Archive for November, 2008
- By Scott Berkun on November 26th, 2008
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- linkfest
Wednesday linkfest
- The first 100 days. An interesting visual summary of what many presidents accomplished in their first 100 days in office. (Hat tip: line architecture)
- Building a bridge with rockets. To build the Siduhe Grand bridge, the tallest bridge in the world, they had to use rockets to stretch the first suspension wires across the span. Amazing pictures.
- Those were the droids I was looking for. The regrets of a stormtrooper.
- The things he carried. Fantastic article on the absurdity of airline security. Author tells tales of the many things he deliberately tried to get through security and what happened.
- By Scott Berkun on November 26th, 2008
- 3 Comments »
- philosophy
Quote of the month
I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.
I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
- Woody Guthrie
- Woody Guthrie
Check out Dust Bowl Ballads – despite the tough topics he lives up to the quote.
- By Scott Berkun on November 24th, 2008
- 6 Comments »
- lifehack
Your quota of worry and how to shrink it
Sometimes I think we all have a worrying quota. An amount of worry we feel compelling to apply to the world. And if our lives get safe, and there isn’t much really worth worrying about, we fill up our quota by worrying about things that don’t really matter much at all. Case in point: I just had an extended conversation with my brother about the criteria for accepting Facebook invites from people who were jerks 25 years ago when we went to grade school with them. Boy – do we need other things to fill our quotas of worry.
Like the Facebook example, I catch myself worrying about ridiculous, trival things now and then, and the trick that helps, that shrinks my worrying quota is Maslows hierarchy of needs.
It’s an old trick: put whatever is on your mind in some kind of perspective (What’s worse? What’s better?) and it loses both its venom.
Most of the time, whatever I’m worrying about scores on the top half of the pyramid, and while it might belong in my quota of worry, it certainly doesn’t deserve the amount of energy from my life it’s absorbing.
Sometimes decisions are so insignificant that simply flipping a coin to decide and getting the decision out of the way is the best and healthiest thing all around: neither end of the decision matters. The only bad choice is taking too much time to make one. I find I can shrink my quota of worry by deciding a) some decisions matter less than I think b) worrying won’t help me make a better decision c) get someone else to sanity check if I’m worrying too much about something.
How do you find ways to worry less about things that aren’t worth worrying about?
(While I’m a fan of Maslow’s, anyone know of interesting alternative hierarchies of needs?)
- By Scott Berkun on November 24th, 2008
- 8 Comments »
- Management
If you’re working this week, you’re smart (Vacation strategy part 2)
With one of the biggest U.S. holidays, Thanksgiving, on Thursday, many people will be traveling to visit with families. If you’re working today, and most of this week, you’re smart – as I’ve talked about before, the best vacation strategy is to work when everyone is away, and spend your vacation days on days you’ll be escaping from actual work.
I don’t even work in an office, yet I’ve already had two out of office messages from people I work with at various companies – they’re already on vacation.
Of course often you don’t get to choose when to spend vacation days – if the family tradition is to meet back in your hometown at your folks place on the day before Thanksgiving, well, you’re stuck.
But if you have a choice, stay in the office on those extra days when everyone is away. You’ll be more productive than you will on a typical day, and you’ll save that vacation day for a time you really need a break.
Especially in the U.S. where we get some of the fewest number of vacation days in the western world (Europe averages about 40 days, U.S. 13 days).
- By Scott Berkun on November 20th, 2008
- 2 Comments »
- Management
What’s so special about a team of rivals?
Found this nice op-ed piece this morning called What’s so special about a team of rivals, By James Oakes. It’s the perfect antidote to the sloppy thinking circling the now cliched phrase ‘team of rivals’.
Another nice observation I heard on NPR last night was that every cabinet choice leaves the half dozen candidates you didn’t pick miffed with you. And if you pick the rival, there is some powerful candidate within your party or staff who will never view you in the same way again. All choices have opportunity cost and there’s no perfect way to select something as complex as a cabinet.
I confess I haven’t read Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals. And I do buy the nugget of the theory that selecting people who have diverse opinions, even in some cases opposing ones, can be a useful force if the energy of those tensions can be converted into the positive: better decisions or better policies. But to do that means picking very special kinds of rivals. Rivals with whom intelligent discourse and deep trust are possible, which is very hard to find.
- By Scott (admin) on November 19th, 2008
- No Comments »
- history
Debunking Thanksgiving myths
Here’s a good one from about this time last year: debunking thanksgiving myths.
It’s a great example of how much we confidently assume we know is true as adults, based simply on what we were told as kids.
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