem and resolving it go “concomitant” shows Learning and Creating are fused in practice. A child marvels, an expert manipulates variables, and either can do the other badly. Refuse any developmental ranking (contrast Wilber, Graves, Kegan in references.json). The modes rank moves, not people.
6. Not a law either. “MMM” is a memory aid. Reality didn’t agree to come in threes, and each triple of M-words is partly an alliteration choice. Box’s “all models are wrong” point (already in the quote options) applies to this model too. Say plainly that the chapter offers a tool with a use-case, and the use-case is noticing when you’re stuck in one mode.
7. Why having three helps: the default-mode trap. People and institutions over-use whatever mode rewarded them before (Maslow’s hammer). March’s exploration/exploitation result gives this teeth: systems that refine exploitation faster than exploration look effective in the short run and fail in the long run. Becoming is partly the exploration budget a purely productive life never funds. Argyris’s thermostat shows the fourth move that sits across all three: questioning the setpoint itself (double-loop).
8. Choosing a mode is itself a judgment. Cynefin offers a parallel: in ordered situations you sense and analyze, in complex ones you probe with safe-to-fail experiments. MMM gives the plain-language version: Do I need to understand this, make something, receive something, or reconsider what I’m trying to do?
9. What the three leave out. Rest, grief, asking for help, material scarcity, setting a boundary, maintenance (washing up after dinner), luck, other people’s power over you. A framework turns silly when every locked door gets treated as a puzzle in the user’s head. Point forward to Chapter 17, which takes these up properly.
10. Close back in the kitchen. The soup is still on the stove, which gives the handoff to Chapter 14 (Learning). Leave one portable question: which mode am I in right now, and which one is this situation asking for?

Key questions

1. Why three? Is the number a finding or a design choice? What would a fourth mode be (Maintaining? Resting? Grieving? Asking?)
2. (child) “Why can’t you just fix the soup and talk to people at the same time?” Can modes run in parallel, or only by quick switching?
3. How do you know which mode a situation is asking for before you’ve tried one?
4. Is Becoming really a mode of meeting a problem, or is it what happens when you stop treating the situation as a problem?
5. (cynic) “Isn’t this just ‘think, do, chill’ with fancy alliteration?” What does the framework add over common sense?
6. If Aristotle already split knowing, making and doing, what (if anything) is new here?
7. When does Learning become procrastination, gathering more data to avoid acting? When does Creating become flailing, building before understanding?
8. Can you manifest anything, or only set conditions? What separates making room from wishful thinking (and from the self-help sense of “manifesting”)?
9. (child) “Does the dog do all three?” Which modes do other animals clearly show, and is any of them uniquely human?
10. Do groups and institutions have default modes? What does a university over-learn, a startup over-make, a monastery over-become?
11. Is there a mode that asks “should I be solving this at all?” Is double-loop learning a fourth mode or a move inside each one?
12. Why do success tests differ by mode, and what goes wrong when you judge one mode by another’s test (e.g. judging a conversation by its outputs)?
13. (cynic) “Who has time to marvel? Becoming sounds like something for people with a cleaner.” Is the framework class-blind?
14. Does the order in the book (Learning, Creating, Becoming) quietly suggest a ladder even though the text denies one?
15. Can doing one mode badly be worse than not doing it at all, e.g. a misread measurement or a forced “spontaneous” moment?
16. What does it feel like, in the body, to switch modes: putting the spoon down, sitting back, leaning in?
17. (child) “What if the problem is that someone is sad?” Which mode is comfort? Maybe none of them.
18. Can the framework be turned on itself? What would Learning about MMM, Creating with it, and Becoming around it each look like?
19. If modes overlap so much, what’s the use of naming them separately? When does a blurry distinction still earn its keep?

Examples

1. The dinner (people, one evening). Keep the draft’s salty soup, dairy-free guest and wandering story. One extension: the dairy fix could also teach you something (that the stock was the salt source), and the story might produce the next dinner’s plan. That shows overlap in a single scene.
2. Aristotle’s three kinds of intellectual life (c. 350 BCE). Nicomachean Ethics VI.3–5 separates scientific knowledge, art (making) and practical wisdom (doing), and says making aims at something beyond itself while doing well is its own end. It’s a 2,300-year-old precedent for the triad, and for the claim that Becoming shouldn’t be justified by its outputs. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.txt
3. Arendt’s labor / work / action (1958). The Human Condition divides the active life into labor (cyclical upkeep of life), work (making durable things) and action (beginning something new among others). Her “labor” is exactly what MMM leaves out: maintenance. A useful foil for the “what it leaves out” section.
4. E. coli run-and-tumble (cells). A bacterium swims straight (“run”, roughly a second) and then randomly reorients (“tumble”, roughly a tenth of a second). It lengthens runs when the chemical gradient improves. That’s measure/move/meander in a single cell with no brain. Howard Berg, E. coli in Motion (Springer, 2004). Use it to show the modes aren’t a human invention, only a human elaboration.
5. Slime mould rebuilds Tokyo’s rail network (single-celled organism). Tero et al. placed oat flakes in the pattern of cities around Tokyo, and Physarum polycephalum grew a network comparable in efficiency and resilience to the actual rail system. It explores widely first, then prunes. Tero et al., Science 327:439 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1177894
6. Betty the crow bends a hook (animals, 2002). A New Caledonian crow at Oxford, given a straight wire and a basket of food in a tube, bent the wire into a hook and fished the basket out. She did it on 9 of 10 trials. Creating under constraint, with no teaching. Weir, Chappell & Kacelnik, Science 297:981 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1073433
7. Rats laugh when tickled (animals, play). Panksepp and Burgdorf recorded ~50 kHz ultrasonic calls in rats during play and tickling, and rats sought out the tickling hand. Play has no immediate product, which makes it a good animal analogue for Becoming. Panksepp is in references.json (Affective Neuroscience, 1998). Check the specific paper before citing.
8. Preschoolers play more when evidence is confounded (children, 2007). Schulz & Bonawitz showed that four- and five-year-olds explore a toy longer when they haven’t been able to work out how it works. Play turns into Learning when the world is ambiguous, and Marvel and Measure overlap. Developmental Psychology 43(4):1045. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.4.1045
9. Alison Gopnik’s “lantern” and “spotlight” (children vs adults). Gopnik contrasts children’s diffuse, broad “lantern” attention with adults’ focused “spotlight”. She calls children the R&D division of the species (The Philosophical Baby, 2009). Good for the anti-ladder point: the “less developed” mind is better at one of the modes. Verify wording before quoting.
10. Semmelweis and handwashing (Learning in an institution, 1847). In Vienna’s First Obstetric Clinic, Ignaz Semmelweis introduced chlorinated-lime handwashing, and maternal deaths fell from over 10% to about 1–2%. It’s a textbook measure-model-manipulate case, and a cautionary one: the institution rejected the result, which shows that Learning without Creating social uptake stalls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
11. Apollo 13’s square-peg CO2 scrubber (Creating under hard constraint, April 1970). Engineers in Houston improvised an adapter from plastic bags, cardboard, a sock and duct tape. Crucially it had to be built only from items on board, and it fitted the command module’s square lithium hydroxide canisters to the lunar module’s round sockets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
12. Fleming’s mouldy plate (Becoming plus a prepared mind, September 1928). Returning from holiday, Alexander Fleming noticed a Penicillium mould had cleared the staphylococci around it. The discovery depended on an unplanned event, an untidy lab and a trained eye. It pairs well with Pasteur’s line (Source material). https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html
13. The Post-it Note (Becoming inside an organization). At 3M, Spencer Silver made a “failed”, weakly sticking adhesive in 1968. Art Fry found its use as a bookmark in a hymnal around 1974. Snowden & Boone credit 3M’s 15%-time rule for making room for this. That’s Manifest as setting conditions, not ordering outcomes. https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making
14. Toyota’s andon cord (Learning built into a group). Any worker on the line can stop production when they see a defect, so problems get surfaced and investigated at the source. It shows an institution deliberately building one mode into its routine. https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/
15. Hōkūleʻa’s 1976 voyage (civilizational Map/Move/Make). The replica Polynesian voyaging canoe sailed from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti with no instruments, navigated by Mau Piailug from stars, swells and birds. It revived a way of meeting the ocean that combines all three modes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dk%C5%ABle%CA%BBa
16. Sabbath and fallow (civilizational Becoming). The weekly Sabbath and the seventh-year shmita rest for fields are social technologies that protect time with no output. They’re a good test case for whether Becoming can be justified without appealing to productivity. They also connect to Chapter 21.

Source material

1. “Doing is not Making, nor Making Doing.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 4 (c. 350 BCE), trans. D. P. Chase (1847; Everyman ed.). [verified: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.txt] Use: The ancient root of splitting Creating from other modes. Pair it with the same passage’s line in VI.2, “acting well is an End in itself” [verified: same URL], to argue Becoming doesn’t need a product to justify it.

2. “a thermostat that automatically turns on the heat whenever the temperature in a room drops below 68 degrees is a good example of single-loop learning. A thermostat that could ask, ‘Why am I set at 68 degrees?’ … would be engaging in double-loop learning.” — Chris Argyris, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1991. [verified: https://hbr.org/1991/05/teaching-smart-people-how-to-learn] Use: The clearest image for the chapter’s “reconsider what I’m trying to achieve” prompt, which sits above all three modes. It replaces the draft’s paraphrase of Argyris with his own words. (Note: the references.json entry is the 1977 HBR article. This quote is from the 1991 one.)

3. “Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives.” — John Dewey, How We Think (1910), ch. 1, §3. [verified: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/37423/pg37423.txt] Use: Defines “a problem” in the chapter title: a situation that interrupts smooth activity. The same section adds: “A traveler whose end is the most beautiful path will look for other considerations … than if he wishes to discover the way to a given city.” [verified: same URL] That’s a perfect illustration that the mode depends on the end, not the terrain.

4. “Problem understanding and problem resolution are concomitant to each other.” — Horst W. J. Rittel & Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973), p. 161. [verified: https://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_files/1973%20Rittel%20and%20Webber%20Wicked%20Problems.pdf] Use: Evidence that Learning and Creating overlap and aren’t sequential steps. The same paper (p. 160) also says: “Social problems are never solved. At best they are only re-solved—over and over again.” [verified: same URL] That supports “tools, not a law with an end-state.”

5. “adaptive processes, by refining exploitation more rapidly than exploration, are likely to become effective in the short run but self-destructive in the long run.” — James G. March, “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,” Organization Science 2(1) (1991), pp. 71–87, abstract. [verified: https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1287/orsc.2.1.71] Use: Gives the “why three modes” argument a formal backbone. A life or institution that funds only the productive modes starves the exploratory one. (Not currently in references.json. Consider adding it.)

6. “In a complex context, right answers can’t be ferreted out at all; rather, instructive patterns emerge if the leader conducts experiments that can safely fail.” — David J. Snowden & Mary E. Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review, November 2007. [verified: https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making] Use: A neighbouring framework (Cynefin) that also says different situations call for different responses. Use it to show MMM isn’t alone, and to contrast it: Cynefin sorts situations, while MMM sorts responses.

7. “Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object” — Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” in Waiting for God (1950; Eng. trans. Emma Craufurd, 1951). [verified: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simone_Weil (secondary; check page in the Craufurd edition)] Use: The best short statement of Marvel as receptive rather than grasping attention. The same essay’s “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them” [verified: same URL, secondary] fits Manifest as making room.

8. “In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.” — Louis Pasteur, lecture at the University of Lille, 7 December 1854 (orig. “Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.”). [verified: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur (secondary)] Use: Where the modes overlap: Becoming (chance) only pays off when Learning (preparation) is already there. It pairs with Fleming.

9. “The situation talks back, the practitioner listens, and as he appreciates what he hears, he reframes the situation once again.” — Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner (1983), ch. 5 (approx. pp. 131–132). [UNVERIFIED] Use: Making as a conversation with material, which blurs Creating into Learning. Schön is in references.json. Check wording and page against a print copy before using.

(Already in the chapter’s Quote options, so not repeated: Kolb, Simon, Bergson, Box & Draper, Maslow.)

Counterarguments and limits

• “It’s just common sense with alliteration.” Partly true. The defence is modest: naming a default makes it easier to catch yourself in it. The chapter should claim no more than that.
• Triads are seductive. Humans like threes (rule of three, trinities, thesis/antithesis/synthesis). The chapter should admit that the M-alliteration shaped what’s grouped where. Would “Measure, Model, Manipulate” still read as a unit if it were “Observe, Explain, Test”?
• Overlap may dissolve the distinction. If every real act mixes all three, the categories risk being unfalsifiable: any behaviour can be relabelled after the fact. Mitigation: define each mode by its success test, not its activity.
• Becoming may be a different kind of thing. Learning and Creating are goal-directed, while Becoming explicitly isn’t. Critics could say it’s not a way to “meet a problem” at all, which makes the chapter title contradict itself. The author may want to lean into that tension rather than hide it.
• Implied ladder by sequence. Presenting Learning → Creating → Becoming in chapters 14–16 can read as an ascent toward the “spiritual” mode. Developmental models in references.json (Wilber, Graves, O’Fallon, Kegan) do exactly this, and the chapter should explicitly distance itself.
• Western, individualist framing. The three are described as choices of an individual cook. Many traditions treat receptivity, making and knowing as communal or ritual (Ch. 21). Many problems are met by other people acting, which falls outside the three.
• Class and power blindness. Marvel and Meander need slack. The framework can sound like advice for the comfortable. Say who can’t afford which mode.
• “Manifest” baggage. In popular culture, “manifesting” means wishing things into existence. The draft’s clarification (supporting conditions, not ordering outcomes) needs to be prominent, or the chapter will be misread.
• Evidence claims. Animal and cell examples are analogies, not proof that MMM is a natural kind. E. coli doesn’t “marvel”. Frame such cases as family resemblances.
• Overreach risk in “practical instrument”. There’s no evidence that labelling your mode improves outcomes. At most, related work (Argyris, March, Cynefin) suggests matching response to situation matters. Don’t imply empirical validation of MMM itself.

Connections

• Ch. 4 (Subjectivity): Learning is the mode that does the “extra, deliberate work” of objectivity introduced there.
• Ch. 6 (Second Blade): representations looping back into reality. Creating is that loop made deliberate.
• Ch. 9 (Cost of the Blade): measures replacing purposes. Judging Becoming by Learning’s or Creating’s test is a version of this.
• Ch. 11 (Knowledge) and Ch. 12 (Mathematics): the map of knowing that this chapter turns into doing.
• Ch. 14, 15, 16: each mode in depth. This chapter must hand off to 14 (the soup).
• Ch. 17 (Maintenance, Meaning, and Magic): the explicit home for “what the three leave out”. Foreshadow it without spending its material.
• Ch. 18 (Loops That Learn and Loops That Don’t): double-loop learning and runaway loops. The thermostat image recurs there.
• Ch. 20 (Raising the Floor): group-level modes. Semmelweis and Toyota point there.
• Ch. 21 (Practices Before Patterns): Sabbath and fallow as inherited Becoming. Aristotle and Arendt as older triads.
• Ch. 22 (A Better Tuesday): “which mode am I in?” as a practical checklist item.
• Act III close (Unnatural in Our Loops): this chapter introduces the loops whose sophistication that close celebrates.

Exercise ideas

1. One annoyance, three passes (15 minutes, pen and paper). Pick one small, current, real snag: a squeaky door, a stalled email thread, a plant that’s wilting. Write three short responses, one per mode:

   • Learning: one observation you could make today, one explanation, and one small test that could prove the explanation wrong.
   • Creating: one thing you could make or change in under 20 minutes that would help even if you never understand the cause.
   • Becoming: spend five minutes just attending to it without trying to fix it, and write what you noticed that wasn’t in the first two passes. Notice: which pass came easiest (your default), which felt pointless, and what the third pass surfaced. Finally, ask one double-loop question: “Is this actually my problem to solve?” Why: it makes the chapter’s core claim tangible. The same situation supports three different moves with three different success tests, and most people have a default.

2. Mode log for one meal (do it at your next dinner, cooking or hosting). Keep a scrap of paper by the stove. Each time something goes off-plan, jot a one-word note and a letter: L (figured out why), C (made a fix), B (let it be or went with it), or X (none of these: asked for help, gave up, rested). Afterwards, count. Notice: how often the modes blended in a single moment, and how many X’s there were. Why: it tests the chapter’s two main claims directly, overlap and incompleteness, on the book’s own central example. The X column is a built-in admission of what MMM leaves out.

3. Wrong-test swap (10 minutes). Recall one recent conversation that “went nowhere” and one project that “didn’t teach you anything”. For each, ask what test you were judging it by, and what the result would be under a different mode’s test (did the conversation deepen anything? did the project work, even if you learned nothing?). Notice: whether a disappointment was really a mismatch of tests. Why: it shows why having separate modes matters. Judging Becoming by output is one of the costs of the blade (Ch. 9) turned on everyday life.

Open questions for the author

• Title vs. content: Is Becoming a way to “meet a problem”? Keep the title and address the tension, or retitle (e.g. “Three Ways to Meet a World”)?
• Labels: Lead with the plain names (Learning, Creating, Becoming) or the M-triads? How much weight should “MMM” carry as a brand, given the alliteration critique?
• Double-loop placement: Is questioning the goal a fourth mode, a move inside each mode, or something Chapter 18 owns? The draft currently puts it here.
• Ancestors: How much to credit Aristotle and Arendt. A paragraph, a footnote, or a structuring device?
• Scale: Should this chapter use cell and animal examples, or save them for 14–16 and Act III’s close, keeping 13 strictly in the kitchen?
• “What they leave out”: How much to say here vs. deferring to Chapter 17? One line, or a short list?
• Ordering in 14–16: Explicitly say the order is arbitrary (soup first because it’s boiling), or vary it to break the ladder impression?
• References: Add March (1991), Rittel & Webber (1973), Snowden & Boone (2007) and Aristotle NE VI to references.json? And swap the Argyris 1977 entry for or add the 1991 HBR piece the quote comes from?
• Exercise replacement: The current “One sheet, three kinds of doing” paper exercise could be replaced by Exercise 1 or 2 above, which tie directly to the dinner.

Reader perspectives

Curious young child

First reactions:

• The dinner story works because kids are at dinner parties: too-salty soup, the guest who can’t have milk, the story at the table. They’d recognize all three.
• “MMM” sounds like the noise you make when food is yummy. They’d find that funny and remember it forever. (The book should lean into that.)
• Nine words that start with M is a lot. They’d remember “Measure” and “Make” and “Marvel,” and mix up the rest.
• They’d be puzzled why listening to a story at dinner is a “way to meet a problem.” To them, the story wasn’t a problem; it was the good part.
• “Not a ladder or a law” is a sentence they’d skip, because they didn’t think it was a ladder in the first place.

Questions they’d ask:

1. “Why do they all start with M? Did you pick words just so they’d start with M?”
2. “Which one is the best one?”
3. “Can you do all three at once? I can eat and listen at the same time.”
4. “Is playing Learning or Creating or Becoming?”
5. “What’s ‘Manipulate’? My mom says my brother manipulates her to get more screen time. Is that bad?”
6. “What if the soup is too salty and you just don’t eat it? Which M is that?”
7. “What’s a problem that none of the M’s can fix?”
8. “Do cats do MMM? My cat stares at nothing for ages. Is that Marvel?”
9. “Why is the kid in the chapter the one who marvels? I can do experiments too!” (they’d notice “a child can marvel” and feel slightly boxed in, even though the next clause is fair)
10. “What does ‘single-loop’ and ‘double-loop’ mean? Like a roller coaster?”
11. “If I’m sad, which M do I do?”

Where they’d get lost, bored, offended or unconvinced:

• The inbox example (“answer work messages faster”) is a grown-up problem they have no feel for. Swap it for something they know: getting faster at a video game level but never asking whether they even like the game.
• Argyris and “governing assumptions” would lose them completely. The idea is simple though: fixing how you do it vs. asking if you should be doing it at all.
• “Manipulate” has a bad meaning in their world (tricking people). They’d be suspicious of it as a good step unless the chapter says so up front: here it means “poke it and see what happens.”
• “Manifest” is also a word they may have heard from influencer videos (“manifest your dream life”). The chapter needs to tell them early that it doesn’t mean wishing.
• The list of things outside the three modes (“rest, another person’s help… time to grieve”) is the part that would actually comfort them, but it’s buried near the end.

Examples they’d bring:

• A Lego set with missing pieces: Learning: count what’s missing, work out which bag. Creating: build something else from what’s there. Becoming: forget the instructions and just see what it turns into.
• A new puppy: You learn what it likes (Measure), make it a bed from a box (Make), and sometimes you just lie on the floor and watch it sleep (Marvel).
• A rainy day with no plans: A kid knows a day can go three ways: figure out why the window leaks, build a fort, or watch raindrops race down the glass.
• Sibling fight over the last cookie: Learning (who had more yesterday?), Creating (cut it in half, one cuts and the other picks), or Becoming (who cares, let’s go play). Plus the answer outside the model: ask a grown-up.
• Being sick in bed: None of the M’s help much. You just need soup and someone nice. That’s a strong example of what the model leaves out.

What would win them over:

• Say out loud that MMM is also the “yum” sound, and that the name is a memory trick, not a magic spell. They’d trust a book that admits it chose the letters on purpose.
• A simple picture: three overlapping circles (like a Venn diagram they’ve seen at school) with the dinner things placed in and between them.
• A clear “none of these” box, so the kid who is sad or sick doesn’t feel they’re doing it wrong.
• Let the kid in the story do all three, not just marvel.

Cynical adult

First reactions:

• “MMM. Three alliterative trios of three M-words each. Nine M-words. This is a management consultant’s framework, and I’ve been to that offsite.”
• The draft is aware of this (“reality has not signed an agreement to arrive in threes”), which I appreciate, but a disclaimer doesn’t make the branding go away. If it’s just a memory aid, why nine words?
• The dinner scene is pleasant and low-stakes. Salty soup, a dairy-free guest, a nice conversation. “My problems are not salty soup.”
• “Overlapping tools, not a ladder or a law” is the right framing, but if they overlap this much and the author admits they leave things out, what is the framework actually for?
• The paragraph about answering work messages faster is the first real problem in the chapter. I’d start there.

Questions they’d ask:

1. “What does MMM let me do that ‘think, do, and chill’ doesn’t?”
2. “Who else sells a three-part cycle? Kolb’s learning cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act, OODA loop. How is this different, and why do I need another one?”
3. “If the three modes overlap and there are answers outside them, how would I ever know I used the framework wrong? Can it fail?”
4. “Is there going to be a workbook? A certification? An app? Because that’s where these frameworks usually go.”
5. “‘Manifest’ is the word the law-of-attraction crowd uses. Why would you pick it? Is the author trying to catch that audience or just not noticing?”
6. “How do I decide which mode a problem needs? The chapter says ‘choose,’ but gives me no rule.”
7. “The Argyris single-loop/double-loop thing: that’s the interesting idea here. Why is it one paragraph, and why is it borrowed rather than the book’s own?”
8. “Who has time for a dinner party where people aren’t on their phones? Whose life is this written for?”
9. “What does ‘Becoming’ mean when I’m a parent with a sick kid and a mortgage? Sounds like something for people with free evenings.”
10. “The paper exercise: test an explanation, make an object, and follow a shape. With one sheet? Honestly, what is this for?”

Where they’d get lost, bored, offended or unconvinced:

• The acronym. “MMM” also reads as a sound of satisfaction, which will make some readers roll their eyes before they’ve read the definition.
• “Manifest” will trigger immediate suspicion of new-age content. The draft’s redefinition (“supporting conditions”) comes after the reader has already flinched.
• The “One sheet, three kinds of doing” exercise does not make sense as described. The user already said the exercises don’t make sense; this one is a clear example. Folding paper to learn “Becoming” feels like a kindergarten craft.
• “Nor do the modes rank people. A child can marvel” is a reassurance nobody asked for; it hints the author worried it sounded elitist, which makes me think it might be.
• The list of things outside the modes (rest, help, resources, boundaries, grief) is the most honest paragraph, and it’s buried near the end. It also raises the obvious question: if that many important things fall outside, is the framework the main event?

Examples they’d bring:

• A car making a new noise: Learning (what is it?), Creating (fix it or get it to a mechanic), and something else entirely, deciding whether you can afford it this month. Good test of whether the modes cover real life.
• A layoff: you research the job market (learning), rewrite your CV and apply (creating), and there’s a grief period that no amount of doing speeds up. That third one is where “Becoming” could be defended without sounding soft.
• Toyota’s “five whys” and PDCA cycles on the factory floor: a well-known, tested version of Learning/Creating. Worth comparing so the reader sees what MMM adds.
• John Boyd’s OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act), used in the military and business. The cynic has heard of it and will ask why this is better.
• The inbox example, extended: a manager who “optimized” email response times until the team was always on call. The double-loop question (“should we be available at all hours?”) is the real point.

What would win them over:

• Lead with a problem that stings (the inbox, a failing relationship, a job loss), not a dinner party.
• Say plainly what the framework is for in one line (“a check on which kind of response you’re defaulting to”) and show a case where using the wrong mode made things worse.
• Compare honestly with Kolb, PDCA and OODA and name what’s borrowed. The cynic trusts a framework more when it admits its ancestors.
• Either replace “Manifest” or confront the association head-on in the first mention, not later.

Believer / spiritual reader

First reactions:

• The three modes line up closely with the Bhagavad Gita’s three paths: jnana (knowledge), karma (action) and bhakti (devotion, surrender). A Hindu reader would recognise MMM at once and wonder why the book doesn’t say so.
• A dinner with a salty soup, a guest with a dietary restriction and a story that takes over is almost exactly Luke 10:38–42, Martha and Mary. Martha is busy with serving, and Mary sits and listens. A Christian reader will hear the echo whether the author means it or not.
• They’d like the honesty of “reality has not signed an agreement to arrive in threes,” and the section on what the modes leave out: rest, help, grief.
• They’d notice that the list of things outside the modes leaves out prayer, gratitude, repentance and worship. Those are the responses a believer would reach for first at that table.

Questions they’d ask:

1. Is this the Gita’s three yogas in new clothes? If it isn’t, what is different, and why not cite the older version?
2. Who blesses the meal? Saying grace before eating doesn’t fit Learning, Creating or Becoming. Is it “something else entirely,” and does the book have room for it?
3. In Martha and Mary, Jesus says Mary “has chosen the better part.” Does the book rank Becoming above the other two, or refuse to rank at all? Why?
4. You say the modes don’t rank people: “a child can marvel.” Many traditions teach that the child’s way is the higher one (Matthew 18:3). Is “no ranking” a finding or a politeness?
5. Is Becoming just a secular word for what we call contemplation, or prayer without an addressee?
6. Where is hospitality in the dinner? The guest isn’t a dairy “problem.” Receiving a stranger is a sacred duty in Abrahamic, Hindu and Sikh traditions.
7. What about double-loop learning at the level of the soul? Questioning “permanent availability” is close to what traditions call repentance or teshuvah, a turning. Is that a fourth mode, or the deepest form of the others?
8. Why three? Is the number meant to carry weight, as it does in the Trinity or the Trimurti, or is it just a memory aid? You say memory aid, but alliteration chosen for resonance usually carries more.
9. If an evening “cannot be ordered from the kitchen,” who or what gives it?
10. What do you do when all three modes fail and the soup is still salty, the guest is still hungry and the conversation dies? Traditions call that surrender or acceptance. Where does it live in MMM?

Where they’d get lost, bored, offended or unconvinced:

• Unconvinced: by presenting MMM as new. Without a nod to the Gita’s three paths, or the Benedictine balance of prayer, reading and work (the Rule of St Benedict, ch. 48: “Idleness is the enemy of the soul”), a spiritually literate reader will think the book either doesn’t know its predecessors or is quietly taking from them. That clashes with the Act III promise that “practices come before patterns.”
• Mildly offended: if “What they leave out” lists grief and rest but not worship or gratitude. The omission reads as a statement.
• Bored: by the phone-free story as the only example of Becoming. Give the conversation some content: someone at the table has had bad news, or an elder is telling a family story, so that receiving it clearly matters.
• Lost: because the Argyris “work messages” example leaves the dinner. The chapter promised one dinner, so keep double-loop learning at the table (“why am I hosting at all, and for whom?”).

Examples they’d bring:

• Bhagavad Gita, the three margas. Karma yoga (ch. 3), jnana yoga (ch. 4 and ch. 13) and bhakti yoga (ch. 12) are offered as different paths suited to different temperaments, and they overlap, as the book’s modes do. It’s a direct precedent for “overlapping tools rather than a ladder.”
• Luke 10:38–42 (Martha and Mary). The same dinner and the same tension between serving and listening. It’s the most famous text in the West on Creating versus Becoming.
• Genesis 18:1–8 (Abraham at Mamre). Abraham rushes to prepare food for three strangers who turn out to be divine messengers. Making dinner is also a way of receiving what you can’t plan, the “entertaining angels unawares” of Hebrews 13:2.
• The Sikh langar. A communal kitchen where anyone, of any caste or faith, sits on the floor and eats the same food. All three modes appear at once: organized making, a discipline of equality, and receiving strangers.
• The Shabbat table. The meal is cooked before sunset because creative work stops for the Sabbath, and then the evening is given to song, study and conversation. It’s a ritual that sets Creating and Becoming at separate times.
• Chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) and ichi-go ichi-e (“one time, one meeting”). Exact preparation serves a meeting that can’t be repeated, a lived version of “manifest” as making room.

What would win them over:

• An explicit, respectful nod: “The Gita’s three paths and the story of Martha and Mary got here first. Here is what this version adds and what it drops.”
• Naming worship, gratitude and repentance among the responses that fall outside or beneath the three modes, with the same respect given to rest and grief.
• Treating the guest as a person to receive, not a constraint to solve for.
• Keeping “memory aid, not law.” It’s a humility believers will recognise and trust.

Skeptical scientist

First reactions:

• Three alliterative triads, nine M-words. My first instinct is that this is a mnemonic sold as a model, and the draft half admits it (“reality has not signed an agreement to arrive in threes”). I appreciate the honesty. It also raises the question of what the framework predicts or rules out.
• The dinner scene works as a teaching device: three problems (salty soup, dairy guest, conversation), each a different kind. But the chapter maps problems to modes one-to-one, which undercuts “overlapping.”
• The Argyris paragraph is the most substantive thing here, and it isn’t one of the three modes. It’s a fourth move (question the goal). Is that part of MMM or outside it?
• “What they leave out” is handled in one paragraph (rest, help, resources, boundaries, grief). That list is good and deserves more room, because it is what separates a tool from a personality quiz.

Questions they’d ask:

1. What would count as evidence that MMM is a bad way to carve up responses? If no case could fail to fit, the framework explains nothing.
2. Why three? Could it be two (explore/exploit, from decision theory and reinforcement learning)? Where do Learning and Creating differ from the standard exploration/exploitation split, and what does Becoming add?
3. Is this a description of what people do, advice on what they should do, or a classification of problems? All three appear in the draft.
4. Do the modes have any grounding in cognitive science, or are they purely conceptual? Either answer is fine; hiding which one it is isn’t.
5. The chapter says the modes don’t rank people. Does it also avoid implying they’re traits (“I’m a Becoming person”)? That’s how typologies usually get used.
6. Are the modes present in other animals? Act III’s close claims we’re unnatural in the sophistication of our loops, so the baseline matters.
7. Why is Learning first? The chapter says “not a ladder,” yet Learning, Creating, Becoming reads as a progression, and “We begin with Learning” reinforces it.
8. How does a reader know, in the moment, which mode they’re in or should be in? Is there a diagnostic question?
9. How is “Learning” here different from Kolb’s cycle, which is in the quote list? Kolb’s learning-styles descendants have a poor evidence record, so the association may cost you.
10. Why does “Manipulate” need defending as “not domination”? The defensive note suggests the word itself is the problem.

Where they’d get lost, bored, offended or unconvinced:

• Unconvinced: “The name is a memory aid” followed by nine chapters built on it. The reader needs a clear statement of the framework’s status (heuristic, not theory) and a sign that the author will keep to it.
• Lost: Learning, Creating, Becoming, MMM, and Measure/Model/Manipulate plus eight more M-words all arrive in one short chapter. That is a vocabulary dump. Give the three plain names first and hold the nine sub-steps back for their own chapters.
• Bored: the inbox example is generic self-help. The double-loop idea deserves a sharper case.
• Offended (mildly): the paper exercise (“follow a shape without deciding its purpose”) will read as craft-class filler to a sceptical adult unless it’s clear what it’s supposed to reveal.
• Loose terms: “mode,” “cycle” (the filename says cycles, the chapter says modes; a cycle implies iteration and feedback, a mode doesn’t), “tool,” “attention.”

Examples they’d bring:

• Explore/exploit. James March, “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,” Organization Science (1991), and the multi-armed bandit problem in reinforcement learning (Sutton and Barto, Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction). An established two-mode framework that MMM should position itself against.
• The learning-styles warning. Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork, “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest (2008), found little evidence that matching teaching to a person’s supposed style helps. It’s a cautionary tale for any intuitive typology that people will use to label themselves.
• The Barnum or Forer effect. Forer (1949) showed that people rate vague, general personality descriptions as highly accurate for themselves. Frameworks that “fit everything” feel true for exactly this reason. It’s a good line for the “what they leave out” section.
• Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant (1997). Stokes replaced the linear basic-to-applied research model with a 2×2: understanding and use as independent axes, with Pasteur doing both at once. It’s a precedent for arguing “overlapping, not a ladder,” from someone who needed to overturn a real ladder.
• Scientists switching modes on one problem: Fleming’s contaminated plate in 1928 (noticing, or Marvel), testing mould broth against bacteria (Learning), then Florey and Chain’s team working out how to produce penicillin at scale around 1940 (Creating). One problem, three modes, several people, over a decade.

What would win them over:

• An explicit status statement: MMM is a heuristic for choosing a response, not a claim about the brain or nature. Pair it with one kind of case it doesn’t describe well, placed early.
• A clear comparison with explore/exploit. Show what the third mode adds that the two-mode framework misses, or admit the overlap.
• One diagnostic question per mode (“Do I need a better explanation, a better object, or better attention?”) so it works as a tool rather than a taxonomy.
• Settle “cycle” versus “mode” in the terms and filenames.

Earlier draft

From “Three Ways to Meet a Problem”

You have thought carefully about dinner. The soup is too salty anyway. One guest cannot eat dairy. Meanwhile, somebody has started telling a story and, for once, nobody seems to be looking at a phone.

The plan has met a kitchen. Several kinds of attention are now available.

The soup invites investigation. How salty is it? Did the stock contain more salt than expected? Would dilution help? You observe, form an explanation, and try a careful change. Call this Learning: Measure, Model, Manipulate—or, in ordinary language, observe, explain, test. The last word means intervention, not domination. A test can improve understanding even when control is impossible.

The dairy problem calls for making. You check what is in the cupboard, decide which dishes can change, and assemble an alternative. Call this Creating: Map, Move, Make—find your bearings, try a route, produce something that can meet the world. You may learn while doing it, but the immediate test is practical: can your guest eat?

The conversation asks something else of you. You could keep comparing the evening with the one in your plan. Or you could put the spoon down and listen. A story may wander somewhere nobody intended. You can make room for that without knowing what useful result it will produce. Call this Becoming: Marvel, Meander, Manifest—attend, explore, make room. Here manifest means supporting conditions in which something may emerge. You can set a table and give people time; you cannot order a worthwhile evening from the kitchen.

These three alliterative trios form the family we will call MMM. The name is a memory aid; reality has not signed an agreement to arrive in threes. The modes overlap. Tasting the soup is observation and skilled making. Inventing a dairy-free dish requires a model. An unexpected conversation may lead to a new plan. Nor do the modes rank people. A child can marvel; an experienced scientist can manipulate a variable; either can make badly or attend beautifully.

The distinction helps when one good habit has become automatic. Suppose you answer work messages faster and faster. That may solve the immediate problem of a crowded inbox. But perhaps the goal itself—permanent availability—deserves examination. Chris Argyris called the difference between correcting action and questioning its governing assumptions single-loop and double-loop learning. MMM adds a plain-language prompt: do I need to understand this, make something, receive what I cannot yet organize, or reconsider what I am trying to achieve?

There are answers outside the three modes. You may need rest, another person’s help, a material resource, a firm boundary, or time to grieve. A framework becomes silly when every locked door is treated as a puzzle in the user’s mind.

Try One sheet, three kinds of doing. With the same piece of paper, test an explanation, make a small object, and follow a shape without deciding its purpose. The kitchen contains all three sorts of activity; paper lets you slow them down. Notice what you count as a result in each pass. Then ask what the categories themselves leave out.

We begin with Learning, because the soup is still on the stove.