A lot is a choice
You might want to make something that a lot of people want a little… Or you could make something that a few people want a lot. It’s usually neither. It’s rarely (very rarely) both…
Risk vs. Uncertainty
Easy or Hard
Steady state and the trigger for change
If, every time there’s a dish in the sink, you load and run the dishwasher and scrub the entire kitchen, you’re never going to get anything else done. On the other hand, if you wait unt…
The Developer Antilibrary
Understand what you know and what you don’t
Problem-Solving Techniques: The Sniper vs the General
What is the best approach to follow when dealing with a critical incident in production?
“What’s on tonight?”
This common question no longer means anything. Every TV show is on. All the time. Our record collection streams every record ever recorded. And our readers can find and display just about any book …
Front of house/back of house
What do the dishwashers eat for lunch? What’s the user experience of accounts payable for that big tech company? How does the head of sales treat the receptionist? If it’s good enough f…
Basic mental arithmetic for activity and weight
Posted on Tuesday 4 Oct 2022. 688 words, no links. By Matt Webb.
Putting Culture First: Just Do It
The advertising industry lost a real titan recently. Dan Wieden, the co-founder of Wieden And Kennedy, passed away at the age of 77. W+K is arguably the
The Last Word On Nothing | The future is a myth that is true and false
Dive a bit deeper, look a bit wider - Event-Driven.io
Event-Driven by Oskar Dudycz
Sunday Firesides: Look Into the Tomb
A year and two months after his wife died, Ralph Waldo Emerson opened her tomb. Emerson had been visiting Ellen’s grave daily since she’d succumbed to tuberculosis, just two years into what had been a happy, golden marriage. But on a gray day in March 1832, Emerson decided to not only talk to Ellen as […]
Slashing Rules That Don't Matter
This email is inspired by Episode #141 of The Knowledge Project podcast, featuring serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker Kunal Shah. Pick your
Logistics vs (and) innovation
When innovation arrives, the logistics people have to scramble to keep up, because innovation always makes it hard to do things the way we used to. Over time, an innovative company thrives if it ca…
Retribution, revenge, and especially, remorse
When an organization has caused harm (through error or intent), it’s tempting to be sure they learned a lesson. We want folks to take responsibility, to admit culpability and to be sure they …
Courage Is Calling by Ryan Holiday
Today’s post was written by our old friend, the author Ryan Holiday. Ryan has gotten famous as a popularizer of Stoicism, the Greco-Roman philosophy, and
Social pressure
It’s normal to feel it. It changes our careers, our dress and even the way we live our lives. The question is: is it caused by external or internal forces? More often than not, it’s sim…
Conor Browne on Twitter
“Some personal observations on the characteristics of people I know who are continuing to take as much care as possible to not get Covid (in no particular order): a short 🧵
1. High impulse control
2. Personal experience of serious illness
3. Strong internal locus of control”
The parts between
Listen to one musician’s track in isolation on any record (like this one) and you might be amazed at how trivial they sound. Paul McCartney, one of the great bass players, in one the great gr…
Sunday Firesides: Covenants Over Contracts
In the world of sports, when a star player leaves his team for another franchise, hometown fans often feel disappointed and indignant. Yet while we decry such displays of disloyalty in athletes, we tend to approach all of our own decisions — even those unrelated to business and career — with a similar free agent […]
We know you're winging it
This image was inspired by a thought from an interview with IDEO’S Founder and Former CEO, David Kelley, on the How I Built This Podcast on NPR, Episode
Core Human Motivations: Thoughts Inspired by Kunal Shah
These images were inspired by Episode 141 of the Knowledge Project podcast (TKP), interviewing serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker, Kunal
Is there a word for that?
Experts have a word for it. If it’s important, conceptual or frequently discussed, there’s probably a domain-based word that experts understand. The precision of a special vocabulary al…
The Innovator's Paradox
Talking about money
Who benefits when we hesitate to look at money clearly? When we avoid doing a P&L, thinking about pricing, or creating a budget, we’re avoiding the fear that comes with these choices. And…
The grassroots
Starting at the top seems like great advice. Deal with the people with power and authority. Except… Power and authority aren’t often in the same place. The real power is usually foundat…
“And we also”
The simplest way to run a business is to have no also. We maximize profit, period. At least you’re being honest about it. If you say, “and we also care about the environment,” or …
The last 1%
If you apply for something with a 99% rejection rate (which is more common than it sounds–job openings, sales pitches, fellowships, journals, etc.) that’s pretty close to 100%. Somethin…
Autofocus: The Productivity System That Treats Your To-Do List Like a River
In one of the emails Oliver Burkeman, author of Time Management for Mortals, sent out to his subscribers, he talked about how we typically treat our to-do lists like buckets that we need to empty every day. The problem, Burkeman observes, is that the to-do list is a bucket that never entirely empties. As we […]