The front page test is a handy thought experiment for your decision-making ethics: how would you feel if your actions were on the front page of a major newspaper? Would you squirm or would you stand proud? There are many ways to think about making ethical decisions: sticking to promises, considering the net good and bad consequences, considering what would happen if everyone behaved the same way, and others. The front page test is simple and cuts through much of the noise to how you truly feel about an action.…The front page test is a handy thought experiment for your decision-making ethics: how would you feel if your actions were on the front page of a major newspaper? Would you squirm or would you stand proud? There are many ways to think about making ethical decisions: sticking to promises, considering the net good and bad consequences, considering what would happen if everyone behaved the same way, and others. The front page test is simple and cuts through much of the noise to how you truly feel about an action.WWW…
Yak shaving describes how when setting out to do something, you found you had to first do something else, which needed you to finish this other thing, and so on until you found yourself shaving a yak, or equally unrelated activity, to do the first thing you set out to do. It's pretty frequent in life — tidying your room? — and particularly resonates in software development, where when tackling one thing, you often find yourself fixing something else, which needs you to fix something else, and so on. Here's the ever brilliant xkcd on fixing problems. Yak shaving features, lovingly polished, in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. More: Here's a brilliant 40s clip of Hal changing a lightbulb from Malcolm in the Middle, classic yak shaving Early yak shaving features in the song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which fixing a bucket requires straw, which requires a knife to cut it, but the knife needs sharpening, which needs a stone, which is too dry and needs wetting with water, which needs fetching...with a bucket The first I found of yak shaving was a short article on productivity in the first issue of Make magazine by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann. Yak in the style of Alison Green and Adam Stower's excellent children's book, What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?…Yak shaving describes how when setting out to do something, you found you had to first do something else, which needed you to finish this other thing, and so on until you found yourself shaving a yak, or equally unrelated activity, to do the first thing you set out to do. It's pretty frequent in life — tidying your room? — and particularly resonates in software development, where when tackling one thing, you often find yourself fixing something else, which needs you to fix something else, and so on. Here's the ever brilliant xkcd on fixing problems. Yak shaving features, lovingly polished, in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. More: Here's a brilliant 40s clip of Hal changing a lightbulb from Malcolm in the Middle, classic yak shaving Early yak shaving features in the song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which fixing a bucket requires straw, which requires a knife to cut it, but the knife needs sharpening, which needs a stone, which is too dry and needs wetting with water, which needs fetching...with a bucket The first I found of yak shaving was a short article on productivity in the first issue of Make magazine by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann. Yak in the style of Alison Green and Adam Stower's excellent children's book, What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?WWW…
It's been called the expectation effect. Is it a B or a 13? It appears that how we see depends on the context and what we expect to see. This neat example is from a 1955 experiment by Jerome Bruner and A. Leigh Minturn. One of the findings, other than people seamlessly identifying a B or 13 when surrounded appropriately by letters or numbers, was that when asked to draw what they saw "as is" participants were more inclined to draw a closed or partially closed B when it was surrounded by letters. What participants expected to see appeared to affect what they did see. Order print …It's been called the expectation effect. Is it a B or a 13? It appears that how we see depends on the context and what we expect to see. This neat example is from a 1955 experiment by Jerome Bruner and A. Leigh Minturn. One of the findings, other than people seamlessly identifying a B or 13 when surrounded appropriately by letters or numbers, was that when asked to draw what they saw "as is" participants were more inclined to draw a closed or partially closed B when it was surrounded by letters. What participants expected to see appeared to affect what they did see. Order print WWW…
Bosses push information up to authority. Leaders push authority down to information. This little gem is from ex-submarine captain turned leadership guru, David Marquet. Pretty much any talk by him is great, but here's an entertaining and thought-provoking talk by him I enjoyed. See his book Turn the ship around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders…Bosses push information up to authority. Leaders push authority down to information. This little gem is from ex-submarine captain turned leadership guru, David Marquet. Pretty much any talk by him is great, but here's an entertaining and thought-provoking talk by him I enjoyed. See his book Turn the ship around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into LeadersWWW…
If you wanted to know who would win an election, then the only reliable (most of the time) way to do that is to ask everyone to vote for real and count them all. Short of doing that, if you want to get an idea who would win you can pick a group that you hope is representative of the whole of the voting population, ask them what they plan to vote instead, and then multiply up to the full group. But it turns out, whenever you ask people things, it's jolly hard to really have confidence in what you're extrapolating up to as all sorts of bias can creep into your sample. If you ask people what they plan to vote they may lie, they may tell you what they plan to do then change their mind, they may tell you what they think you want to hear depending on who's asking, they may say the first option because it's easiest, and you may ask in the places where it's easy or cheap to do so, or hear from only the people who are happy and not too busy to talk with you. In the example in the sketch, if you hope to receive responses to your questions by surveys then you get responses from people who happen to not mind doing surveys — from anyone who throws them in the bin you won't receive a single data point. All of these, and others, can lead to a bias in your sample and, at times, to drawing wholly inaccurate conclusions. Extreme example from How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.…If you wanted to know who would win an election, then the only reliable (most of the time) way to do that is to ask everyone to vote for real and count them all. Short of doing that, if you want to get an idea who would win you can pick a group that you hope is representative of the whole of the voting population, ask them what they plan to vote instead, and then multiply up to the full group. But it turns out, whenever you ask people things, it's jolly hard to really have confidence in what you're extrapolating up to as all sorts of bias can creep into your sample. If you ask people what they plan to vote they may lie, they may tell you what they plan to do then change their mind, they may tell you what they think you want to hear depending on who's asking, they may say the first option because it's easiest, and you may ask in the places where it's easy or cheap to do so, or hear from only the people who are happy and not too busy to talk with you. In the example in the sketch, if you hope to receive responses to your questions by surveys then you get responses from people who happen to not mind doing surveys — from anyone who throws them in the bin you won't receive a single data point. All of these, and others, can lead to a bias in your sample and, at times, to drawing wholly inaccurate conclusions. Extreme example from How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.WWW…
Compare if you please: Sentences that have been written in a passive voice are generally less powerful than sentences that have been written in an active voice. Active writing hits harder than passive writing. It's easy for passive writing to slip in. Here's a handy technique to help you spot passive writing in your sentences. Try adding "...by monkeys" to the end of the sentence. If it still makes sense, then there's a good chance it's passive. In the example in the sketch: "The bug will be fixed" you can tack on "...by monkeys" and all makes sense. It's passive. Passive writing is an easy way to distance ourselves and our opinions from what we're writing. Active writing takes ownership and responsibility and connects with the reader. "We'll fix the bug. Sorry about that." I love the "...by monkeys" example for spotting passive writing as it vividly shows how responsibility disappears. This super example and technique is from Monzo's excellent tone of voice guidelines. Handy for writing copy on the web, for your brand, and for everyday life. You might like the excellent Hemingway app to spot other non-Hemingway slips in your writing. I ran this post through it and cut out a lot of fluff. I also love the classic The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. More writing sketchplanations…Compare if you please: Sentences that have been written in a passive voice are generally less powerful than sentences that have been written in an active voice. Active writing hits harder than passive writing. It's easy for passive writing to slip in. Here's a handy technique to help you spot passive writing in your sentences. Try adding "...by monkeys" to the end of the sentence. If it still makes sense, then there's a good chance it's passive. In the example in the sketch: "The bug will be fixed" you can tack on "...by monkeys" and all makes sense. It's passive. Passive writing is an easy way to distance ourselves and our opinions from what we're writing. Active writing takes ownership and responsibility and connects with the reader. "We'll fix the bug. Sorry about that." I love the "...by monkeys" example for spotting passive writing as it vividly shows how responsibility disappears. This super example and technique is from Monzo's excellent tone of voice guidelines. Handy for writing copy on the web, for your brand, and for everyday life. You might like the excellent Hemingway app to spot other non-Hemingway slips in your writing. I ran this post through it and cut out a lot of fluff. I also love the classic The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. More writing sketchplanationsWWW…
