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Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the concept of being organic. To me, being organic means not forcing things to happen. It’s a mindset of alignment—understanding nature, respecting its pace, and allowing things to unfold naturally. This way of thinking applies not just to personal life, but also to how we work, grow, and create.

Being organic shares similarities with being authentic—both encourage us to act and speak in alignment with our core values. But while authenticity is inward-looking, being organic extends outward. It includes how we grow over time and how we interact with our environment. It’s less about identity and more about process—about pace, rhythm, and adaptation.

Being organic means growing not by chasing metrics, but by evolving in synergy with ourselves and the world around us. Society often sets expectations: go to college at 18, work 9 to 5, get married, hit milestones on a fixed timeline. These expectations can be helpful heuristics, but they don’t fit everyone. Some people do their best work at night. Some aren’t ready for college at 18. Some chart entirely different paths.

Too often, we live as though our stories have already been written, forgetting that the script might not suit us. What we really need, especially early in life or in our careers, is time and space to explore, to experiment and to grow.

There are many benefits to living and working organically: greater peace of mind, sustainable growth, deeper alignment with your environment, and better readiness for emerging opportunities. On this last point, I’m reminded of the book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. Its central thesis is powerful: if we reduce our journey to chasing predefined objectives, we limit our creative search space—and often miss unexpected breakthroughs along the way. True progress, it argues, is guided by curiosity and executed with playful exploration, not rigid metrics.

So, is there only one way to be organic? Of course not. Think of a garden: some plants grow fast, others slow. Some are green and plain, others colourful and intricate. Yet they all grow in the same soil, responding to the same sun and rain, each in their own way. Humans are like that too. Growing organically might mean being as persistent as grass, or as intricate as a flower.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of my own research. Recently, I led a small team to develop a generalist medical AI model. We were working under a tight timeline, as I was preparing for a move to the US. The project was ambitious, and the team was brilliant. But the pressure to deliver quickly led us to make assumptions we didn’t have time to test rigorously. I fell into confirmation bias, interpreting weak signals as signs we were ready to scale.

That was a mistake. In hindsight, I see that the rush cost us insight. We overlooked promising directions because we were fixated on our original goal. Not getting the fellowship I applied for might have been a blessing in disguise—it gave me the time to revisit our assumptions. Now, with a clearer mind and fewer constraints, I believe we’re on track to something more meaningful.

Can this organic approach scale? I think so—but not through top-down mandates. Being organic doesn’t work by imposition. It grows from the bottom up—from individuals, teams, and communities choosing to live and build differently. Not every challenge has an organic solution; large-scale infrastructure and science projects still require centralised coordination. But in areas where flexibility, creativity, and emergence matter, being organic can lead to a society that is less polarised, less rigid, and more adaptive.

Be organic when you can. The results will take care of themselves.