The View Inside Me — Essays on meaning and purpose
Essays and reflections by Marc Winn on meaning, purpose, and living a contrarian life.
What Could Possibly Go Right? Marc's weekly letter on technology, business and the strange possibilities of ordinary life. Every Friday.
The Ikigai diagram
The story behind the four-circle Ikigai Venn diagram
The origin story of the most-read thing Marc has ever written, and the misunderstanding that travelled with it. Read it.
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What if the room is right?
If I automatically disagree with the crowd, am I really thinking for myself? A reflection on contrarian identity and the freedom to listen.
A machine looking for me
I have been asking a machine to help me sound more like myself.
The ideas I haven't lived
There are ideas I have carried for so long that I can forget they are choices.
Clarity for founders: finding the one thing that matters
When everything feels important, where do you begin? Marc Winn explores how founders can find the decision beneath the list and make one useful move.
AI in your organisation: start with what you want it to make possible
AI adoption starts with a useful question: what should become possible? Marc Winn explores simpler work, human judgement and a small place to begin.
Organisational inertia: why good teams stop moving
Good teams can become stuck inside sensible processes. Marc Winn explores organisational inertia and how to make one useful change without a grand relaunch.
What a leadership team is really disagreeing about
A strategy disagreement can hide different hopes, fears and meanings. Marc Winn explores how leadership teams can understand the choice in front of them.
When an organisation loses its purpose, and how to find it again
The business is growing. The numbers look respectable. The strategy has been refreshed. Someone has commissioned a rather lovely slide deck.
What a diagram taught me about organisations that have lost their way
A picture I adapted travelled around the world. What its reach, and its limits, taught me about organisations that have lost their way.
I have accidentally become the helpdesk
I like building systems that help. This is fortunate, because I have also built quite a few systems that need help.
I would quite like to enjoy the future
I am excited by what is becoming possible. I am also aware that I could spend the rest of my life investigating it and forget to have much of a life. There is always another tool to try, another connection to make, another idea that might turn into something wonderful. My curiosity has never really needed a motivational speaker.
The diagram can manage without me
I am quite happy to call myself the ikigai guy when it seems useful. But I am less attached to the diagram than that introduction might suggest.
One question, four AIs
I asked four AIs my favourite question. Then I spent the evening noticing what drew me into their answers.
Is this allowed to be lovely?
I have been trying to make life lighter and somehow given the project a clipboard.
The thing already on the table
I am very good at beginnings. Give me a half-formed possibility and I can usually see its strange cousin, three hidden doors and the larger system it might become.
Village Sovereignty
For years, I have wondered how we might help individuals become more powerful. I am beginning to think I had the wrong unit of transformation.
Lessons from A Contrarian Life
There’s a part of me that has always resisted the obvious path. When I was younger, it wasn’t especially thoughtful. If someone told me to do something, I’d often feel the urge to do the opposite. Sometimes to see what would happen. Sometimes just to be noticed. It got me into trouble more than once. […]
The Link Between Karma and Dharma
I’ve found myself in a slightly surreal position over the years. Being described as the accidental creator of the Ikigai Venn diagram. A simple visual that somehow travelled the world and sparked a global conversation about meaning and purpose. The irony is that it also helped surface a misunderstanding. Because the Western version of Ikigai […]
Listening to the Project: A Simple Practice for Clearer Decisions
I have a little ritual I use when groups or founders feel stuck. It is gentle, playful and strangely effective. It helps people move from personal tension to collective clarity. It lets a project speak for itself. The idea Instead of diving straight into strategy, I invite everyone to choose an object to represent the […]
A Summary of the Philosophy of The View Inside Me
This blog has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. Hundreds of reflections as I went on a personal journey of exploration. Here is a summary of my journey and reflections contained in this blog. A companion of possibility I live as a companion of possibility. I refuse to be governed by the […]