Building an Anti-Fragile Mindset

The idea of anti-fragility comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Black Swan: the basic idea is that many human-made systems are fragile. Something comes to stress the system, and it falls apart. Some systems are robust or resilient, which is much better than fragile.

But even better is the idea of being anti-fragile: stress makes the system stronger.

Human systems are anti-fragile – when we exercise, we’re stressing the system, and after we recover, we’re stronger and better able to handle that stress. Bones get denser with impact. Lots of natural systems have anti-fragile mechanisms built in.

We can make human-made systems more anti-fragile by designing ways that stress will make the system better able to handle stress. Failure helps the system get stronger.

Let’s look at how to apply this idea into our training – any kind of learning, habit formation, physical or mental training, anything where we’re trying to improve something.