Why You’re Running Just to Stand Still: 5 Scientific Truths That Will Change How You See The World
We all try to understand the world, but it’s a complex place, and our intuition often fails us. We get stuck in patterns of thinking that feel right but lead to the wrong outcomes. We feel busy but not productive, certain but still wrong, and exhausted from running in place.
What if the keys to navigating our lives and careers more effectively were hidden in the fundamental principles of the physical world? In his book, The Great Mental Models: Volume 2, Shane Parrish explores how core ideas from physics, chemistry, and biology provide powerful metaphors, or “mental models,” for seeing the world as it truly is. This post distills five of the most surprising takeaways that can give you a new lens on reality.
1. You’re Chasing Speed, But You Need Velocity
We often confuse being busy with making progress. The crucial difference lies in the scientific distinction between speed and velocity. Speed is movement without direction; you can run in place at a high speed and go nowhere. Velocity is speed with direction; taking a single, deliberate step forward is velocity.
No one understood this better than Napoleon Bonaparte. In his early campaigns, he was a master of velocity, moving his troops with unprecedented pace toward clear, achievable objectives. In Italy, his army covered immense distances to strike his opponents before they had time to react, turning superior movement into victory.
His catastrophic 1812 invasion of Russia, however, shows what happens when this strength is misapplied. Obsessed with reaching Moscow, he again moved his massive army with incredible speed. But in the vast, harsh Russian landscape, this speed came at the cost of his supply lines, his soldiers’ health, and his ability to adapt. He covered thousands of kilometers with blinding speed but made zero progress toward his ultimate goal of subjugating Russia. He ended up back where he started, his army decimated.
This reveals a hidden law of strategy: even a perfectly executed strength can become a fatal weakness when misapplied to the wrong environment. It’s easy to fill our days with tasks and meetings—to feel the rush of speed. But this activity often distracts us from making meaningful progress. True effectiveness comes not from how fast we are moving, but from ensuring our movement is consistently in the right direction.
2. The World’s Strongest Walls Eventually Fail
One of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics is that systems move toward equilibrium. If you place a hot object next to a cold one, they will eventually become the same temperature. This reveals a hidden force of nature: separation isn’t a state, but an active, energy-intensive fight against the universe’s tendency to mix.
Physical walls—like Hadrian’s Wall or the Great Wall of China—are like insulators. They are built to maintain contrast, but this requires immense and constant energy. Ultimately, they are porous. History shows they never truly stop the movement of people and ideas, only slow it down.
This physical law serves as a powerful metaphor for any artificial barrier we create, from organizational silos that prevent collaboration to personal echo chambers that block new ideas. Maintaining these divisions requires constant effort and fights against the natural tendency for information and culture to seek equilibrium. This tendency is not just physical; as author Tim Marshall notes, it is a defining feature of human politics.
Division shapes politics at every level—the personal, local, national and international. Every story has two sides, and so does every wall. It’s essential to be aware of what has divided us and what continues to do so, in order to understand what’s going on the world today.
Ultimately, the universe favors equilibrium, and any wall we build, physical or ideological, faces a relentless pressure to crumble.
3. Bad Ideas Stick Around Longer Than You’d Think
In physics, inertia is the resistance an object has to a change in its state of motion. The greater its mass, the more force is required to alter its course. This same principle applies to ideas and social habits, but what determines their “mass”?
The mass of an idea is not determined by how correct it is, but by its momentum. The longer a product, belief, or habit has been used by a society, the harder it is to change. A startling historical example contrasts lead with absinthe. The toxic effects of lead were known for over 2,000 years, but its societal mass—its integration into everything from pipes and paint to gasoline—was so great that its use persisted for centuries against clear evidence of its harm.
In contrast, absinthe, a popular 19th-century drink, had very little societal mass. Based on flimsy evidence and moral panic, it was banned in many countries within 50 years. Lead, a proven toxin, is still found in consumer products. Absinthe, largely absolved, remains hard to find. What does it tell us about our own society when a known poison outlives a harmless drink by millennia simply due to momentum? It shows us why simply presenting facts is often not enough to change a deeply entrenched belief. The inertia is just too great.
4. You’re Running as Fast as You Can Just to Stay in Place
This humbling concept comes from evolutionary biology and is known as the “Red Queen Effect,” named after a character in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. In a dizzying chase, the Red Queen tells Alice:
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
In any competitive environment—whether in nature, business, or your career—all participants are constantly adapting and improving. This means you have to improve at the same rate as everyone else just to maintain your current position. A predator gets faster only because its prey is also getting faster. The Red Queen Effect reveals that in any dynamic system, progress is not an absolute measure but a relative one. Your growth only matters in relation to the growth of those around you.
This is a powerful mental model for the modern world. Skills become outdated and competitors innovate. In a constantly changing environment, complacency isn’t just stagnation; it’s a direct path to being left behind. Continuous learning isn’t optional for getting ahead—it is the minimum requirement for staying in the game.
5. Your “Truth” Is Correct—But So Is Theirs
We often assume that if someone sees the world differently, one of us must be wrong. Einstein’s theory of relativity, however, offers a more profound insight: two observers can have different, yet equally correct, views of the same event.
Imagine standing on a platform as a train speeds by. At the exact moment its midpoint passes you, lightning strikes both the front and back of the train. Since you are an equal distance from both flashes, you correctly observe them as simultaneous. A friend sitting at the train’s midpoint, however, is moving toward the light from the front strike and away from the light from the rear strike. The light from the front reaches her first. From her perspective, she correctly concludes the strikes were not simultaneous.
Relativity reveals that our personal “train”—our unique frame of reference built from experience, culture, and bias—literally defines what we perceive as simultaneous or sequential, important or trivial. This doesn’t mean all beliefs or conclusions are equally valid, but it does mean our own perspective is inherently limited. The lesson is about recognizing the limits of our perception, not about embracing pure relativism. As science fiction author Isaac Asimov brilliantly clarified, some perspectives are “less wrong” than others:
John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
The goal isn’t to believe that all views are equal, but to have the humility to understand that our own view is never complete.
Conclusion: A New Lens on Reality
These models from science are not just academic concepts; they are practical tools for thinking. They help us see the hidden forces at play in our jobs, our relationships, and our decisions. They reveal that being busy is not the same as making progress, that artificial walls will always crumble, and that we must constantly adapt just to keep our place.
The world doesn’t have to be a complete mystery. The key is knowing which lens to look through. Which of these models gives you a new perspective on a problem you’re currently facing?
