Knowledge and technique used to be closely guarded secrets. Admission to the guild was reserved for a few, and crafts like typesetting, plumbing and medicine were off limits to most folks.
One of the reasons for the explosion in productivity and innovation in the last century is that more tools and leverage are available to more people than ever before.
But, along the way, we began to prize tools that were convenient, easy to engage with and flat. Flat in that more experience didn’t always lead to better results. Five minutes with a kazoo sounds a lot like five hours with one.
We can find more upside when we choose to lean into something worth leaning into.
Just because it feels easy at first doesn’t mean that it’s a worthwhile career path.
The people most likely to sign up for coaching or additional learning are the folks who are already good at their craft.
“I’m terrible at this,” can lead to, “and I don’t want to be reminded of it.” Or perhaps, “I don’t want to waste their time,” or, “I’m never going to get better.”
When it’s possible to get better, embracing mediocrity isn’t a useful strategy.
I’d rather have a surgeon who regularly attends trainings, wouldn’t you?
Read a book, find a coach, organize a group. If you’re serious about getting better, you’ll improve.
Learning creates more competence but first, it amplifies our feelings of incompetence.
I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the street is a significant safety problem. The speed limit is there for good reason, and if you selfishly and recklessly blow through the crosswalk, you ought to get a summons.
Municipalities can now hire a service that uses an automated speed camera to find the scofflaws and issue summonses directly, without the random luck of getting away with it as a factor.
But of course, cars now have computers in them, and GPS as well, so a car could easily be built so that it cut out the middleman and simply warned the driver and then issued itself a summons.
We’re inconsistent about how we interpret freedom and responsibility. The status quo gets the benefit of the doubt, simply because it’s what we’re used to.
Freedom’s fabulous, but as soon as we interact with others, it comes with responsibility.
As our communities become ever more interwoven and the surveillance of our actions becomes more complete, the cats and mice aren’t going to be nearly as relevant as to what sort of balance we all seek to strike between freedom and responsibility.
It should not be controversial for us to be responsible for the impact of what we say and what we do. Cats and mice have nothing to do with it.
There are a few tools I use regularly that make me smile, because the craftspeople who made them decided to build something with extra magic and care.
By using and paying for well crafted software, we often get far more than we pay for…
Ecamm is the tool I use for all my online talks, recordings and meetings. It’s really powerful, so it’ll take some time to get good at it, but the responsiveness and support of the company is terrific.
Superhuman is powerful and needs some ramp up time, but it’s a worthwhile investment.
This little app that allows people to bypass the horrible UX of Resy for meals in NY or SF is brilliant.
Nisus is still the most powerful, easiest and kindest word processor I know.
A trick question is designed to fool us into proposing the wrong answer (example below).
A trap question, on the other hand, stops the train completely.
A trap question demands an answer, and the answer will paralyze us and keep us from the work at hand.
“Yes, but how many followers does your brand have on Insta?” is a trap question. So is, “Are you sure you’re prepared enough for the talk you have booked next week?”
Trap questions bring out demands for perfectionism, or amplify feelings of shame. Trap questions ought to be ignored, avoided, or, if we must respond, simply say, “it’s not a priority.”
Time spent on trap questions is time you’ll never get back.
[Here’s the trick question, much easier now that you know that’s what it is. It was in the first batch of questions I created for Guts, the online game launched on Prodigy in 1989…]
Which of the following was a world boxing champion?
It’s pretty easy for some kids to switch gears. They can go from sad to ebullient in seconds, and switch contexts without much fuss. Others have more trouble.
As we get older, our natural ability to thrive in a new situation can decrease. But, like a muscle or a skill, it responds to practice.
The same is true for organizations. As the world changes faster and faster, it seems clear that organizations that prize plasticity will thrive.
The original figureheads were carved into the bow of a ship. They exist to express the spirit of the boat and to demonstrate its power and resilience.
Here’s an AI recreation of the most famous one:
The sailors were wise enough to understand that the purpose of a figurehead isn’t to steer the boat, trim the sails or do much of anything at all.
Now that most of us don’t sail in schooners, it’s possible we’ve lost the thread. When we organize around leaders, it’s easy to imagine that our goal is to have a thoughtful and resilient long-term thinker, who just happens to be the well-carved powerful avatar of our dreams.
It might be that we need one without getting the other.
June 30, 2024
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