I've talked in the past about a pattern I might call the Negentropic Wave.

You create an auto-catalyzing wave of energy to surf to your destination.

You do this by finding the items that in the background brownian motion just so happen to be headed in the direction you want to go, and subset them into a new collection.

The momentum of the collective will then be strongly in the direction you want to go… and you never had to break a sweat, you just applied a curatorial selection to what already exists.

Why call it a negentropic wave?

The mechanism of action is similar to Maxwell's demon thought experiment… except at macro scales, it works!

Maxwell's demon thought experiment is about entropy.

Schroedinger noted that some systems, like living systems, seem to become more ordered over time.

He called these systems "negative entropy", or Negentropy.

Imagine applying this technique within an organization, to find a set of volunteers on a project you think will change the game.

One might ask: "how do you keep them motivated?"

But the trick is that they were already intrinsically motivated to do this work before you found them.

So you don't have to convince them to do something they don't want to do.

All you have to do is fan the flames of energy they already had.

This is easy! Especially if they feel like that energy is part of a collective that is gaining momentum.

If you were trying to push via extrinsic energy, then if you got distracted the thing would run out of steam.

But a negentropic wave is one that is auto-catalyzing even if you get distracted.

Even when you aren't looking, it will continue going.