• 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.

Posted in linkfest | No Comments »

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.

Posted in philosophy, quote of the x | 2 Comments »

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?)

Posted in lifehack, philosophy | 6 Comments »

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).

Posted in Management, lifehack | 7 Comments »

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.

Posted in Management, politics | 2 Comments »

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.

Posted in history | No Comments »

• Obama will create the first CTO position for the US government. You can suggest and vote on what the CTO’s agenda should be (This doesn’t appear to be an official site, but it does already have thousands of votes).
• How to get people to send you less email. Whenever people complain about how much email they get I generally think it’s their own fault: much of their behavior is prone to getting *more* email whether they realize it or not. Good advice here.
• U.S. debt clock runs out of digits. This electronic sign in Time Square was a big deal when put up in 1989. But it has run out of space when the national debt hit $10 trillion.
• Researchers pumped cement into a leaf cutter ant anthill - the result is this amazing visualization of how complex the design of anthills are. It is the coolest video you will see this month: Ants! (youtube). Jump to 2:50 to skip the background on ant air conditioning systems.
• The return of nap time. We’d all be much nicer to each other if we slept more - which is part of why I’m a fan of nap time. I think the siesta is a good idea. This NYT article describes an invention that hopes to make it easier for people to find time to nap. I’d love to see these in airports.

Posted in linkfest | No Comments »

I’ll be in town for a private speaking gig, but if there’s a community group or someone else who wants to organize a public place for me to speak on Wed Dec 3rd, I’d be happy to try and make it happen.

Leave a comment or contact me directly.

Posted in On Tour | 1 Comment »

Today marks the third annual World Usability Day. There are many events taking place online and more in various cities around the world, possibly near you.

My favorite event is the Alarm clock rally: You have to guess how hard to use each alarm clock is.

In years past I did tons of free usability reviews of websites and things, but I’m sitting this year out.

Posted in Design, ui review, usability | No Comments »

• Author William Gibson finds one of his books in a sad place. Happens to everyone.
• Secrets of the writing of the Daily Show. Amusing, but there are some interesting nuggets on process in there. Also note the size of the staff.
• The Nature journal has a special issue on innovation. Haven’t read these yet, but they look deliciously non-fluffy.
• The sketch that gave birth to twitter. Some archival photos from one of the inventors of twitter. Btw: I love legal pads.
• The Story of the Office 2007 Ribbon UI. Lots of backstory, photos, prototypes, etc. straight from Jensen Harris, one of the main people on the project.
• A simple plan for fixing the ridiculous H1B Visa policy in the USA. I’d like to understand a) how it got so messed up to begin with, and b) what possible arguments there are to not changing the policy in this direction.

Posted in lifehack | 2 Comments »

The longer I’m on this planet, the more I think the problem with everything is someone’s failure to get the basics right. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been invited to companies or to talk about projects going on here or there, only to hear some basic, fundamental principle being violated without anyone screaming or raising the red flag. First. Am I right? Do most people, most of the time, suck at one of the basics of what they’re supposed to be professionals at? And if so, why is this?

In management / design / business circles I know for certain of one reason. Flat out hubris. For an executive to say: “This project sucks because I have failed to organize this team effectively”requires a huge amount of humility. Much more humility than is required to say something like “Our innovation infrastructure needs to be redistributed to support the new rate of change”. Or some other bullshit that sounds complex, makes him seem smart, and entirely distracts people away from what might solve the problem: identifying the problem in the simplest terms possible.

We habitually hide the core problem under layers of noise and complexity because it makes us feel safer, and feel more competent than if we confessed to the truth. Even the best baseball players strike out hundreds of times a year. Yet they don’t explain it away or invent jargon for it in the way people in the professional world do for unavoidable failures of a simple nature.

Worse, once we have been doing something for 5 or 10 years we convince ourselves we must be experts. And to admit we got a basic wrong would be fatal to our reputation. But honesty is so rare among experts, to call something what it is would likely enhance someones reputation way more than hurt it, especially if they know how to go about fixing this basic problem.

Case in point #1: What percentage of people in every profession do you think flat out suck at what they do? 10%? 20%? 50%? There has to be a number. What do you think it is? I say its got to be at least 25%. People whose peers would never ever hire them to do what they are paid to do.

Case in point #2: I’d say at least half of all professional managers have not earned the trust of their team. Its got to be at least half. Now if you don’t have the trust of your team, no budget, no brilliant plan, no clever organizational model, is going to save you. Your team will always under perform if they do no trust their leader. End of story.

So as regards the working world: want to fix 50% of the projects out there? Forget all the fancy stuff. Convince these managers to find the guts to trust their own people, and then in reciprocation, the team will grow to trust the manager.

And on it goes. I’m convinced you can take any challenge a manager out there believes is intractable, impenetrable, something so complex and advanced they believe you’d need a PhD in 25 disciplines just to understand it, and slice it down to one or two fundamental problems that if called out, could be solved and transform the situation.

What do you think? Does everyone need a reality check at the basics of their craft? Or am I just being cranky?

Posted in Management, rant | 26 Comments »

Last week I was in Trinidad, just off the coast of South America. I was speaking at the BDC’s Innovation to Income conference and took a few extra days for fun.

It’s an interesting place - since most tourists head over to the quiet, beautiful neighboring island of Tobago, Trinidad itself isn’t an easy place to be a tourist. The capital city of Port of Spain is tough, crime is a problem, and there are few true tourist attractions, nor info centers or tourist desks that I could find. But that made it real travel - I had a most interesting time walking around the core downtown area (Indi Square). It was the first time in awhile I went somewhere impossible not to stand out as a foreigner (80+% of the population is of African or Indian decent, and I’m of neither), which was a thrill.

Here’s what I learned:

• A continent can look like an island if you are an idiot. From my hotel pool I asked one of the staff “what is that island in the distance” and was told “That? That’s south America”.
• The Hyatt Regency is a fantastic hotel with one the best pool I’ve ever seen. It’s outdoors on the 4th floor and is lined up so the pool horizon matches the actual horizon. Fantastic.
• Local lingo: Limin’ = to hang out. BamBam = your rear end. Boof = to insult or yell at someone.
• Fried shark is a delicacy. Up at the beautiful Maracas beach I tried what’s called Bake ‘n Shark, which is fried shark on a sandwich with various toppings like garlic sauce (yum).
• You can buy aged Rum - and it’s quite good. I had no idea Rum could be a premium alcohol (like Scotch), with 8, 10 and 15 year aged versions of premium brands.
• A roti is not just bread, as i assumed from having had it at Malay Satay in Seattle. Here the roti is the container for various stuffings. Roti shops are basically like us sandwich shops.
• KFC is extremely popular here. Vaguely like McDonald’s was in Moscow. Long lines.
• Obama has made the US popular again, at least here. Walking on the street at Independence square, total strangers asked me if I was American, and if I said yes, they’d happily yell Obama! and shake my hand

.

Posted in Travel | No Comments »