In a given neighborhood, just about all the cars are the same.
There are few that are pink, orange or purple, for example.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with those frequencies of light. Nothing that modern paint technology can’t deliver, nothing that offends the rods and cones of our eyes.
It’s because the color of the car we choose tells a story. A story about our cultural awareness, status and attitude, for example.
And if something as benign and random as a color tells a story, just imagine what the other choices we make say about us.
We send signals with every choice we make.
June 16, 2025
The single-most effective way to invest 90 seconds a day is simple (and difficult).
18 times a day, when you’re about to offer advice, ask a question or blurt out a response, wait five seconds.
That pause shifts the way what you say next will be perceived.
It also opens the door for you to discover what was about to be said, which might be the most important thing you haven’t heard.
Buzzer management is essential for some activities. But 18 times a day, a pause might be exactly what’s needed instead.
PS Yesterday’s post had a link that caused a warning for some folks. I’m sorry. There was a bug in the software I use, and I’m hopeful they fix it soon. The warning was needless, but it still perplexed some folks. My apologies.
June 15, 2025
Kids grow up with innate curiosity. It’s the hardwired instinct that permits us to walk, talk and survive long before we get to school.
And at school, the industrial imperative prizes rigor over just about everything else. Obedience, detail orientation and system compliance are the unstated goals.
Curiosity is supposed to fend for itself, apparently.
Once we leave school and enter the workforce, curiosity gets even less encouragement. That’s a shame, because while many institutions suffer from too much rigor, just about all of them would benefit from more curiosity.
If you are lucky enough to find a curious person, perhaps they could benefit from a little rigor. But if you encounter a rigorous person, the real opportunity is to rekindle their curiosity. It’s there, we simply need to encourage it.
XKCD.
June 14, 2025
If our day (and our work) would get better if we had more:
- Division
- Shortcuts
- Momentary viral jolts
- Breaking news
- and doom
…we know where to get it. If not, then why are we spending our magical attention there?
June 13, 2025
Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture.
The front lawn was only invented around the time of Columbus. The idea was to demonstrate that you had time and money to waste. You could take useful land and make it non-productive. You could take labor and put it to work taking care of this non-productive land with no obvious utility in return. A big front lawn, well cared for, was a sign of status and luxury.
It’s a contagious idea, and a sticky one. Many suburbs have it written into their laws.
John Green reminds us that Jay Gatsby paid to have a neighbor’s yard groomed before Daisy came over to meet him…
The costs are real. Depending on location, we use 30 to 70% of our country’s total potable water supply to water the grass. We spend billions of dollars a year maintaining it, and the machines we use make our air toxic. If someone invented grass today, with all the hassles and costs, there’s no way it would catch on.
The next step in the status ladder is happening in many communities–grass for the high school playing fields has become low status. It needs to be replaced with plastic “turf” (a name created by wordsmiths to remind us of grass, when it’s actually carpet). The best reason to do the switch, supporters say, is because all the other schools are doing it, and we’re falling behind.
If it can happen to grass, it can happen to everything, and it does.
When in doubt about why a cultural trope exists, look for status.
And perhaps, now and then, we should set status aside and take a hard look at where we are, making a new decision with new information.
June 12, 2025
Your project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the customers, competitors, marketplaces, systems and tech that make it all work.
I used to make almanacs. Long, detailed, fact-checked reference books that might save a trip to the library. When there are plenty of bookstores and no internet, the almanac is an important resource and a useful business model.
I also had a division that made DVD roms for book publishers.
Neither project was likely or possible in 1920, and as the web took hold, both became unsustainable.
The ecosystem for board games was large, steady and profitable. The combination of toy stores and TV ads made it sustainable. And then, for most providers, it wasn’t.
The telegraph employed tens of thousands of people… and then it didn’t.
Google profited from building a huge search ecosystem and selling little slivers of it to advertisers. Many companies and projects thrived from the organic or paid traffic they got from billions of people doing a search. And now, it’s very clear that search traffic is way down, and will almost certainly never recover. AI has upended an ecosystem that many organizations assumed was normal and here to stay.
We can lament the end of an ecosystem. After all, we worked hard to get here and we counted on it. We’re comfortable with it and we understand it.
Or, we can accept that ecosystems come and go, and focus our energy on how the next ecosystem gives us a chance to do our work, new work, different work, but work that matters, for people who care.
June 11, 2025
Every retailer knows that the items that sell the best are at eye level or at the cash register.
Some people are hungry, rushed, distracted and lazy. If you want to reach them (us), you need to make it convenient.
The lesson is simple: We can market to ourselves the same way others market to us.
Put the good habits in a place where they’re easy to find and engage with. And put the other stuff on a top shelf in the back of the room.
What would happen if you had your most noxious social media apps on a device you needed to go far out of your way to interact with?
It’s not as difficult as it sounds.
Lock up your candy.
June 10, 2025
Disappointed
Delighted
Amazed
Offended
Ripped off
Grateful
Loved
Sometimes we get what we expect.
June 9, 2025
One strategy is to spend time finding the one wheel and address it.
The better approach is to realize that if there’s one wheel that’s squeaking, it’s likely that all the wheels need lubrication.
June 8, 2025
There’s a big hill near my house.
Sometimes, a bicyclist will really pedal hard on the downhill. It’s good for the ego. It’s also crazy dangerous, since braking and steering become much more difficult, and high speed gives you less time to react.
And sometimes cars rev their way up the hill, with the drivers imagining that since there’s gravity to overcome, might as well go even faster.
The disciplined, resilient approach is to go your own speed, regardless of the incline.
June 7, 2025
