Reading Time: 2 min The idea of “the prophet’s dilemma” is interesting to think about. In short, it’s a type of self-defeating prophecy, where the act of predicting something causes it not to happen. The opposite would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, which we see quite often. An example would be thinking that you have stage fright, leading to actual […]
General
Hindsight is always superior
Reading Time: 2 min When something goes wrong, it’s easy to look back and think “it was so obvious that was going to happen, the clues were all there.“ The helpful clues might have been there, but so were thousands of unhelpful clues that only separated themselves after the fact. In Don Norman’s book “The Design of Everyday Things” […]
The words that you just have to accept
Reading Time: 2 min I can be a bit pedantic at times, but I do my best not to because I know that I make frequent mistakes as well. In many cases, I just have to accept that some of the “wrong” words that I hear are perfectly acceptable. Phrases like “I could care less” aren’t technically meaningful, but […]
Name it for the other person
Reading Time: < 1 min When creating a calendar invite or sending a document, I try to name them with the other person in mind. For example, next week I have an item that someone added to my calendar called “Lunch with Mickey”, which is not particularly helpful at a glance. I’ve seen the same with resumes that come in […]
A quick look at 2023
Reading Time: 2 min Every January first (for the past few years – 2020, 2021, 2022) I like to look at some numbers and stats from the previous year. Content This was once again a solid year with exactly 365 posts. It’s getting a little harder in some ways; the flow is great, but continually finding new things to […]
Merry Christmas
Reading Time: < 1 min If you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a wonderful day full of presents and friends. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I wish you an excellent day of quiet and rest. Our body and mind tend to recharge when unplugged (the opposite of our devices), so may all of your batteries be full today.
It never goes without saying
Reading Time: < 1 min Kevin Kelly’s “Excellent Advice for Living” has a lot of great thoughts in it, and I really liked this one: If you think that something “goes without saying,” it is usually best for everyone if you just go ahead and say it. This made me think of two things. First, it should always be done […]
9/11 caused 1,600 automobile fatalities
Reading Time: 2 min Humans are bad at understanding risk. We’re all a bit scared of mass shootings, but they only account for 0.1% of firearm fatalities in a year. Or as I shared a few years ago, the full list of what we’re scared of (and is shared by the news) is vastly different from what’s actually likely […]
Values without expression are dead
Reading Time: < 1 min I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they mentioned that they “never take a stance on social issues”. While it can make sense for a business to stay neutral at times, it was interesting that they personally didn’t take a stance on anything. Further, it wasn’t just a lack of a public […]
The key is not the will to win
Reading Time: 2 min A few days ago I shared that fantastic video from Bill Gurley, and I wanted to share one more quote from it. Much of the video discussed the late Bobby Knight, including this quote that stood out to me: “The key is not the will to win… everybody has that. It is the will to […]