School trains people to work as maintainers. “The sculptures are all here in the gallery, make sure they are still here at the end of the shift… The floor is clean when you start, make sure it’s clean when you finish… The policy manual has seven rules in it, please don’t break them… The next ten patients are going to need allergy tests…” There are customers to be served, standards to be maintained, work to be done. Important work, no doubt, but not thrilling.
A few people somehow avoid these lessons and become instigators, impresarios and disruptors instead. They’re not only dancing with infinity but completely unsure what’s going to work, and yet they are hooked on leaping forward.
I think it’s possible to switch from one posture to the other. I know that it’s incredibly difficult, though. And it’s hard to do both at the same time.
Choose wisely.
November 10, 2019
In order to learn something, you must understand it. You might become so insightful and facile with the ideas that it appears you’ve memorized them, but that’s just a side effect.
Rote memorization can be done in some fields, and you can even recite what you’ve memorized to someone else who can memorize it.
For example: You can’t learn alphabetical order, you can only memorize it.
On the other hand, memorizing anything that you’ll need to build upon, improvise on or improve is foolish. You’ll need to do the work of understanding it instead.
November 9, 2019
If two people are having a discussion about the resilience of the food chain, and one says, “as a farmer…” it’s likely that this statement carries some weight.
The same goes for the opinion of an admiral if we’re talking about naval operations, or a copy editor if we’re talking about grammar.
The question is: Why isn’t everyone already a technologist?
Given that technology has been the defining cultural and economic driver of the last fifty years, why sign up to be a victim of what’s next?
Bonuses! A new article in the latest issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review. And a recent episode of my podcast Akimbo is worth checking out. It’s about impostors.
November 8, 2019
A few years ago, Nancy Lublin discovered something obvious.
Nancy was the CEO of Dosomething.org, the largest teenage charity in the world.
In order to keep up with its members, Dosomething shifted their communications from email to texting (yes, that’s obvious, but that’s not what she discovered).
Monitoring the effectiveness of the texts, she realized that even though the millions of texts they were sending were clearly announcements, not personal notes, kids were texting back.
Texting is such a personal medium that it’s easy to see how the natural thing to do with an incoming text sent with permission is to write back.
Within days, Nancy was seeing that many of the return texts were from kids in trouble. Kids who were being abused, or suffering with mental issues. People who needed to be seen.
And so, Crisis Text Line was born. Thousands of trained volunteers in the US (741741), Canada (686868) and the UK (85258) fielding millions of text messages from people who need to be seen and heard. Not just teens.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that they’ve saved thousands of lives.
CTL is running a fundraiser, but that’s not why I’m posting this today. I’m posting it because someone you know might need the number.
Humans need to be seen and heard. And when we’re in crisis, the privacy and speed of a text is magical.
741741. Use it wisely. Spread the word.
November 7, 2019
Umbrellas are a fabulous invention. You can use one when you need it, but you shouldn’t confuse it with a grapefruit.
Just because something is handy doesn’t mean it’s the right tool for the job.
November 6, 2019
A publisher recently sent me a 1,000 page book. The paper was perfect in its balance between opacity and thinness, but the margins were too small.
The production designer made a choice–push the text all the way to the edges, allowing the book to shave 20 or 30 pages in length. Sensible.
Except now, every single page seems cramped. The book is tense and can’t relax, and feels faintly amateurish. Why would a missing half-inch strip of white paper matter?
All of our media has margins. Even as computer and phone companies have made bezels ever smaller, we still want there to be a margin, a space between the thing we’re engaging with and the rest of the world. Movies have coming attractions and credits. Record albums have a few seconds between songs. Paintings have a frame, or a wall separating them from the next…
The edges do more than delineate. They give the person encountering the work confidence that a professional made it, someone who has an eye for what seems right and can respect the edges. It takes discipline to only go near the margin when you’re doing it on purpose, to make a point, not all the time.
Jackson Pollock not only abandoned the frame, he violated our understanding of the margin as well. But because he did it with intent, not out of commercial necessity or ignorance, his point was made.
The self-discipline to see the margin and use it as a tool is a gift we offer the consumer of culture.
Create a new channel for every project.
Invite the right people to join the channel to work on it.
Every project has a beginning, and it has an ending as well. Don’t start a channel if you’re not prepared to end it.
When a project isn’t helping you reach your longer-term goals, leave the channel.
Direct messages demand clarity and care. And teams do better when communication is shared.
Remember that your reputation moves with you, from channel to channel.
Emotions are real, but emojis can be a distraction.
November 5, 2019
When we’re wrestling with outsourcing project work, a key question is:
Do we give someone the entire project, or do we break it into pieces?
Should you have the architect also handle the budgets, the materials, the labor, the permits–all of it? Or should you project manage the thing and hire people for each discrete action?
Should you have your favorite freelance programmer build every element of the website, or should you have her only focus on her core skills and then you farm out the rest?
The axes are:
Coordination vs
Span.
Coordination costs you. You need to manage it. Make sure the details match up. Get the information flow right. Coordination benefits you, because you can work in parallel, with experts.
Span of work benefits you, because one person or a tiny team sees it all. On the other hand, span of control costs you, because it means that much of the time, the work is being done by a non-expert.
If you give one person the entire project, then coordination costs go way down. It’s all in her head, and shortcuts present themselves.
On the other hand, if you break a project into tiny parts, you can find exactly the right person or process for that part, and often, they can be done simultaneously.
This is obvious, of course, but we forget to ask the question. That’s the hard part.
November 4, 2019
Does being annoyed serve any useful purpose?
If it does, are there classes you can take or experiences you can pay for that help you become annoyed? We have gyms to get fit and mindfulness exercises to get calm, but I’m not sure I’m seeing a widespread movement toward seeking annoyance.
So, if being annoyed is simply a side effect of something else we do, and it’s not actually useful, why do we work so hard to amplify the annoyance we feel? Why create a narrative, push hard against the powerless bureaucrat or the stuck pickle jar simply to make ourselves even more annoyed?
The only person who is getting taught a lesson is us.
November 3, 2019
Will today’s emergency even be remembered? Will that thing you’re particularly anxious about have been hardly worth the time you put into it?
Better question: What could you do today that would matter a year from now?
November 2, 2019
