Insight is hard work

If ever there was a time that we needed our leaders to have insight, to identify something that grounds them, and around which they can rally people, it's now.

There's a tendency for some of the development literature to assign insight a mystical quality, something that happens when we're in the shower, or walking in the woods, and that it has some sort of mystical quality. Whilst I agree with that to an extent, we don't often talk about the precursors to insight.

Ability to peer into and discern the inner nature or workings of things.

John Boyd, "Patterns of Conflict"

Insight is what gives us a different perspective on things. It opens new ways of seeing and understanding, and it often makes what we have learned and thought to be true redundant. It means unlearning and relearning.

One of the most difficult things with insight is conveying it to others, who still think you're where you were before you had the insight. When Copernicus tried to explain his insight that the earth moved round …